3.5 XP Calculation Problems

[Primehunter74]

Hey everyone, finally dusting off my account so I can ask a few questions.

So I came back after 2 years as a player so I can DM a 3.5 prewritten game with some friends. I've already had a short session with them, and I began to calculate the xp they had made, and would make, in this dungeon. The thing is, I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

5 1st level adventurers defeat a CR2 encounter, so they gain 600 xp divided among them equally, right? Am I doing this right?

I added up the rest of the encounters that they were likely to go through, and the xp just doesn't seem to add up. It looks like by the end of this dungeon they wont be as far as they should be (3rd level, and I don't want to throw them into the next part lower than this) for the next part of the adventure. Any idea what I should do about this? I'm going to use random encounters in the wilderness between town to get them some more, but even then it wont be enough. Quest xp? Just say "screw it" and level them up?

What do you all think?

[Forrestfire]

That's the correct way to do it. If I remember correctly, it generally averages out to something like 13 encounters per level-up.

If you want to speed it up, I'd say go ahead and do it. In my games, I don't even use exp, just to make life easier for everyone.

[Lorsa]

Say "screw it" and level them up. The way I see it, XP is more guidelines than anything.

[Primehunter74]

Thanks guys. I think that's what I did before in this module (I've ran it part way through before). Now all I have to do is help them build their party so they don't die. They have 0 meat shields and almost no one can stand in melee combat. The things I do to balance a party...