Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4846543" data-attributes="member: 80487">Second Edition has a &quot;story award&quot;, but that is supposed to be no more than 1:1 with XP possible from defeating monsters encountered (and in any case no more than enough for 10 to raise a character 1 level) -- versus an expected ratio of 3:1 or so for treasure in the old model. XP values for monsters are higher, but not enough to keep advancement from being greatly slowed. At low levels, the result is basically higher PC mortality due to greater emphasis on combat (at minimum, more monster encounters per level).In my experience, people tend to come up with other schemes. Some restore treasure XP. Others implement either bigger story awards or (what is often effectively the same thing) characters simply gaining levels by DM decree. A common problem is that story awards are not explicit before the fact the way treasures (at least potentially) are to players. Instead of being able to exercise strategies to minimize risk and maximize rewards, players end up just taking whatever the DM gives them.Increasing monster XP even more has the benefit of giving players more control than (post hoc) story awards, but of course further reduces experience to a matter of monster-fighting.The trend in published modules in that era was toward story &quot;railroads&quot;, which made the issue of &quot;encouraging&quot; any sort of approach by other means pretty moot. If the plot-line suffered any decline under WotC, it seems to me to have returned.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 4846543, member: 80487"] Second Edition has a [B]"story award"[/B], but that is supposed to be no more than 1:1 with XP possible from defeating monsters encountered (and in any case no more than enough for 10 to raise a character 1 level) -- versus an expected ratio of 3:1 or so for treasure in the old model. XP values for monsters are higher, but not enough to keep advancement from being greatly slowed. At low levels, the result is basically higher PC mortality [I]due to[/I] greater emphasis on combat (at minimum, more monster encounters per level). In my experience, people tend to come up with other schemes. Some restore treasure XP. Others implement either bigger story awards or (what is often effectively the same thing) characters simply gaining levels by DM decree. A common problem is that story awards are not explicit before the fact the way treasures (at least potentially) are to players. Instead of being able to exercise strategies to minimize risk and maximize rewards, players end up just taking whatever the DM gives them. Increasing monster XP even more has the benefit of giving players more control than (post hoc) story awards, but of course further reduces experience to a matter of monster-fighting. The trend in published modules in that era was toward story "railroads", which made the issue of "encouraging" any sort of approach by other means pretty moot. If the plot-line suffered any decline under WotC, it seems to me to have returned. [/QUOTE]

Verification