D&D 5E Why do we award Encounter XP instead of Adjusted XP?

[redrick]

I'm always amazed at how many people use "XP when the DM feels like it". I hate hate hate that with a passion to the point where I'd rather not play D&D at all that play under that system.

If we as players come up with a clever way to kill your creature worth a ton of XP, I would be pretty angry if you just hand waved that into the "milestone leveling" system. Otherwise where is the risk vs reward?

I'm not sure if this is partially in response to me or not, but, yes, to be clear, my players received XP for the whole combat. We just didn't go through the tedium of finishing it.

I would say, for the most part, I agree with you, though I think objective based XP is OK so long as it is objectively determined before the players hit the adventure. So, if I say, "finding the treasure is with 2,000 XP," my players should get that XP, even if they manage to do it without facing the treasures guardian. The XP should be about how hard I thought something should be, not how hard it looked when the players were done with it.

And players should never be penalized or rewarded, via XP, for which tactics they use to achieve a certain goal, unless those tactics also achieve a secondary goal.

(For the record, we play killing monsters=XP, but not sure I'll do that for my next campaign.)

 

[DaveDash]

Y
As a DM I would count the experience even if I hand-waived the rest of the encounter. The characters came up with a good strategy that worked, so they get XP (either actual encounter XP, or counting towards a milestone - they successfully thwarted the baddies), but there's no reason to waste time rolling and going through the motions of killing wave after wave of baddies if nothing is going to change. Now, if there was a boss baddie who could come up with a strategy of his own, then fine. Otherwise, "you successfully mow down the rest of the baddies" and move on.

I get that. Especially if the DM is running a narrative type game.

I still feel like though that the destiny of my character is too much in the hands of the DM though, and it ruins that sandbox style of game.
HoTDQ for example throws enough XP at you to get to level 3, yet you're still struggling at level 1 by the end of the first chapter. Where's the incentive to even risk your characters lives on some of those side quests if you're automatically going to level anyway because the plot says so?

It's also not hard to hand out XP in between sessions, which is what we do.

 

[Delandel]

Players will play in whatever manner is rewarded by the game. If you get bonus XP for fighting larger groups, then it encourages players to increase the number of enemies - run into the next room, and gather as many goblins as possible, because they're all going to die from one Fireball anyway, and each one gives you an XP multiplier.

And that just... doesn't seem like how they want the game to be run. It doesn't seem like the characters would want to do that, and it's counter-productive to put the players and characters at odds with each other.

You run from room to room, "aggro" the goblins, "kite" them into a small area and then AOE them down? Maybe if the goblins were mindless zombies, sure. But goblins with half a brain aren't going to react like this. A DM isn't going to follow some computer script and say "whelp, this is exactly how the monsters are going to react, you figured out how to game the system."

That's a scenario straight out of a video game. It happens in games like World of Warcraft. I have a very hard time believing that this is a legitimate concern at a real table, and if it is, then there's some underlying issues with the players themselves and the DM that lets them do this (unless that's what everyone wants).

Similarly, I don't hear any concern that level 10 adventurers can go massacring frogs, crabs, and other 0 CR creatures to level up (always 10 XP). Sure, it's possible, but that's not a practical concern.

EDIT: And even if the players do try to play it out like an MMO RPG and try to "aggro" all the rooms, they're taking an enormous risk (because, as I said, intelligent creatures aren't running on limited lines of code), and they should be rewarded for those risks. You herd 20 goblins and your plan doesn't work -- that's a lot of arrows being sent your way.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The XP should be about how hard I thought something should be, not how hard it looked when the players were done with it.

And players should never be penalized or rewarded, via XP, for which tactics they use to achieve a certain goal, unless those tactics also achieve a secondary goal.

The question is, does XP go to the player or to the character? You seem to propose that XP is primarily a reward to players, for succeeding in the game.

If you instead treat XP as a measure of actual experience, then a fighter should only get better at fighting by actually fighting, and the real difficulty of the encounter should matter more than what you expected it to be. You learn a lot more about hitting and dodging if you wade into the middle of the goblin horde than if you lure them into a trap, and you learn virtually nothing about fighting if your opponent goes down in the first round due to some goofy critical hit.

 

[redrick]

The question is, does XP go to the player or to the character? You seem to propose that XP is primarily a reward to players, for succeeding in the game.

If you instead treat XP as a measure of actual experience, then a fighter should only get better at fighting by actually fighting, and the real difficulty of the encounter should matter more than what you expected it to be. You learn a lot more about hitting and dodging if you wade into the middle of the goblin horde than if you lure them into a trap, and you learn virtually nothing about fighting if your opponent goes down in the first round due to some goofy critical hit.

That's certainly one way to treat XP. As a younger man, I thought of life experience as the silver lining to suffering. Payment that I could not eat. And I was very hungry. That's more in line with your thinking on the subject.

The way I see D&D, however, XP is a payment or a reward, and rewards are given for results, not effort. So, when the player characters muffled the bell that summoned the 40 skeletons and zombies waiting in the closet, they earned a ton of XP with a little foresight and a few ability checks. It was very satisfying for them to watch the head priest run towards the bell shouting, "just wait til my guardians get here!" and then wail ineffectively at the bell. If they had decided to ring the bell themselves, they would have been outnumbered 8:1 and they might not have survived to claim that xp.

Of course, I also like the "treasure as xp" model, where xp for overcoming monsters is more of a consolation prize. I had to give that up at the beginning of this campaign, because the player characters made 3 forays into the caves of chaos, killed 20 goblins, an ogre and 12 hobgoblins, and had nothing but pocket change to show for it. (The session I acquiesced to player demands and started giving them murder xp, they finally found the treasure horde and would have gotten more xp for their haul than they ended up getting for their combats. So it goes.)

 

[Kikuras]

I'm always amazed at how many people use "XP when the DM feels like it". I hate hate hate that with a passion to the point where I'd rather not play D&D at all that play under that system.

If we as players come up with a clever way to kill your creature worth a ton of XP, I would be pretty angry if you just hand waved that into the "milestone leveling" system. Otherwise where is the risk vs reward?

I also don't really game the XP system either like farming in some MMO, but I expect more control over my destiny.

I mostly agree. If I struggle through a battle slaughtering dozens of foes, rescuing two of the party from death, and barely surviving myself, I don't want to be rewarded 400 xp and a 'see you next week, guys, where you'll get another 400 xp!"

It helps if the over-time session rewards even out some - I may not get as much for the battle session as the charts say, but I got a lot of XP during the story-based, RP session, so all is as it should be. Of course a DM who session-rewards but who can reflect the challenge in the reward, get it in the ball park, I'm for it. Trying to get 5+ people into a room all at the same time for the same amount of time is difficult enough, I don't want to spend the better part of a year flailing around under 5th level because the DM can't be bothered to do a little 4th grade math.

As for Adjusted XP, and the OP, it seems to me that it's just poor terminology on the part of the designers. I would have gone with a more intuitive term, maybe Difficulty XP. Adjusted XP just sounds like you should give more.

 

[DaveDash]

I think from a logic perspective adjusted XP makes more sense, but from a game perspective it's more consistent to just use encounter XP.

It's possible the designers just wanted to keep it simple, since most of them are big fans of the "Level when it feels right" style of play.

 

[DaveDash]

I mostly agree. If I struggle through a battle slaughtering dozens of foes, rescuing two of the party from death, and barely surviving myself, I don't want to be rewarded 400 xp and a 'see you next week, guys, where you'll get another 400 xp!"

It helps if the over-time session rewards even out some - I may not get as much for the battle session as the charts say, but I got a lot of XP during the story-based, RP session, so all is as it should be. Of course a DM who session-rewards but who can reflect the challenge in the reward, get it in the ball park, I'm for it. Trying to get 5+ people into a room all at the same time for the same amount of time is difficult enough, I don't want to spend the better part of a year flailing around under 5th level because the DM can't be bothered to do a little 4th grade math.

As for Adjusted XP, and the OP, it seems to me that it's just poor terminology on the part of the designers. I would have gone with a more intuitive term, maybe Difficulty XP. Adjusted XP just sounds like you should give more.

Yeah it generally comes out in the wash over the course of a campaign.

My group banished and hold personed their way through a good portion of the underdark, trivializing 10,000+ XP encounters. But then almost had a near TPK from a 7000XP encounter involving a mind flayer.

It works itself out, and the players always have confidence that they are more in control of their characters destiny. Take on the Dragon? Sure. You may die, but the rewards might also be great.

I think under this model its also important to award XP for overcoming encounters rather than just killing things. If the Bard turns the stone giants friendly through persuasion the party gets XP as if they killed them.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

The Encounter XP for the goblins is actually lower than the Githyanki, 350 vs. 700.

That's my problem: the PCs are being awarded less XP for fighting an encounter that's supposed to be equally challenging.

It really isn't as challenging unless the players elect not to use their area effect potential, fail to make efforts to channel their foes or at the least press up against a wall. Even in a White Room the players can fight back to back severely reducing their frontage.

Also if you use "Encounter XP", groups of 6 or more characters will they only get HALF the XP from any lone foes. Don't forget that for a bigger group the encounter XP multiplier for a lone foe is x0.5 not x1.

One single target spell can end or nearly end the fight against the single foe.

Far less so with Save Every Round effects.

Conversely, a single fireball can render a group of enemies dead before they can act, potentially irrespective of whether they make their saving throw (since half of 8d6 can easily wipe out goblins and other low CR creatures).

True that.

But there are a small limited number of PC area effect spells per day

And players tend to save them for these types of encounters.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'm always amazed at how many people use "XP when the DM feels like it". I hate hate hate that with a passion to the point where I'd rather not play D&D at all that play under that system.

If we as players come up with a clever way to kill your creature worth a ton of XP, I would be pretty angry if you just hand waved that into the "milestone leveling" system. Otherwise where is the risk vs reward?

Why assume we don't take that into consideration? If the group does something amazingly clever, I'll level them a session earlier than I intended to. For smaller rewards, I use inspiration and hero points, so there's still mechanical benefit.

But as far as the incentive? As far as why bother to be clever, why bother to pursue side quests? Because there are often IC reasons to do so, and because that's where the fun in the game is. As usual, no wrong way to play, but personally? I would never consider refusing to go along with an obvious plotline because it might not be worth the XP, and I don't often game with people who prefer to think/play that way.