XP for Escapees?

[nopantsyet]

My party just fought a battle against three evil NPCs--the leader and two minions. The two minions were killed in consecutive rounds and the leader then teleported to safety. This was what I expected to happen since the leader is a very powerful NPC who will recur.

How should I calculate XP for this? Obviously they get XP for the defeated opponents. But what about the one that got away? He made the encounter more difficult, but they did not defeat him. And had he fought to the death or even a few more rounds there likely would been a few PC deaths.

They did get through the encounter, so DMG advice would seem to say they get full XP for the encounter. But that seems like alot when I calculate it.

I'm just wondering what other people have done in this situation.

 

[Ma'varkith]

By driving him off, they managed to pass the encounter. If you feel the award for driving him away is too high, you might consider giving them part of the award now and the rest when they finally defeat him.

 

[Crothian]

It would depend on how much he did before he left. A CR encounter of their level (assuming it's a party of four) should use up 20% of all their resources. So, estimate how much of their resources where wasted on this guy, and gage a CR based off of that. But make sure it's not the full CR for the on who got away.

 

[DarkJester]

Was he a encounter? Did they overcome him? Then yep. If they forced him to run its as good as killing him in my book.

 

[Crothian]

It doesn't sound like they chased him away. It sounds like the encounter was designed for the PCs to kill the underlines, and then watch as the bad guy escapes before they can do anything about it. The poster does say this is going to be a re-occuring villian.

 

[nopantsyet]

Was he a encounter? Did they overcome him? Then yep. If they forced him to run its as good as killing him in my book.

No. He will be a recurring NPC until the PCs get powerful enough to bring him down. It was planned for him to escape when his henchmen went down.

I think what I'm going to do is give them 25% of the CR-based XP for the leader. (In addition to full XP for the henchmen, of course.) I think that's a good quantification of the degree to which his abilities made the battle more difficult for the PCs. And after calculating it out, it seems like a reasonable number.

 

[AuraSeer]

It depends on how much this guy affected the encounter. If he just sat on a throne and watched while his minions fought, then I wouldn't award any XP for him at all.

However, since he's apparently a spellcaster, he probably cast spells to aid his minions and hamper the PCs. My rule of thumb is to award XP based on how long he sticks around.

If the wizard flees as soon as his minions are defeated, before he himself is in danger, I award 50% of the normal XP. If he keeps fighting until he's actually defeated-- he's reduced to very low hp, or he runs out of spells, or something-- then I award full XP.

Example 1: The PCs fight the warrior minions, while dodging spells and taking on summoned monsters. When the warriors are finally defeated, they look for the wizard, but he makes a parting comment and vanishes. They get full XP for the warriors, but half XP for the boss.

Example 2: Same as above, except that when the warriors are dead, the wizard takes to the air and keeps chucking spells. After several rounds of being pummelled with Fireballs and Lightning Bolts, somebody gets a lucky crit with a longbow. The wizard loses so many hp that his Contingency is triggered, and he automatically Teleports home. The party gets full XP for all opponents, even though the wizard survived.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

If they fought him and forced him to flee they are supposed to get full XP.

The question is; Were the PC winning? Nevermind that the NPC could have brought half the party with him into the grave if he had decided to fight to the death. If he fled because he was losing, the party gets full XP. That's the rule.

If he fled because you fudged/arranged the encounter in order for that result to occur, you should have figured out the XP you wished to assign for the encounter when you designed the adventure. From a strict rule PoV, if this encounter was scripted in such a way that the PCs were in no real danger because the villain was going to flee before risking killing someone, they could get 0 XP! I mean, where was the challenge?

But how should any of us know what is appropriate for your campaign?

Personnaly I never fudge and I've seen plenty of important NPC die before they even got the chance to say their name!

*shrug*

I don't like scripted encounter. IMO Important villain should never enter combat unless you, the DM, are willing to accept either their death or that or the PCs.

When I play I can always tell when the DM is fudging and I don't like it one bit.

 

[nopantsyet]

There's nothing to say that a well-coordinated attack couldn't have taken the NPC out. The party chose a different strategy. And PCs could have died as well. The fact that my dice did not roll death is a different matter; the battle ran as the dice fell. I wouldn't have gone home crying if someone had died, and I'm not crying that they didn't.

However, in this case I had determined ahead of time the NPCs tactics. The strategy provided maximum protection to the NPC because, after all--that's what minions are for! And if the minions fell, he would teleport away. A simple and logical strategy. His plans require an item the party has, but they would not be accomplished by his untimely demise.

There's a big difference between fudging and having enemies that actually employ smart tactics and use their abilites. I think it's rather silly to think an every NPC opponent has to fight to the death the first time they meet the PCs--or that they would be stupid enough to do that when they have powerful abilities like teleport at their disposal. If you ignore these aspects of NPCs or monsters when developing or executing their strategy, that is fudging.

Nobody wants the BBEG get away, but as the NPCs get smarter, they have to be played smarter. Intelligent opponents fight when they can manipulate the odds in their favor; they don't die uselessly when they can teleport away and live to realize their diabolical schemes. Plus, a BBEG who gets away is alot more interesting than throwaway foes who are there only to be killed right away.

So here's my final ruling:

The characters neither defeated nor forced the hand of the NPC, but his presence made the battle more challenging and that added challenge should be appropriately rewarded. He expended about 25% of his resources before leaving, so I added 25% of the his XP value to the XP value of the minions. Yeah, it's Rule 0-ing, but that came up with an amount of XP that made sense for the encounter that took place. That XP is because the minions were effectively more difficult to defeat, not for the NPC. They get 0XP for him--It would be silly to have a story with a recurring villain and give out full XP every time they see him. I'm applying double jeopardy to XP: you can't earn XP multiple times for the same opponent. When he is defeated (eg dead or flees this plane), they will get the XP.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

The characters neither defeated nor forced the hand of the NPC, but his presence made the battle more challenging and that added challenge should be appropriately rewarded.

Well did they or did they not force him to flee? Were they or were they not attacked directly by the NPC? Could they or could they have not been killed by him?

It's still not clear to me. If they did directly attack him and get attacked in return, if the NPC fled because he was losing and could have been killed, then he was defeated and by the rules you should give full XP reward even if it means giving it more than once because they'll meet again. I did this on more than one occasion.

CR means challenge rating. If the challenge has been, killed, forced to flee, subdued, tricked or parlayed down doesn't really matter as long as it has been overcome.