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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 3509129" data-attributes="member: 545">The potential downside is that the PCs will be rewarded for stupid or otherwise undesirable behavior.An example in a gray area is the party with zero ranks in Survival slogging their way across the Dark Forest beating up random wandering monsters.  Should they get a lot more experience than the party with the clever Ranger who quickly & easily bypasses all the danger?  My personal preference is that the DM have a flat XP award for crossing the Dark Forest, and give very small token awards for the random encounters, such that the XP total will end up being pretty much the same.A weirder example would be playing out The Seven Samurai as an adventure.  Should you get more XP for keeping the villagers away from all the fighting?  Under 1e guidelines I can easily imagine players bending over backwards to keep all NPCs from the fight, so that fodder NPCs are not soaking up precious XP for "guarding the mules" while barely within the combat zone.  Obviously no one who took the spirit of this scenario seriously would allow any the villagers to get slaughtered pointlessly, but it would ruin the mood to go for the other extreme as well.</blockquote>