Low Level Party NPCs

[lordhack]

Hey guys. My current campaign revolves around Mind Flayers having taken over the planet. Since a Mind Flayer would probably wipe out a level 1 party without too much trouble, most of the parties foes thus far have been mind controlled thralls. However, the PCs have shown a lot of ingenuity when it comes to freeing people from control, and they currently have 3 NPC party members traveling with them. Once the PCs make it to a city the NPCs will leave them naturally, but for the time being it makes a lot of sense for the NPCs to travel with the party and contribute to combat.

Statwise however, none of them rate CR 1. I'm using guard stats for 2 of them, and commoner stats for the last. Clearly they're contributing to combat, and I've been giving them a share of XP, but I'm not really sure how to budget extra XP for the monsters to account for these characters. For reference, the party is currently level 2, and as this is my first time playing 5e I'm a little worried about scaling encounters too difficult and killing some one off by mistake.

In short, how should I budget encounter XP to compensate for 3 NPCs effectively lower than level 1?

[MrFahrenheit]

I would divide xp up as if they were PCs, then either

..."level" them up to the next stat block if they get the appropriate amount of xp
...or don't give them xp, but still divide the tota amount up as if they were going to receive it.

[DivisibleByZero]

CR =/= Level
The commoner would be sub-1, but the guards wouldn't be.
I'd count the guards as two more level one party members, ignoring the commoner, and work out the math from there.

[Zman]

Just subtract their xp value from the pool of monster xp and subtract their numbers from the enemy numbers for calculating the numberous enemy multiplier. They aren't powerful enough or growing characters to deserve an equal share of xp.

[lordhack]

Thanks for the advice Zman, and everyone. I was considering doing something like that anyway. Though I'm going to let the commoner get XP, he's mostly been using the 'help' action and the PCs have taken a shine to him and want to help him survive. Thinking of letting him become a bard if he gets enough XP and singing of the PCs adventures every time they make it back to town. Or killing him mercilessly right before they reach civilization again.