[3.5] XP Question

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

Had a weird situation at last week's game: party encountered some Adepts and a Nupperibo. Dues to Cause Fear spells and the Nupperibo's fear aura, several of the party were forced to flee from the battle. Then after some melee, the rest of the party decided to flee due to being overmatched (low level).

However, they also managed to force the enemy to leave their hideout and take off.

So question is this - if both sides flee, how do I award XP? Is half XP fair? Or do I need to pin down which side fled first?

Cheers - T

[Gwendol]

Half XP seems reasonable for what is essentially a draw.

[RoboEmperor]

No XP. Seems like the PCs ran first. Based on your description the PCs attacked, failed, and ran while the evil doers, with their hideout exposed and probably severely damaged, decided to abandon it.

[SiuiS]

I disagree with everyone else.

They overcame the challenge. They uprooted the den of evil. Sure there were losses, heavier ones than expected, but the system does say don't adjust XP based on the whims of the dice.

Award XP based on the challenge rating of each opponent. Some people were affected by fear and incapacitated, but you give XP to players who were paralyzed, put to sleep or knocked out from damage, right? Why does this other magic condition have to reduce their reward?

[RoboEmperor]

From his description seems like they lost. Running from a fight gives no XP. If you want to give them XP for successfully uprooting the criminals or exposing them or whatever, that's quest XP or something so you could grant them that if you want.

[Khedrac]

Hang on - in theory one gets the xp for encountering the challenge.

Saying "No xp because you lost" is like saying "no xp for that trap because you set it off."

Now actually I don't approve of giving xp for the same opponent multiple times (unless opponent levels up in between), but given that they did force them to move I think giving a decent amount of xp reasonable.

Also I would give the same to all party members - having to calculate different amounts of xp for different characters (when they have different levels) is a pain, and most of the people I play with don't do it! The ones feared at the start had the encounter - they were just disabled for the entire fight, same as for a sleep spell. Now anyone who didn't go to the battle should not get xp, but anyone present should get full xp for trying (well full being as much as you choose to award for the partial victory).

Now if they will be encountering the same group again very shortly then I would only give a small amount of xp - as they will get another chance at the full xp next fight. Same goes of the monsters - they only drove the PCs away and did not stop them.

[SiuiS]

From his description seems like they lost. Running from a fight gives no XP. If you want to give them XP for successfully uprooting the criminals or exposing them or whatever, that's quest XP or something so you could grant them that if you want.

This is incorrect. Fights are irrelevant to experience gain. You encounter challenges and overcome them. You gain experience thereby.

If the challenge was "uproot the bad guys" then even though they ran and died they still succeeded. Only if your challenges are "kill this guy" and then "kill that guy" would this be correct.

The OP describes success by narrow margin, but does not describe actual failure.

[RoboEmperor]

This is incorrect. Fights are irrelevant to experience gain. You encounter challenges and overcome them. You gain experience thereby.

If the challenge was "uproot the bad guys" then even though they ran and died they still succeeded. Only if your challenges are "kill this guy" and then "kill that guy" would this be correct.

The OP describes success by narrow margin, but does not describe actual failure.

Yeah so give them XP for succeeding the challenge of uprooting the bad guys, but the fact is they failed to defeat them and ran so they shouldn't get combat XP.

If a team stalls a dragon long enough for the village evacuate, but fails to kill the dragon, they get the quest XP for successfully stalling and surviving the encounter, but not the dragon's XP. Otherwise I could fly sky high, teleport to a tarrasque, dance around and retreat, and get that CR20 XP for surviving the encounter.

[SiuiS]

Poppycock. They beat the dragon. It's been a staple of the game for forty years. If you sneak past a Minotaur and get his treasure, you get his XP as surely as if you plunged dagger into his heart. This isn't quest XP. This isn't some houserule. This is the explicit way of the game.

Your teleportation around a tarrasque encounters no challenge and overcomes nothing. Silly semantic hyper literal obfuscation does not make my point less correct or less true. It only demonstrates misunderstanding of the thing at hand.

[RoboEmperor]

Re-reading the dungeons master's guide you're right. Sneaking past a minotaur grants full XP. So I guess if the goal was to uproot the criminals they get full XP, but if it was to kill the criminals then no XP. If there was no goal, and the PCs just fought them and retreated, then I'd argue no XP.

[drack]

No XP. Seems like the PCs ran first. Based on your description the PCs attacked, failed, and ran while the evil doers, with their hideout exposed and probably severely damaged, decided to abandon it.
Indeed, no xp for the clallenge, but toss them something close to it as a misc XP award for having achieved an objective.
(GM fait may give players rewards even when they only half deserve it, though by RAW they get nothing if they ran first.)

Edit:
Poppycock.

Wait, you put poppy seeds where?! :smalleek:

I jest, a friend is fond of that one, just always thought it sounded rather ridiculous, no offense intended. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: really, heh. Seems oftly biased in favor of the players... then again it often is. :smallsigh:

[SiuiS]

Re-reading the dungeons master's guide you're right. Sneaking past a minotaur grants full XP. So I guess if the goal was to uproot the criminals they get full XP, but if it was to kill the criminals then no XP. If there was no goal, and the PCs just fought them and retreated, then I'd argue no XP.

That's a fair cop. We don't have all the context. I just needed to punch through the fight = encounter barrier.



I jest, a friend is fond of that one, just always thought it sounded rather ridiculous, no offense intended. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: really, heh. Seems oftly biased in favor of the players... then again it often is. :smallsigh:

The ridiculousness is part of the charm~

It is sort of in favor of the PCs. It's also a reason not to pull your punches and keep players alive – they didn't need to get into a head to head murderfest, try chose the hard path. Let them accept the consequences of their choice. Maybe they'll do some recon next time.

It also gives clear guidelines of a sort for noncombat encounters. If it could reasonably be done by someone of X level but not reasonably done earlier, it's an X level encounter. This means that when negotiating with a angry duke, success on the argument portion grants XP, and the attack isn't an encounter separate if they tick him off, it's the consequences of failure and should be able to strip a quarter of their resources.

[drack]

The ridiculousness is part of the charm~
I'm sure my friend would agree.

It is sort of in favor of the PCs. It's also a reason not to pull your punches and keep players alive – they didn't need to get into a head to head murderfest, try chose the hard path. Let them accept the consequences of their choice. Maybe they'll do some recon next time.
In general yup, though personally, if anything, I should probably make stuff a touch easier for 'em.

It also gives clear guidelines of a sort for noncombat encounters. If it could reasonably be done by someone of X level but not reasonably done earlier, it's an X level encounter. This means that when negotiating with a angry duke, success on the argument portion grants XP, and the attack isn't an encounter separate if they tick him off, it's the consequences of failure and should be able to strip a quarter of their resources.
yup, personally I think it's pretty nifty, though I don't use those all too often myself because I think of the encounter less as easy medium hard, and more as so and so thinks X and has Y personality, if they can be convinced to Z then it's less about it being tough or easy and more about how all the factors line up. PC personalities, NPC personalities, and the actions those force them all into. Then again I don't really make it essential to convince them, often it's just for an extra boost in power or item, even aid. :smallsmile:

[SiuiS]

yup, personally I think it's pretty nifty, though I don't use those all too often myself because I think of the encounter less as easy medium hard, and more as so and so thinks X and has Y personality, if they can be convinced to Z then it's less about it being tough or easy and more about how all the factors line up. PC personalities, NPC personalities, and the actions those force them all into. Then again I don't really make it essential to convince them, often it's just for an extra boost in power or item, even aid. :smallsmile:

Easy medium and hard aren't about how you run the encounter, it's about the numbers. If the duke has a good sense motive, decent diplomacy, and responds to almost all intimidation with immediately calling your bluff, then that's a normal to hard encounter (because his skill is good relative to the party), especially if his protections are up to snuff; a duke with protection from mind affecting, immunity to fear, who can try to read your mind he's going to be a harder social encounter than without those.

[drack]

Were it so simple the lines would still be ambiguous, though I fear it isn't. I tend to play rather deceitful characters, yet I never take bluff, because simply using the truth makes their sense motive always reveal truth, and to be honest, the diplomacy rules are kind of off kilter, I don't like them. Now if I'm a player I may be using them anyways, but they're nothing to set an encounter by. As for intimidate, whatever reward they get they can have (assuming the folk can be intimidated), though that's a good way to make enemies...

I suppose the core of it however is that I've found that good RP begets good RP, and that rewards for it would just be another bauble to balance about. Truth is, plenty of folks play for the story. This means they like the RP bits more then the deep combat bits anyways, so it hardly seems worth the hassle to stop at every NPC interaction and ask if this is something xp worthy, or of what difficulty I would consider whatever they want to do with the NPC. :smallconfused: I mean I do out of combat xp, just that it's more for story progression then for getting the key from the lord (one way or another) to investigate the crypt. (Though that may very well progress the story, so who's to say?)

Also mind you, skills are the easiest thing to boost in D&D, unless the players need them all and often then you'll see mods 30+ or 40+ before they even pass level 5. Mind you, you're supposed to always be using them all, but often players and GMs get lazy and don't. They do give a character some character though and act as nice utilities, so I gotta give 'em that.

[SiuiS]

Were it so simple the lines would still be ambiguous, though I fear it isn't. I tend to play rather deceitful characters, yet I never take bluff, because simply using the truth makes their sense motive always reveal truth, and to be honest, the diplomacy rules are kind of off kilter, I don't like them. Now if I'm a player I may be using them anyways, but they're nothing to set an encounter by. As for intimidate, whatever reward they get they can have (assuming the folk can be intimidated), though that's a good way to make enemies...

I suppose the core of it however is that I've found that good RP begets good RP, and that rewards for it would just be another bauble to balance about. Truth is, plenty of folks play for the story. This means they like the RP bits more then the deep combat bits anyways, so it hardly seems worth the hassle to stop at every NPC interaction and ask if this is something xp worthy, or of what difficulty I would consider whatever they want to do with the NPC. :smallconfused: I mean I do out of combat xp, just that it's more for story progression then for getting the key from the lord (one way or another) to investigate the crypt. (Though that may very well progress the story, so who's to say?)

Also mind you, skills are the easiest thing to boost in D&D, unless the players need them all and often then you'll see mods 30+ or 40+ before they even pass level 5. Mind you, you're supposed to always be using them all, but often players and GMs get lazy and don't. They do give a character some character though and act as nice utilities, so I gotta give 'em that.

Just as it's possible to bypass a combat brute monster without rolling an attack it is possible to bypass a social encounter without a social skill. The game still measures the difficulty by the numbers.

I personally retain every single 3.0 rule that was not directly over-written, and all the obscure 3.5 ones. Someone may buy your bluff but not care or consider the consequences worth action anyway. Rolling to convince someone is an opposed check not one with a flat DC. There's nothing preventing someone from cutting you off and fouling your attempt if you simply start to fast talk. Sense motive tells you if there's something fishy going on, not if they are lying exactly (although that is also a use of the skill). DCs of checks change based on the circumstance, mood and character of the antagonist. Etc.

[drack]

Well, what can I say, it sounds fun. :smallbiggrin: hope I get the chance to play in one of your games some day to try it out.