XP Awards for Driving Off Opponents

[Scion]

I definately agree with pretty much everything pax just said i was even in a debate on another board about a situation where something like the following happened:

Party walking along, a dragon lands in front of them, the dragon demands an item from each person or he will kill them all, the party hesitates for a bit, start to give in, one person resists and is blasted into unconsciousness from one breath weapon, after that the party members gave over the items and the dragon left. The dm was on the board saying how silly his players were for expecting to get exp, I said that they succeeded in their goal, staying alive through an encounter. Sure it woudnt be worth a ton of exp, but still some.. Even if they didnt overcome it as he wanted (he apparently wanted them to fight it, of course it would have been a tpk but that is beside the point..) they should still get some exp for overcoming the challenge in some way.

anyway, just rambling have a good one all.

 

[Darklone]

Hey, I know that story... except that the PCs walked into the dragons lair and asked him for a favor... he was in a good mood and asked them for the presents... at which point the PCs got long faces and mumbled: "Presents?"...

 

[Scion]

Hey, I know that story... except that the PCs walked into the dragons lair and asked him for a favor... he was in a good mood and asked them for the presents... at which point the PCs got long faces and mumbled: "Presents?"...

And after that bumble if they were somehow able to escape with their lives it would probably still be worth some exp

 

[dcollins]

I'll just pop in and say once again that the always-award-full-XP argument relies on an overly liberal reading of the core XP rules. From the DMG:

A monster is usually overcome by defeating it in battle, a trap being disarmed, and so forth.

The discussion of possibly awarding XP for other actions, like sneaking past or hiding from an opponent, comes later, after a line that says "Other times it can be trickier." It's clearly optional, and meant to be an infrequent case.

This is emphasized in that the idea that XP can be awarded for a particular goal or mission is fully fleshed out in the "Variant: Story Awards" section. The full expression to that idea is this:

You can handle story awards in one of two ways. The first is to make all awards story awards. Thus, killing monsters would earn no experience in and of itself... The second way is to use standard awards for defeating enemies but award only half the normal amount for doing so, making up the other half through story awards... Don't simply add story awards to standard awards [...] unless you want to speed up character progression.

We can see from this that:
(a) When the book says "defeating enemies" they mean it to be synonymous with "killing monsters" generally, and
(b) If you you're arguing to award XP for maneuvering through a forest, you should not award as much XP for the monsters you do kill.

 

[Count Arioch the 28t]

It depends on the situation.

If the NPC is drven away, and he ain't never coming back, I award full EXP.

If the enemies makes a strategic withdrawal, but intends to some back, I don't normally award EXP, unless they actually stopped said bad dude from completing a nefarious task, which I thne give full EXP.

However, that's only if the goal was to kill them. If the challenge is getting past said NPC, then any way you get past him counts, unless, of course, you just teleported in the building in the BBEG's privyu, and didn't even know or encounter the guard.

 

[James McMurray]

a) I can agree with that. However, int he context of the campaign killing is not always the only option if one wants to earn XP.

b) Could you provide some reasoning for that statement?

If the party's goal is to make it through the forest alive, wach encounter along the way will have an EL, and each creature will have a CR. In the case of hit and fade ambush's its probably easiest to equate each one to a trap, since the encounter is likely to a single round, and the party preumably doesn't have much chance at chasing these spirits down. If they survive the ambus they should get the XP for the equivilent "trap" CR. If they manage to kill some spirits in the process they should get the XP for the spirits, as it involved both overcoming the obstacle and movement towards the goal (by blunting future ambushes and making them easier to survive).

 

[Gantros]

Seems like some good ideas here.

I like the idea of treating the hit-and-run attacks as equivalent traps, because full XP are awarded for a trap whether it's survived, disabled, or skillfully bypassed.

As for the retreating villain, I can see the case for awarding full XP here. Assuming the villain can fully recover and adapt between encounters, then each one will be a different life-and-death experience for the PCs.

So we have one example where the foe flees after a single attack, and another where the foe flees just before they are defeated. This still leaves a gray area in between, such as a cowardly goblin that flees when reduced to 50% of its HP. Neither awarding trap XP nor full XP seems appropriate in that case.

Then there's the issue of Dismissal. One point that was brought up was, if the DM knows the foe won't be back, then full XP should be awarded. This makes sense, but I don't really like the idea that I have to decide this on the spot. And there's also an issue with planning encounter difficulty. If I know a party member has Dismissal, should I lower the effective EL of an encounter with an Outsider? If I assume they never come back, then this spell is basically equivalent to an instant kill on a failed save. If I assume they can come back, then the spell just becomes a temporary nuisance.

 

[James McMurray]

Cowardly goblin: sine he isn't likely to return (unless a stronger creature forces him to) I'd ward full XP.

Dismissal: Do you allow full XP if an enemy gets killed by Slay Living and later resurrected? If so, you should allow XP when something gets banished by Dismissal and later returns to the plane they were banished from.

 

[Gantros]

Okay, I buy the Dismissal argument. I would award full XP for Slay Living, and since this is also a 5th level spell, it doesn't seem unbalanced.

If I give full XP for the cowardly goblin, is it safe to assume that its "cowardliness" is accounted for in its CR? Or should I modify the EL if I know it will flee at 50% HP?

Sorry about all the nitpicks, but this situation seems to come up often enough that I'm surprised it isn't addressed better in the core rules.

 

[James McMurray]

If it will flee early it should have a lower EL.