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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bawylie" data-source="post: 7969714" data-attributes="member: 6776133">Gotta start with adventure design.First, you figure out how much XP to give as a reward for each thing the PCs do. And that’s easy enough because you just turn to DMG pg 82, find the party’s Average Level and look at the XP threshold for a medium encounter. That’s the basis I use for a basic XP reward.Then you assign values to actions. Generally, I do it like this: a planned encounter is worth the average reward; a milestone, boss encounter, or quest completion is worth double the average reward; random encounters and tangential discoveries are worth half the average reward.(Ex - a party of level 1 characters earns 50 XP for overcoming each obstacle I put in their way between them and their goal. They earn 100 XP for completing the quest. They earn 25 XP for each random encounter or discovery.)Now that you have rewards with values, you design your adventure content (in broad strokes) with these in mind. At level 1 and 2, each adventure should be relatively short and end with them getting a level.The level 1 adventure will have a goal, probably 3 planned obstacles, and has space for 2 of the half-rewards (random encounters or discoveries).  Now I’m gonna design 2 random encounters that I may not use and 2 discoveries that they may not find. It is likely they’ll hit at least 2 of these possible 4. And nobody will be upset if they go over and get 3 or even all 4.So what happens if they come up short? If my level 1 party overcomes the three obstacles I set (50 XP each) and completes the quest (100 XP) and only has one random encounter (25 XP)? They have 275 XP and are only 25 XP from level 2!That’s a judgment call. You have to weigh their accomplishments. Since (in my example) they did all the main quest stuff and merely avoided a random encounter, I’m inclined to just give them the XP as a bonus. But if they hadn’t completed the quest and instead had all 4 of the half-reward stuff, I’d keep them short of their level.Essentially, an active group that does stuff gets the benefit of generosity while a group that looks for anthills to boil gets a reminder that XP is for adventuring.</blockquote>

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