Running WotC Adventure Question

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

Why not just hand out the *adjusted* XP?

I have completely considered it and have read online when others have. I just might since it would require far fewer encounters...

 

[cmad1977]

Seriously. At the end of a session I hand out roughly what the ‘expected’ xp per session is. I don’t add up numbers of beasts killed or challenges conquered or quests turned in.
If the heroes are at 300xp and have completed a session I ‘look at my notes’, hem and haw a bit, and declare ‘ok... so everyone gets.. 350xp!’

It’s basically ‘milestone’ style I guess. I will grant more for cleverness and such or less if the heroes avoid encounters without actually ending the threat they present.

 

[dave2008]

...because of the difference between adjusted XP and awarded XP for defeating foes.

You keep mention this, so I just want to make sure you realize that XP rewards and XP for determining encounter difficulty are different things.

 

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

You keep mention this, so I just want to make sure you realize that XP rewards and XP for determining encounter difficulty are different things.

Sure, I realize that.

Say I have a party of four 1st-level characters. A moderately difficult encounter would be worth 200-300 XP. So, I choose 5 CR 1/8 monsters, like Kobolds. Well, at 25 XP each they are only worth 125, but because there is 5 of them, the adjusted XP is increased to 250 (125 multiplied by 2). The adjusted XP says this is a moderately difficult encounter, but in fact is only worth 125 XP as a reward. Hence why I mentioned before the difference between adjusted XP and actual rewarded XP is often 25-50% less (in this case, it is 50% less).

When I am building encounters, if I want so many at each level, the rewarded XP is nearly always less so I end up needing more encounters than I anticipate to get enough XP for the characters to level. I've been working on an encounter template to illustrate as an example what CRs and how many opponents you need for the different encounter difficulties at different levels. The sample I have resulted in 8 encounters (2E, 3M, 3H) for Level 1 to 2, only 7 (2E, 3M, 2H) for 2 to 3, but 14 (5E, 5M, 4H) to go from 3 to 4!

If what people have said about 6-8 encounters per level is supposed to be accurate, I would love to see it work because after the first couple levels it is often a dozen or significantly more encounters to generate enough XP with a reasonable distribution of difficulty types to advance the characters. That is why I suspect the WotC adventures are leaving characters short on XP from the encounters, because of how you compare adjusted XP to determine difficulty, but only reward non-adjusted XP for success.

I hope all that makes sense? And just to point this out, I don't like milestone or session-based XP systems, so please do just say "meh, they are simpler". I know that, it is pretty obvious.

 

[dave2008]

Say I have a party of four 1st-level characters. A moderately difficult encounter would be worth 200-300 XP. So, I choose 5 CR 1/8 monsters, like Kobolds. Well, at 25 XP each they are only worth 125, but because there is 5 of them, the adjusted XP is increased to 250 (125 multiplied by 2). The adjusted XP says this is a moderately difficult encounter, but in fact is only worth 125 XP as a reward. Hence why I mentioned before the difference between adjusted XP and actual rewarded XP is often 25-50% less (in this case, it is 50% less).

Yes, that is why you don't use the encounter building guide for XP rewards. They are separate things, don't try to combine or relate them. That is not how it is to be used / analyzed.

When I am building encounters, if I want so many at each level, the rewarded XP is nearly always less so I end up needing more encounters than I anticipate to get enough XP for the characters to level.

That shouldn't happen because you shouldn't be looking at the encounter difficulty for XP rewards.

I hope all that makes sense? And just to point this out, I don't like milestone or session-based XP systems, so please do just say "meh, they are simpler". I know that, it is pretty obvious.

Now, from this and previous post it looks like things don't level-up fast enough for you. In that case, use the difficulty XP instead of the standard XP rewards. Personally, that would be much to fast for me, but I'm a real scrooge when it comes to leveling (it my group 4 years to get to level 10).

 

[toucanbuzz]

XP is always a complicated point. I vaguely recall something Dave Arneson once wrote about it being an incentive for players to return to the table over and over. After 20+ years of DMing, I've concluded XP doesn't matter. If people are coming back to the table, it's because they're having a good time. And, in more story-based campaigns (we're playing Curse of Strahd), XP doesn't work. It's not about wandering the wilderness and killing stuff. In AD&D, tracking XP mattered because the classes had their own XP tables, you got XP for doing things specific to your class, and you could adventure with people at different levels and be fine.

I began to notice at some point in 3rd edition some of my players weren't even tracking their XP. Unless you missed a session, you're probably going up at the same level.

In Out of the Abyss, I did XP. This worked fine in the 1st half (to around 7th level), but in the 2nd half, there simply wasn't enough XP for the written stuff, not even close, to bring the party in line for the finale. And trying to fill that void with random encounters wasn't helpful because it would have taken dozens, and that's boring. There's nothing less heroic than trying to save the world against the demon lords but saying "hey, I know we've got to get this component back so we can save the day, but do you mind if we aimlessly wander the Underdark so we can grind some XP?" I suppose the designers left it open for random side-treks, but even when I inserted 2 converted modules, full length, this didn't get us close.

In summary, my experience is the modules don't provide enough traditional hack n slash XP, and if you're arbitrarily assigning a number to story XP to ensure the party is at a particular level, just use milestones. It frees up players to do more than look for battle and puzzles.

 

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

Now, from this and previous post it looks like things don't level-up fast enough for you. In that case, use the difficulty XP instead of the standard XP rewards. Personally, that would be much to fast for me, but I'm a real scrooge when it comes to leveling (it my group 4 years to get to level 10).

That is part of my dilemma. I am used to playing my 1E/2E hybrid for decades and we often made 6-7 levels in year 1, maybe 8-10 in year two, and then only a level or two each year after that. The concept of 5E, unless I am much mistaken, is that advancement should be much more rapid than that. From my best estimations, a character would max out at 20th in a year or two at most. In my current group, we've only been playing about 3 months and the characters at 5th or 6th levels already. I guess that is supposed to be normal for 5E or close to it if you use the guidelines for session-based advancement. Of course, our sessions are routinely 10-12 hours long!

 

[dave2008]

That is part of my dilemma. I am used to playing my 1E/2E hybrid for decades and we often made 6-7 levels in year 1, maybe 8-10 in year two, and then only a level or two each year after that. The concept of 5E, unless I am much mistaken, is that advancement should be much more rapid than that. From my best estimations, a character would max out at 20th in a year or two at most. In my current group, we've only been playing about 3 months and the characters at 5th or 6th levels already. I guess that is supposed to be normal for 5E or close to it if you use the guidelines for session-based advancement. Of course, our sessions are routinely 10-12 hours long!

I think it would be a mistake to assume that advancement should be rapid in 5e. It definitely caters to that approach, but it is also quite easy to keep it slow. If that is what you prefer, just go for it.

One of my current groups stated with 4e from almost the beginning of the edition and it took us the whole edition to get to 10th level. We converted those characters to 5e (started at 5th level in 5e) and after 4 years of playing 5e they recently passed 11th level heading to 12th!