D&D 5E Out of the Abyss: dividing XP with fellow prisoners?

[SpiderMonkey]

Hi, all.

I've been away from DMing 5e for quite awhile, and I'm prepping to run Out of the Abyss. I'm wondering how all of you handled dividing XP with the NPC prisoners that accompany the PCs. Do you? Do you just use Milestones or fiat?

Cheers,

SM

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I didn’t level up the prisoners, so if the NPCs provided significant support in the encounters, I just eyeballed a reduction in XP awarded to the PCs. That being said, from the get-go I was gunning to get rid of all the NPC prisoners as quickly as possible, one way or another.

 

[Raunalyn]

Yeah, I've gotten rid of most of my NPC's. They just reached Blidgenstone, and they only have Shuushar, Eldeth, and Glabagool left in the group...everyone else is either dead, run off, or has been reunited with their people.

That being said...I used milestone leveling as opposed to XP.

 

[ammulder]

The other factor is that a number of the prisoners are effectively higher-level to begin with. It also seems like everyone picks a different subset of the Drow staff for the PCs to deal with on their way out. If the PCs are at or near level 1, and fighting Quaggoths and Elite Drow and Priestesses of Lolth then they would likely need to rely on the other prisoners pretty heavily -- whereas if they're level 3 and fighting mostly the lower-level Drow they can really take the lead. So then if you're awarding XP "honestly," the PCs might get a very big or very small fraction, depending on the setup (though at low level even a small fraction can go a long way).

Anyway, I'm not tracking XP for the other prisoners and I'm using milestone XP for the PCs. But then I break up the amounts I need to give out for larger milestones (e.g. escape Velkynvelve = gain a level) into chunks I can give out for encounters along the way to keep the feeling of concrete advancement for each session.

 

[Motorskills]

I used milestone XP, I gave all the NPCs proper character sheets, and levelled them up too.

As a gimmick, I gave the Quaggoth an extra point in each physical stat every level (or something, I forget the exact math, but he became very dangerous very quickly).
I also made him more and more unstable. So the party knew they had an increasingly potent ally - but one that could flip out on them at any time. Lossa fun.

 

[Mercurius]

Seems like unnecessary extra work. Just split XP among the PCs and level up NPCs whenever you want.

 

[LarryD]

The only NPC's left are the Quaggoth and Stool (the Myconid). Sluushar and Buppido died in the Kuo-Toa settlement when Deomgorgon attacked. The rest were either killed during the jailbreak or opted to stay in Velkenvelve. When the PC's leveled up, I added one level's worth of HP to the NPC's.

But - just because some NPC's go away, it doesn't mean new ones join the group. I just DM'd the Hook Horror nest encounter, and after defeating the Horrors, the party decided to 'hatch' the eggs, so a baby HH imprinted with each of the PC's. Four of them. This will definitely add an interesting element to the game next time we play.

 

[MarkB]

I haven't split the XP with the NPCs at all, nor have I levelled them. It's become less of an issue at present - I run the game periodically at our gaming club, and tend to get a different mix of players each time, and last time round I ended up with just two of the original group. With this accompanying the climax of the Sloobadoop storyline, everyone got separated in the chaos, and they ended up with only Sarith still with them, though they have now also acquired Glabbagool.

 

[zaratan]

In the beggining of the adventure I divided the XP when the NPCs have great part in the combat, like all they agaist one elite drow (1800xp) + 2 drow. But I never leved them up, because none of them is really important in my table to go the full adventure. The combatent ones all died, the rest don't make difference in combat, now PCs are like bodyguards, lol.