D&D 5E XP Per Adventuring Day Per Player is Ridiculous

[MarkB]

That just makes it more ridiculously anticlimactic when they do face it. "Seriously, that thing defeated armies? It only had 500 HP!" I've played in that game before and it was not fun.

Only if it's a solo critter. Maybe it defeated armies before by having armies of its own, and those are the forces it's spending years rebuilding.

It also doesn't have to be a straight-up battle. Look at the classic example, Lord of the Rings - nobody, even the most powerful champions, actually fights Sauron. They defeat him indirectly, largely by denying him the opportunity to fully recover his power.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Only if it's a solo critter. Maybe it defeated armies before by having armies of its own, and those are the forces it's spending years rebuilding.

Any creature which is beatable by four PCs in personal combat was never a threat to armies in the first place. This is true of solos but also of a leader with a bunch of mooks.

Your point about indirect means is well-taken, and I'll argue that you MUST set up the threat such that it can be confronted indirectly, because a genuine army-killer will murder the PCs. E.g. Orcus in OOTA is an army-killer by virtue of his ability to create infinite liches. You could set up a scenario where the PCs are meant to decoy his army away and then hit him behind the lines just when he thinks he is safe, but if he manages to escape, he'll be back with five hundred liches tomorrow and the PCs will be doomed. That would qualify in my mind as an indirect approach because you're avoiding Orcus's main strength, but is also an order of magnitude harder than a WotC-written scenario because you have to both force him to engage and then kill him quickly, on his home ground, before he can Time Stop and escape. Frankly, I'd expect most PCs to lose, especially ones raised in the post-TSR era on a "balanced encounter" mentality. In all probability Orcus will take over the world; in any case he doesn't work as a brooding evil because his strength grows continually.

Edit: I guess he might work as a brooding evil if he lost his wand and all but five hundred liches, and pulled back to a defensive posture while he is searching for it again. His forces are too strong to attack, so the threat cannot be ended, but he also does not want to operate aggressively at present because he COULD lose them. He's going to wait until 100% chance of victory with his wand rather than risking everything on a 90% chance of victory right now. Yeah, that could work.

 

[Dausuul]

Does anyone else think this pace is utterly ridiculous?

Assuming about 1 session per adventuring day, that's 3.3 sessions per level. Same pace as 3E.

I don't really have a problem with it. If you don't like it, cut the XP awards in half or something.

 

[keterys]

Might be fun though if it actually were an army-breaker with AC 28, thousands of HP and regeneration, massive 500' radius AoEs, etc.

Just have a 500' radius aura that deals 10 damage per round. Don't need many hp or AC then

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Just have a 500' radius aura that deals 10 damage per round. Don't need many hp or AC then

You still need a lot of HP or high mobolity/stealth or you'll die to siege engines from outside that radius. Or longbowmen actually, though I assume you intended 600' instead of 500', which would exclude longbows.

 

[aramis erak]

It is adjusted XP. I'll quote the relevant DMG passage in case you're away from your books:



The passage is poorly written and I can see how you might have looked at the "expected to earn in a day" sentence and interpreted it as an earned XP table. But it is an adjusted XP table.

BTW, I tried at one point awarding earned XP = adjusted XP, but it was way too much XP and it also didn't mesh with the "life force vampire" fluff I had given my players, so I dropped it after the first big fight.

They could have made the whole thing much clearer by calling the "adjusted XP value" something else; "Difficulty value" would be my choice. Especially since you don't actually award the adjusted XP value.

 

[Uller]

No. I don't think it's ridiculous. It's a guideline that DMs can us to determine what the difficulty is for whatever encounters the party will face without a long rest. It is based on the base assumptions of the game and doesn't have anything to do with actual xp awards or leveling pace.

Your game likely varies from the base assumptions of the game (for instance 8 or 9 PCs in a game that assumes 3 to 5). So you have to adjust the guidelines and your expectations for the usefulness of those guidelines accordingly.

 

[procproc]

Based on the XP per day, characters should advance to 15th level in 33 adventuring days. This is beyond ludicrous.

Does anyone else think this pace is utterly ridiculous?

As a general rule for D&D, yes. However, it sounds like a great premise for a campaign.

"DM: The name of this campaign is 'The Worst Month of Your Life.'

Player: Cool, what's it about?"

 

[Tyrson]

It is worth mentioning that some of your math in the initial post is entirely wrong.

First, to find the adjusted XP value of the monsters, you multiply their total XP (sum of their individual values) by an amount shown on DMG p.82 (x4 for more than 14 monsters).
Second, if you have a large group (8-9 players qualifies) you use the multiplier from the next step down (x3 for 11-14 monsters).
So your 4 Ettercaps (CR 2, 450 XP ea) and 12 Giant Spiders (CR 1, 200 XP ea) encounter does not come out to 4200 XP, it comes out to 12,600...
It's a 12,600 XP encounter for balance & challenge purposes (well over "Deadly", which would be about 9-10,000) that actually rewards each player only about 500 XP (based on the monsters' actual XP totals).
The amount each player should get per day is based on the effective XP, not the monster's actual XP, so your 12,600 encounter divided by the 8 players means they're each getting 1575 of their daily recommended 3500... probably not worth it from their perspective, since it's only providing 1/15th of what they need to reach the next level (525 XP, but they need 7,500 more to reach level 6).

4 ettercaps & 12 giant spiders- 12,600 effective XP

2 wereboars & 6 giant boars- 9800 effective XP

3 wyverns - 10350 effective XP

Coven of 3 green hags- 8100 effective XP

12 harpies & 1 harpy queen (custom CR 6)- 11750* effective XP
(probably less, since the CR 1's are largely irrelevant next to a CR 6)

Hope that helps.

 

[Emerikol]

I haven't read the whole thread so I am responding directly to the OP's original question.

I'm old school so my target would probably be 1 adventure or 1 level (in a multi-level large dungeon) for a first level character to advance. Then 2 for a 2nd level character to advance and so forth all the way to 10 for a 10th level character to advance. At that point I'd probably just cap it at 10.

Now that is a rough overview and perhaps 10 is not the ideal cap but it's high. So I fall on the slow side of advancement.

I also find my group is usually much better than the DMG thinks they'll be in most editions of D&D. I admit I tend to have tactically smart groups who know how to get the advantage. I haven't played 5e but from what I've heard I doubt it would be different.