[3.x] House Rule: XP Bonus Pool + secret ballots

[Maginomicon]

I plan on using a variant of the Bonus XP Pool system presented in Unearthed Arcana (the text of my variant is below):

I award bonus XP to players based on clever ideas, roleplaying their characters especially well, and, frankly, entertaining the group.

If anyone particularly distinguishes themselves during an encounter (or in the time before an encounter), I put a checkmark (called an “awesome-mark”) by the character’s name on a sheet. When someone does something particularly inventive or interesting in any situation, they get a check mark, too. In the rare case where someone really obstructs play, I might erase a mark.

At the end of an encounter (I always award XP by encounter), I count up the total amount of XP to be awarded, and I total up the number of marks by each person’s name. I multiply the total XP award by 75% and divide that out equally (assuming everything else about the encounter was equal). The other 25% of available XP goes into a bonus pool.

When I divvy out the XP in the bonus pool, I use a special spreadsheet that splits it up proportionate to how many awesome-marks each person earned during that encounter. I try to always tell players why their characters got bonus XP. “Good job with that puzzle trap by the dungeon door,” or even, “Hey, great job roleplaying your character’s grouchiness when the high priest was healing everyone for free.”

If the campaign uses action points, players who distinguish themselves in a session recover action points. The person who net won the most XP that session immediately recovers two action points (to a maximum of “5 + ½ ECL”). The runner-up recovers one action point. Action points are a minor but useful intangible award that enables objectively-awesome players (based on how much bonus XP they got) to use their action points more frequently. In the highly unlikely event that there are ties for a place, each person in the tie recovers one less action point than normal (so a tie for the runner-up means neither get any action points).
This will admittedly cause there to be XP disparity in the party, but that's fine.

Determining XP by encounter instead of by session is made possible because I have a XP calculator that can rapidly output individual XP awards based on a number of factors (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AojdoKCdOXqNdE1RQmNsOFRtb2s4MThDdzFwZEkxa 2c&usp=sharing) (you can play around with the calculator by editing the contents of the green boxes).

This much is set in stone and is not open for debate.

What I'm looking for is:

I want feedback on the following idea inspired by The end-of-level ranking system in Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (http://youtu.be/yBNwVMXUYbs?t=3m30s). (The goal is to involve player sentiments in determining the Bonus XP Pool.)

In order to augment the number of "awesome-marks" given out in an encounter, after each encounter everyone is given a notecard. Each player then secretly writes two names on their notecard. First, who they feel was the biggest bother that encounter. Second, who they feel helped the team the most that encounter. (EDIT FIX: Players can always choose to not vote for one, the other, or both.) The notecards are then folded, given to me, and shuffled. I do not reveal the player votes or the exact number of awesome-marks I had given them before the vote (I may congratulate them descriptively, but not quantitatively).

Each negative vote reduces that person's awesome-marks by one (minimum 0).

Each positive vote increases that person's awesome-marks by one.

I then tell players their new XP totals and congrats.

What I do NOT want to hear:

I do not want to hear that I shouldn't be using the Bonus XP Pool or anything else described above where it says it's "not open for debate".

[TuggyNE]

The description of the voting makes it sound rather zero-sum-ish, as though everyone always has a negative vote to pass out (even if no one was particularly obstructive or bothersome). If that's not what you meant, I'd suggest rephrasing to avoid that, since otherwise the players would probably misunderstand the same way I did.

[Chronos]

I can see it maybe causing some friction in the party. It being a secret ballot would help, of course, but it still seems like a bad idea for people to be actively thinking about "Who was the biggest bother?" after every encounter. Better for that thought to not even cross anyone's mind. If anyone in your group knows each other outside of the game, you could also get bleed-over from that: If two of them have had a fight, they might downvote each other for reasons unrelated to the game.

Another thing to watch out for, if one person is the clear candidate for "awesome", that person is going to get, what, four or five check marks from the one encounter. While I know you said that disparity isn't a problem, too much disparity might be. Though this also depends on how many other check-marks you typically give out, for determining how significant the voted check-marks are.

[Cruiser1]

Second, who they feel helped the team the most that encounter.
You should state that a player can't vote for their own character. Otherwise, every powergamer will vote for themselves after every encounter, in order to always gain a little extra XP.

Similarly, power in D&D is always relative to the party. In a 4 person party, if I downvote the other 3 after three consecutive combats, that's the same relative XP advantage as if I had voted up myself. The competitive powergamer will always downvote other players (even if nobody deserves it) in order to increase their own relative power over time. (Or at least to avoid falling behind other players in power, assuming the other players are doing the above too.)

[Red Fel]

In order to augment the number of "awesome-marks" given out in an encounter, after each encounter everyone is given a notecard. Each player then secretly writes two names on their notecard. First, who they feel was the biggest bother that encounter. Second, who they feel helped the team the most that encounter. (EDIT FIX: Players can always choose to not vote for one, the other, or both.) The notecards are then folded, given to me, and shuffled. I do not reveal the player votes or the exact number of awesome-marks I had given them before the vote (I may congratulate them descriptively, but not quantitatively).

First, any system that effectively puts the distribution if XP in the hands of the players is abusable. I would only use such a system at a table where I really trusted my players, and they trusted each other. Your other system already seems fine; why add more?

Second, however, is the fact that this benefits people by encounter. How are you defining encounter? For example, if you define it broadly - such as "the meeting with the king" is an encounter - then everyone has a chance to shine, and that's good. But if you define encounter to apply almost exclusively to combat or combat-related situations, then the "face" or skill monkey characters will be slighted constantly. Not every character shines in combat, particularly at high levels when your casters will be throwing around orbs of cosmic power and rewriting reality.

Further, there's the concern of resentment. Here's an example. Suppose you do define an "encounter" broadly, to include social settings and roleplay opportunities. Suppose the face character - who really, REALLY designed his character around diplomacy - gets a ton of screen time in one of these scenes. And suppose one of the combat characters feels slighted. After all, combat happens all the time, so it's no big deal, but how often does the party get to hang out with nobles? What's to stop this resentment from resulting in downvotes? If not downvoting them for that encounter, maybe downvoting them in a series of subsequent combat encounters.

This has been mentioned by another poster as negative emotions bleeding over into the ratings, and it's a valid concern.

And if you do see a lot of biased downvoting, unjustifiably so, will you, as DM, fiat it? And if you do, doesn't that just eliminate any pretense of the players having a say?

I'd avoid it altogether. You have a good system already.

[gr8artist]

Imagine a short encounter which the wizard solves with one clever use of a good spell.
You give him an awesome mark. Each other player votes for him. There are no downvotes. He now has 5 marks, the most anyone else might have is 1 or 2. The system of making each player's vote count as 1 AM is that players will get AM's in large quantities.
Consider retaining that 25% bonus xp until the end of the session. Add in all the 25% bonus pools, and all the AM's, so that you end with one large pool and plenty of votes. This *should* help average things out, instead of allowing one player to steal all the thunder from each encounter. This helps mitigate problems with the fighter's clever idea being wasted on a low CR encounter, while the wizard solves the big ones and gets all the xp.
Also, consider granting only 1 AM to the player with the most votes. That makes everyone's actions more important. Your votes still hold the most sway, the players can simply give out a little benefit here or there. This helps minimize the competitiveness and backstabbing that might arise in letting players vote on their own XP pools.