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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8861589" data-attributes="member: 71699">An approach I find to the 5e text that I find fruitful is to note that the Running the Game rules in the DMG are denoted Variant, Optional, and just plain rules. Relating to XP, it's worth quoting the (non-variant, non-optional) rules from that section here:[SPOILER="DMG XP Rules"]EXPERIENCE POINTSExperience points (XP) fuel level advancement for player characters and are most often the reward for completing combat encounters. Each monster has an XP value based on its challenge rating. When adventurers defeat one or more monsters-typically by killing, routing, or capturing them-they divide the total XP value of the monsters evenly among themselves. If the party received substantial assistance from one or more NPCs, count those NPCs as party members when dividing up the XP. (Because the NPCs made the fight easier, individual characters receive fewer XP.) Chapter 3, "Creating Adventures," provides guidelines for designing combat encounters using experience points.NONCOMBAT CHALLENGESYou decide whether to award experience to characters for overcoming challenges outside combat. If the adventurers complete a tense negotiation with a baron, forge a trade agreement with a clan of surly dwarves, or successfully navigate the Chasm of Doom, you might decide that they deserve an XP reward. As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure.MILESTONESYou can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples: Accomplishing one in a series of goals necessary to complete the adventure. Discovering a hidden location or piece of information relevant to the adventure. Reaching an important destination. When awarding XP, treat a major milestone as a hard encounter and a minor milestone as an easy encounter. If you want to reward your players for their progress through an adventure with something more than XP and treasure, give them additional small rewards at milestone points. Here are some examples: The adventurers gain the benefit of a short rest. Characters can recover a Hit Die or a low-level spell slot. Characters can regain the use of magic items that have had their limited uses expended.LEVEL ADVANCEMENT WITHOUT XPYou can do away with experience points entirely and control the rate of character advancement. Advance characters based on how many sessions they play, or when they accomplish significant story goals in the campaign. In either case, you tell the players when their characters gain a level. This method of level advancement can be particularly helpful if your campaign doesn't include much combat, or includes so much combat that tracking XP becomes tiresome.SESSION-BASED ADVANCEMENTA good rate of session-based advancement is to have characters reach 2nd level after the first session of play, 3rd level after another session, and 4th level after two more sessions. Then spend two or three sessions for each subsequent level. This rate mirrors the standard rate of advancement, assuming sessions are about four hours long.STORY-BASED ADVANCEMENTWhen you let the story of the campaign drive advancement, you award levels when adventurers accomplish significant goals in the campaign. [/SPOILER]The group can really agree to attach XP to anything, using the session-based advancement and combat encounter rates as a guideline. The game text overtly lays out non-combat XP... but fails to translate that into the sort of really concrete mechanical design that GP = XP represented. Perhaps that is consistent with assumptions about DM-curation in the D&D mode of play, but I feel like this part of the game design deserves more priority.</blockquote>

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