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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7383151" data-attributes="member: 82106">XP is awarded for completing Quests, this is "the fundamental story framework of an adventure- the reason the characters want to participate in it." --DMG p102"Minor quests are the subplots of an adventure, complications or wrinkles in the overall story." --DMG p103Major quests are worth as much as an encounter of the same level (as the adventurers generally, quests are not usually 'over' or 'under' leveled). Minor quests are worth as much as one standard monster, and usually go to one specific PC they relate to.There is also a provision for 'Player-Designed Quests', which is pretty close to being a direct player input to the fiction rule! Chapter 7, 'Rewards' states "Characters gain [XP] for every encounter they complete." later on the page this is clarified somewhat as "Every monster slain, skill challenge, puzzle solved, and trap disabled (these are all the enumerated types of encounters in the previous chapters) is worth an XP reward."It never outright states that an encounter must be 'defeated', and in fact the plain reading of the rules would be that attempting a Skill Challenge is enough to gain the XP reward, though oddly you must solve puzzles and disable traps. Page 120 later does make it more clear that encounters must be 'overcome' in order to grant an XP reward.So, in a sense, this IS a little like previous editions, at least on the surface. HOWEVER, context is everything. 4e is a game where the expected (and the DMG in Chapters 6 and 7 makes this QUITE clear) pattern is of encounters that are close to the level of the PCs, and within certain fairly specific parameters. That is a 'standard encounter' will have 5 equal-level monsters, or monsters with an equivalent XP value (which will be the XP reward for defeating them). Since the game is designed around allowing the PCs to complete roughly 4-5 such encounters in a day there are 2 characteristics which emerge.1. The rate of encounters will be within a predicted margin.2. The difficulty of encounters will be within a predicted range.Since these are ALWAYS true, and forward progress in adventures is fairly dependent on success in encounters, you can pretty much calculate that a party will gain 50% of a level worth of XP every day, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THEY DO as long as they adventure and make progress.Contrast this with, say, AD&D 1e where XP is granted on a sliding scale. A level 1 PC gets 1.0x the XP value of a monster that is 'at his level' (has a HD equivalency equal to his level, the DMG lists these for MM1 monsters and gives guidelines for their estimation). The XP value multiplier is a ratio of Monster Effective Hit Die/PC Level. Furthermore you get XP for GP and GP value of magic, which are at least nominally drawn from a table which gives more for higher level encounters. Again the XP value is subject to the same multiplier. Thus XP reward is modulated not by forward progress, but by the level of danger the PCs subject themselves to. This is reinforced by the 'monster level follows dungeon level' design of the core dungeon environment, which gives the players control over selecting a danger level (IE by going down more/less flights of stairs). 1e rewards you for living dangerously, its a reward system. 4e rewards you for playing, effectively its a pacing mechanic.</blockquote>

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