Unearthed Arcana WotC's Mearls Presents A New XP System For 5E In August's Unearthed Arcana

I have to say...not terribly impressed with this month's article...

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-ThreePillarXP.pdf

I think my thread should be closed. So I repeat myself here:
Streamlined and probably very useful. I think level 1 and 2 should get an accelerator. Should be considered tier 0 probably.

 

[Al2O3]

Ignoring the specific XP values I quite like this system. If the XP values suggested are thought of as L% or LP (level percent) it might be good for coming up with suitable XP or milestone rewards with those kinds of rewards.

The thing I like more than the rewards is how it ties into adventure hooks. Looking at the tier 1 treasure and location could make for a good start for a DM (e.g. me) wanting to come up with their first homebrew adventure. Make a village. [Place] has been taken over by [threat] or lost or whatever. It is rumoured that it contains [treasure], something the players want. Go fetch!

Sent from my Huawei P10 plus

 

[Osgood]

People still use XP? Left that method back in the 3.5 days. Just use milestone leveling, its way simpler and prevents the ever-constant 'is that worth xp?' and killing creatures just for the XP. Been in over 6 groups using that method and it works wonderfully.

I always use XP, and in 30 years of gaming, I've never once heard someone ask if anything was worth XP or kill things just to gain XP. Different player culture I guess.

 

[Von Ether]

Except that every creature is worth at least 2 exp in this system. Yes my example was absurd, but if you wanted to do a massive battle with this system a wizard could fireball a massive group of mooks and be like hey I killed 15 guys thats like a 1/3 of a level right. This is in the rules he provided. The current exp system would maybe net him 1000 exp, but at midlevels it take 21000 exp to level up, so it's far more reasonable than this system

Not every creature. Every monster. Unless the chickens are cocktrices or breathe fire, or more specifically pose a threat in combat, they aren't eligible for the XP reward.

The wizard example isn't much different than the "How many battles does it take for a first 1st level Commoner to reach 20th level." It's a matter of bookkeeping and every edition has a different answer for it. And no one answer pleases everyone.

But yeah, a twist of phrase is all this XP chart really needs at the moment, let the play testing begin!

As a sidenote, I've been doing milestones for a while, don't really miss XP that much. My players are Pavolvian enough when it comes to hanging out every week to kick butt and charm the locals.

 

[mdusty]

I always use XP, and in 30 years of gaming, I've never once heard someone ask if anything was worth XP or kill things just to gain XP. Different player culture I guess.

Oh absolutely, I'm certain.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I can imagine some 10th level Rogue sneaking out at night and killing 50 chickens and taking a level.

But, then he'd "...just be picking on the chickens."

It has to be some kind of a challenge to be worth exp, so unless he's eating 50 chickens to win a contest, no. And a contest is a social interaction, so the NPC judging the contest, probably a local with influence only in the town where it's held, determines the exp. For a 10th level character, seems like that'd be 5.

Not every creature. Every monster. Unless the chickens are cocktrices or breathe fire...

*swipe*

Legend has it, that when the egg of a ... what? seriously? fine... of a rooster is incubated by a red dragon or pyrohydra, the resulting pyrotrice....

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-ThreePillarXP.pdf

Anyway, the system is desultory, but it's just a UA alternative so, whatever. The xp for gold reference is unnecessary, with the more reasonable scale of 'importance to...' right there and equally applicable to items as locations, but, yeah, nostalgia, check. The system does throw away the varied pace of leveling that the default system has, which is too bad, as it speeds play to the 'sweet spot,' helps it hover there a while longer, and also allows low-level PCs adventuring with higher level ones to 'catch up.'
I guess it's more 'simplification by arbitrarily smaller numbers.'

Even so, any recognition of the other two pillars is a plus. A stronger system might keep the current charts and peg the exp award for the location or social objective to the directly to the level of challenge it represents - non-combat CR of some sort.

 

[mellored]

Why is everything a multiple of 5?

20xp to level, 1,2, or 3 XP for doing something.


Still, it's nice to see non-combat XP.

 

[lyle.spade]

People still use XP? Left that method back in the 3.5 days. Just use milestone leveling, its way simpler and prevents the ever-constant 'is that worth xp?' and killing creatures just for the XP. Been in over 6 groups using that method and it works wonderfully.

Me, too. I don't know why folks get wrapped around the axle about this system or that - just go with what you and your group like best.

As for encounter building, I think I'm going to dump accounting for CR and just eyeball it from here forward, providing the party with a sense of "this looks pretty easy to your experienced eyes," or, "you have a bad, bad feeling about this..."

...and from that I'll just keep leveling the party by GM fiat, tied to story/chapter turning points.

 

[robus]

I prefer this over the default way.

I'm totally confused by the pointlessness of subtracting 100XP from your total when you level, though, and I'd rather measure combat XP by encounter overcome instead of per monster defeated.

I'm liking it too. A happy medium between full XP and milestone leveling.

The reason for the 100 subtraction is so you don't lose XP when you level. For example:

You're at 90 XP and then you have an encounter that the DM values at 30 XP.
You're now at 120 XP. Great, level up! And the subtract 100 so you retain the extra 20 XP earned.

 

[ccs]

One thing about this simplified system is a DM could tinker and adapt it to their game. In an RP heavy group, the DM could award an XP or two for a great scene of RP between the characters and/or NPCs. In an exclusively dungeon-crawl group, you could award an XP for each difficult lock and trap conquered.

I can already tinker with the xp & assign xp values to social/exploration stuff.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I dont mind this system but would probably tweak it to remove social altogether (if you make allies etc, that's it own reward), and just focus on killing monsters and exploring. On the other hand, milestone or incremental leveling just works so well already...