XP question

[Umbran]

I have a shy/new gamer that I usually reward if she shows improvement in roleplaying or just a little extra involvement. She might not have done as well as Player A, but it was a great showing for her. Of course, these bonuses are pretty moderate but it is enough to excite the players.

I find this sort of thing to be highly effective, too. Don't make the players compete with each other to improve - that promotes divisiveness. Make them compete with themsleves. It's a bit more difficult, but very rewarding, especially if you talk to the player about why they got a particular award.

 

[ced1106]

Hi. I was wondering, how do you guys handle doling out XP? I have been doing party-based XP, where all participants in an encounter receive a share of the XP. However, the hard-hitting barbarian is complaining that he should get a bigger share because he racks up more kills? I personally do not agree, but he might have a point. My thought is that the cleric who runs around healing the front-line people is no less valuable than the barbarian dealing out the damage.

Well, he **is** a barbarian.

Being lazy one thought is not to have party experience, but to use a percentage system based on the XP each player needs to level up. With the 13-14 encounters per level rule of thumb, each encounter should be 8% of the experience a player needs to gain a level. So you could divide this up to 5% for adventuring, 2% for entertaining roleplaying, and 1% for whinging -- er, doing stuff that suits one's race and/or class. Note that, if you feel like it, you could use that 5% to "reverse engineer" the average difficulty of a creature for a PC. As a result, not-so-coincidentally, the lower levels of the party fight the goons, while the higher levels take on the boss monsters. (Just like in the comics!)


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Fallen_Lord]

Give this a try. Run a session where there is little to no combat and explain to him thatbecause he didnt kill anything he doesnt get any xp of corse to save him from exploding with rage you can then give him the xp he deserves for the session after he gets your point

 

[Churchill]

Kill XPs BAD

I just wanna chime in and say that I think XPs for dealing the killing blow are a bad idea.

Many years ago (i.e., 1st Edition) my gaming group - which, for what it's worth, has three of its original members still playing - awarded a creature's experience points for being the one who finished it off.

This led to a whole heap of problems, and there is NO way I'd want to go back to that.

 

[Drakmar]

personally.. I changed to my own system..

to gain a level you need 7 XP. (from one level to the next - always)

you get one XP for turning up.

you get one XP for good roleplaying.

end of story.

mind you.. a magic item.. costs about 1 XP point to make.. It keeps a cap on those magic item creation nutters out there. (Personal view that)

what this means is.. that it takes a minimum of 4 sessions to gain a level.. and a max of 7.. and a minimum amount of bookkeeping for me.

 

[Drawmack]

First and for most when it comes to experience is I take my sharpie and color over that chart on page 100 of the DMG. Then I use the following formula.

X/(Y*(Z/A)+1) - round the result down.

X = The XP needed to progress from the ECL to the next level (i.e. for an ECL 1 x = 1000 because it takes 1000 experience to go from first to second level and for an ECL 2 x = 2000 because it takes 2000 xp to go from 2nd to 3rd level)

Y = How many encounters of ECL = Party Level I want the PCs to have to face in order to level.

Z = Pary Level

A = How often the number of encounters needed to level should increase.

The +1 is so excel doesn't give me divide by zero answers.

Now this all might seem a bit difficult to calculate but I use excel and and actually leave Y,Z and A as variables that I can change by changing a number in a cell - if any one wants a copy it is here.

Then what I do is fill in the number of encounters at each applicable CR the party has faced. As the game progresses I hand out what are called role playing points. Each role playing point is worth the same as one encounter of ECL = PL would be worth to a single PC. Then at the end of the game I give out the XP that my XP calculator is telling me to hand out. When the players see others getting more experience because they made me laugh or they played their part very well they will then strive to become better role-players.

BTW: The sheet that I posted also has a character sheet appropriate for the GM to use (with skills and feats on a pick list from the SRD, Grim -n- Gritty and The Book of Broken Dreams) And a battle tracker that lets you put in people's initiative rolls hit ctrl+o and have your intiative order set up and be ready to track a battle of up to 25 rounds. Although the instruction sheet isn't completed yet if you wait until this afternoon to download it the instruction sheet will be in there as well.

 

[nsruf]

I use a home-brew XP system that has rewards both for group effort and individual effort. Combat is usually treated as group effort, i.e. everybody gets the same share, unless only part of the PCs got involved. Oh, and killing for its own sake does not yield any XP - it has to be either dangerous to the PC or help to achieve a goal.