NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6040024" data-attributes="member: 42582">That depends almost entirely on playstyle, as reinforced by mechanics.Thus in 4e, despite the misleading title to DMG chapter 7 ("Rewards"), XP clearly are a pacing mechanism, to make the game move forward through "the story of D&D" - starting with kobolds, ending up with Orcus. And treasure is even more obviously not a reward but a central element of PC building (complete with the "wishlist" advice to support it). The 4e GM is in charge of exactly where and how treasure is found, but is, in effect, breaking the rules if treasure is not found. (Unless inherent bonuses are being used intead.)The only consequence of not awarding XP or treasure to a PC whose player was absent is to create a mismatch between the PC's mechanical abilities, and the mechanics of the story elements which will be occurring in the situations that PC will be confronting (as the story moves on through the tiers to the final confrontation with . . . whichever epic cosmological entity is the focus of the campaign). That would be punishment.I mean, suppose you had a walking group, and every weekend you're going to increase the distance walked by 5 kilometres, until over the course of two months you work up to 40 km in a day. If a member of the group misses the week 3 walk, it would make no sense to have him/her turn up for the next weekend's walk with only enough water and snacks for a 15 km rather than 20 km hike.In default 4e, at least, XP and treasure are analogous.</blockquote>

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