D&D 5E XP tracking vs. story progresion leveling, an observation

[Tony Vargas]

In XP tracking, even if you didn't get enough XP to level up, you got XP and could see the progress to the next level, and knew how close you were. So it felt like you made progress, even if in the large macro perspective you leveled a bit slower than story progression leveling.

I miss that, I think.

Interesting observation. Subtle psychological things like that do seem to make a bigger difference than one might think.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, there's something about needing to fight tooth and nail for advancement rather than just getting levels for showing up.

 

[robus]

I do find that using milestone based leveling does take away some of the gamification of leveling that XP provides. As mentioned above players seeing that they're getting close to leveling get quite excited about the prospect and then satisfaction as they gain the reward they were approaching. Milestone leveling seems a bit anticlimactic (and perhaps whimsical) so while they're pleased to receive the level up it does seem a bit like XP ex machina

 

[jbear]

I have been following an adventure path since we began playing 5e: Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I never run adventure paths as written, as I prefer to build in side treks and flesh out locations for players to go off the beaten track if they so choose. I drop crumbs to tempt them off the track, and my players love crumbs!

The use of chapters or story points to level up is useful and a big time saver. I don't really work out CR for encounters either (a lot of that is done by the adventure path itself;they can get it very wrong at certain times however), preferring to go by instinct when I add in my own plot lines or encounters in response to player decisions.

My players know they level up at certain plot points and they are fine with this. They know that if they go off the beaten track they aren't going to farm more XP. That has a whole snowball effect if they get too far ahead of the power curve in a published adventure which usually translates to more (unwanted) work adjusting everything. Instead my players know that going off the beaten track has potentially other benefits, namely magic items and the likes (which I use very sparingly).

It works out pretty well. I was able to totally flesh out the PCs arrival in Baldur's Gate using the adventure 'Murder in Baldur's Gate'. I added in a very fun sidetrek during the caravan journey when the PCs followed the Golden Stag into the Feywild. I wa able to flesh out their arrival in Daggerford using the first part of the Ghost of Dragonspear Castle adventure. Having had quite enough of caravan journeys, I had them skip the whole Carnath Wayhouse episode and head directly towards the Cult's base fleshing out the Mere of Dead Men with some fun 'Neverending Story Inspired' Giant Turtle riding adventures. They are almost near the end of Skyreach Castle episode and they are about to be offered a sidetrek to aquire the flying castle which will involve taking on the first module of Against the Giants. In summary, if I had calculated all the XP for each of these wanderings off the path the players would probably be level 10 by now. Instead they are at the right power level to continue with Rise of Tiamat with some nice, very fun magical stuff up there sleeves. Its been a lot of fun, I haven't mised handing out session by session xp awards, and I feel like a lot of time has been saved in not having to worry about those things (time is pretty preciousin terms of managing prep nowadays so this is important to me).

 

[Sunseeker]

If you can't tell how close you are to the goal and "next level", that's a problem with how you plot is moving.

 

[robus]

If you can't tell how close you are to the goal and "next level", that's a problem with how you plot is moving.

I think that was directed at me(?) and that seems a little dismissive? Players are supposed to know how close to a milestone they are? Have you seen how wildly different the chapters in RoT are for example?

 

[Shiroiken]

Generally I prefer XP, probably because I'm an old fart. My current group uses party XP, which means everyone levels at the same time, which is kind of convenient, but also annoying at the same time. I've designed my adventures assuming everyone shows up, and now we have to NPC players who aren't present. My next campaign will hopefully change that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If you can't tell how close you are to the goal and "next level", that's a problem with how you plot is moving.

I'm confused by this, because those two things seem completely unrelated. Especially from the players' perspective. How are they supposed to know how far along the plot they are? Even if you were playing an incredibly linear game (and most don't), how would they know how far along the story they are unless they already knew the entire story from the get go?

 

[Valetudo]

I used story progression during 4th edition. It worked fine but my players missed getting xp. I went back to xp for 5th.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I do find that using milestone based leveling does take away some of the gamification of leveling that XP provides. As mentioned above players seeing that they're getting close to leveling get quite excited about the prospect and then satisfaction as they gain the reward they were approaching. Milestone leveling seems a bit anticlimactic (and perhaps whimsical) so while they're pleased to receive the level up it does seem a bit like XP ex machina

I wonder how different these forums would be if, instead of posters awarding XP to each other, the mods just "levelled up" posters when they felt it was appropriate. ;-)

Awarding XP to players imposes no real burden on the DM and increases feelings of player empowerment. To me it's a no-brainer: of course you award XP. If you want to be lazy/efficient you can just award XP in big milestone-sized chunks (10,000 XP here, 20,000 XP there) instead of after every combat, but it's still important that the levelling be XP-based.