In Defense of Milestone Leveling

[5ekyu]

Choice. You’re missing choice.

If I’m a player and I earn XP by making discoveries, defeating monsters, finding treasure, and making friends then I FEEL like my choices are weighed and rewarded.

If I just gain a level from time to time, and the connection between my choices and that level gain are not very strong, then I do NOT FEEL like my choices are rewarded and that I can just sit there and still gain levels.

Here’s an example. In my games, monsters that are tougher than you are are worth more XP and monsters that are less tough than you are worth significantly less XP. Discoveries are always worth a moderate amount of XP, and helping your allies is always worth a moderate amount of XP. How do you think my players behave? What do they do? What do they try to avoid doing?

Now if I were to just give them levels whenever I felt it was appropriate, I would lose the connection between the behaviors and the rewards. Any rewards would have to come from another source, but there still wouldn’t be a sense of progress toward character development. Can you guess how they behave in this scenario? Maybe. Maybe not.

Theoretically, they should play the same, regardless. But IMX (and speaking only for games I’ve run at my table), they do not play the same. The fiat system is always less focused and less engaged. It comes with a “when do we level?” after every session. With earned-XP, even earning it based on various milestones/quests, they’re more driven and even go after side rewards because they feel like they’re making progress.

And let’s be honest, a major component of a classed-based game with levels is character advancement. Removing the feeling that YOU affect that advancement also removes some of the satisfaction of the advancement itself. This is not always a welcome trade-off.

But the difference really is how your choices feel.

I agree fiat - esp mystery giant- has some issues, specifically when do we level. But imx a standard session xp based and known timing Avoids those. My guys know tierx3-4 sessions is a level with the 3-4 wiggle being "reach a good point like prolonged rest or travel."

So they dont have to ask - ever.

Meanwhile, they know they never need to choose whether to do this or that based on "want xp progress," they choose side quests or bigger foes for the in-game reasons that matter to their characters. If I haven't given them enough in-game reasons to be interested enough, honestly , they shouldn't go after them.

I would rather they skip several uninteresting to them quests than take them for the XP anyway. If all I gotta do is dangle XP, that sets my bar way way too low. If I need to offer do to interest them in quests, to motivate them then imo I am shorting my players.

Imo.

 

[Bawylie]

I agree fiat - esp mystery giant- has some issues, specifically when do we level. But imx a standard session xp based and known timing Avoids those. My guys know tierx3-4 sessions is a level with the 3-4 wiggle being "reach a good point like prolonged rest or travel."

So they dont have to ask - ever.

Meanwhile, they know they never need to choose whether to do this or that based on "want xp progress," they choose side quests or bigger foes for the in-game reasons that matter to their characters. If I haven't given them enough in-game reasons to be interested enough, honestly , they shouldn't go after them.

I would rather they skip several uninteresting to them quests than take them for the XP anyway. If all I gotta do is dangle XP, that sets my bar way way too low. If I need to offer do to interest them in quests, to motivate them then imo I am shorting my players.

Imo.

That’s cool - I have players whose motivations for playing are not strictly limited to-in game events. That doesn’t mean those in-game events aren’t sufficiently interesting, though: it just means I recognize my players have sometimes more than one thing that grabs them. I’m sure there’s a variety of motivations to play and I know for me, it’s several. But certainly they’re not always the same for everyone, even at the same table.

 

[Li Shenron]

How do you feel about Experience Points, and how they are distributed?

My general feeling on the topic is that its importance is somewhat overrated, but not too much.

I think the most important thing is the general level advancement speed of player characters, which is determined by the total XP gained. How exactly are they distributed during the game is secondary, not irrelevant but less important.

Personally I started off DMing in 3.0 edition using standard XP rules (i.e. combat) + individual bonus XP for anything, from strong roleplay to good tactics to right decisions to individual achievements... so in the same session the Paladin could get +50XP for a nice speech against the BBEG, the Rogue +25XP for successfully disarming a trap, the Fighter +100XP for figuring out the best way to ambush the enemies and so on. It was way too fiddly and subjective, and even with its theoretical good purpose (i.e. to encourage players to play well) it gave me the feeling that it was unfair to other players who maybe were not that good, and could get discouraged by the competitive aspect of this system.

So I then moved to "same XP to everyone". But I did include XP for surpassing non-combat scenarios, actually trying to make them about as valuable as combat, think 50-50 XP gained from either. It worked quite well, even if the non-combat XP were still essentially subjective.

Next I switched to "everyone levels up when the DM says so", which was actually decided only because I had various published adventures that I wanted to run, so I needed a way as a DM to control the level of the PCs in order to fit with those adventures. Sometimes it meant to speed up the leveling quickly, some other time to stop it altogether. This is the closest I have used to "milestone levelling", or perhaps equivalent to it if those milestones are set by the DM freely instead of being regulated. The only problem I encountered with this approach was that some of my players said they missed recording XPs, because they found it to be a nice throw-back touch like scoring points in a video game...

I continued with this approach also during 5e playtest years, but in that phase it was always agreed that we were playtesting and wanted to play the game at whatever levels we wished.

However, when we actually just started playing the new edition, I decided to use the default XP rules (which in fact, we probably should have playtested too!) and that's because I always want to play with default rules first...

Nowadays, I am still using 5e default XP rules i.e. combat XP only. I believe the real reason is that I just don't care anymore I see no reason to change it currently, even tho I always feel like I'd prefer a de-celerating level/XP progression.

 

[S'mon]

So if I were to instead award 300XP, the players might feel like their choices mattered a little more. Heck, I can use XP to make the milestone leveling all but invisible, if I'm clever about it. Maybe at the end of the night, I cherry-pick 3-4 memorable events from the adventure and give them enough XP to just barely pass 300. "...for successfully sneaking out of the torture chamber, 100XP. For surviving that goblin ambush and the dire rats, 150XP. And for, um, finding the secret door and disabling its trap, another 60XP. You all get 310 XP total."

Give them the XP in-session when they do this stuff and they'll feel like their choices matter. And if they end up levelling a session late or early, surely no harm done.

 

[cbwjm]

I don't mind milestone XP, particularly since the level gain of each class has been standardised, but something I have done in the past is to award quest XP, complete a quest, gain 5% XP needed to level. I combine this with encounter XP, that is the difficulty of the monsters the players face. The thing about encounter XP is that it doesn't matter how that encounter is beaten, it could be through combat or through diplomacy or stealth. Players still gain the XP.

Something else I tend to do is to use party XP, I total up the XP, divide by 4 (or by however many players I have) and that is how much XP the party gains. Once everything became standard after 2e, there just doesn't seem to be any point in each player individually tracking XP. If a player misses a sessions, their PC will still level up with the others. If a new player joins, they create a PC at the same level as others, all based on the total party XP. I guess I could use milestone XP, but this way I have a way to measure progression of the players.

 

[Oofta]

If I’m a player and I earn XP by making discoveries, defeating monsters, finding treasure, and making friends then I FEEL like my choices are weighed and rewarded.

Not that I'm picking on you, but this seems to be a common theme here. That the DM needs to reward people for things they are supposed to do as defined by the DM. Blech. I encourage, cajole, semi-direct PCs all the time, but it's through story and role play. Using explicit XP or pre-defined milestones pushes the "it's a game" aspect over "it's a shared story" aspect of the game.

The really important parts will be stuff like...did they kill the boss, or let him escape? Did they take the exit that leads to the swamp, or the one that leads to the forest? Did they rescue the other prisoner? Did they find the sword? That's where the choices they make are going to shine (or haunt them). I'd prefer they focus on those rather than the points they get for killing Whatever, but I can see where assigning milestone levels might pull focus.

This is more my way of thinking. Actions have consequences, PCs have impact on the world and those around them based on action or inaction. Too "lazy" to stop the orc invasion? Well, sorry your favorite tavern is now a smoking ruin and Talley the little girl with a stuffed bunny you thought was so cute is now a homeless, just another nameless refugee.

We're telling a story together, not just playing an advanced version of a board game. Most stories just logically have different chapters. As the story progresses the heroes get better, learn new skills, face tougher challenges. The PCs don't gain levels because they accomplished X feat or overcame Z obstacle it's because they're in a different part of the story and need more capabilities.

Or going back to real life again, I feel like there were times when I learned more from a project that went horribly, terribly wrong than a project that went perfectly. Sometimes achieving a goal is a good thing, but I don't want to tie it to accomplishing something. Especially because I do very sand-boxy campaigns and there are frequently multiple threads. Happen to tie up several threads in one session and what ... gain two levels?

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with any of the options for gaining levels (or tracking wealth for that matter, I tend to just hand out the numbers after the game session). Different people play for different reasons and my style probably isn't for everyone. It's just something I discuss with the players up front in a session 0.

 

[Bawylie]

We're telling a story together, not just playing an advanced version of a board game. Most stories just logically have different chapters. As the story progresses the heroes get better, learn new skills, face tougher challenges. The PCs don't gain levels because they accomplished X feat or overcame Z obstacle it's because they're in a different part of the story and need more capabilities.

Quick thought experiment. In the “shared story, not advanced board game” - can you imagine a different part of the story wherein the characters need FEWER capabilities? Would they be alright with de-leveling so their capabilities matched the needs of the shared story?

I can’t (and therefore won’t) answer for your players. But I wouldn’t be alright with that if I were playing and you said, “ok, Brad we’re dealing with goblins again this time, so it’s back down to level two.” I suspect I’m not alone there. Advancement is a fairly big part of the game. Getting new abilities, new spells, and new magic gear is part of the appeal. And you see this across platforms and games of all stripes, not just tabletop; leveling is a measure of advancement and XP is a measure of leveling. Gaining XP feels like accomplishing or working towards something.

I’m not knocking story, or any in-game motivations. I’m just saying there are other motivations, advancement being one of them, and there are some ways to handle advancement (engaging and less so) just like there are ways to tell engaging shared stories and duds.

IMO, ignoring XP because it’s too gamey or too meta or too hard risks overlooking it’s value. And, it’s been around SO LONG now that people are accustomed to it, anyway.

 

[5ekyu]

Quick thought experiment. In the “shared story, not advanced board game” - can you imagine a different part of the story wherein the characters need FEWER capabilities? Would they be alright with de-leveling so their capabilities matched the needs of the shared story?

I can’t (and therefore won’t) answer for your players. But I wouldn’t be alright with that if I were playing and you said, “ok, Brad we’re dealing with goblins again this time, so it’s back down to level two.” I suspect I’m not alone there. Advancement is a fairly big part of the game. Getting new abilities, new spells, and new magic gear is part of the appeal. And you see this across platforms and games of all stripes, not just tabletop; leveling is a measure of advancement and XP is a measure of leveling. Gaining XP feels like accomplishing or working towards something.

I’m not knocking story, or any in-game motivations. I’m just saying there are other motivations, advancement being one of them, and there are some ways to handle advancement (engaging and less so) just like there are ways to tell engaging shared stories and duds.

IMO, ignoring XP because it’s too gamey or too meta or too hard risks overlooking it’s value. And, it’s been around SO LONG now that people are accustomed to it, anyway.

Cant speak for him, but my players are ok with it.

We have in most long campaigns occasionally played flashback scenes from earlier in the timeline. In those cases, where we needed to, we cut back or scaled back traits as appropriate.

But that's fine for chapters in a bigger story. We dont tend to run Memento-like progress backwards stories, so doing things like this for prolonged timeframes isnt ever " needed by the story."

But then, the story is usually one that is unfolding as its bring played - not following a pre-determined set of key points enforced by GM assigning values to the "right way".

So, that flashback, for instance, is actually creating that back-story element that sets the stage for the future story. - instead of just scripting it by GM or others.

It's part of why I stopped using the "so for following the right way" long long ago. Let's everybody have more choices - in-game in-character - for their own merits not for XP or whatever.


But for the de-leveling... I think this sentence spotlights the difference...

"But I wouldn’t be alright with that if I were playing and you said, “ok, Brad we’re dealing with goblins again this time, so it’s back down to level two.” "

I as GM dont **tell** Brad we are doing this or doing that with levels backwards etc. Itsbmore a case of Brad and I choose to roleplay that past event for more detail and making it more "real in game. Often - most often - its Brad's idea.

That whole GM telling thrm to de-level fits in with the GM choosing what gets xp carrots and what doesnt - the core idea that advancement is the GMs to give out or not, by extension, to take back.

That's where we differ.

 

[iserith]

In the first adventure of my next campaign, I've already decided that everyone will gain one level when they escape the introductory dungeon. Whichever exit they choose (there are two), and how they reach it, will reward them with a level. Their choice will have a huge impact on which direction the story goes next, but the XP reward will be the same.

If I announce that to the group at the end of the adventure, you are suggesting that some players might feel like their choices didn't matter. "You have escaped the dungeon of Black Mountain! Congratulations, you all gain one level." I think I agree: that sounds really stiff and flat.

So if I were to instead award 300XP, the players might feel like their choices mattered a little more. Heck, I can use XP to make the milestone leveling all but invisible, if I'm clever about it. Maybe at the end of the night, I cherry-pick 3-4 memorable events from the adventure and give them enough XP to just barely pass 300. "...for successfully sneaking out of the torture chamber, 100XP. For surviving that goblin ambush and the dire rats, 150XP. And for, um, finding the secret door and disabling its trap, another 60XP. You all get 310 XP total."

Either way, the party goes up a level once they escape the dungeon, just as I had planned all along.

The really important parts will be stuff like...did they kill the boss, or let him escape? Did they take the exit that leads to the swamp, or the one that leads to the forest? Did they rescue the other prisoner? Did they find the sword? That's where the choices they make are going to shine (or haunt them). I'd prefer they focus on those rather than the points they get for killing Whatever, but I can see where assigning milestone levels might pull focus.

I would say what makes the difference is whether or not the choice was an informed one. If the players know in advance what exactly gets them XP, then they can prioritize and make decisions based on that, to the extent getting XP is important to them. If they don't know in advance what gets them XP, then yeah, the DM may as well just hand out levels by fiat and dispense with the illusion of choice.

I would also add that if you're tying XP to making decisions to engage with your DM prep, then the likelihood that your prep isn't "wasted" goes way up. So that is an added benefit. My players, for example, will usually scour an adventure location such that all the XP and loot is found. It's pretty rare when they leave any XP (and thus my prep) on the table.

 

[Bawylie]

Cant speak for him, but my players are ok with it.

We have in most long campaigns occasionally played flashback scenes from earlier in the timeline. In those cases, where we needed to, we cut back or scaled back traits as appropriate.

But that's fine for chapters in a bigger story. We dont tend to run Memento-like progress backwards stories, so doing things like this for prolonged timeframes isnt ever " needed by the story."

But then, the story is usually one that is unfolding as its bring played - not following a pre-determined set of key points enforced by GM assigning values to the "right way".

So, that flashback, for instance, is actually creating that back-story element that sets the stage for the future story. - instead of just scripting it by GM or others.

It's part of why I stopped using the "so for following the right way" long long ago. Let's everybody have more choices - in-game in-character - for their own merits not for XP or whatever.


But for the de-leveling... I think this sentence spotlights the difference...

"But I wouldn’t be alright with that if I were playing and you said, “ok, Brad we’re dealing with goblins again this time, so it’s back down to level two.” "

I as GM dont **tell** Brad we are doing this or doing that with levels backwards etc. Itsbmore a case of Brad and I choose to roleplay that past event for more detail and making it more "real in game. Often - most often - its Brad's idea.

That whole GM telling thrm to de-level fits in with the GM choosing what gets xp carrots and what doesnt - the core idea that advancement is the GMs to give out or not, by extension, to take back.

That's where we differ.

Ok, it’s definitely not Brad’s idea.

—————-

Here’s another perspective on this. If my back itches, there’s no amount of cake you can serve me that scratches the itch on my back. And if I’m keen on earning XP (and you know that I am because I keep asking for it), no amount of shared story, funny voices, or gesticulation will satisfy my want for XP (no matter how good those other things are).

Anyway that’s my last on the subject.

/lurk