XP - is it really a river?

[Toliudar]

I read a lot on these forums about experience balancing out for crafters, characters with LA, or those who take a level penalty from being raised from the dead, etc. I know that, RAW, lower level characters get more XP from encounters, and so in theory level up faster.

What I'm asking is: in roughly what proportion of the games that you've played does this actually happen? When I've DM'ed for my RL group, I sometimes did these different calculations, but I was the only one who did. I've played a LOT of PBP games on these boards, and have never seen experience meted out differently for different level characters.

Your experiences?

[Amphetryon]

I read a lot on these forums about experience balancing out for crafters, characters with LA, or those who take a level penalty from being raised from the dead, etc. I know that, RAW, lower level characters get more XP from encounters, and so in theory level up faster.

What I'm asking is: in roughly what proportion of the games that you've played does this actually happen? When I've DM'ed for my RL group, I sometimes did these different calculations, but I was the only one who did. I've played a LOT of PBP games on these boards, and have never seen experience meted out differently for different level characters.

Your experiences?
I can't speak to how other DMs do it, but I mete out the XPs based on the Character Level of the majority, and then leave it to the players to adjust if they're behind - or ahead of - the curve.

[some guy]

Yeah, I give lower level characters more xp. The DM I played with also did. But, in my experience, if you lost a level, catching up does take a very long time. Crafting might be worth it.

Also, I have houseruled it so that there's also a xp difference between pc's of level 1-3.

[Starbuck_II]

I read a lot on these forums about experience balancing out for crafters, characters with LA, or those who take a level penalty from being raised from the dead, etc. I know that, RAW, lower level characters get more XP from encounters, and so in theory level up faster.

What I'm asking is: in roughly what proportion of the games that you've played does this actually happen? When I've DM'ed for my RL group, I sometimes did these different calculations, but I was the only one who did. I've played a LOT of PBP games on these boards, and have never seen experience meted out differently for different level characters.

Your experiences?
I've experienced it in college when I was the Wu jen crafter of items.

I wasa lower level for a few battles before I would same level (if I leveled)then crafted again putting me below. The extra wealth made up for it.

[Eldariel]

I've been in few games where there's been enough crafting and resurrection to make it apparent and yeah, the people behind do catch up though never quite; but they stay within the one-level differential and additional consumption of experience doesn't meaningfully drop them further behind.

[Piggy Knowles]

The only games I've been in where XP is truly a river are the games where I was the DM.

[nedz]

It's down to the DM.
By RAW they should (apart from levels 1-4 for some reason), but then RAW also states that it's down to the DM's discretion.

[Keld Denar]

Of my 3 RL games, one doesn't use XP at all, one used XP, but all players got the same amount based on the average party level, and one (the one I run) calculates XP separate using the d20SRD.org encounter calculator. So only 1/3 of my RL games run XP as a river, one of which doesn't even really have a provision for crafting at all.

[erikun]

I do hand out more XP to lower level characters, mostly because it is what the rules say to do and there are enough awkward rule decisions to adjudicate on or change already. If I can avoid an hour-long discussion by following a rule I don't care much about, I'd like to just progress with the game.

[eggs]

This is probably the single most common houserule I've seen beside stupid RAW fixes - I've even seen multiclass penalties and non-fractional BA more often.

I use the encounter calculator in my games, and I've had a couple other DMs use it (I've shown the ones who've had a computer at hand during the tedious XP table/calculations, and everybody's used it), but splitting experience evenly among the group seems to be most common, and I've seen DMs just wing experience ("you axed the bad guy and looted the dungeon, so you all gain a level") more than a couple times.

[Aasimar]

I have an idea.

How about not charging xp for things?

Even death could be handled by the imposition of a negative level (probably temporary), or con loss or something

[Amphetryon]

I have an idea.

How about not charging xp for things?

Even death could be handled by the imposition of a negative level (probably temporary), or con loss or something

CON loss was the norm Back In The Day; it was usually cited as horrid and the reason why folks didn't res Characters, choosing to create new ones instead. In 3.X and beyond, where PB is often used, I can't imagine resurrection and CON loss being more popular than making a new Character when you're certain to get stats you can use.

[TypoNinja]

We've got a party crafter in one of my games, he just goes and solo's the odd critter to get his buffer back every so often.

[Aasimar]

The con loss would of course, be temporary too. (Maybe weeks, or months or until you get Restored, but temporary)

[Absol197]

I have an idea.

How about not charging xp for things?

Even death could be handled by the imposition of a negative level (probably temporary), or con loss or something

So, you mean exactly how Pathfinder handled this?

As for myself, I've been in a lot of games, and the way we handled this always changed.

In a bunch, we did away with XP entirely, and just leveled up once the DM (often me, but not always) felt like it would be a good time. In other games, our DM (also often me; I'm beginning to see a pattern here...) did the entire XP calculation as given in the DMG, often with adding in additional factors for roleplaying. In fact, one game I ran had a whole list of, like, fourteen different roleplaying factors, and how XP from them were calculated. It was complex, but it made things fun :smallsmile: .

Crafting has never actually been a thing in my groups. In fact, I can only recall a single character (once again, me) in any game I've run that made even a passing attempt at crafting consistently. I have to keep reminding the player of the wizard in our current game (I'm not DMing) that she can scribe scrolls in order to have some of her favorite spells in reserve for when she runs out of spell slots. And yet, she still hasn't done it...


~Phoenix~

[Yora]

I don't keep track of XP as a GM. I never had crafting or resurrection come up in any of the games I ran.

[LTwerewolf]

When I DM I average the player's level, and tell them their xp total. It's up to them to divide it up how they want, as long as everyone gets at least 10%.

[Twilightwyrm]

This isn't generally he case in my experience. Generally, there isn't enough of an XP gap to see the difference in level for any protracted period of time, and since leveling up takes one day per level in our group, spreading out the XP totals too much just means twice as much time spent leveling up, with the other not-leveling characters sitting around twiddling their thumbs while it goes on. It mostly just ends up being a pain.

[IdleMuse]

As a DM, this is what i've done in games since I realised that just handing out levels every now and then is harsh on crafters.

Everyone gets a new level everytime I want them to level up. Anyone who wants to spend any xp (for spell costs or crafting, basically), drops down one level the first time they do so. This gives them a pool of spare xp equal to the difference between the last level and the current 'party level' to spend as they please. Each time the party levels up, they gain a level plus some more crafting XP (the difference between the 'crafting pool size' of the previous level and the one they're now at, if that makes any sense. It's easier conceptually than it is to explain!)

This actually ends up pretty similar to the 'RAW' method, in some ways.

[ericgrau]

I read a lot on these forums about experience balancing out for crafters, characters with LA, or those who take a level penalty from being raised from the dead, etc. I know that, RAW, lower level characters get more XP from encounters, and so in theory level up faster.

What I'm asking is: in roughly what proportion of the games that you've played does this actually happen? When I've DM'ed for my RL group, I sometimes did these different calculations, but I was the only one who did. I've played a LOT of PBP games on these boards, and have never seen experience meted out differently for different level characters.

Your experiences?

Well it is by RAW of course. As for whether or not my DMs have actually done so, it's a mixed bag. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't; even the same DM may change. It's usually a matter of making things easy on themselves, so if you have a character concept such as a crafter that revolves entirely around the extra xp it's a good idea to talk to the DM before the campaign starts. Sometimes they're a hard*** but usually they were only being lazy and won't mind accommodating you once you explain it to them. Crafting may be nice, but it's not like you're breaking the system unless you tweak out cost reduction tricks.