Missed session catch-up XP

[Jacob Marley]

In my campaign XP is awarded as follows:

1. Player present, PC participates in challenge = Full XP
2. Player absent, PC participates in challenge = Full XP
3. Player present, PC does not participate in challenge = No XP
4. Player absent, PC does not participate in challenge = No XP

I've been doing this method for XP since late 3rd Edition and find it works quite well for my group. My players each manage a stable of four to five PCs within a fairly open world-style campaign. PCs often have personal agendas apart from the group's that frequently create XP worthy challenges. I tend not to worry about XP disparity between PCs.

 

[Blue]

Or, as in the case of my latest game, backup characters earn XP every time a player spends Inspiration to benefit another player's character.

I loved reading about that in another thread. That it's your "off duty" PCs bragging stories around a tavern, and chiming in with "that not how I heard it happened" is just full of goodness.

Though it varies a bit by campaign, in general, you're always coming in at 1st-level as a new player in my games. You are therefore encouraged to create and level up a backup character by swapping him or her in from time to time as your main. Usually, players will play both characters until they're at 3rd level each, then pick one as the main and leave the other as backup. At least they get to start at 3rd with a subclass if the main bites the dust. You catch up pretty quick in my experience.

Yeah, this is what I was referring to about a stable of characters per PC, which will have a different dynamic.

Though you mention "catch up" - are you refering that characters that start behind have a way to catch up to the same XP total as other characters? In other words, gain more XP. Or is "catch up" just to be the same level? The second part works okayish at the low levels, but once you are in the high single digits others seem like they would be climbling levels with the same XP it takes the 1st level PCs to get to where they were and it will take forever to catch up.

But really my comments weren't meant for a stable. I've done stables of PCs before, and we've done things like run our lower level PCs with new player's high level PCs - all whom were around the same level. That worked well to get the player at least one PC up to the right level range.

 

[guachi]

Thus, the PCs all have different XP and sometimes levels. In one campaign, I saw a level difference of 7 levels in a session. In truth, it was not an issue at all. The lower-level PC just had to be a little cautious for a couple of fights, then quickly leveled up.

One of the genius designs by Gygax was just this type of leveling. Even back in the day it became clear that Gygax was writing rules for the types of games he was running. And ensemble games with players of all levels seemed to be the norm. So it won't be a big deal at the table. It wasn't at my 5e table where I ended up losing 4 of 6 players and recruited 3 new players who all started at level 3 and the remaining two players were level 5 or 6.

The players may only be level 3 (and I really recommend starting new players off at level 3 if existing players are 5+) but everyone gets a subclass. Then at 4 they get an ASI. And at 5 they are basically equal with everyone else.

 

[Blue]

I do XP so I do XP by PC participation. If his PC sat out then no XP, but unless its a huge variance I don't think it makes a lot of difference. If the PC was there then he gets his usual share.

Do PCs who participate more get more XP? Or is it really awarding attendance instead of participation?

Sore point from back at university - only underclassmen could be graded based on attendance, but many teachers graded on class participation - asking and answering questions, etc. Which was by the rules okay to grade for all students. And made it harder on introverted students vs. extroverted ones. Ever since I've had a very sharp divide between attendance and participation.

Let me give an example. Back in 3.x I ran two campaigns where the players could give each other poker chips for cool RP. Sort of like how Inspiration is awarded in 5e but by the players.

At the end of the night I awarded an RP XP pool as well as any other XP (milestone and reduced encounter XP). Each player got 2 shares for attendance - they show up, they got those two shares. Then each chip also gave a share and a small level-based XP bonus*. That's participation.

Though it went a bit further than that because we had an unexpected development - often when players were absent, they had created such bold and memorable characters that other players would chime in for what they would say or do. And sometimes this would get a chip. So by creating such strong personalities that they could enhance the dynamic even then they would occasionally get a share of the RP pool of XP. Not expected but in the end very welcome in rewarding what we wanted.

Because that's what it was at the end - rewarding the behavior we wanted. And I wanted great RP. So I rewarded based on that. And I outsourced rewarding it to the players to keep my workload low. Which wouldn't work with every group, but I have a mature and great bunch I game with.

 

[Inchoroi]

Training!

Have an NPC of the same "class" from the world that the players have known for a bit, and have that NPC tutor them, for money and/or favors. That's how I do it. Works pretty well, but it takes downtime as well as money. Here's the rules I came up with:

Class Levels
It is possible for a character to learn class levels through training. However, there are some restrictions, as this system is intended to allow a character who is lagging behind in levels to catch up to the rest of their adventuring party.

Like all training, a character must locate a tutor in order to train up to a level; the tutor must be a member of the class that you wish to train in, and must possess that class up to the level you wish to learn. The character
must spend a number of days training as detailed on the training table below, paying the tutor a sum of wealth, as shown on the table below.

When a character completes their training, they are granted enough experience points to reach the level they trained to, but no further. A character cannot train to a higher level than the highest level of the party, which
never includes NPCs.

Training Class Levels Table

Levels Sought	Training Time	Training Cost per Level
2nd-4th	10 days	Trainer’s level x 10 gp
5th-10th	20 days	Trainer’s level x 100 gp
11th-16th	30 days	Trainer’s level x 1,000 gp
17th-20th	40 days	Trainer’s level x 10,000 gp

I've had two players end up using it thus far, and its worked out pretty well.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Do PCs who participate more get more XP? Or is it really awarding attendance instead of participation?

Sore point from back at university - only underclassmen could be graded based on attendance, but many teachers graded on class participation - asking and answering questions, etc. Which was by the rules okay to grade for all students. And made it harder on introverted students vs. extroverted ones. Ever since I've had a very sharp divide between attendance and participation.

Let me give an example. Back in 3.x I ran two campaigns where the players could give each other poker chips for cool RP. Sort of like how Inspiration is awarded in 5e but by the players.

At the end of the night I awarded an RP XP pool as well as any other XP (milestone and reduced encounter XP). Each player got 2 shares for attendance - they show up, they got those two shares. Then each chip also gave a share and a small level-based XP bonus*. That's participation.

Though it went a bit further than that because we had an unexpected development - often when players were absent, they had created such bold and memorable characters that other players would chime in for what they would say or do. And sometimes this would get a chip. So by creating such strong personalities that they could enhance the dynamic even then they would occasionally get a share of the RP pool of XP. Not expected but in the end very welcome in rewarding what we wanted.

Because that's what it was at the end - rewarding the behavior we wanted. And I wanted great RP. So I rewarded based on that. And I outsourced rewarding it to the players to keep my workload low. Which wouldn't work with every group, but I have a mature and great bunch I game with.

By PC of course I mean the character, no the player. I do give bonus XP for excellent play too but only to the players who showed excellent play. If you are gone your PC gets full XP since the group is running him as an NPC so its not really a participation award. Encounter X was worth 2000xp . So the 5 survivors out of 6 all get a full share of XP for that. No player is ever wanting to hold out their character if they are not going ot make it since its sometimes impossible to narrate and they don't want their buddies to go into fights shorthanded.

 

[Blue]

Several people mentioned "catch up", and I'm really having a problem wrapping my head around it because the math doesn't seem to support it. Can you explain what you mean by it?

To catch up in actual XP means that they would need to gain more than the others, so I assume what is being talked about.

To catch up in level only seems to work at the first tier of play. For me we don't usually spend a large amount of campaign time at those levels but that just may be the tables I play at. We spend the most sessions at second and third tier of play.

Second tier of play is 5-10, with halfway through 8th as the point in the middle (5,6,7,8,9,10). So that's 28500 XP. By the time someone starting from 1st has gained 23000 XP to hit 8th, they existing PCs are half way to 10th. It's not until 14th when they are all briefly the same level, though only for 2000 XP of it.

To me, that's not catching up quickly.

And that's just the middle of second tier. If character's just hit 3rd tier with 85K of XP, a 1st level character joining will never catch up in level.

But several people have said it, so I feel I must be missing something. How do the people starting at 1st catch up? Or is is it really "only in the first tier of play"?

 

[iserith]

I loved reading about that in another thread. That it's your "off duty" PCs bragging stories around a tavern, and chiming in with "that not how I heard it happened" is just full of goodness.

It works really well.

Yeah, this is what I was referring to about a stable of characters per PC, which will have a different dynamic.

Though you mention "catch up" - are you refering that characters that start behind have a way to catch up to the same XP total as other characters? In other words, gain more XP. Or is "catch up" just to be the same level? The second part works okayish at the low levels, but once you are in the high single digits others seem like they would be climbling levels with the same XP it takes the 1st level PCs to get to where they were and it will take forever to catch up.

But really my comments weren't meant for a stable. I've done stables of PCs before, and we've done things like run our lower level PCs with new player's high level PCs - all whom were around the same level. That worked well to get the player at least one PC up to the right level range.

By "catch up," I mean to close the gap between the character levels. Presumably the lower-level PCs are fighting things they couldn't normally fight except that they have higher-level PCs with them that can. And big chunks of XP follow which gets them to level up pretty quickly. Also, we have to imagine that sometimes the higher-level PCs are going to miss sessions sometimes which means in those sessions they can get closer to those PCs' XP totals. They may never be equal in XP total, but they can get close enough with their difference is effectively negligible due to D&D 5e's design.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

So you use XP as a punitive measure for an out of game situation?

That approach to the game and group dynamics will end poorly. The players are not your employees. If there is a problem with a player the group should talk about it and decide what to do.

It works fine for me. I tell my players that this is the rule before we start playing. And it motivates them to not miss without giving word. As those situations might happen quite frequently it's better to just not give XP rather than talk with them about it every single time.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Several people mentioned "catch up", and I'm really having a problem wrapping my head around it because the math doesn't seem to support it. Can you explain what you mean by it?

I've already explained it earlier, but I personally go by AL rules: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/AL_PG_YP.pdf
See section "Downtime: Catching Up".