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Morrus on ... XP
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<blockquote data-quote="Hautamaki" data-source="post: 5838697" data-attributes="member: 42219"><p>I use a modified OD&D system.</p><p></p><p>The point of XP is to reward players for overcoming challenges, however sometimes the difficulty can be highly subjective, so figuring out how much XP to give can be difficult. Especially if the PCs find a clever way to bypass, nullify, or completely obliterate a challenge that you initially thought would be very difficult. What happened in my games is that players would always attempt to kill monsters, even if they didn't have to, even if, 'realistically', a party of adventurers on a quest would have no reason whatsoever to take a side track to attack an owl bear they spotted tracks for way off in the distance. Players would also never run away from a battle under any circumstances, so putting a battle they would not be able to win would be a no-no. I was forced to always provide parties with the exact right amount of challenge; which to me impacted the game's verisimilitude.</p><p></p><p>So I decided to scrap that system. Now, players get experience for recovering loot and bringing it back to a safe place, and for accomplishing quests/missions. They get exactly 0 experience for killing a monster or disabling a trap. Monsters and traps are obstacles they have to figure out how to overcome, not the goal of the quest. This frees me up to do all sorts of things like put in monsters that are too strong for the party, and the party must either sneak or talk their way around them. The fact that the party also has this option and they know that this will not reduce the amount of XP they get on a given adventure also frees them up to find more clever or role-playing based ways to get around a given set of obstacles.</p><p></p><p>Experience is always awarded to whichever living characters make it back to a safe place when they get there. Whatever treasure the party recovered from the dungeon (treasure they brought in there doesn't count) gives them 1 point of experience per gp resale value of the treasure; treasure given to the PCs as a reward for completing a quest also counts for XP. If they are able to negotiate a higher resale value by using gather information, history checks, appraise, etc, so much the better, they took those skills they absolutely should be rewarded for using them with more experience too. Players also receive quest experience upon giving proof of quest completion to whoever gave them the quest. But I usually don't give extra quest experience unless there's not nearly enough loot either in the dungeon or in the quest giver's possession for them to get enough experience just by the gp value of the treasure they get though. For example, if a poor farmer asks the PCs to kill a local dire bear that has been eating his cows, neither the farmer nor the dire bear is going to have any treasure for the PCs but if the PCs are good-aligned they should realistically consider taking the quest and be rewarded with XP at least when they complete it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hautamaki, post: 5838697, member: 42219"] I use a modified OD&D system. The point of XP is to reward players for overcoming challenges, however sometimes the difficulty can be highly subjective, so figuring out how much XP to give can be difficult. Especially if the PCs find a clever way to bypass, nullify, or completely obliterate a challenge that you initially thought would be very difficult. What happened in my games is that players would always attempt to kill monsters, even if they didn't have to, even if, 'realistically', a party of adventurers on a quest would have no reason whatsoever to take a side track to attack an owl bear they spotted tracks for way off in the distance. Players would also never run away from a battle under any circumstances, so putting a battle they would not be able to win would be a no-no. I was forced to always provide parties with the exact right amount of challenge; which to me impacted the game's verisimilitude. So I decided to scrap that system. Now, players get experience for recovering loot and bringing it back to a safe place, and for accomplishing quests/missions. They get exactly 0 experience for killing a monster or disabling a trap. Monsters and traps are obstacles they have to figure out how to overcome, not the goal of the quest. This frees me up to do all sorts of things like put in monsters that are too strong for the party, and the party must either sneak or talk their way around them. The fact that the party also has this option and they know that this will not reduce the amount of XP they get on a given adventure also frees them up to find more clever or role-playing based ways to get around a given set of obstacles. Experience is always awarded to whichever living characters make it back to a safe place when they get there. Whatever treasure the party recovered from the dungeon (treasure they brought in there doesn't count) gives them 1 point of experience per gp resale value of the treasure; treasure given to the PCs as a reward for completing a quest also counts for XP. If they are able to negotiate a higher resale value by using gather information, history checks, appraise, etc, so much the better, they took those skills they absolutely should be rewarded for using them with more experience too. Players also receive quest experience upon giving proof of quest completion to whoever gave them the quest. But I usually don't give extra quest experience unless there's not nearly enough loot either in the dungeon or in the quest giver's possession for them to get enough experience just by the gp value of the treasure they get though. For example, if a poor farmer asks the PCs to kill a local dire bear that has been eating his cows, neither the farmer nor the dire bear is going to have any treasure for the PCs but if the PCs are good-aligned they should realistically consider taking the quest and be rewarded with XP at least when they complete it. [/QUOTE]
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