D&D 5E Traps and XP

[I'm A Banana]

A trap is worth X amount of experience. This assumes 'perfect situation'.

No, it's just an estimate. CR isn't a science, it's an art, and like any art, it's subjective -- people are going to approach it in different ways from different angles. CR just gives you a baseline estimate to compare your play experiences against.

Palladium hands out XP based on 'actual game play results' (e.g., if a fight is barely won, it's worth more xp...regardless of what was fought; coming up with a clever idea, successful or not, is worth xp; making everyone laugh at the table so much that everyone has to take a break to wipe the tears from their eyes and catch a breath...you guessed it, worth xp).

Of course, that has flaws and disadvantages, too. For one, it's useless for estimating a challenge prior to an encounter. So if you want to know if that dragon is going to challenge your party, or kill your party, or be a snoozefest for your party...well, you can't. It's not for that.

My needs for an XP system are largely on the construction side. Once I've got something that is in the ballpark of "an appropriate challenge" (and I have no delusions that this is a mathematical determination, merely a rough estimate), I don't care too much what the actual point value for reward is. After that, it's more about pacing the campaign for me than it is about how much challenge they faced or ignored. Ultimately, I don't need CR to do the job of "tell me precisely what will consume 20% of my party's resources for the day." I need it to do the job of "tell me about how much the math expects the party to handle, and I'll take it from there."

 

[Kaychsea]

I treat traps as force multipliers for the monsters, so they bump the CR and so the XP.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

Ok, I see your point. I still feel that even that when you say "I need it to do the job of "tell me about how much the math expects the party to handle, and I'll take it from there.". Mostly because the "math" will be almost nothing but variables that will change on a party to party, PC to PC, situation to situation base. I mean, someone who has a high DEX and some Feat/Skill that gives Advantage to finding traps is going to have a significantly easier time finding some trap than someone with a mediocre (or even low) DEX, no training in it, and no tools (re: Disadvantage with a penalty, probably). What you want isn't going to be able to be based on any reliable "numbers". That's why I suggested something like the Palladium method. Have a trap be "Killing", "Reduction", or "Delay"; give some number you are comfortable with (say, 100, 50, 10, appropriately). Then maybe come up with some multiplier for how effective it actually was (say, Very (x3), Somewhat (x2), Mediocer (x1), and Not Very (x0.5)). Now, after the situation is resolved in-game, pick an "effectiveness" based on what actually occured during the game. In other words, if the PC's almost died in a near TPK or were otherwise completely succumed to the traps purpose, make it "Very (x3)". If it was a Killing trap (nasty damage, like acid filled 30' pit or something)...that would be 300xp. If it was something like a huge bookcase falling over blocking their progress for an hour, that would be a Delay trap that was very effective (x3; or, 30xp). But, if they were immune to acid, or could instantly clear the book's, then the effectiveness becomes Not Very, and the XP value now worth either 50xp for the acid pit, or 5xp for the books.

Anyway, somthing along those lines. Something variable based on actual effectiveness...not just a simple "CR X trap is worth ##xp". That's what I would do anyway.

^_^

Paul L. Ming