Edena_of_Neith said:
You might not ... but the designers at TSR did.
So? If I feel a writer has improperly applied the rules, I ignore what they've written.
Edena_of_Neith said:
Yes, there are other ways besides killing to gain experience. But you know very well, and everyone knows very well, that historically killing has been the primary way in D&D. Other ways have been secondary (except for treasure in 1E, which was primary even over killing ... but killing the monster first and getting the treasure second was the first option most players took.)
Sorry. I don't know that. Most good-aligned PCs in the D&D (any edition) games I've played have always tried to avoid fights when they could. (Heck, they knew there'd be plenty of times when they couldn't avoid a fight, since they were often on quests against evil.)
Monsters often fled the scene once they realized they were out-matched. Monsters were often defeated through turning,
Sleep,
Hold Person, or other means that ended the fight without the death of all opponents, but which often meant still meant getting the bulk of the treasure.
DMs always gave XP for "getting past" monsters without killing them. DMs always gave "story awards". These things were true even in my 1e AD&D days.
When 2e & 3e came around & treasure was no longer the primary by-the-book source of XP, just about every DM I knew shifted even more to--at that point by-the-book--story awards.
& still--if none of that were true--it's a
huge leap from "killing is the primary source of XP" to "PCs must consider killing fun & games".
In any case, you seem much more interested in this Medegia tangent than the title of this thread, & I don't really have anything more to contribute to that.
