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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 6948914" data-attributes="member: 75065">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).</blockquote>

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