Why I dislike Milestone XP

[Ancalagon]

I think you are mixing two issues together: xp award and railroading. What is your true concern.

 

[Caliban]

I just tell the PC's to level up whenever I think it feels appropriate. Not at predetermined points, because I don't have a specific path laid out for them in the game I run - just a few goals they can try to achieve, but how they get there is up to them.

Tracking XP per encounter or quest completion just feels like a gigantic waste of time that I don't feel like dealing with.

 

[Hjorimir]

For me, I like milestone xp if only because without it the only incentive for the players is to solve all problems via combat. I want to run a game where diplomacy or creative thinking can be just as rewarding.

 

[Rhenny]

To me, milestone xp/leveling actually frees up the party and the DM. It creates a specific goal oriented focus rather than a what can I do to gain more XP approach. Sure, some DMs and players who use xp can also focus on goals and avoid xp grind, but after using milestones, xp alone does not seem necessary. Also, with xp counting, sometimes it is hard for a DM to decide how much xp to grant. Here's an example: if a group runs away from a dragon that is worth 10,000 xp, I always find it difficult to judge how much xp they should gain. They may not have defeated the foe, but maybe running was the best option. If they fought and ran, they should gain some experience because they learned something about fighting dragons. Yet, if you award some xp, and they encounter the same dragon again, do they get full xp for defeating it or does the DM have to amortize the xp gain. Those types of situations bug me.

One of the knocks against milestone leveling is that players don't feel that their PCs are growing while they chase the next milestone. To combat this feeling, I like to divide each level into quarters and give out 1/4 milestones after 1-3 sessions when it seems appropriate. That way, they know if they are 1/2 way to leveling or 3/4, etc.

 

[iserith]

For me, I like milestone xp if only because without it the only incentive for the players is to solve all problems via combat. I want to run a game where diplomacy or creative thinking can be just as rewarding.

See DMG page 261, "Noncombat Challenges." This gives you guidelines on how to award experience for exploration or social interaction challenges. In my current Planescape campaign, players know they can earn XP by engaging with and overcoming combat and social interaction challenges. They receive other rewards for overcoming exploration challenges, often treasure.

In my last campaign which was a rewrite of Red Hand of Doom, I used milestone XP - true milestone XP, not story-based advancement which everyone seems to call milestone XP - plus XP for combat challenges because combat and completing quests were the main focus of that game.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

As iserith has pointed out, milestone XP is more like "1200 XP each for killing that dragon, and another 1000 XP each because you had a reason for doing it" than it is "you only get XP for events I've pre-determined."

And as such, I love to use it because it makes my players want to set clear goals for their characters (whether those goals come from hooks I toss them, or from their own minds as they interact with the world around their characters), and it also allows me to have the pace that the characters level up at tied more towards actually accomplishing things than to number of encounters overcome to do so.

Though I have used story-based or session-based advancement in some campaigns because it was a better fit (because the goals of the campaign were all very straight forward, and the players were choosing not to deviate, so I could then stop doing XP math at all).

 

[AmerginLiath]

I dislike milestone XP because it requires characters to be the same level and be leveling together. That both limits the numbers of characters in play and hastens the approach of those asinine high-levels (which no RPG, much less any D&D edition, has ever done well). Although much has changed since the days of Lake Geneva, my groups and I’ve held to one maxim that the original Gygax players often write of having done (although we realized it ourselves twenty-five years ago): if each player keep subbing out interrelated characters over the course of the campaign, you can constantly change the focus of adventures while broadening a vast storyline that never actually has to end (the plotline of a given character is fulfilled while twenty others go on). Plus, that means you can keep things under level 12 or so because no one set of characters is constantly hogging XP like the usual d20 core four: just figure out what the XP is for whatever set of levels is at the table that night (which might run from 3-10 or something if those are the characters who naturally fit the story or whose characters fit together, but the low-level guys are getting a bonanza). Milestone XP is anathema for these situations, because you’re enforcing a system where a given character is always X levels ahead just to save you doing math (although you end up doing more math when you end up in the drudge of high-level play instead of semi-retiring those guys to domain-type guest-star status in lieu of other mid-level characters like St. Gary intended!).

 

[Warpiglet]

Milestone XP and railroad adventure paths are both the spawn of Hextor. I fart in their general direction. I will give out Quest XP depending on what it is. But in my upcoming S&W game you bet we will be tracking each rat slain and gold piece pilfered.

Ha! I am with you! I am unabashedly old school. This is merely my OCD...but I want to really earn it. Grind it. I want levels to be hard fought and not guaranteed.

I want to scream Wheee! like a giddy school girl when I can actually cast a third level fireball for the first time!

Granted, we had a hell of a time getting above 9th level or so in first edition, but still. We switched characters too often as well...but not everyone had a high level character they actually advanced. Throwing flamestrike was hard earned and fun!

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Wow. Lotta misplaced angst floating around this one. Leveling on a tight schedule? Limiting player agency? Controlling narratives? Playability at higher levels (a failure of ALL editions, no less!)? Wresting control from players and DMs alike? Either "milestone XP"ing is more serious than we think, or I don't think it means what you think it means...

I'm leaning towards the second one.

 

[Gradine]

I think you are mixing two issues together: xp award and railroading. What is your true concern.

This. I was about to say that this thread should be titled "Why I dislike Adventure Paths" based on the OP, but not even that's accurate. The OP's main concern is with railroading.

Which should have been obvious when they decided to drag that old dead horse "dragon attacking Greenest" scenario to beat on once more.