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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7572423" data-attributes="member: 6796661">I've tried a variety of experience and leveling systems since I started 5e. In my first homebrew game I used traditional XP but I saw XP as representing the level of the challenge. You could get XP by negotiating or avoiding, instead of fighting. You could get XP for disarming traps and meeting other challenges. There were also story based milestone XP rewards for completing certain quests or reaching certain locations. But I found it got to be overly complicated. Halfway through the campaign we went to pure session leveling. Everyone would level up almost every session. In my Curse of Strahd Campaign I found that traditional XP leveling wouldn't work well without a lot of extra work on my part and session based leveling didn't seem to encourage the sandbox style of the adventure. On DM's Guild I found "A Structured Milestone System for Curse of Strahd: Milestones Made Easy" by R. Padron. It worked very well. You got one to eight XP per milestone. A milestone could be meeting one of the conditions of the Tarroka card reading, defeating major enemies, thwarting Strahd from meeting certain of his goals, "moving the story forward" (mainly completing various quests), exploring new areas, and finding magic items. XP was a party resource. It required a custom leveling table that would show how many XP the party needed before leveling up, based on the party size, but it was incredibly easy to use to run the game and gave players a sense that they had control over how they leveled up. Whether they liked to fight, or explore, stick to the main plot line, or engage in side quests, their were ways to be rewarded and to advance. In my current campaign, which is centered around the mega dungeon Rappan Athuk, the players gain XP for GP extracted. What I love about this system, beside nolstalgia, is that it supports almost any play style except wealth hating. You like to be sneaky, avoiding combat and stealing? That is a great way to play. You like lots of magic and planning out how to overcome obstacles with strategic use of spells, that works. You like to kick in door and kill monsters? That works as well. Even better, a mix of all those approaches. Plus the in-game game of working around encumbrance. Getting the good and items of value out. Selling things to get gold (you don't get your XP until you sell it). I find that this game works best if players have a motivation to take the wealth. For some extracting valuable is all the motivation they need. But the paladin that just wants to smite evil, may want to see that the ill got games of the bad guys is put to good use. Also, it helps to have reasons to spend that gold. In my current campaign, we play once per month. Between that we use downtime activities as a mini game that we play by e-mail. I am also using Matt Coleville's Strongholds & Followers rules. Finally, leveling up requires spending gold. I've enjoyed running, and my players have expressed that they've enjoyed playing, each of these campaigns. Each felt very different and how experience and leveling was handled played a big role in how each felt. I don't think that there is one perfect system. Determine the kind of game you want to play and use the XP system that best supports that.  But I caution against making it too complicated. GM's have enough bookkeeping to do.</blockquote>

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