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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9776284" data-attributes="member: 907">That is not true. The 3.5e DMG had about two pages about both ad hoc XP rewards and story-based awards, both for non-combat encounters and for achieving mission goals, and also discussed the need to adjust treasure rewards accordingly to make sure a big XP boost doesn't come without the appropriate amount of treasure, leaving you underequipped when you level up.Heck, even 2e went into some detail on how to award story-based XP. I think it had a note about how available story XP generally shouldn't be more than available monster XP. I'm not really sure how this compared to 1e – I believe the intent for story XP was to replace 1e-style XP for gp (which was around in 2e as an optional rule, with a great big signpost saying "don't use this"). On one hand, from what I understand of 1e gold-based XP was generally intended to be much larger than monster-based XP, with some talk about how that rewards getting the treasure without getting into a fight with its guardians. On the other hand, monster XP is generally higher in 2e because special abilities count as extra HD rather than being a flat bonus. So for example, the 1e bulette is worth 2300 XP + 12 XP per hp, for an average of ~2780 XP. In 2e, they clock in at 4000 XP, almost twice that. So 2e awarded more XP for monsters than 1e did, but recommended a cap of non-combat XP equal to the potential value. I don't know if 1e had a similar recommendation, but I did find a note in Basic D&D that treasure was supposed to be "3/4 or more" of total XP.On the whole, I think it's fairly likely that neither Gary Gygax, Frank Mentzer, or Zeb Cook spent a whole lot of time crunching the numbers on how much XP should be coming from where and making sure the game stats reflected that, but rather that they had a more vibe-based approach. This in comparison to 3e which specifically pulls the curtain back and talks about how the game is built around 13 1/3 equal-level encounters per level (which in turn is based on playing weekly and having 3-4 encounters per session, which will lead to 1 level/real-world month).</blockquote>

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