XP for "defeated" monsters

[AuraSeer]

Two encounters, two challenges, two times the XP.

XP isn't something you loot from a monster's corpse. It's what you learn from meeting a challenge and overcoming it. If you beat a monster without killing it, whether it escapes or you leave it unconscious or whatever, you still overcame the challenge and get full XP.

Say the PCs encounter a green dragon, beat her down to low hit points and clearly are capable of destroying her, but she manages to escape. She goes into hiding and uses sending to call her identical twin sister for help. Two hours later, the sister arrives in the area, runs into the PCs, and gets killed. Clearly the PCs get XP for both fights, right? So why should it be any different if the second fight is with the same dragon?

What if they killed the dragon in their first encounter, but it was true resurrected and they had to fight it again? Would you remove XP for the first fight because the dragon didn't stay dead?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I guess it depends on how everything went. If the party had beaten the dragon to within an inch of tis life and it fled in panic and the party was unable to finish it off, I would have awarded partial XP. If it had fled before it had been harmed seriously just to be in a better situation, probably no XP. If the party chose to just let it flee (possibly metagaing to get more XP), no XP award.

2 hours later they fight it again, it is fully healed. If it has all of its abilities and they kill it, I would then award full XP. If the dragon was limited in its abilites due to the earlier encounter, and I had awarded partial XP earlier, then I would have probably awarded partial XP again.

 

[dcollins]

I only ever give out one unit of XP for any monster. If you chase it off one day, and kill it months later, maybe you'd get half-and-half.

What the DMG does say is that in cases where monsters are not killed, "... it can be trickier... It's up to you [the DM] to make such judgements."

 

[the Jester]

First of all, the dm decides how many xps everyone gets. I wouldn't argue about it unless he overlooked something. In this case he didn't overlook anything, he made a ruling.

As to me, as a dm, I'd give you xp for defeating it once.

 

[Trainz]

Thanks for all the feedback !

I decided to go with my DM and say he was right. Not that it mattered for the game, DM is always right and all that, but if it makes me feel better, then so much the better.

ENworld is great !