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

[iserith]

I wrote this entire damn Quest XP document for Princes of the Apocalypse in order to get the "feeling" of XP advancement without all the tedious post-combat-arithmetic: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?442930-Princes-of-the-Apocalypse-Quest-XP

Got one written up for CoS yet by chance?

 

[KahlessNestor]

Got one written up for CoS yet by chance?

I'm running HOTDQ right now and doing a combination approach. I am giving XP as normal. They are in chapter 1 (1st level) and the level up via XP in the middle has saved them. A few have missed sessions and when they finish chapter 1, if they aren't level 2 yet I intend to give everyone enough XP to get there, so meeting the milestone. It's 7 players and I'm not adjusting, so th ey may not need it, and they have slower XP progress from combat as a result.

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[Sacrosanct]

I find it awfully difficult to use xp because my players are so averse to combat. They usually find another way to deal with most encounters and so I am forced to ballpark how much xp they actually recieve in a given session. After a year or two of doing that, I threw my hands up into the air and just went with milestone leveling, only occasionally going back through the slow slog of keeping track of xp.

Go with the old AD&D rule: PCs got monster XP for defeating the monsters. "Defeat" doesn't always mean in combat. It means getting past the encounter successfully, so if they snuck around them and didn't encounter them, they would still get the monster XP.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

@Siivos,

You could take a page from AD&D and stop giving XP for killing monsters, but do give players XP for spending gold offscreen on RP-related goals, say on a 10:1 basis. That guy whose backstory is that he's in love with a pirate queen? Whenever he sends her a e.g. 50,000 gp present, give him 5000 XP for it. Then when he manages to avoid the mind flayer and its intellect devourers and steal its 50,000-gp gem-encrusted idol from right out of its bedroom, he can get excited about scoring 5000 XP.

This will probably reinforce your players' tendencies towards avoiding combat. Giving XP for engaging in activity X is like a big glowing sign that says, "Hey players! X is what this game is all about!"

 

[77IM]

Here's another variant: give XP for encountering monsters. It doesn't matter if the party defeats them, sneaks around them, befriends them, gets captured, or flees in terror with their pants around their ankles; just meeting the monster is enough. This focusses the game more around exploration, and works better in conjunction with quest XP or treasure XP.

 

[Siirvos]

Those are all excellent ideas, and somewhat similar to what I was already doing. It's not so much that they sneak around a given encounter, rather they make things fairly trivial. Instead of fighting a bandit camp, they'll get into the bandit leaders tent, charm him into being an ally, then convince the entire bandit camp to help them in one way or another. Very creative, but difficult to properly award them xp for doing so.

 

[Bupp]

Personally, I hate the number crunching involved with XP. For awhile, I gave out XP arbitrarily, so that on the surface it looked like XP leveling, but in reality it was milestone leveling.

I just got away from that completely and let the players know when it's time to level. I've had times when we've played 5 sessions without gaining a level, and others when they've leveled after 2 sessions. It has all depended on how much fun they are having at their current power level, what adventures I have lined up, and just whenever everyone feels like they are ready to level.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Here's another variant: give XP for encountering monsters. It doesn't matter if the party defeats them, sneaks around them, befriends them, gets captured, or flees in terror with their pants around their ankles; just meeting the monster is enough. This focusses the game more around exploration, and works better in conjunction with quest XP or treasure XP.

Oh, wow. I really, really like the incentives this creates.

Might make sense to award XP only on the first time (or first few times?) you encounter a given type of monster though. There's only so much you can learn from observing trolls, after all. So a high-level adventurer is one who has seen a lot of things and/or stolen/spent a lot of treasure and rescued a lot of princesses.

 

[flametitan]

It depends on the game. For a West Marches? Definitely XP. And don't award it just for kills. Allow players to get XP for negotiations, too. One thing I want to bring back is gold for XP (though unlike some here I think I'd prefer it on a 1:1 basis, as it makes levelling faster but money for things like Plate armour, hirelings, etc. scarce) It encourages exploring more than fighting, and exploring is important in a West Marches game.

Now for a more story focused game, I wouldn't use the minutae of XP, but not the arbitrary Milestone levelling either. Go by the hours played. There's a DMG section that talks about how you can remove XP and grant levels by the amount of sessions played, though it assumes 4 hour sessions. If you multiply it by 4, you should get an hours played --> levels gained chart fairly nicely.

 

[77IM]

Got one written up for CoS yet by chance?

Not yet, but it is definitely on my TODO list. (Unless somebody else gets to it first!) I'm going to base it off of [MENTION=9789]evilbob[/MENTION]'s guidelines in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?481230-Curse-of-Strahd-milestones-(spoilers)!