D&D 5E Not fully grasping the pattern of the XP per CR table

[Xeviat]

You're correct that the DMG says not to do that, but that doesn't mean he's wrong to include the multiplier in the reward; he's simply encouraging a different style of play.

The DMG method is best for a group of players with an old school "thinking man's" style of play. If you have a room full of a dozen orcs, you get the same xp if you lure them out and kill them one by one, as if you just charged into the room. But the former has a much better risk/reward ratio than the latter.

However, if you want to encourage a kick in the door and charge into the room style of play, then rewarding the multiplier is the right way to go. You literally get more xp for attacking all dozen orcs at once than you would for luring them out one at a time. It makes the reward commensurate to the risk you are taking.

IMO, that's not wrong, it simply encourages a different style of play.

Considering I don't actually hand out XP and just tell the players when to level up, it's mostly so I don't vary advancement by my choice of setting up mass combats vs solos. And fairness. They should get XP for the challenge they faced, not the number of XP balloons they popped.

And ... the DMG isn't the Bible. I can disagree with it. Rulings, not rules, right?


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[Argyle King]

I think the math changes every tier (CR 1-4 +2 prof tier, CR 5-8 +3 prof tier, etc) as someone up thread mentioned.

You'll also find some things-such as dealing psychic damage-are incredibly powerful.

It does. I noticed that while doing my initial work before making the post. However, I'm not certain if the pattern of the change is fully intentional or not.

Looking at my notes, I came up with the following:

Amount of CR that each point of XP is worth
1 xp = .005 CR for CR 1 and below
.004 for CR 2
.004 CR 3
.0036 CR 4
------- note: some of these I rounded off
.0027 CR 5
.0026 CR 6
.0024 CR 7
.0021 CR 8
-------
.0018 CR 9
.0016 CR 10
.0015 CR 11
.0014 CR 12
.0013 CR 13
.0012 CR 14
.0011 CR 15
.0010 CR 16 (this one is actually something like .00106, so closer to .0011)
.0009ish CR 17
.0009 CR 18
.0008ish CR 19
.0008ish CR 20

I didn't keep going after that. There does appear to be a consistent patter of CR being worth a little less at each level after CR 5. To some extent, that does make sense to me, but I am unclear on what the reasoning for the change is. Is it a way to adjust leveling speed (as others have commented)? If so, I'm inclined to believe that changing the amount of XP required for each level would be better than altering the challenge rating formula and creating inconsistency. Is the reason for the change because changes in CR do not equate to as much of a change in difficulty at higher levels? That would make sense to me because higher level characters do have more options for dealing with problems. However, with some of the complaints I've seen about certain monsters be too hard or too easy for their suggested level, is it possible that the reason for that is because they actually are (to hard or to easy) due to the math not working properly at certain levels?

On a side note, I've also been doing a lot of work designing my own traps, and it strikes me as odd that the DMG doesn't really assign a level range to traps at all. The later Unearthed Arcana article did, but I think it still missed the mark on a few things. While a separate issue from monster CRs, it's an area of the game which I feel has a lot of room for growth. It has inspired me to create a lot of my own guidelines for traps (as well as creating a lot of my own which work in significantly different ways than the DMG examples).

 

[Fanaelialae]

Considering I don't actually hand out XP and just tell the players when to level up, it's mostly so I don't vary advancement by my choice of setting up mass combats vs solos. And fairness. They should get XP for the challenge they faced, not the number of XP balloons they popped.

And ... the DMG isn't the Bible. I can disagree with it. Rulings, not rules, right?


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I think you misread what I wrote. I was saying that both methods are equally valid, they simply encourage different behaviors.

 

[shoak1]

Like most things in 5e, the CR/XP rules/guidelines are a hot mess, designed and written in a logic-fog imo. 5e is made for RPG purists and to be accessible more to entry level players, rather than being made to appeal to Gamists and those who like a rigid clean rule set. Personally my group just levels every 2nd meeting assuming decent pace, that way everyone can do their leveling on their own time and I can redo the stats on our player aids between meetings.

Why bother creating a clean rule set when the group you are appealing to has the attitude that "Remember, the DM has the right to modify whatever he likes for your table, since what appeals to one group doesn't necessarily appeal to another." lol.....Personally I can't wait for the inevitable counter-revolution edition

 

[mflayermonk]

However, with some of the complaints I've seen about certain monsters be too hard or too easy for their suggested level, is it possible that the reason for that is because they actually are (to hard or to easy) due to the math not working properly at certain levels?

On a side note, I've also been doing a lot of work designing my own traps, and it strikes me as odd that the DMG doesn't really assign a level range to traps at all. The later Unearthed Arcana article did, but I think it still missed the mark on a few things. While a separate issue from monster CRs, it's an area of the game which I feel has a lot of room for growth. It has inspired me to create a lot of my own guidelines for traps (as well as creating a lot of my own which work in significantly different ways than the DMG examples).

I can tell you one reason monsters are too easy- damage resistance bludg/pierce/slash. I've removed it from my game entirely since I usually give out a magic item per level in my current game. Monsters get another 40-80 hit points out of that one change.

Traps are a little bit harder to work out xp for. I've put them with exploration. The times I've used a trap in combat, I've stated it out as a monster, pretty much an animated object.

 

[Argyle King]

I can tell you one reason monsters are too easy- damage resistance bludg/pierce/slash. I've removed it from my game entirely since I usually give out a magic item per level in my current game. Monsters get another 40-80 hit points out of that one change.

Traps are a little bit harder to work out xp for. I've put them with exploration. The times I've used a trap in combat, I've stated it out as a monster, pretty much an animated object.

I haven't started giving XP for traps, but I do find it helpful to have a little chart for myself to quickly reference and know if a certain trap is deadly at a certain level. To be fair, the info in the DMG does list this, but it does it in a very bare-bones way. The Unearthed Arcana article about traps offers some more information, but not a whole lot. Though, I did find the complex traps in the UA article to be pretty cool.

The way I design traps is a little different than the DMG suggests also. I'll give a rough example of something I'm working on...

Swinging Blades are a staple in fantasy games. The UA article had them as an option, but I still wasn't thrilled with the implementation. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted either. I like traps to be a little more interactive, so I've started working on building some of them as something similar to a terrain feature. For the sake of making my example easier to understand, I will assume a grid to help with visualizing how it works.

In the version of swinging blades that I'm working on, the blades do not attack a specific square. Instead, they are swinging along the lines which are the edges of squares. So, imagine a 2 square wide hallway with a 5 square section of the Swinging Blades "terrain feature."

00l0l0l0
00l0l0l0 The 0s represent squares, and the ls represent where the blades are.


Taking your time to study the pattern, speed, and rhythm of one blade might making crossing it no problem. As such, I would allow the player to move one square and stop without needing to make a save. However, crossing multiple blades is more difficult, so that would require a save. Likewise, being pushed into the path of a blade would require a save because you're not ready for it. The more blades crossed, the more difficult the save.

So, my rough draft notes of that particular idea looks something like the following:

Swinging Blades
Moving across 1 and stopping: no check to avoid
Moving across multiple blades or being pushed into the path of blades: DC 15 Reflex; 2d12 damage
+1 to DCs and +1d12 for each additional blade crossed*

*meaning that crossing all three blades in my above example would be DC 16; 3d12 on a fail

It's still a work in progress though. My idea is to make traps a little more interactive and provide more choice to how to deal with them; I think making them a little more dynamic is more interesting as part of an encounter too. In this particular example, I'm considering adding the option of treating the area as difficult terrain (to simulate trying to be more careful while crossing the paths of the blades) in exchange for a lower DC to avoid damage or treating the area as difficult terrain in exchange for advantage on the save. The latter option seems like less bookkeeping for an idea which already increases what a DM is managing.

I don't want to derail the thread too much though. Suffice to say that I have a notebook full of trap ideas that I've been working on, and my above example gives some insight into what I'm trying to do.

 

[Argyle King]

Like most things in 5e, the CR/XP rules/guidelines are a hot mess, designed and written in a logic-fog imo. 5e is made for RPG purists and to be accessible more to entry level players, rather than being made to appeal to Gamists and those who like a rigid clean rule set. Personally my group just levels every 2nd meeting assuming decent pace, that way everyone can do their leveling on their own time and I can redo the stats on our player aids between meetings.

Why bother creating a clean rule set when the group you are appealing to has the attitude that "Remember, the DM has the right to modify whatever he likes for your table, since what appeals to one group doesn't necessarily appeal to another." lol.....Personally I can't wait for the inevitable counter-revolution edition

I think I fall somewhere in-between. I don't consider myself a "gamist," and some of my least favorite elements of 4E* were elements that made sense in the context of a boardgame, but got in the way of what I felt made sense in a rpg/story game. I'm willing to make sacrifices in the name of playability and accept that certain "real" things get in the way of a fun game, but I also feel that going to far in the other direction makes me question why I'm playing a rpg instead of just playing one of the boardgames on my shelf. That being said, I do see the appeal of a cleaner set of rules. I actually think that a cleaner set of rules helps to foster a game in which "rulings not rules" is the mantra. If you're expecting me to design my own stuff, that (imo) becomes easier if I can design my own stuff from a mindset of knowing how the game works instead of guessing. It's also worth noting that I, as an individual, do not equate "rules lite" with being cleaner or more efficient; some of the games I personally view as being intuitively designed and/or well designed are somewhat heavy in comparison to D&D. In contrast, I find some "lite" games to be surprisingly unintuitive or clunky despite fewer rules for a rpg.

*Not hating on the particular edition, just using it as an example which is familiar to the likely audience on Enworld. For what it's worth, I actually like a lot of what 4E did -even if I didn't always agree with the underlying mentality of how the game was built or evolved.

 

[Xeviat]

I think you misread what I wrote. I was saying that both methods are equally valid, they simply encourage different behaviors.

I just replied to the wrong person or what I though twas the newest person in the ongoing thread. But since I hide the XP from my players anyway, and only one of them has even read the 5E DMG, I don't think either way would encourage my group. If you give out xp after every fight and if all of your players know how the book says to do XP, then maybe they'll make certain decisions. I know I certainly did in the Baldur's Gate game.

 

[Argyle King]

A lot of the reason for why I'm looking at how the numbers work (or don't) is to benefit myself on the DM side of things and hopefully provide a better game for my players. I'm not really looking at how my XP I award to players, but how XP and CR can be used to better guide my choices of encounter design.