XP Goofs and woes about future levelling

[DragonBaneDM]

Hey guys!

So I've been running 5E games for a while now, which makes this really embarrassing to say: I've been doing XP wrong the entire time the game's been out.

See, I missed the sentence in the XP rules that explain that you don't hand out the adjusted XP as a reward: it's just for figuring out the difficulty of the encounter. So it turns out that I've been giving out a substantial XP boost every time I use a combat that doesn't feature a single enemy, which is the overwhelming majority of them.

The campaign I'm most invested in right now just hit level 6, and every player, including myself, thought it was a total slog to get past 5. However, I've gotten pretty used to planning out the XP of combats. Heck, I've got an entire excel sheet of (now totally inaccurate) numbers that plan out possible story arcs my party could follow, what combats they lead to that I've already built, and around what time they should be hitting the next level after each, so they get to experience a new setting with each new level. That's all shot now.

I like using four or five Medium-Deadly encounters a day instead of the prescribed 6, and I've even been using quest-reward milestone XP to fill the gap on my XP math as levels have crossed tiers. I like handing out XP at the end of sessions, but should I do away with it? Just switch to a "Well that's three story arcs down, gratz!" milestone-only approach? Or just say darn it all and keep handing out the adjusted XP value? I've had this said to me by a couple players and now I'm starting to think it myself: what's the point in calculating that extra XP if the PCs aren't gonna see it?

[Armored Walrus]

If it's worked for you so far, I wouldn't change it mid-campaign. Maybe revert back to the rules as written in your next campaign?

[Magic Myrmidon]

I agree that using XP without telling the players feels a little pointless.

I went through a phase of using milestone XP, but that was basically because I wanted a super fast leveling system in which players leveled every 2 sessions. My latest campaign used normal XP, and although it's a bit of a hassle, I also feel like it's kinda fun to see that number ticking up. That, and I was just giving them the XP total for monsters and splitting it up amongst the party. Which. I guess is wrong? But it felt pretty ok, anyway.

What problems have you found with doing it that way? If the players felt it was a slog, while you felt you're giving a boost in XP, would reverting it make it even more of a slog?

[Rysto]

I wouldn't worry about it and just continue awarding XP as you have. I get the impression that the main reason why the DMG recommends awarding unadjusted XP is that they worried that calculating adjusted XP for every encounter would be too tedious. When I DM'ed for a brief period, I intentionally awarded adjusted XP because I had a bias towards encounters with larger numbers of monsters, and I didn't want to effectively penalize the party for the way that I built encounters. It didn't seem fair to me that they could be fighting hard or deadly encounters and only get rewarded with the XP for a medium encounter.

[Zalabim]

I get the impression that XP for completing roleplaying goals should make up the difference between monster XP and adjusted encounter XP anyway, so that the XP of challenges faced is also the XP the PCs earn, assuming they succeed at their goals along the way. If you fail to complete goals, or don't have any goals in the first place, progress would be a bit slower.

[MrStabby]

I find some of the comment quite interesting.

I had always thought of the reason why adjusted XP was not used was that this encouraged effort over achievement. You can use a wall of force to split a deadly encounter into two easy encounters, but if you do the same by ambushing part of a group before they meet up you get much less adjusted XP for it.

Using XP over adjusted XP is probably better for a more sandboxy type game. As it is, it sounds like you have planned out everything you PCs will do in advance so PCs may have less control of what encounters they face and have less control over the conditions under which they will face them so it doesn't really matter so much.

Personally I reward XP only for major plot/character based challenges overcome but award double for some. Kill a bandit lord and bring peace to the roads? Thats xp for double the lords estimated value. Kill 20 bandits in random encounters: no XP. Kill 20 bandits in an orchestrated show of strength to intimidate the others into stopping - normal XP for that.

No way is best - it is just about game style and what you and the players want. Just make sure it provides an incentive to the type of behaviour that you want in your game.

[Armored Walrus]

RAW, adjusted XP only exists to serve as a measure of how difficult the encounter will be. Because they use an XP budget for encounter design, that's the only metric they can adjust. So you have this phantom XP that doesn't really exist, except for the purposes of deciding whether this is an Easy, Hard, or Deadly encounter.

That being said, the only impact it will have on your game if you've been accidentally handing out the adjusted rather than the base XP is that level progression will be faster. That may or may not be a negative, depending on the campaign. Certainly changing it mid-campaign is going to mess with the flow, and probably make the players feel like they've hit a brick wall as far as advancement goes.

[DragonBaneDM]

So.

It sounds like if I happen to continue handing out adjusted XP as a way to continue to fasttrack level progress and keep my encounter count on the lower side, perhaps giving out the difference in bonus XP here or there, an angry mob of fellow 5E DMs aren't gonna show up to my house with a bunch of pitch forks and torches?

Sweet. Sweet sweet sweeeet. I think I'm gonna do that.

Unless anyone wants to Frankenstein me for that? Anyone?

EDIT: Frankenstein's monster* My b.

[Sigreid]

Nope, you're good. As long as you aren't running AL or something like that all that really matters is that your consistent and your group is having a good time.

My group hasn't tracked actual xp in years. We don't really do milestone either. When whoever is GMing at the time decides 1 that you've been through enough and 2 they are ready to escalate, the party as a whole levels up. It's all about the fun however you do it.

[UrielAwakened]

You probably want to hand out double XP on solos then.

Otherwise your solo encounters, which are designed to be difficult bosses, give half as much as the equivalent encounter with multiple monsters.