Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 4698006" data-attributes="member: 2629">Individual XP is the Devil's Work..."OK, Dwarven Defender... Sit Up! Role Over! Good boy! Here's 300 XP!""Who's a good cleric? Who's a good cleric? You are! Yes, you are! Pray at the altar... and here's a 250 XP bonus!""Man, I love it when the barbarian's leg starts thumping the floor when I give him a 200 XP bonus.""Bad assassin! I liked that NPC! 200 XP Penalty!"D&D players are not dogs. We, as DMs, do NOT need to train them to do as we wish by giving them XP for specific acts that make us happy. Individual XP rewards are, IMHO, demeaning - and they damage the fun for the people that don't get them as often.But couldn't the other players get them more often by being good puppies? Maybe. Many DMs, however, seem to have favorite PCs or players that tend to get rewards more often because the DM creates more opportunities for them to get rewards. If you're a bard with a silver tongue, you might get dozens of opportunities to get an XP bonus in a city adventure, but you might not find any in an adventure where the only things you meet are mindless.Once one PC starts to get ahead in XP, that player will have more options available to them - and they'll be more effective in general. That gives them more opportunities to shine and earn individual awards - allowing them to further out distance their allies. In no time, you can find yourself with one PC and a bunch of his henchman rather than a party of allies.I prefer one party XP level that rewards the group as a whiole for the work of the group. PCs that do great things in character are rewarded by what occurs as part of the adventure - not by gaining more power faster than their allies. The PCs should be competing to beat the traps and challenges the DM sets before them, not with each other to get the most XP.</blockquote>

Verification