XP - How do you do it?

[IronWolf]

For my current campaign I am just announcing level ups as appropriate and not assigning XP on an individual basis. I am not planning on penalizing for a missed session. We're playing Kingmaker so I have a rough idea of where folks should be at which point and this allows me to do away with small chunk of administrative overhead.

 

[WizarDru]

Up until recently, I was using the book standard method. I often would 'catch up' folks who'd missed sessions when it became unbalancing back under 3E for characters to get too far out of sync. Under 4E, I finally reached the point where I realized we were all kind of tired of keeping track of it.

I announced (and my players immediately agreed) that we were shifting to a 'I'll tell you when to level up' system. Especially when we realized that leveling in 4E was working out to around 3.5 sessions ANYWAYS. So we were just removing the math...and it let me level the PCs up at more logical times. So far, we've been happy with the method.

 

[fanboy2000]

I generally don't bother tracking XP these days and consider it somewhat of a hassle. Normally when GMing I have the PC's level on a set schedule (every 3 sessions was what I used for 4e) or just whenever I feel like they should.

You just reminded me of something. I ran a once of month Eberron game where, because of the slow pace, I ruled that after every session the PCs gained a level. Worked well.

 

[Mercurius]

Thanks for all the replies. I have another, related, question and am tempted to start a new thread, but will refrain (for now; if I don't get some responses I will).

When a character dies, what level do you start the player's next character at?

 

[Ourph]

I have gone back to XP for GP recovered (i.e. not just discovered but actually taken back to a place of safety) because I like the way it shapes the players motivations. I award XP for monetary and other non-magical treasure recovered, but not magic items.

 

[im_robertb]

For a previous 4E, more RP-based game, I had a very simple system: We play once a week, for 4 hours each session. Every 3 weeks, everyone levels up.

I'm planning on running the KotS AP, and will probably go with the by-the-book method.

 

[fanboy2000]

When a character dies, what level do you start the player's next character at?

The level of the lowest party member.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

I was doing RAW for combat + RP bonus + card bonus (from SabreCat's Purple Index Cards; posted in 4E houserule forum).

That got to be a bit to fast (leveling around 1 per 1 & 1/2 sessions), so I hacked combat xp in half and doubled quest values to focus more on RP aspects of the game. The main issues was that I couldn't keep up with the Parcel system. For example, my group had 2 combats in all of 5th level, so I still owe them 3 magic items and about 1k gold.

My group likes RP, so they were mostly fine with this (our 5 hour session Sunday featured exactly ZERO combats).

Edit note: to answer the second question, a new PC joins at the lowest PCs level with minimum XP for that level. So, if a party has 3 8ths and 7ths, they would come back as a level 7 PC.

 

[delericho]

When a character dies, what level do you start the player's next character at?

For 3e/4e/Pathfinder: the same XP total as the rest of the group, with appropriate goal for his level. If the other PCs looted the corpse of their dead comrade, then I'll reduce the treasure they get for the next little while, to get them back to where they "should" be.

For WFRP: the player rolls up a new starting character, but starts play with unspent XP equal to the total earned by the rest of the group. The player is then entitled to spend that XP on advances normally, but cannot advance any characteristic by more than one "step" at a time. Thus, he's behind for a bit, but very rapidly catches up.

The same rulings apply to new players joining the group, and also to new characters brought in as replacements for a retired character.

In general, my thinking is that death is itself enough of a penalty. Forcing the player to then deal with a character who is "behind" the rest of the group (potentially forever) seems like a really bad idea - not only can they contribute less, but they're also more likely to die again, and fall even further behind.

 

[Pickles JG]

Thanks for all the replies. I have another, related, question and am tempted to start a new thread, but will refrain (for now; if I don't get some responses I will).

When a character dies, what level do you start the player's next character at?

The same as everyone else.

I gave up tracking XP & just level people at about the right time. I used to penalise people who missed a session by holding them back for one session but I gave up on that. We are playing the KOTS campaign & have just hit paragon as we play infrequently & we started it as a prerelease! Going faster is on the cards from now on.

I have also pretty much given up on treasure finding. They get an item each level plus some cash they find for consumables &c. They find the odd special item - rares in new essentials lingo.