XP Awards for Driving Off Opponents

[EPRock]

it actually cut out half of my post .

I was saying that people should be rewarded for defeating the encounter. If the party meets the person again another time, the enemy will be at full power and therefore full experience. If a party meets the person later and the person is still down health, spells etc... Then they should get the complete xp at the time.

I suppose if a party knows that they are going to be fighting an encounter where they have aforementioned knowledge, and are prepared for the encounter totally, they should not be able to get max xp because there was not as much of a challenge.

A party fighting a purple worm, but the party is flying should not get as much xp for defeating it unless the purple worms actually did something to the party, like poisoning, or eating party members.

 

[Will]

(beats on his drum) I think the event that finally pushed me over the edge to doing story awards is...

Well, first, I had been really annoyed by the rate of XP growth. A few 'ambush' encounters by lower level guys, that the PCs beat easily, were enough to push things too fast. (Level every 2.5 sessions rather than 3.5)

But the final event was a fight with nightwalkers who were guarding a portal to the plane of shadow. Two nightwalkers plane shifted out to get reinforcements (and heal).

Thus, the argument...
If the party left when the enemies vanished, do they get the XP?
But the nightwalkers only made a tactical, temporary retreat.
What is the difference in 'knowledge gained' between an enemy fleeing in terror, an enemy fleeing to avoid being nailed, and an enemy fleeing as part of a tactic?

Another one... if there is no concrete goal, how do you evaluate XP?

Man, it drove me nuts.

 

[Scion]

Well, first, I had been really annoyed by the rate of XP growth. A few 'ambush' encounters by lower level guys, that the PCs beat easily, were enough to push things too fast. (Level every 2.5 sessions rather than 3.5)

Dont know about your characters, but the characters in the game I am currently playing have so little low-level combat ability that we mainly run from most battles lol.. After 3 rounds the 5 of us managed to kill 2 zombies, and then had to run from the other 10 of them that just showed up that round. That sort of battle is pretty typical for us, but we actually managed to kill something that time! sortof.