D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Eliminate

[Oofta]

That’s all well and good. But meta game rewards happen whether you want them to or not.

Right, but what I’m getting at is that you do, whether you want to or not.

This is in no way mutually exclusive with awarding experience points.


And that’s fine. If it works for you, have fun. I’m not trying to tell you your approach is wrong. If you’re having fun, it’s right for you.

I'm not convinced of the basic premise or that the hassle and overhead are worth the extra overhead. Not rewarding XP, not focusing on that aspect of the game has it's own rewards which I think outweigh any hypothetical benefit from granting XP.

On the other hand, there is no one true way.

 

[TwoSix]

Your open-table point tangentially gets at my main objection to milestone levelling: how do I-as-DM reward the characters that take the risks and-or drive the action and not reward those who don't, and at the same time avoid accusations of favouritism?

I've never felt the need. Getting to drive the game is its own reward. I've been fortunate enough to game with people who prioritize pushing the game forward, no matter the reward structure.

 

[Faolyn]

There’s no sense of agency, of knowledge that you can actively pursue leveling up. You just have to blindly follow the plot and hope the DM gives you a level for doing so.

I don't get this; the players should know that there are problems to be solved, likely with time limits involved to prevent worse things from happening.

 

[Charlaquin]

Are you actively communicating that to the players in the metagame? Or are they inferring it from the narrative? ("Well, the fiery tower full of demonspawn is probably way more XP than the idyllic village down the river.")

I guess I just don't see the utility outside of dungeon crawls and sandboxes, which aren't really how I play. If you tell me site A is moderately challenging and worth 5,000 XP, and site B is hard and worth 10,000 XP, my choice is always going to be "whichever site has more relevance to my character."

My standard formula is an easy encounter worth of XP for simple encounters that require little to no set-up l, and for completing minor or side-quest objectives, a medium encounter with of XP for encounters that are complex enough to need a grid or other visual aid, and for completing major or primary quest objectives, and a hard encounter worth of XP for climactic or setpiece encounters. I lay that out (and any exceptions particular to the campaign) in session zero, and I also go over XP earned at the end of every session.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm not convinced of the basic premise or that the hassle and overhead are worth the extra overhead. Not rewarding XP, not focusing on that aspect of the game has it's own rewards which I think outweigh any hypothetical benefit from granting XP.

On the other hand, there is no one true way.

Sure. Like I said, if you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.

 

[jmartkdr2]

What cost? Writing a number down once a week? I think a lot of groups have stopped using them because their value is not intuitively obvious and their cost is. But I do think it creates a subtly but significantly better player experience, at only a minor bookkeeping cost to the DM.

Figuring out how much to award, for what, when, tracking those activities in-game, and then adding it all up.

If you're not thinking about how much to award, for what, and when, you're not rewarding anything. You're just picking a random number. I have an otherwise great dm who does this, and it's frankly worse than not giving xp because I get a weekly disappointment, because even the sense of reward I did get once is now soured, because that reward was removed.

Obviously experience points won’t fix a game that isn’t otherwise fun. They also won’t take the fun away from a game that is. What they will do is make a subtly, but significantly, more psychologically rewarding experience. But yes, the game still needs to be fun. Figured that went without saying.

I can tell you for certain that experience points do not always significantly improve fun. I've seen them ruin fun just as often, either by encouraging un-fun gameplay (just kill everything, only follow the plot, skip rp to go for more points, etc) or create tension and feelings of favoritism, or just be so arbitrary as to lose any sense of reward.

The idea that any game would be better by adding experience points is a big claim, and one not borne out by any evidence that I can see. If anything, the number of people who drop xp is pretty good evidence that it isn't true.

And if xp is only helpful if used well - that was my initial point. It's not always good because it can be used badly. Using the tool well is possible, but a skill, and badly used tools, or tools built for one purpose being used for another incompatible purpose, are bad.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't get this; the players should know that there are problems to be solved, likely with time limits involved to prevent worse things from happening.

I mean agency over your character advancement. If you just level up when the DM says you do, there’s no specific actions you can take to influence that. You can’t actively pursue character advancement. You just have to accept it when it comes.

 

[Oofta]

Are you actively communicating that to the players in the metagame? Or are they inferring it from the narrative? ("Well, the fiery tower full of demonspawn is probably way more XP than the idyllic village down the river.")

I guess I just don't see the utility outside of dungeon crawls and sandboxes, which aren't really how I play. If you tell me site A is moderately challenging and worth 5,000 XP, and site B is hard and worth 10,000 XP, my choice is always going to be "whichever site has more relevance to my character."

Without further info, there is no way of knowing. The fiery tower could be an illusion, a red herring, to cover up what is going on in the idyllic village.

The only thing I've seen XP reward is killing monsters over non-combat encounters and solutions. This will likely vary from DM to DM, but if you get XP for killing those bandits and none (or less) for resolving the situation peacefully, nobody can complain when the group turns into murder hobos that fireball first and ask questions later.

Now, I'm not saying anyone is promoting "kill them for XP", I'm just basing it on my own personal experience. Which is part of why I got away from XP, I wanted to reward alternative solutions as being viable options. However, then for non-combat solutions and general RP/investigation I was just making up arbitrary XP numbers. For me it was just easier to cut out the middle man.

Even though I don't use XP, people still want to explore and take risks because that's what they signed up for. If someone is having fun staying back and only doing ranged attacks, who am I to say they're playing wrong? Well, that and flanking to get the guy staying in the back and only doing ranged attacks is just good tactics for certain opponents.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Initiative.

 

[Oofta]

I mean agency over your character advancement. If you just level up when the DM says you do, there’s no specific actions you can take to influence that. You can’t actively pursue character advancement. You just have to accept it when it comes.

While true, it also seems to mean that by definition the DM is using something that matters to the player but not the PC as motivation.