I'm not sure how to reward XP here

[Jon_Dahl]

The PCs were charged with keeping order in the upper-class part of the city after a major catastrophe had just hit the kingdom. They heard a woman scream from a nearby manor and so they smashed the front door into pieces and ran upstairs. A band of rogues were holding an elven housekeeper a hostage while one of them was picking the bedroom's door. The PCs and the rogues were just about to fight when the thief finally managed to open the bedroom door. All of a sudden, they all faced the bedroom's silent guardian: a clay golem that followed just one order: "If someone opens the door without holding a thumb up, kill everyone." Two of the PCs fled immediately. The rogues fled too. The thief who had picked the lock was crushed by the golem. The elven housekeeper froze from fear and got crushed by the golem while one of the PCs, an invisible halfling rogue, looted the bedroom and left the manor without anyone noticing. He faced no traps and the golem didn't hear him sneaking around. He just walked around the golem, took everything and left.

The golem itself is worth a massive amount of XP... As it is evident in the story, the golem didn't have to fight at all and received no damage.

[InvisibleBison]

Your players seem to have pretty much failed this encounter, I think. The criminals they were supposed to apprehend escaped, the crime victim they were supposed to protect got squished, as did one of the PCs, while the rest didn't even try to fight the golem. The halfling rogue might have earned some XP by avoiding being noticed by the golem, but given the typical golem's utter lack of detection skills, I'd say there was no real chance of the golem detecting him, so he shouldn't earn any XP.

[Darrin]

The golem itself is worth a massive amount of XP... As it is evident in the story, the golem didn't have to fight at all and received no damage.

Looks like a goose egg to me.

In order to earn XP, the PCs have to have a goal, and an encounter introduces an obstacle that prevents them from immediately reaching their goal. XP is awarded when the PCs defeat the encounter and achieve their goal. However, success isn't necessarily defined exclusively by combat prowess. An obstacle circumvented through the clever use of skills or magic can also be "defeated".

There are several goals here, but not a lot of success:

1) Maintain order: FAILED.
2) Rescue the damsel in distress: FAILED.
3) Defeat the golem: FAILED.
4) Stop the robbery in progress: FAILED. (The robbery was stopped by the golem, not by PC actions)
5) Bring the thieves to justice: FAILED.
6) Collect treasure: PARTIAL SUCCESS.

The halfling rogue was the only PC that had any measure of success here, and should probably get some sort of reward. And he did: loot. He was clever enough to circumvent the golem with a spell, but didn't defeat it in combat. It's still a threat, so I wouldn't give him the full XP for it. I'd be tempted to say his only reward here is whatever treasure he scooped up, but there's also this: he avoided combat, used his sneak skills, and grabbed everything that wasn't nailed down. This is exactly what a halfling rogue is SUPPOSED TO DO. So I would consider giving him a portion of the XP for the encounter for properly performing his role as a rogue.

[Gildedragon]

No XP but I wag my finger at you as a fellow DM
The golem attacking the housekeeper is goshdanged stupid; as is the golem's command. Kill everyone... Jeesh that's asking for a tragedy when someone tries to steal while the master is asleep... Golem will kill the master and rampage through town

As for the rogue...
Not sure. CR 5 perhaps? On one hand they did face the golem and beat it... On the other they as a group failed at dealing with the golem... Who must now go around killing everyone in the city

[ComaVision]

I'm agreed that the halfling earned experience. I'd probably calculate it like the group had beat the clay golem but only the halfling gets his portion. Then, I'd split that portion among the players solely because I don't like giving out different amounts. I'm sure they'll still realize they got way less experience than they could have.

[Pugwampy]

No kill beastie ? Also no one had a creative idea or did anything above and beyond their usual activity . No XP .

The party got treasure that halfling stole so that is their reward .



I'm agreed that the halfling earned experience.

He was in no danger , just took advantage of the situation.

[AMX]

Did the halfling loot the dead thieves, or the actual room?
The latter is a direct violation of his mission ("join in the looting" is pretty much the opposite of "maintain order") - I would not award any XP for that.

[Jon_Dahl]

No XP but I wag my finger at you as a fellow DM
The golem attacking the housekeeper is goshdanged stupid; as is the golem's command. Kill everyone... Jeesh that's asking for a tragedy when someone tries to steal while the master is asleep... Golem will kill the master and rampage through town

As for the rogue...
Not sure. CR 5 perhaps? On one hand they did face the golem and beat it... On the other they as a group failed at dealing with the golem... Who must now go around killing everyone in the city

The housekeeper was a potential thief too. For the owner of the house and the golem, anyone could be a thief. It was easiest to tell everyone that "Going to the bedroom will get you killed, so don't do it. It's a trap." The housekeeper had been warned several times. She imagined that the trap would kill the bad guys. Then she saw the golem and thought that it would be ok, since it's a humanoid creature (?) and she was just an unarmed servant girl. NPC failure, yes; DM failure, no.

And the master sleeps in the bedroom. Once combat starts and he's still alive after 3 seconds, he can give a new command to the golem as free action. The door is closer to the golem than his bed, so anyone coming through the door will be killed first by the golem.

[Andezzar]

He was in no danger , just took advantage of the situation.Why not? The golem could have heard and stomped him.

[Chronikoce]

Why not? The golem could have heard and stomped him.

Not likely. Standard golem has terrible perception skills and you can't fail a skill check on a natural 1. The DM could check the rogues skill modifiers and the golem skill modifiers but I suspect that the rogue couldn't fail his stealth rolls when supplemented with magic.

As a side note to the DM. A clay golem?!?!
Is this guy insane? He guards his bedroom with a golem that has a 1% chance every round of combat of going completely and uncontrollably berserk with no way of stopping it except destruction. Unless he built the thing with a bomb in its chest that he can detonate that is nuts.

[Jon_Dahl]

N

As a side note to the DM. A clay golem?!?!
Is this guy insane? He guards his bedroom with a golem that has a 1% chance every round of combat of going completely and uncontrollably berserk with no way of stopping it except destruction. Unless he built the thing with a bomb in its chest that he can detonate that is nuts.

It was at a discount, so the berserk thing is just minor detail. And he is not afraid of the golem. And he is not afraid of the city if people get killed.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm going to chime in with the group saying "No xp for anyone. The loot the rogue took is the entire reward for his sneakiness."

[Gallowglass]

Not likely. Standard golem has terrible perception skills and you can't fail a skill check on a natural 1. The DM could check the rogues skill modifiers and the golem skill modifiers but I suspect that the rogue couldn't fail his stealth rolls when supplemented with magic.

As a side note to the DM. A clay golem?!?!
Is this guy insane? He guards his bedroom with a golem that has a 1% chance every round of combat of going completely and uncontrollably berserk with no way of stopping it except destruction. Unless he built the thing with a bomb in its chest that he can detonate that is nuts.

While this set up is ridiculous and silly, its no more ridiculous and silly than innumerable other "trap" set-ups from modules, adventure paths and adventures through the history of the game.

"Yes, I would like to have a 40,000 gp security system to protect my dirty socks and potions of superior bedroom performance please."

The question is, how much experience should they get?

I don't agree with the people saying they "failed the encounter" by going off mission. D&D is a free-form system. Just because you were given a particular goal "protect the city!" doesn't mean you can't go off tangent "recruit various groups of malcontents who are attacking the city and ransack the city ourselves!" and still get experience points.

But I still think, in this case, they hardly overcame the encounter. They kind of sidled by it. Now, running away is a fine strategy when faced with an overwhelming force, but usually running away is followed up by "to figure out a different way to come back and get past the encounter."

1> do you normally give personalized experience to each player? or only a group pool to the party? I.E. if players 1-4 participate in beating up the dragon while players 5-6 hide and contribute nothing, do all 6 get the xp or just the 4? How about if that's within character for 5 and 6? how about if all 5 and 6 contribute is a few buff and heal spells? How about if 5 and 6 run off to grab loot while 1-4 are fighting the dragon under the pretense of "so we will have something if we are forced to flee?" which ends up unnecessary when the dragon is defeated?

Personally, I'd give the group experience for overcoming the thieves and consider giving the loot experience to the thief, or a small % of the clay golem's xp pool. Then I'd have the authorities who are entrusting this group with the mission of policing the city find out about their complete disregard for their mission and send a second group after them.

Also, this makes me glad I'm running pathfinder where we are going with "level up at set story points rather than using experience" right now.

[Chronikoce]

Story based checkpoint leveling is an option in 3.5 as well. I've used it in almost all my campaigns.

The real issue isn't that robbing the house isn't an action that could give xp (becoming thieves just changes the story after all).

The problem is they didn't overcome any challenges.

As mentioned they didn't stop the thieves from getting into the room.

They didn't chase the thieves away (golem did that).

They didn't save the housekeeper (and apparently made no effort to try and drag her to safety).

They didn't really stop any civil unrest from occurring.

As for the theft, the golem has no perception skills that could have seen this rogue. If the master was present and could have spotted the rogue and redirected it to attack him then that would be a different story. But as described that room was effectively empty and devoid of traps. The rogue overcame nothing, ergo his reward is the loot he got rather than the xp.

As an analogy. At level 1 a basic pit trap blocking a tunnel deserves xp for getting past it and transferring all party members safely to the other side.

That same pit trap is not a challenge once the party has consistent and regular means of flight active (as opposed to expending potions or something). Sure it's still present but it poses no more challenge than walking across an empty stretch of tunnel and therefore deserves no xp.

[dascarletm]

I would give minor XP. They survived the encounter, but did not defeat it. Something like lvl x 50XP for each member.

[Chronikoce]

I would give minor XP. They survived the encounter, but did not defeat it. Something like lvl x 50XP for each member.

This is what I'd do if anything.i definitely wouldn't favor the rogue with xp in this scenario though.
You could of course boost the xp accordingly if they did some nice roleplaying during all of this.

[Gallowglass]

This is what I'd do if anything.i definitely wouldn't favor the rogue with xp in this scenario though.
You could of course boost the xp accordingly if they did some nice roleplaying during all of this.

except the rogue actually DID something.

He used an ability (invisibility) and rolled a skill check (stealth) and completed a goal (loot the rich guy's bedroom) and overcame an obstacle (avoid the trap read: clay golem)

The fact that the trap was ridiculously easy for him to overcome proving it a complete waste of the 40,000 gp the guy spent on it doesn't invalidate the rogue's success. Hopefully, he will learn than his money is better spent on a trap that actually targets the tactics used by the kind of people who would want to break into his bedroom such as stealth, illusion and invisiblity. The fact that the rogue's goal was contrary to the supposed goal of the party and could/should lead to in-game consequences also doesn't invalidate his success. He -should- get experience for overcoming an easy trap. THEN he should face the consequences of his choices.

From description it sounds like the rest of the party did nothing. They rolled perception checks, moved in the direction of an encounter, had a 3rd party (the golem) appear before they could take any appreciable actions, then fled rather than trying to keep the thieves from fleeing, forcing them into the clutches of the golem, or trying to save the elf or anything else they may reasonably have chosen to do.

Now, in my opinion, this was an encounter design you could've improved on. you could've given the party some countdown of rounds to try and keep the thieves from opening the door rather than having the clay golem spring into position before they could act. That seriously denied them a great quantity of agency. You could've given the party some chance to figure out how to overcome the clay golem (perhaps they see the housekeeper make a panicked motion (the safety motion) then notice the clay golem ignored her to let them figure out the command motion). You could've given the party the incentive to follow the thieves to their fallback position in order to apprehend them. You could've had one of the thieves also go invisible then had the two invisible people each trying to loot the room while avoiding or stopping the other, neither one willing to directly attack lest they face the golem's wrath.

That's not all on the encounter, some of that is on the players lack of creativity. Not being there, I don't know how much.

You could argue that they are still in this encounter and get no experience until the encounter ends, which won't happen until they face the consequence of the rogues rash decision, or until they hunt down the thieves that got away.

[Jon_Dahl]

Now, in my opinion, this was an encounter design you could've improved on. you could've given the party some countdown of rounds to try and keep the thieves from opening the door rather than having the clay golem spring into position before they could act. That seriously denied them a great quantity of agency. You could've given the party some chance to figure out how to overcome the clay golem (perhaps they see the housekeeper make a panicked motion (the safety motion) then notice the clay golem ignored her to let them figure out the command motion). You could've given the party the incentive to follow the thieves to their fallback position in order to apprehend them. You could've had one of the thieves also go invisible then had the two invisible people each trying to loot the room while avoiding or stopping the other, neither one willing to directly attack lest they face the golem's wrath.

They got to speak for 6 rounds before the thief managed to open the lock. During this time the invisible PC position himself close to the hostage-taking NPC (the one that had the elven housekeeper) and waited for the highly charismatic sorcerer PC to intimidate the NPCs. This all happened on the third round, because the PCs had climbed up the stairs in a very noisy manner, alerting the thieves. The thieves were intimidated and tried to give the leadership of the mission to the PCs, but they refused. The lock-picking rogue had paid no attention to the conversation and there was no effort to stop him or distract him. He had just picked the lock. Six rounds. The discussion was pretty long between the PCs and the NPCs.

I gave no extra help for them to overcome the golem, because its CR was ok. No help at all.

They caught two of the thieves since they spread out after the golem's appearance. They surrendered and told the PCs everything they wanted to know.

I would not change anything in this scenario. No.

[Chronikoce]

Ah see now that is more information than originally presented. 6 rounds of negotiating and roleplaying plus tactical behavior that was attempting to set up for future actions (even if it wasn't completely successful) does deserve an xp reward in my opinion.

Could they have handled it better? Certainly but hindsight is 20/20. My original inclination to award no xp was because I thought they were effectively nothing but spectators, however since it now sounds like they were active participants who even apprehended two of the thieves, I do believe they deserve xp.

I personally don't tend to award different xp values to party members who were all part of the same encounter unless one of them did something truly spectacular.

[Jon_Dahl]

Ah see now that is more information than originally presented. 6 rounds of negotiating and roleplaying plus tactical behavior that was attempting to set up for future actions (even if it wasn't completely successful) does deserve an xp reward in my opinion.

Could they have handled it better? Certainly but hindsight is 20/20. My original inclination to award no xp was because I thought they were effectively nothing but spectators, however since it now sounds like they were active participants who even apprehended two of the thieves, I do believe they deserve xp.

I personally don't tend to award different xp values to party members who were all part of the same encounter unless one of them did something truly spectacular.

The apprehended thieves are so low-level that they are worth any XP. That's way I didn't mention them. The thieves are out of any calculations regarding XP.

[Gallowglass]

They got to speak for 6 rounds before the thief managed to open the lock. During this time the invisible PC position himself close to the hostage-taking NPC (the one that had the elven housekeeper) and waited for the highly charismatic sorcerer PC to intimidate the NPCs. This all happened on the third round, because the PCs had climbed up the stairs in a very noisy manner, alerting the thieves. The thieves were intimidated and tried to give the leadership of the mission to the PCs, but they refused. The lock-picking rogue had paid no attention to the conversation and there was no effort to stop him or distract him. He had just picked the lock. Six rounds. The discussion was pretty long between the PCs and the NPCs.

I gave no extra help for them to overcome the golem, because its CR was ok. No help at all.

They caught two of the thieves since they spread out after the golem's appearance. They surrendered and told the PCs everything they wanted to know.

I would not change anything in this scenario. No.

See, now with context, this encounter is starting to take shape.

The PCs had several rounds to try and social combat their way through the encounter and didn't succeed. It sounds like they made the rolls, but didn't get the outcome they were looking for? They didn't demand the lockpicker stop, they didn't demand they release the hostage, I'm not really sure what they did demand in those 6 rounds with their intimidate checks....

Obviously, they could've attacked (I assume they didn't because of the hostage), but was there something they -could- have done negotiation wise within those 6 rounds that would have stopped the door from opening and the golem from being loosed? Or was that going to happen no matter what they said? Was this a matter of they didn't say the right things to stop the encounter, or that you really wanted to get that golem out that door?

It seems like they were given an encounter, tried to solve it social-wise rather than through combat, made their rolls but didn't say what needed to be said to prevent phase 2. Is that the meat of it? But it could also be that you were going to get that door open and get that golem out there no matter what they said meaning they really had no social agency to stop that door from opening. I've certainly played enough scenarios where the DM was just going to get that phase two encounter out there no matter what. Still... they could've attacked despite the hostage I suppose.

So they DID overcome part of the encounter right? they caught two of the thieves and questioned them. So they should get experience for that right? So experience for overcoming the thieves - any you were going to give them for saving the hostage and experience for an easy trap. No golem experience. Seems fair to me.

[Chronikoce]

The apprehended thieves are so low-level that they are worth any XP. That's way I didn't mention them. The thieves are out of any calculations regarding XP.

Not all xp in d&d should be earned from combat. Story/roleplaying rewards can give xp as well and if you think they did a good job with their roleplaying or have progressed the story forward then I'd say make a judgment call and award some xp for it.

I recently had my party take out 200 level 2 soldiers. Party is level 12 and came to a town under attack and by an army unit, they absolutely overwhelmed the forces and the remaining forces fled in terror after 200 of them fell in a basically a round. Now awarding xp for 200 lvl 2 soldiers is kind of silly as they were not a threat. But they roleplayed with the town leader, found out what the situation was, chose to intervene even though they have they own mission to attend to, and we're successful. So I gave them xp for the roleplaying.

[Jon_Dahl]

Ok, let me get this clear. The PCs were at levels 11, 9 and 8.

1. The hostage was kept by five 1st-level warriors. Worthless in any and all cases.
2. The golem. CR 10.
3. The rogue (level 5), who was picking the lock. Stopping him or defeating him would have awarded full XP. CR 5.
4. Saving the elven housekeeper from the whole situation unharmed. CR 6.
Putting any more possible XP into this encounter would have been too excessive. CR 10 + CR 5 + CR 4... and that's all. I give roleplaying XP for the whole session. Story award I give for their entire peacekeeping duty; it will not be awarded in small bits. I ask you to respect my decision.

[dascarletm]

Ok, let me get this clear. The PCs were at levels 11, 9 and 8.

1. The hostage was kept by five 1st-level warriors. Worthless in any and all cases.
2. The golem. CR 10.
3. The rogue (level 5), who was picking the lock. Stopping him or defeating him would have awarded full XP. CR 5.
4. Saving the elven housekeeper from the whole situation unharmed. CR 6.
Putting any more possible XP into this encounter would have been too excessive. CR 10 + CR 5 + CR 4... and that's all. I give roleplaying XP for the whole session. Story award I give for their entire peacekeeping duty; it will not be awarded in small bits. I ask you to respect my decision.

Looks like you were sure how to reward XP here. :smalltongue:

[Jon_Dahl]

Looks like you were sure how to reward XP here. :smalltongue:

Not really.

[Chronikoce]

I mean that looks like I would do. Sounds like you've got the right idea.

They will get their story/roleplaying rewards later and you've got a nice breakdown of the other reward points. I see no problem with your plans