What Is an Experience Point Worth?

It seems like a simple question, but the way you answer it may, in effect, determine the metaphysics of your game. Many RPGs use some sort of "experience point" system to model growth and learning. The progenitor of this idea is, of course, Dungeons & Dragons; the Experience Point (XP) system has been a core feature of the game from the beginning.

View attachment 88552​

Yet what exactly an experience point is remains unclear.

Think about it: can anyone earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class? The 1st-edition Dungeon Master’s Guide specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?

These esoteric questions were highlighted for me recently when I recreated a 20-year-old D&D character from memory for a new campaign I’m playing in. All I could remember of this character from my high school days was her race and class (half-elf Bladesinger, because I liked the cheese, apparently) and that the campaign fizzled out after only a handful of sessions. If I made it to level 2 back then, I couldn’t rightly say.

I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP for this campaign.

As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?

This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels? Different editions of D&D have presented different interpretations of this question, from essentially statting up all NPCs as monsters, with their own boutique abilities (as in the earliest iterations of the game), to granting NPCs levels in "non-adventuring classes" (the famous 20th-level Commoner of 3rd-edition days).

The current edition of D&D has come back around to limiting classes and XP awards to player-characters only—which brings us back to our original question: are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?

contributed by David Larkins

 

[jasper]

Will answer this once right after

"how many angels can fit on the tip of a pin.?"

easy first the student needs to decide on the dance music. Then as practical exercise the student takes a take measure and notes the buttocks and leg length of each angel. That will get you the step distance. the rest is math.

 

[CapnZapp]

Approximately 1 gold piece.

One 1 XP is ≈ 1 GP if you squint enough

 

[GMMichael]

I have a deep and abiding for specific and targeted XP like you see in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.

I have a deep and abiding too. However, players should be rewarded for all of two things in RPGs: role-playing, and having fun. If the player is the ultimate authority on who his character is, then the GM is in a bad position to award XP for either of these cases since they're pretty subjective. Sure, you can assign lesser XP goals like Helping Other PCs or Achieving Plot Goals, but why bother with XP then? Just grant more character features or levels when these milestones are passed, and save some space on the character sheet.

 

[Jhaelen]

I have a deep and abiding too. However, players should be rewarded for all of two things in RPGs: role-playing, and having fun.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment, but: shouldn't 'having fun' be its own reward?

Rewarding good role-playing makes slightly more sense, but I still dislike the practice because some players _are_ good role-players and don't need (and usually don't care about) the extra xp. They're roleplaying because they consider it fun (i.e. see above). It's the players who struggle with role-playing who'd benefit most from a rule granting them extra xp to encourage them to give their best. But if you want to treat all your players fairly, they'll still always fall behind the players who are already good role-players.

In other words: granting xp isn't a good choice if you want to encourage good role-playing.

What you really want to achieve is that your 'problem' players realize that role-playing is fun! So, what works better, imho, is to give them more opportunities to be in the spotlight and reward their efforts with mostly immaterial things, like better contacts or allies.

 

[Jhaelen]

I don't want to sidetrack the original topic with my tongue-in-cheek bummer comment. But how many people run Ars Magica (or any campaign in any RPG) long enough that getting old matters.

Interestingly, in our last Ars Magica campaign 'death' was the main theme right from the start:
We decided to start play in a Winter covenant and each of us created one of the old founding Magi that were still alive and ruling the place - if only in name. There was a Criamon Magus that had actually already become a ghost without realizing it, a Tytalus Magus seeking to cheat death, a Verditius Magus that nobody had seen for years after locking himself in his lab, and finally a Merinita Magus who had invited the players' young Magi to join the covenant in an attempt to bring about a new Spring.

Initially unknown to the players, the Tytalus Magus had found a way to stop his aging process by causing others to experience accelerated aging, so it didn't take long to become more than an abstract theme...

 

[Lanefan]

I'm sure there are exceptions to the 2 year span and some DMs manage to make it take longer to get to high level. But does anyone make it take 50 or more years? I don't see many 70 year old characters running around as murder hobos.

What about Elves who can live for centuries?

In the game I play in the DM is using the same game world he did in the 1980's, only it's 250 years later. What this means is that our "new" characters are occasionally running into our old characters - mostly Elves - who are still alive. Now, when we meet these guys they're not 85th level (most were 6th-10th when last seen) so we have to assume they haven't been adventuring during this time...so what would have happened to their levels and so forth?

For simplicity the DM in this case just left them where they were - which from my quasi-selfish player point of view is fine as some of these old characters are mine and I can play them again. But from a broader view this just doesn't work for me. Those characters should have either lost some levels, gained some levels, forgotten their class entirely, or maybe even have levels in a different class by now...it'd be quite unlikely to find one that just happened to be at the same stage of development as it was 250 years ago. They'd remember some key things they did back in the day, perhaps, and some striking events; and could tell us war stories till the sky turned pink...but that's it.

Does what I'm saying make sense?

Lan-"but for some of us it was only a ten-year time shift, and to explain that would take more time than anyone wants to spend"-efan

 

[DerKastellan]

I have a deep and abiding for specific and targeted XP like you see in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.

One of the issues I have with games like D&D is the way larger numbers of experience points and lack of knowledge of how many a given encounter, milestone, etc. is worth makes it almost impossible to effectively reason about and make informed decisions.

Of course, the aforementioned games have an entirely different gameplay to it.

The reasoning of D&D parties at the latest since 3e, but probably since 2e is very simple: Can we beat it? Charge!

I'm only half-kidding. Ever since the main and predominant source of XP has been monster-slaying, monster-slaying has become the dominant aspect of the game. In 0e and 1e that could get you killed very easily (at lower levels), so some players wizened up and actually approached situations with a more measured, calculating approach - especially since those monsters themselves yielded barely any XP. If you need somewhere between 1,251 and 2,501 XP for even 2nd level, slaying a 10 XP monster does not seem like a viable strategy. Outwitting monsters and taking treasures was, though.

With 2e, the monster awards shot up. I observe that some of my players will assess whether to attack humanoids when conflict can be avoided, but for monsters it's as simple as above. The XP do not really play into it. The most reasoning you will get is whether an encounter is morally wrong (slaughtering a goblin tribe is okay for some and anathema to others, so it often depends on who attacked first) or whether it waste time and resources and might endanger the mission. If the current quest is time-driven or does not allow for resting, players will be more likely to weigh encounters and seek ways around them. Most of the time they however expect to beat encounters and see combat simply as part of playing the game, not something to think about.

So, XP to them is this happy thing that eventually leads to level up. Lack of XP award leads to player complaints. But the amount of XP earned is not informing how my players play the game. It simply helps them keep track of when they get more juicy stuff. They are not part of "informed decisions" - usually instead player weigh their own resources ("I'm almost out of spells") and the foes' approximate challenge and the particular mission and that in turn is what informs their decision-making.

And frankly, that's perfectly reasonable in-world thinking to me. Seeing the "I get better in doing stuff" reward would be a complete inversion of how people actually think. They think about actual goals - which are defined by the mission or by any loot they see or might find. They have a rough assessment of their own capabilities, as adventurers they have a rough assessment of the enemy's capabilities, and then they make a call. That's good immersion to me, even if sometimes a bit of game babble comes into it. In comparison, if somebody would say "but goblins earn me no XP at this level" (3e...) then I would say that undermines immersion as XP are no viable goal in-game.

 

[tzxAzrael]

1 XP per GP, just like Gary handed down on stone tablets.

You may find your silver, copper, and electrum pieces and weep.

technically it was 1xp per gp value of non-magical treasure, totalled. (eg, coin, gems, jewelry...)

so a sack of 1000cp was still worth +1 xp.

 

[DragonMan]

Experience is a measure of getting better at the abilities that you use all the time. In real life , people get better at their jobs and level up (i.e. Get pay raises) as they do. Although jobs are nearly always annual times to level up, characters will improve once they've used their skills enough. A level represents the % of your learning and once 100% is reached, they get better. Classes differentiate based on what they do. Thus, although she might wield a dagger it's not their prime focus. The tables reflect that by slower hit bonuses for arcane casters.

 

[GMMichael]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment, but: shouldn't 'having fun' be its own reward?

Rewarding good role-playing makes slightly more sense, but I still dislike the practice because some players _are_ good role-players and don't need (and usually don't care about) the extra xp.

What, you mean people read my replies? Okay, I'll choose my words more carefully, then:

Grant XP for doing fun things; don't make XP a chore to earn, or the game could become a chore.

Grant XP for good efforts to role-play. This is as easy as including a character's backstory in the player's decisions/dialogue.

Another take on what an XP is worth: whatever a player will do for one! In this light, some XP could be worth pizza slices...