D&D 5E XP for Absent Players

[Fanaelialae]

I give absent players full XP. They miss out on loot however, unless the other players are feeling particularly generous. I usually come up with a brief description of an adventure that the PC went on while absent, which both explains where the XP came from and allows me to drop hooks and seeds for future adventures.

I do this because gaming is (or at least should be) fun. As such, it's "punishment" enough for the player to not be able to play. I certainly don't want to create some perverse incentive for them to skip out on real world obligations, just so that they don't fall behind in game.

Part of the reason is that I've seen this sort of thing turn into a vicious cycle. The player misses a session or two, causing them to fall behind. When they return, they feel less competent than their companions, which dampens their interest in the game. This causes them to miss more games, further reducing their interest until they drop out entirely.

That said, 5e tends to be fairly forgiving in terms of level disparity. However, that doesn't mean that the player will feel it is. Objective truth and subjective feelings don't always align.

One possible suggestion, if you don't like the idea of giving "free" XP and your players don't mind homework, might be to have the player write up what their character was doing while absent in exchange for the XP. That way if the player doesn't care about level disparity they don't need to do it, while someone who does can spend a bit of free time to close the gap, while possibly also giving the DM new material to incorporate into their game. Just a thought.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I award no XP for absent players and have found 5e to be very forgiving in regard to that choice. AD&D 2e, which is my other D&D of choice, is likewise very forgiving of groups with uneven XP distribution, making it a non-issue for my group.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've got more players than seats at the table (generally 8 to 10 players for 5 seats). If you can make it, great; if you can't, someone else will take that seat and we'll catch you some other time.

Ahh, now this makes a big difference! If I was running a game where the expectation wasn’t that every player shows up to every session, then I would likewise only award XP to players who were present for whatever accomplishment it was awarded for. At that point it’s not a punishment for non-attendance when attendance is a baseline expectation, it’s a resource you character earns during the seasons they are present for.

 

[Shiroiken]

Depends on your edition of choice, and the group's overall preference. Prior to 4E, everyone having individual XP totals was the norm, so missing a session meant you fell behind a bit. 4E generally assumed that everyone was the same level, meaning that everyone has the same XP or used milestone leveling. 5E officially only grants XP to players present, but this isn't baked in the way 3E had it (where you could spend/lose XP).

If you're running a West Marches type game, with infrequent players, having variable XP is fine. If you're trying to run a story based campaign, allowing characters to slowly separate in level can be fairly detrimental. My group prefers to have everyone be at the exact same XP, so only 1-2 players have to keep track.

 

[CleverNickName]

In one campaign, we don't use XP at all. The party gains a level when they reach a particular milestone in the story, and it doesn't matter how many gaming sessions you missed. Nobody is "punished" for missing a game (except that they have to spend the evening "Adulting" and miss out on playing D&D with their friends).

In another campaign, we use XP and characters that are absent for a gaming session don't earn XP at all. If you miss more than a few gaming sessions, you could fall behind. But it's rare for a player to miss a game because we use a shared online gaming calendar to schedule our gaming sessions, and we all work together to make a game happen. We will move a game to someone else's house if they can't find a babysitter, or we will move the day/time of the game a bit, or someone will play someone else's character for a while until they can make it to the game, that sort of thing. But it does happen every now and then, and so far nobody has complained about feeling "punished" by missing out on XP.

 

[Mistwell]

It's just so much easier to level everyone at the same time and rate. This concept was a fundamental change from 1e AD&D (and B/X) which leveled everyone differently based on race/class, and it's carried a step further with things like event based leveling rather than tracking specific XP. It makes planning adventures a lot easier when you know everyone is always the same level. And that ease far outweighs any benefit that comes from staggered experience points dependent to each PC and how often they played.

 

[iserith]

Ahh, now this makes a big difference! If I was running a game where the expectation wasn’t that every player shows up to every session, then I would likewise only award XP to players who were present for whatever accomplishment it was awarded for. At that point it’s not a punishment for non-attendance when attendance is a baseline expectation, it’s a resource you character earns during the seasons they are present for.

I just don't view that as a punishment though. The way I see it, experience points are something a player earns for engaging in the particular behaviors the DM wants to encourage, not something to which a player is entitled by signing up to a game. If you miss a session, you just get after it with that much more gusto and try to make it up. It's all in the players' hands, assuming it's not an event-based game.

Personally, as long as the group is consistent with how and why they use a particular method of advancement, it doesn't really matter to me. In some games in which I play, the DM just levels everyone up, whether you attend or not, every session. It doesn't really incentivize anything. It's not my favorite, but it's fine.

In my games, I do generally prefer experience points, specifically standard XP or maybe milestone given certain conditions, rather than session-based advancement, but that's chiefly because I want XP to drive play toward the central theme or concept of the campaign more precisely. I would also consider story-based advancement, though really I'd prefer not to run event-based games and that seems to be what that is meant for. It's really only session-based advancement that directly ties attendance to level with no hope of making up for sessions you missed. And that's not my bag.

As an aside, my current setup of a player pool larger than my max number of seats per session grew out of not liking to cancel sessions because we couldn't make quorum and a hatred of having scheduling discussions. Now, if I want to have a game, it's a very rare day indeed when we don't have enough people to at least make quorum (four PCs). So those two problems have been nicely solved.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Like many others, we award and I have as DM, half the XP for absent characters (players only get a strong, "What the heck, dude, you said you were coming!?!).

 

[Draegn]

My players have characters ranging from second to thirteenth level. They either play their main characters or their alternates when they are present. When away their characters are considered to be working on down time projects for which there is the possibility of experience.

Often times I run mini plots in between our bimonthly group meetings which allow my players to have stories to talk about and share information that they might have learned while away from the group.

 

[Kinematics]

First option: The "pink bubble". If you miss a session, you are protected from any harm, but also gain no benefit. Your character wanders around with the rest of the group (so no risk of being left behind if we teleport to another world or something), but can't contribute in any way (ie: spells, skills, knowledge, etc). There's no risk of your character being killed, but you also gain no skill/XP/etc.

The pink bubble works well for any skill-based system because there's no obvious comparisons between characters, and you aren't dealing with key abilities being gated behind level accumulation. If you didn't get a chance to level up your sword skill this week, oh well. There's no sense of "falling behind", unless you miss a ton of sessions. It didn't really transition to level-based systems like D&D, but still works if you don't want to let someone else play your character.

Second option: Allow another player to play your character. This is what we do with most level-based systems, including D&D, as long as you're only going to miss the occasional session. This means you gain XP with the rest of the group, and the group gets access to your spells/skills/knowledge, but your character is subject to the risk of injury or death or loss of items, or whatever else might happen. In fact, there's probably greater risk, because other players won't be as well-versed in your abilities as you are.

This option assumes you can trust your friends to play your character fairly. It comes with the assumption that the DM won't allow any abnormal behavior, such as looting your character, or using him as a bomb detector, or other obnoxious things.

Third option: Set up a side adventure for your character with the DM. You lost your chance to be part of the "main" adventure (which may involve more loot and/or XP), but you can still have fun doing something, and it often allows small quest hooks to be dropped in that can be used with the main group later. Rather than "no XP", this is more of "less XP" if you get explicit XP rewards. If you do milestone leveling, then you should still be keeping up with the rest of the group.

Extended leave: Character is removed from the roster and does not advance any further, or on a slightly slower track (eg: 1-2 levels behind the main party). Is not available as a playable character for the rest of the party (as in option 2). Don't have a lot to say on this option, as usually it meant a permanent removal of the player, or by the time they got back we were on a different game, so they'd be making a new character anyway. Occurs when someone's work schedule changes, or someone in the military goes on a 6-month tour, etc.


I don't like the concepts of punishing the player by withholding XP (even if couched in terms of "encouraging" the player to not miss sessions) because it reminds me too much of my MMO days, where attendance became a club to beat people with, and it almost guaranteed that it was eating away at real life because you were punished in a myriad of ways for not being in game. When I see those types of arguments, I think, "You're the type of person who ran a guild and made my life miserable."