XP award: I need help!

[jollyninja]

ok: the dmg discusses both ways of doing it does it not? so either way could concievably be considered "official". your examples are correct ancalagon. however that said, using the encounter level would also be correct. but level 7 in 2 years sounds way to slow, i have reached level 7 in 7 sessions but my group is small (usually 3 people and the dm) so we get alot done in a session as far as xp per character goes.

if your sesions are roleplay heavy, that might explain it. or if your dm is just really good at using weaker monsters to their full effectiveness that would also explain it. recently our level 10 party was routed by trolls, can you imagine? 5 characters level 8-13 getting trounced by 10 cr 5 creatures. it was a total whipping, we did not even take a single one down.

 

[Dimwhit]

I've been playing with my group for 15 months (once a week, with occasional extra sessions). I've probably had around 70-75 sessions. We run several different campaigns. Between them all, I've gained a total of about 25 levels. That works to leveling about once level every 3 sessions. (Of course, lower levels seem to go more quickly.)

Anyway, 7 levels seems pretty low to me. Your DM has discretion, but hopefully he's doing it correctly. Seems a bit boring if you're not leveling more frequently.

 

[Belares]

leveling quickly in 3E

I agree with everyone that has posted saying 7th level in 2 years is most unusual. I have been running a weekly game for last 3 months and my players (4) for the most part are 7th level and I was wondering if I was giving too much experience.

I guess the higher levels equal out or smooth out later on. If they don't making level 20 is going to be very quick.

I know I am doing the exp. correct, but I was talking to my players and they weren't unhappy with maybe slowing down the rapid level advancement.

I think your DM may have seen this problem and instead of telling you all he/she may want to keep the fun without the quick advancement.

 

[HeavyG]

Ancalagon got the shaft.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

Ive been running two months and the players are almost 3rd level, probably will be next week. We game once a week, 4 hour games. If you have 8 players the CR's should be much higher, so much so that the DM will give out enough xp for you to advance normally.

Sounds like your DM is slowing down the game on purpose. I think that would be kinda cool, give people more time to adjust into their characters. Of course i'd rather run to 20th level once just to get a feel first. I think you need to talk to your DM. Is he giving RP xp awards? Maybe you guys fight less and do more RP?

 

[Ancalagon]

Greetings

We had a talk and he basicaly admited I was right and he was doing it "wrong". He did say that he wouldn't have allowed us to go at full "speed" if he had known the right rule. However, he did agree that the curent progression was too slow. Hopefully we will get to go up a level more often now.

Thanks for the advice,

Ancalagon

 

[Oracular Vision]

Remind him to raise or lower the experience awards based on how difficult each fight really was, per the DMG. Giving the party a 10% experience award for being clever is always a good idea, and over time it will make them advance faster too. If a fight was absurdly easy, subtract percentages, as the party learned little from the encounter. This rarely happens with my group.

I have also been known to give out a hero experience award, for someone who went beyond normal measures to save a party member for instance, but that can be overused. I also give out experience awards to one person each time for writing up a synopsis of the last game. And it makes players happy to be generous with loot if the amount of experience is small, and vice versa. If they are progressing slowly, but getting a reasonable level of treasure, they don't have much to complain about.

 

[Ancalagon]

Loot?

Well, I'm a 7th level PC. I have a +1 morningstar, a +1 ring of protection, 2 first level scrolls I made myself, and perhaps a potion of healing.

But that is another story.

Ancalagon

 

[sbwoodside]

Now hold on a minute here. You guys are throwing around numbers without taking into consideration that larger parties are more powerful and thus deserve less rewards. Let's say there's two parties: a normal 4-member party of 5th-level characters called "The Cooks" and a big 8-member party of 5th level characters called "The Dicers".

What defines a "challenge" for either party (accroding to the DMG) should be an encounter that uses of 20% of each PCs resources.

The Cooks will be "challenged" by a CR 5 monster. But, The Dicers are not going to be challenged by a CR 5 monster. They might lose more like 10% each. Playtest it to find out exactly.

I think you should called The Dicers a 7th-level party, using the same concept they use in "Challenge Ratings for NPCs" on p.167 of DMG. So, when The Dicers beat up a CR7 monster, they get 2100 = 262 XP each.

Compare to The Cooks when they kill a CR 5 monster they get 1500 = 375 XP each. Well, for The Dicers to each get 375 XP each for killing one monster, it has to be CR 10, so maybe The Dicers should be called a 10th level party.

I guess I've just contradicted myself. Can someone untangle this for me?

Simon

 

[Mephistopheles]

Time for some musings from a DM who is still somewhat green in relation to 3rd Edition...

My group size is usually in the 4-8 range, lately 6-8. I've tried three different ways of forming challenges for a group larger than the 4 player party that all the CR/EL stuff is based on.

At first I kept organizing challenges for the average party level. This ended up creating a situation where the party would go through a lot of encounters before it started to wear them down. The inidividual encounter wasn't too challenging for them sometimes to the point of a rather boring series of encounters, and progression was slow at about a level every 6-8 weeks.

The second way I did it was to add up the party levels and only divide them by 4, designing the challenges based on this number as the party level. This created a noticeable jump up in difficulty, as the party was facing individuals that were too tough for them but they had to numbers to absorb the high frequency of players being knocked below 0 and still come out on top. This seemed acceptable for a while, but I noticed that my players were getting frustrated with the high difficulty level and the fact that at least 1 or 2 party members were knocked below 0 in almost every fight. The 2 clerics in the party were very busy with the Cure Minors for stabilizing unconscious party members while I used this method. Progression was increased to roughly 4 weeks/level, but so was the frequency of unconsciousness and/or fatality.

The way I do it now is to calculate the average party level, generate challenges based on that difficulty level, and then increase the number of enemies according to the proportion of players over 4 in the party during a session. So, for an arbitrary example to illustrate this, if my average party level is 10 a suitable encounter might be 4 Osyluths (CR 6, 4 of them is EL 10). If I have 6 players present, I just add an extra 50% to the creature numbers. In this case I'd use 6 Osyluths. For single monsters or numbers where the proportional increase doesn't work out to whole numbers I tend to make up the difference by increasing the hit points of the enemies but not the potency of their attacks. I've found that this keeps various abilities of enemies (damage, saving throws, hit chances, etc) in a range that PCs can handle individually, but the increased numbers and/or staying power of the enemies means the party still gets an appropriate challenge. Progression is still at about 4 weeks/level, but the players seem to be enjoying it a lot more because their abilities are more effective against the foes they are facing.