D&D 5E The Illusion of Experience Points that Everyone Disbelieves

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=52734]Stormonu[/MENTION] Agreement! I think we broke the Internet Would XP you, but I've given you one too many recently.

I wonder about 3e's use of XP and an expended resource for certain spells, and perhaps elsewhere? I never had much expirence with 3e so I don't know how disliked that sub-mechanic was. However, in other RPGs - I'm thinking of Shadows of Yesterday - XP can be used in a way similar to hero points or perhaps healing surges.

Not that I think the choice between (a) do I level up sooner or (b) do I level up later and get a cool power-boost right now? is a good design decision for D&D, but it would make for an interesting variant option.

 

[the Jester]

I have to say, the OP is full of playstyle assumptions.

Level advancement is the only required mechanic for PC power advancement...

...Indeed, in D&D, whatever the level a group of PCs is, that group will only undertake adventures designed for that level.

...Consequently, tracking experience points is useless, since the PCs will be of a determined level at certain milestones of the campaign anyway. This is all that counts and it will be invariable whether XPs are tracked or not.

...If XPs are tracked, then PCs might reach that level slightly before or slightly after that milestone, from one gaming group to the next, which changes nothing really. It's only an illusion that PCs evolve according to their own merits and achievements. This is an illusion since the adventure has the PCs evolve at a predetermined rate, which is honestly quite precise. Or, if in a homebrew without a determine level advancement rate, the DM still reacts by pitting the PCs against level-appropriate opponents, so the result is the same, only in this case the adventure level is chosen depending on the level of the PCs, and not the other way around; but the result is the same, i.e. the PCs are pitted against level-appropriate opponents.

All of these, in my experience, are far from universal. I've been in quite a few games where in-campaign status, honor, reputation and connections mattered just as much as level. I have, conversely, never played in a D&D campaign that was all tailored to the party's level. Nor have I ever played in an "automatic advancement" game like you describe.

I recognize however that there are rare D&D campaigns, usually homebrews, and usually in the form of sandbox campaigns, where DMs allow PCs to freely roam a game world and meet monsters that are way too strong for them; and the players then need to identify that fleeing or otherwise avoiding combat is the proper solution. This is fine and I recognize that XPs can have much greater value in such campaigns. But this type of game is the exception. By and large, most campaigns pit the PCs against "level-appropriate" encounters.

I would be surprised if most campaigns didn't, at least sometimes, offer the pcs opportunities to face non-level-appropriate encounters.

An XP system could still be provided for those that wish to continue using XPs, as an optional rule. This would not be complex, since monster power level still needs to be measured, to facilitate encounter design. For example, monster power could established in levels, e.g. monsters leves range from 1-20, and monster types are either minions, normal, elite and solo (to take the 4E example). XPs could easily be calculated accordingly if an XP system is desired.

So what is the difference between presenting an xp system with a note that not all groups will use xp, and presenting xp as an alternative system to not-xp?

Put another way, what's gained by doing this? It sounds like a slight rearrangement of the way the topic is discussed without making any actual change, except to make overreactive xp-users angry that their playstyle has been relegated to the optional pile.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Hypothetical - 5th Ed is published without experience tables.

How does the rule book present the system, for the DM, of how quickly PCs should level? The rules are written with completely new players in mind - they can't just say "whenever you feel appropriate" because new DMs won't have the foggiest idea what they think is appropriate.

From previous articles, it's clear WotC intends to use experience points to accomplish this. If you think Xp are unnecessary for this, what would you write in the DMG to advise brand new DMs how often to give PCs a level?

 

[Grydan]

Hypothetical - 5th Ed is published without experience tables.

How does the rule book present the system, for the DM, of how quickly PCs should level? The rules are written with completely new players in mind - they can't just say "whenever you feel appropriate" because new DMs won't have the foggiest idea what they think is appropriate.

From previous articles, it's clear WotC intends to use experience points to accomplish this. If you think Xp are unnecessary for this, what would you write in the DMG to advise brand new DMs how often to give PCs a level?

Now, despite not really using XP (other than for encounter budgeting purposes, and occasionally figuring out roughly where characters would be levelling in a published adventure if I was going by the book), I'm not advocating for its removal/absence from the rules. There's clearly people who find it a more useful tool than I do, and it's not getting in my way at all.

That said, there's plenty of other methods (with pretty much all involving less bookkeeping than XP) that they could suggest for the inexperienced (or for the experienced looking for a different approach).

One could base levelling rate on:
- number of sessions
- number of combats
- completion of a given quest or other in-story objective
- actual time spent playing
- location (reach the second level of the mega-dungeon, level up your character)
- any number of methods involving randomized die rolls
- make levels purchaseable for gold or some other in-game resource, without using the GP=XP intermediary step.

 

[1of3]

It's more intricate than the OP explains. Not only do many groups not play with XP, in many groups only the GM plays with XP. Think about it, if the GM calculates when a level increase comes up, from the players' perspective, the game effectively does not use XP.

For a a game to legitimitely claim using XP, those values would have to be transparent. Players would have to have an idea about how much XP is still required, how much they might get from an endeavour and find out, if it was enough.

I have yet to see a game where these criteria are met.

 

[Yora]

Original D&D wasn't about roleplaying but about dungeon crawl grinding. In that context XP made perfect sense.

 

[pemerton]

use of experience points is an illusion, in most D&D games and in many other RPGs alike. Level advancement is the only required mechanic for PC power advancement.

Indeed, in D&D, whatever the level a group of PCs is, that group will only undertake adventures designed for that level.

<snip>

Consequently, tracking experience points is useless, since the PCs will be of a determined level at certain milestones of the campaign anyway.

<snip>

The alternate solution then becomes to have the PCs level up at determined milestones and ignore XPs altogether.

I think this makes sense for adventure path-style play. But that's not the only playstyle going.

I recognize however that there are rare D&D campaigns, usually homebrews, and usually in the form of sandbox campaigns, where DMs allow PCs to freely roam a game world and meet monsters that are way too strong for them; and the players then need to identify that fleeing or otherwise avoiding combat is the proper solution. This is fine and I recognize that XPs can have much greater value in such campaigns.

I agree with this. I don't think you can play Gygaxian D&D without experience points.

That only started when adventure designers decided D&D needed to be a railroad (sorry, "Adventure Path"). Obviously, if that's the game you're running, an XP system doesn't do the job. XP was designed for a sandbox game.

In other words, this. XP are also largely redundant in non-AP, non-sandbox "scene-framing" play. I use them in my 4e game simply out of habit, but it's basically an open illusion as the OP describes. If I just said "level up every 3rd or 4th session" there's be no noticeable difference in the way the game unfolds. (And I think that's a deliberate function of 4e's design.)

I agree that XP are vitally important for old-school, sandbox play and need to be included.

<snip>

It's also clear that the rules need to specify that DMs should ignore the rule for the appropriate styles of play. This would take a really well-written sidebar, though.

Yes to the first two quoted sentences. And 4e shows how the GM advice can be written. The 4e rulebook defaults for XP as an advancement mechanic, but the way the game is designed tends to make it somewhat redundant. And the DMG explains some different options for handling levelling, and what might change if you use one or the other.

I have seen a spread of encounter challenge levels in the 25 years I've played. It's a hugely group dependent

<snip>

XP is useful for the DM as an encounter building tool to estimate threat level.

In 4e I think the encounter building function of XP is their primary purpose, and that using them as an advancement mechanic is secondary.

I'm not sure I follow the point about encounter spread. I have a reasonably wide spread of challenge levels in my 4e game, but on it's own that's not a reason to use XP for advancement. "You get a level every 4 sessions" would do just as well.

The problem is that (some of) the rules encourage a sandbox campaign, and (most of) the adventures encourage a linear campaign. The solution is to have advice to illustrate the different types of campaigns, and options to support whichever one you want to run.

Definitely. D&D has a history, going back to Gygax, of writing play advice that very strongly presupposes a single approach to play, but isn't very candid in spelling that out, let alone talking about how you might use the ruleset to play in other ways. Good, candid advice in D&Dnext would be a nice change.

I broadly agree with the OP in so much that things like XP and "it just so happens these monsters were the perfect level" apply to D&D, and there tends to be some illusion that is constructed to help ignore them in play. I do not necessarily believe the same illusion exists in rpgs as a whole

<snip>

the "illusion" is more of a D&D construct than it is something that is typical of rpgs as a whole.

This is also true.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm not sure I follow the point about encounter spread. I have a reasonably wide spread of challenge levels in my 4e game, but on it's own that's not a reason to use XP for advancement. "You get a level every 4 sessions" would do just as well.

Well, it's not an argument for XP per se, but it is an argument for varying the rate of advance,ent according to the risks the players tackle. So if the group decides to go after something really challenging, and scores a victory thru their cleverness, then they can (rightfully) expect to level up faster than 4 sessions this time around. If a DM is comfortable eye-balling this... "ok, this dragon fight was really tough so you guys should level up in 3 sessions..." "What? It was way harder!" "Ok, in 2 sessions"...then that's all good.

XP presents one way to handle those sorts of scenarios.

 

[pemerton]

Well, it's not an argument for XP per se, but it is an argument for varying the rate of advance,ent according to the risks the players tackle. So if the group decides to go after something really challenging, and scores a victory thru their cleverness, then they can (rightfully) expect to level up faster than 4 sessions this time around.

I see. At least in my experience of 4e, if the encounter was more challenging it would take more time at the table to resolve. So the "one level every 4 sessions" would still work out much the same.

 

[Balesir]

Original D&D wasn't about roleplaying but about dungeon crawl grinding. In that context XP made perfect sense.

I would put this the other way around. The fact that XP are still part of the rules is what demonstrates that D&D is still "about" characters adventuring - having adventures. Roleplaying is in no way incompatible with this.

Now, if you want to use the D&D rules for something else, no-one is going to stop you - but you might well find that parts of the rules make less sense than they would if you were to play characters having adventures...