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Yora
2013-08-14, 09:03 AM
I am usually not a big fan of XP since I don't want my players to go looking for fights just so they can get to the next level sooner. Simply announcing a level-up any time it seems fitting or at steady intervals works reasonably well in a very story-driven game, but now I am finding myself preparing a campaign that will be a lot about the players judging what risks to take and what investments in time and resources they are willing to make.

I am thinking of quests like entering a ruin and capturing or killing a fugitive warlock who is hiding somwhere in the place. But I want to overcome the mentality of "let's kill everything in every single room to maximize our profits". But suppose the players get an idea that allows them to smoke the fugitive out and catch him as he comes through the door. It doesn't seem quite right to give them the same amount of XP they would get from fighting the two dozen zombie ogres that are hanging around in the ruins. They had one good idea (which should get them XP) and not ten tough fights. Yet I still want to encourage behavior in which the PCs avoid unneccessary risk to their lives.

Does anyone have experience with these kinds of situations you could share?

valadil
2013-08-14, 09:16 AM
What kind of fights are we talking about? If the players see 10 fights and think "free XP!" maybe those fights aren't hard enough. They should definitely spend resources. They should maybe lose PCs. Bottom line, if they're taking a risk to gain a reward, you have to make that risk real. Consumables and allies are something they should think about losing when they get greedy for XP.

Krazzman
2013-08-14, 09:31 AM
Search for Kol Korrans adventure Log. The one out of DM perspective.

He mentioned that he will award XP depending on getting stuff done not killing stuff.
Other DM's that wrote here have mentioned that they award EXP for completing certain corner points of quests. Or I know DM's that tell us we level up when we are in need of the next level.

Tell this to your players beforehand. That you don't want murderhobos and that you Houserule the normal exp system out of the window. (Add Pathfinders Crafting system and you should be ok with not giving them Exp at all).

Hope this helps.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-14, 09:51 AM
You could decide to give XP for any monster which they encounter, but doesn't kick their ass (DM discretion). This allows for the possibility of talking down or scaring intelligent enemies to let the PCs pass.

You could go old-school and simply give XP for treasure looted and earned from adventure (once you accrue next level's WBL, you gain that level). No XP from monsters at all; they're an obstacle, not the objective.

In addition to these, you can crank up the CR so almost all fights will be hard enough that PCs might die.

erikun
2013-08-14, 09:56 AM
I determine the XP for a scenario, and hand that out if/when the PCs complete it. If they figure out some way to bypass the challanges, then they deserve the reward for creative thinking. I'd make sure that their plan would actually work, and plans aren't likely to go exactly how they intend, but I'm not going to shortchange them for when they do plan.

Please note that the scenario XP isn't necessarily equal to the total XP of all creatures they might possibly encounter, just a reasonable estimation of what a party would likely face during a "typical" run. I might do so for ease of bookkeeping with a prepackaged campaign, but if I'm setting up a castle and packing it to the gills with soldiers (as would be expected) then the party isn't getting XP equal to full genocite of the city.

1
As for your situation in particular, is their plan so good that the warlock is guaranteed to be smoked out? Are there no other exits for the smoke, or no other escape routes that the warlock is capable of using? These are the questions I'd seriously consider asking. However, if they do manage to get the warlock out and catch him alone, then yes, I would give them XP for the whole encounter.

Of course, if they want any of the treasure, they'd need to go back for it...

supermonkeyjoe
2013-08-14, 10:01 AM
I award XP for overcoming the challenge presented in the encounter, that could be by fighting, talking, sneaking or bribing your way through, it doesn't matter so long as the encounter is effectively over.

Thinker
2013-08-14, 10:09 AM
You have a few options so that it does not revolve around combat:

Flat XP per session - you play, you progress.
Event-driven XP even without a story-focused game things are happening and those things give XP.
Skill-driven XP - Anytime a player successfully uses a skill s/he gets a small amount of XP.
GM discretion - When the GM feels that the players have earned XP, they get XP.
Gold = XP - Players level up by acquiring gold and treasure.

Yora
2013-08-14, 11:28 AM
One good reason to make players chose to avoid combat and not seek to get extra XP would be to make every encounter costly. Players will only want to take on fights that will earn them more than they have to spend on it. It's like when you are making a financial investment, or when an animal hunts for food. First you have to sacrifice some of your resources in the hope that you will get some benefit of more than equal worth back from it.
If the encounter helps them getting closer to their quest-goal, this progress is part of that "gain". I think in an average encounter, that should also be the entire gain. Any XP and treasure should about equal to the "cost" of the encounter.

The problem I am facing is, that the cost of an encounter really is the risk of loss of hit point, healing magic, and death. And the risk in any investment of resources is where things get exciting and fun. Did you gamble well, or will you fail and lose everything?
And the problem is that in the case of lethal combat, failure means death. And that could make the game a bit more lethal than I would like to. Unless the players actively make poor descisions, I want all PCs to have a good chance to not dying at any point.

I think a lot of what I am having in mind is basically "hex-crawl with a plot". Instead of just clearing hexes on the world map, the PCs will go to specific locations taking the best route, get a specific item or person in that location, and continue to the next location or back home. But I imagine how overland travel and dungeon exploration actually happens is going to be very similar to old-school dungeon crawl. The downside, those thing are lethal. :smallbiggrin:

Slipperychicken
2013-08-14, 12:03 PM
The downside, those thing are lethal. :smallbiggrin:

Not a downside at all, if you're playing with the right mentality.


You seem to want your players to feel like combat is dangerous so they'll fear it, but you don't want to actually make it dangerous because you feel that will reduce their attachment and role-playing.

endoperez
2013-08-14, 12:17 PM
You don't want the players to kill monsters to gain XP, so clearly you want to get rid of the monsters == XP connection.


Ruining the boss's plans = boss experience, even if they didn't fight the boss. You should give them enough information to know when, exactly, the plans have been ruined.

If they want to do sidequests or defeat random encounters, you need something else. You could go the traditional way and say that treasure = XP. If they got the treasure from the thieves' guild without killing the thieves, that's good enough. If they lured the orcs away from their camp, freed the prisoners and destroyed their food, they get the experience for defeating the horde.

If some enemies are still dangerous and cause trouble for the story, the enemy hasn't been completely defeated. E.g. some orcs from the destroyed encampment would go home and some would be defeated by the local guards and soldiers, but some of them might join forces with the local brigands. If 20% of the orcs became brigands, players should get 80% of the experience, since 20% of the orcs are still around causing trouble.

Autolykos
2013-08-14, 12:29 PM
If you want to proof the Quest-XP approach (which is also my favorite) against drastic shortcuts, you could add secondary/optional objectives to the dungeon that can only be completed (or even discovered) by actually going in and exploring it. So they could maybe find a clever trick to complete the main objective and advance the plot, but they'd have to ignore the others and won't get XP for them (and if they find a clever exploit for each of them, they deserve their XP). Once they realize that this will make them fight the BBEG massively underpowered and undergeared, they won't try to bypass whole dungeons anymore.
EDIT: It's a little like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. You can easily breeze through the main quest (and complete the game) in an afternoon, even without "speed running". But you won't, because that would make you miss out on all the cool stuff you could pick up if you explore the world.

kyoryu
2013-08-14, 12:34 PM
So what you want is some form of Achievement==XP approach.

Gold == xp is the classic one of these, as the emphasis on early games was heavily around acquisition of treasure.
Quest == xp is the other obvious one, with possible multiple quests, and extra quests within the dungeon to encourage exploration.

You could even do some combination of the above - yeah, you're there to <achieve objective>, but ransacking the joint is a secondary objective that's always appropriate.

Overall, I'm a big fan of "achievement-based" xp over "activity-based" xp.

navar100
2013-08-14, 12:35 PM
If you're not keeping track of XP and just leveling up whenever, then ignore how many combats the party encounters. Combat is just one means of achieving a goal, whether the combat is on purpose or a consequence. Achieving the goal is what's important for "XP", not how the party managed it. The how only matters for player fun.

If they come up with some brilliant plan that makes the job of achieving the goal very easy, why should they be punished for it with less XP because they didn't do it the hard way of lots of combat?

Slipperychicken
2013-08-14, 12:45 PM
If they come up with some brilliant plan that makes the job of achieving the goal very easy, why should they be punished for it with less XP because they didn't do it the hard way of lots of combat?

I'm going to second this. If you reduce their reward because they didn't fight all the monsters, you're encouraging them to fight more because that's the "safe", "reliable" way to get XP (i.e. because you don't screw them out of XP when they kill the monsters with swords).

erikun
2013-08-14, 12:51 PM
The problem I am facing is, that the cost of an encounter really is the risk of loss of hit point, healing magic, and death. And the risk in any investment of resources is where things get exciting and fun. Did you gamble well, or will you fail and lose everything?
And the problem is that in the case of lethal combat, failure means death. And that could make the game a bit more lethal than I would like to. Unless the players actively make poor descisions, I want all PCs to have a good chance to not dying at any point.
Well, it honestly sounds like you want to do the standard encounter = XP method. Granting XP for a scenario or campaign keeps the players focused on the scenario/campaign, and means that they'll only do things progressing towards the end or for other benefit (treasure, for example). This discourages them from getting into personal encounters and encourages creative thinking to accomplish their objectives, like gassing out the warlock. This happens to be actions I like and wish to promote, although it seems like this isn't the case for you.

If you want players to go through the risk of dangerous encounters personally, they should be rewarded for doing so (XP). If you want them to face the challenge and just overcome it creatively, then you'll want to assign an XP value to each encounter and give it to them no matter how they overcome it - through combat, through stealth, through ambush, through diplomancy, or any other method. Players will do whatever gives them the XP. (I would still recommend granting the XP once players are back a "camp", though, for cases where they sneak by a group but have to fight them a second time - only XP one time, because the first attempt obviously didn't resolve it!)


Of course, this goes back to PCs fighting everything for more XP. However, this seems to be a conflict between two of your priorities. You don't want PCs to just fight encounters for XP, but you do want PCs to risk themselves is the same encounters. I think you'd want to check which of the two is the priority; do you want the party to not fight everything they encounter, or do you want the party to risk their lives in combat with every encounter?

Note that you can simply increase the challenge if the concern is the party easily killing off threats.

Rhynn
2013-08-14, 01:28 PM
Does anyone have experience with these kinds of situations you could share?

In old editions of D&D (pre-AD&D 2E, although that one includes this as an optional rule), PCs got 1 XP for 1 GP of treasure value brought back. The general thinking is that about ~75% of XP came from treasure, and if you tally up the average value of an AD&D 1E dragon's hoard and compare to the dragon's XP value, that more or less holds true. The dragon's hoard is worth as much or more than the dragon's death.

What this encouraged very strongly was a style of play where you do everything possible to survive to take your loot home. (Incidentally, both the treasure and any combat XP was divided between survivors only; this apparently caused its own problems in some groups.) Fighting monsters was completely secondary - getting their treasure in a way that didn't involve danger was better. Obviously, as we can see from later evolution, many players still saw monster-killing as a primary activity, but in true old-school games, where you can never be certain you'll face things you can defeat, fighting is often a bad idea.

If you don't want to be that old-school, you can award XP only for completing goals. Let your players set their own, but approve or disapprove them, depending on their suitability. Set XP values for the goals, and either inform the player or don't. (You can deal with players abandoning goals in various ways: an XP penalty, either immediate or a percentage from the next XP award earned; unable to set goals until the next session; etc.) Break up big goals into small goals, with a bigger XP reward for completing the entire large goal.

D&D isn't terribly good at making encounters "costly" - resources like hit points and spells come back, and potions, wands, and scrolls are usually considered trivial and necessary expenditures. In many other RPGs, injuries don't heal swiftly, or even completely, and combat is always risky.

Yora
2013-08-14, 01:38 PM
I am looking for a middle way between encouraging the players to avoid unneccessary risks to their lives on the one side and maintining the notion that they earned the XP they worked for and not simply got them because I want the characters to be of a certain level.

I really like what someone mentioned about sub-objectives. If any "stage" has just one main objective that gets them all the XP, you can have the situation where they fight everything in the dungeon at a significant risk or find a creative solution that makes them never even become aware of all the monsters, and it doesn't make a difference. Which I personally see as bad, since that really divorces the connection between combat experience and combat skill. They just get better without ever using their weapons.
However, by cutting each stage into smaller sub-objectives, I think that issue gets greatly reduced. They flush out the fugitive and get full XP for the "catch the fugitive" objective. They never run into the "open the door to the second level" objective or the "get through all the zombies on the third level" objective. So they don't get any XP for that, but still the full reward for the objective that they actually tried to tackle.
I really like that idea. I think that might be just what I need.

Since we're at the topic of XP:
Since you never "spend" any XP in Pathfinder, there really isn't need to record them in batches of thousands and ten thousands. In the end, you are always doing the equivalent of 15 level-appropriate encounters and then you level up.
One way to really simplefy things is to use a "progress bar" instead. Every time the PCs get XP, you simply give them for example 10% for an average encounter and 15% for a difficult encounter. Every time a character reaches 100%, he gets a level and retains the remainder.
Since I think one level-up every four sessions is a good pace, the sub-objectives the PCs can complete in a session should provide a progress of about 30%. Maybe 10% for the main objective and 5% for each of the secondary ones. When they complete the main goal of a longer adventure, they get 15% or 20%.


You seem to want your players to feel like combat is dangerous so they'll fear it, but you don't want to actually make it dangerous because you feel that will reduce their attachment and role-playing.
Yeah, pretty much. :smallbiggrin:

Ravens_cry
2013-08-14, 01:50 PM
XP should, in my experience, come from solving the problem.
This means that clever solutions or hiding should give the same XP as if they slaughtered the baddies to a one. There is exceptions that prove the rule however. If you are supposed to be defending a village by stopping an enemy horde, hiding yourself and the party is not solving the problem. If you are transporting a message or artefact, and you give over said message or artefact to the enemy for safe passage, you are also not solving the problem.
In fact, if killing them doesn't solve the problem, it shouldn't grant full XP either.

kyoryu
2013-08-14, 01:59 PM
I am looking for a middle way between encouraging the players to avoid unneccessary risks to their lives on the one side and maintining the notion that they earned the XP they worked for and not simply got them because I want the characters to be of a certain level.

I really like what someone mentioned about sub-objectives. If any "stage" has just one main objective that gets them all the XP, you can have the situation where they fight everything in the dungeon at a significant risk or find a creative solution that makes them never even become aware of all the monsters, and it doesn't make a difference. Which I personally see as bad, since that really divorces the connection between combat experience and combat skill.

It depends on how "sim vs. game" you want to go. Besides, lots of things increase when you level that aren't combat-related - knowledge, athletics, etc. I think the "no combat, don't even see the monsters" level is the extreme case and will not be a common occurrence, so I'd personally avoid making rules to handle it until it proves itself necessary.

The point of the original gold=xp rules was to make combat a cost, and a potentially necessary thing to engage in, but something that wasn't necessarily a primary activity to engage in. It directed player activity a certain way. It also gave the GM freedom to increase the danger in a dungeon by adding monsters that *were* really tough, and promoted more thinking and tactics in the group.

The big thing to me with a goal-based experience system of any sort is really ensuring that the characters are still put into danger in some fashion. So long as that's true, I personally don't worry about the amount of combat they get into.

And besides, totally outclevering the scenario on occasion is *fun*. So long as it's not every time.

It also depends on how artificial the subgoals are. If they're actually things that "matter", it's a great technique. If they're just procedural, then I find it less useful - you're still kind of back at xp for fighting, just expressed differently.

I personally like the "subquest"/secondary objective idea better (some of which can even be tied to killing). Getting the MacGuffin can be the quest and the source of a large portion of the xp, but there could be secondary objectives that are within the dungeon/area/whatever. Maybe there's a necromancer in the dungeon that's the source of skeletons in the area or something like that - sure, getting the MacGuffin without doing that is possible, but you lose out on the secondary objective XP - and you've still tied 'xp' to actual achievement and 'real-world' objectives, as opposed to 'activities' that are just parts of *how* you accomplish the achievement.

This can even work for straight killing things - you may have a secondary objective of weakening the orc forces in the area, which will require that you kill 20 orcs (or whatever other criteria you find useful). Nobody really cares if you open up a door, but they do care if the orcs are beat back hard enough that they stop raiding.


One way to really simplefy things is to use a "progress bar" instead. Every time the PCs get XP, you simply give them for example 10% for an average encounter and 15% for a difficult encounter. Every time a character reaches 100%, he gets a level and retains the remainder.

That's a perfectly good way of handling xp, so long as they're always fighting 'appropriate' encounters, and you're happy with that level of granularity. You could also say that trivial or easy encounters don't grant any 'xp'.

Yora
2013-08-14, 02:25 PM
You can of course adjust the amount of progress percents to any value you consider appropriate.
However, counting it as percents frees you from first having to look up how much the PCs need from the current level to the next level, and calculate what number of XP that would be to have them progress by a certain amount. It's always 100%.

kyoryu
2013-08-14, 02:36 PM
You can of course adjust the amount of progress percents to any value you consider appropriate.
However, counting it as percents frees you from first having to look up how much the PCs need from the current level to the next level, and calculate what number of XP that would be to have them progress by a certain amount. It's always 100%.

It's a great simplification for a lot of games. I'll definitely give you that. In many cases, it'll be utterly indistinguishable from actually counting xp.

Of course, this only works with a few assumptions:

1) You're setting some kind of advancement schedule for your characters, as opposed to "they advance when they advance"
2) Everyone's on the same schedule, due to being the same level and having the same xp/level chart (which wouldn't be true in, say AD&D1e)

Gamgee
2013-08-14, 02:38 PM
If they sneak past the guards, they get the same XP. If they kill them again the same XP. Talk their way past them the same XP. Or anything they think of provided they meet success. It just makes sense.

TriForce
2013-08-14, 04:28 PM
usually, i feel creative solutions should be rewarded. take for example a ogre guarding a bridge, you can obviously fight it and kill it, gaining the xp, but there are about a million ways of dealing with that situation.
ANY solution that makes them pass the bridge will reward the same xp in my opinion, with possible extra rewards based on HOW they did it.

say they talked him out of it (in roleplaying, not by simply making a diplomacy check) that ogre might have some interesting rumors hes willing to tell that leads to treasure or something.

perhaps they deviced a clever way of scaring the ogre away, in that case, id give them a bonus of some item that he dropped while running.


since i find creative solutions are more fun for everyone, i reward them higher then simple combat, but not in xp

Kalirren
2013-08-15, 12:20 AM
As part of my preparation for running the module, I just ran the numbers for XP and loot for the first volume of the Kingmaker Adventure Path.

With 4-6 players, about 40-50% of the XP came from quests given by NPCs. The balance of it was made up by combat XP. The module advises you to treat anything you deal with successfully as meriting an XP award equivalent to defeating them in combat, so I feel the important thing is the resolution of the encounter - if the PCs succeed in dealing with the situation resulting from the encounter, they deserve the XP. If they don't, they don't. If their way of dealing with it is to circumvent it, that's just fine.

That proportion is certainly a far cry from the days when 1 gp was 1 XP, and monsters were invariably worth less XP to fight than they guarded in treasure. In those days, if you could circumvent the monster, you would.

NichG
2013-08-15, 03:42 AM
There's two tiers of approach to this. One is changing your 'rules' about xp gain, the other is engineering player expectations by doing things consistently over a long period of time.

The 'rules' tier:

What I would suggest for the first is to do session XP, but keep is low. Then, tell the players that there are various bonuses for certain things - completing a quest is worth a bonus, doing something epic is worth a bonus, exploring sideplots can be worth a bonus, etc. The smoothest way to do it is to make this bonus accrue to everyone at the table if anyone earns it.

So for example, the players get 10% of the XP they need to level each session automatically just for showing up and doing stuff, even if its a shopping game or whatever. However, for your hex-crawl idea, maybe they get a 5% bonus for exploring at least one new hex, and a 25% bonus for finishing an adventure within that hex, which could be smoking out a hive of giant bees, finding a treasure, defeating bandits, whatever you want to have qualify as an adventure.

This works best for a status-quo world, because otherwise savvy players will realize that faster/slower XP gain doesn't matter much if the encounters are scaled to the party, and that it can actually be advantageous to 'camp' lower levels while accumulating treasure.

The 'pattern of behavior' tier would be to just do per-session XP, but make it clear that there are big rewards for completing quests and also personal subplots. Make a habit of handing out a free skill point here or there when people do side-scenes, at a max of one per session. Give out other small things that are otherwise impossible to get with the standard XP progression to establish the value of doing subplots. Then, you can start to introduce/allow larger subplots with bigger rewards - maybe someone can get a free feat if they go and answer their old armsmaster's urgent letter saying something is wrong at home. This becomes a huge incentive because it means things like PrCs might be easier to fit in to people's builds, and so the players will likely jump on it (if you go too far in this direction they'll ignore the main plot though!).

For this kind of thing, you have to encourage people 'taking the others along' on subplots or your game risks degenerating into six mini-games where each player is off doing their own thing. A reasonable way to do that would be to establish that everyone gets something out of it, even if the guy whose subplot it is might get the bigger reward.

Amphetryon
2013-08-15, 06:44 AM
If they sneak past the guards, they get the same XP. If they kill them again the same XP. Talk their way past them the same XP. Or anything they think of provided they meet success. It just makes sense.

Not all DMs see things this way; Talakeal's recent thread on PCs bypassing encounters to their detriment appears to support a different approach, for example.

The issue Yora appears to be wrestling with - from my perspective - is not wanting PCs to simply bypass encounters, and not wanting to encourage them to seek out every creature in the dungeon. One way you could theoretically do this is have their quest-giver (if you use one) give out a checklist of things they need from the PCs regarding a particular dungeon. If their goal shifts from "neutralize the Warlock hidden in the castle" to "neutralize the Warlock hidden in the castle, while retrieving the 6 known wands of Fireball he made to supply the enemy (that we know of) and the Duchess' necklace, and capturing his two Duskblade lieutenants," the XP they get for a particular dungeon is no longer tied to a singular task. This encourages them to consider that there's more than just one objective, with one simple answer, in turn encouraging them to explore the dungeon more thoroughly.

Lorsa
2013-08-15, 07:20 AM
Do you need to specifically tell the players what they gain XP from? Just say that they get XP from overcoming challenges and not specify exactly what those challenges are? Hopefully players won't bypass all encounters as their characters will have a motivation to stop evil monsters and not let them run loose in the world.

It's possible I might not completely understand your problem because I have never had players that saw enemies (or friends) as walking bags of XP and that sought out fights in order to "gain XP". They've always played their characters and been happy when I've awarded them XP, but said experience points was never the goal.

Yora
2013-08-15, 08:11 AM
Not all DMs see things this way; Talakeal's recent thread on PCs bypassing encounters to their detriment appears to support a different approach, for example.

The issue Yora appears to be wrestling with - from my perspective - is not wanting PCs to simply bypass encounters, and not wanting to encourage them to seek out every creature in the dungeon. One way you could theoretically do this is have their quest-giver (if you use one) give out a checklist of things they need from the PCs regarding a particular dungeon. If their goal shifts from "neutralize the Warlock hidden in the castle" to "neutralize the Warlock hidden in the castle, while retrieving the 6 known wands of Fireball he made to supply the enemy (that we know of) and the Duchess' necklace, and capturing his two Duskblade lieutenants," the XP they get for a particular dungeon is no longer tied to a singular task. This encourages them to consider that there's more than just one objective, with one simple answer, in turn encouraging them to explore the dungeon more thoroughly.
I think I favor giving XP for obstacles that the players are actually dealing with. If they decide not to assault the main gate but instead go through the caverns below the castle, I wouldn't treat it as having overcome the obstacle of the guards at the gate. Similar, they only get XP for the spiders in the caverns only if they actually go through the caverns.
However, not trying to break through a checkpoint and instead going the long way around the hills is again a case of not facing the obstacle but simply avoiding it. I would not award XP for finding a way to avoid a confrontation. If they sneak through it, that's a different thing and they "defeated" the obstacle to get full XP.

In a campaign where everyone agrees that the focus is on making progress with the in-game goals, I believe that maybe just the loss of time that comes from getting back to full strength after a tough fight could be enough incentive to not force a confrontation (that can get them XP) but simply keep on moving. It's the same things that also work against 15-minute-workdays.
If, or rather let's say when, the PCs run out of potions and healing spells, they might become unable to progress any further and in extreme cases might have to return back to base to prepare for another assault. That means several hours or even days for the antagonists to do all kinds of things that are a problem to the PCs.

Amphetryon
2013-08-15, 08:38 AM
I would not award XP for finding a way to avoid a confrontation. If they sneak through it, that's a different thing and they "defeated" the obstacle to get full XP.
I'm confused. How is sneaking through not avoiding a confrontation? It sounds from here like the PCs will get XP for dealing with confrontations in ways you anticipate, rather than by thinking of a solution you didn't anticipate.

Yora
2013-08-15, 08:58 AM
It's still exposing yourself to danger of becomming the target of the enemies attacks and also using your character abilities to come out ahead. If players decide not to explore a cave or flee the battlefield before the fighting starts, they do survive. But they never attempted to win the confrontation and put themselves into danger.
Technically, that would mean using a teleport spell when ambushed is also a case of using your character abilities to come out of a battle alive, but that's where the GM juedgement comes into place.

If the PCs do not place their bet (putting themselves in danger), they also can't win the prize (XP, treasure). They first have to put themselves into a situation where they can lose. I think that's actually a good rule of thumb.

GungHo
2013-08-15, 09:18 AM
I provide XP for overcoming obstacles and moving the game along. Whether the PCs use swords, magic, diplomacy, knowledge, or guile to do that, they get XP, regardless of whether it's related to an encounter, the plot, or the metaplot. The goal is to play and enjoy the game. Note, each method of advancement may have consequences... you may leave an enemy alive that comes to haunt you (or provide you great benefit) later, or you may kill someone that has associates that want revenge (or provide a boon).

Amphetryon
2013-08-15, 09:23 AM
It's still exposing yourself to danger of becomming the target of the enemies attacks and also using your character abilities to come out ahead. If players decide not to explore a cave or flee the battlefield before the fighting starts, they do survive. But they never attempted to win the confrontation and put themselves into danger.
Technically, that would mean using a teleport spell when ambushed is also a case of using your character abilities to come out of a battle alive, but that's where the GM juedgement comes into place.

If the PCs do not place their bet (putting themselves in danger), they also can't win the prize (XP, treasure). They first have to put themselves into a situation where they can lose. I think that's actually a good rule of thumb.
It also presupposes that - using your example of going through the caverns - the long way around holds no dangers to them, unless we're entirely talking past each other. As I read your response, they get no XP for going through the caverns, regardless of any inherent dangers there (monsters, environmental hazards, etc.), because they chose not to engage the encounter you set before them.

Yora
2013-08-15, 09:38 AM
Well, no of course that's not what I meant. If the players decide to avoid one confrontation by taking an alternative route that takes them to a different obstacle, then they will of course get the full XP for the other obstacle. XP only for the obstacles they deal with and overcome.
If they decide to avoid one confrontation and take an alternative route that does not lead them into another obstacles, they get no XP. No XP for obstacles that are never confronted and overcome.

Chosing a safe alternative does come with its own "reward", though. They keep all their hp and supplies and will still have them at a later point of the adventure.

kidnicky
2013-08-15, 10:29 AM
I say, if you rolled, you get the xp. For instance, if you went down the left branching path to avoid the orcs in the right branching path, you didn't "beat" anything, thus no reward. But if you used bluff, or stealth, or whatever else, you beat at least one target number,so you get XP for beating the monster. You shouldn't be punished for figuring out a smarter way to beat the challenge. That's like saying I didn't really cross the street today because I looked both ways first.

Sebastrd
2013-08-15, 11:17 AM
I say, if you rolled, you get the xp. For instance, if you went down the left branching path to avoid the orcs in the right branching path, you didn't "beat" anything, thus no reward. But if you used bluff, or stealth, or whatever else, you beat at least one target number,so you get XP for beating the monster. You shouldn't be punished for figuring out a smarter way to beat the challenge. That's like saying I didn't really cross the street today because I looked both ways first.

That's metagaming and you should be ashamed of yourself! :smalltongue:

NichG
2013-08-15, 11:52 AM
Well, no of course that's not what I meant. If the players decide to avoid one confrontation by taking an alternative route that takes them to a different obstacle, then they will of course get the full XP for the other obstacle. XP only for the obstacles they deal with and overcome.
If they decide to avoid one confrontation and take an alternative route that does not lead them into another obstacles, they get no XP. No XP for obstacles that are never confronted and overcome.

Chosing a safe alternative does come with its own "reward", though. They keep all their hp and supplies and will still have them at a later point of the adventure.

I would say you have to be careful to think about it as 'the XP arises from the scenario as a whole, not its individual parts'. So if the party goes down the right path, gets the XP for it, then backtracks and goes down the left path, they shouldn't get any more XP. The reason they don't get the left path's XP for going down the right path is that both paths share the same XP, not because they did not interact with the specific left-path obstacles.

Otherwise you have the spurious behavior of the party actively seeking the long way around to maximize XP gain. This naturally results from treating XP as a per-obstacle thing, rather than a per-scenario or per-story thing (or even as something unrelated to in-game constructs, like a per-game reward)

Yora
2013-08-15, 12:35 PM
That was something I had been thinking about at the start as well. But in a game where the PCs have the freedom to take different routes, but still have a clear objective to complete, I think the desire to keep up with the antagonists and the progress of events should keep them from lingering unneccessarily to grind XP.
If they defeat a villain and spend all day searching the dungeon for an item, that has already been send away to safety, I think it would be unfair to not give them any XP for the dangers they face in the process just because it didn't actually get them closer to the goal.

I would keep things simple and flexible:
Are they trying to progress the plot? Give them XP.
Are they just goofing around or looking to stir up some trouble? No XP.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-15, 01:12 PM
I think that our old friend Sun Tzu can help us justify XP for avoiding or bypassing combat:


"To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."