More encounters = More XP?

[Ivor_The_Mad]

I was wondering, because i'm currently running a dungeon for my group, how should I give them XP? They started at 5th and I need them to reach 10 at least but I fear I gravely miscalculated. So far they have not gained a single level but they are nearly half way done. Im getting worried that they won't be at least 10th by the end. Is their any way i can give them XP with out seeming to obvious, TPKing, or messing with the storyline? Also the whole dungeon is island/ocean based.

[DivisibleByZero]

Just use Milestones, and tell them when it's time for them to gain a level. Less book keeping, less "let's go kill a rat because I'm almost level 6," less everything.
They focus on playing, you focus on keeping the game fun, and when you think they need to level up you tell them that they have.

[Hurske]

Are they meant to reach 10 by the end of the dungeon you put in? If so, it has to be one hell of a massive dungeon that takes likely months if not years of in world time to go through. 5 levels is a fairly big jump in a characters level of expertise.

One option though is to drop XP and just use the milestone system. They level up when it seems they reach a natural situation in which they defeated a large obstacle. Such as a boss type villain in the dungeon.

[Armored Walrus]

If you're that deep into it and you've missed the mark by that much, you may need to just give them milestone levels.

But yeah, 6 to 8 medium encounters per adventure day is what levels groups at the rate the designers intended. If you go with less, or easier, you'll level more slowly, and if you go with more, or harder, you'll level more quickly.

As for ways to inject more exp into the game now that you're at this point - consider exploration experience, experience for defeating traps, experience for character acting.

[Jamesps]

Just use Milestones, and tell them when it's time for them to gain a level. Less book keeping, less "let's go kill a rat because I'm almost level 6," less everything.
They focus on playing, you focus on keeping the game fun, and when you think they need to level up you tell them that they have.

This is how I do it. It's nice as it allows the players to avoid encounters or talk their way out without worrying about falling behind.

[the_brazenburn]

I told you, dude. I told you that your campaign couldn't possibly get us to 10th.

As an answer to your question, give us XP for social and exploration milestones, instead of just combat encounters.

For instance, when we navigate through some rocky stretch of ocean, give us XP. When we RP our way out of being killed by an arcanaloth, give us XP.

I'm serious about that arcanaloth thing, by the way. We really deserve XP for that.

[Easy_Lee]

Just use Milestones, and tell them when it's time for them to gain a level. Less book keeping, less "let's go kill a rat because I'm almost level 6," less everything.
They focus on playing, you focus on keeping the game fun, and when you think they need to level up you tell them that they have.

I agree. One more point for milestones: experience and encounter difficulty seldom match. It takes eighteen kobolds to be worth the same experience as one ogre, but I know which of those I'd rather fight.

[Tanarii]

DMG guidelines assume 2.4 adventuring days per level gained between 5 and 10. Tier 2 is intentionally very slow compared to other Tiers of play, which vary from 1 adventuring day for early tier 1, to 1.6 for tier 3, to (I believe) 2 for tier 4.

If that doesn't work for you, change it. Honestly if they need to go through the entirety of tier 2 in one adventure, you're best off switching to milestones, if the players are okay with it. (I've found most players will vocally demand XP, not milestones.) Failing that, you're gonna have to ratchet up XP rewards to fairly extreme levels. Tell the players why though, they'll instantly notice a jump of 5-10 fold in XP.

For reference, I run 1 session = 1 adventuring day, so about 3-4 hrs per adventuring day. I have mixed level parties but all within a given tier, so the rate of advancement isn't by the recommended guidelines, it's faster lower in a tier and slower at the end. But if I were going by the book, it'd take a player about 12 sessions, or 36-48 hrs of play, to go from level 5 to 10. And that's apparently very fast, many other DMs take 5-6 hrs to run one adventuring days worth of content, so it'd take twice as long in their campaigns.


Edit:

As an answer to your question, give us XP for social and exploration milestones, instead of just combat encounters.Oh yeah. At the minimum any social or exploration encounter that might potentially cost resources should rewarded as a Medium encounter. Those that won't but are still some kind of challenge should probably get at least Easy rewards.

[DivisibleByZero]

For reference, I run 1 session = 1 adventuring day, so about 3-4 hrs per adventuring day. I have mixed level parties but all within a given tier, so the rate of advancement isn't by the recommended guidelines, it's faster lower in a tier and slower at the end.

I do it differently.
Your current level = the number of sessions you play at that level in order to level up.
First session = level 1
Since you are level 1, and you played 1 session, you are now level 2 upon the start of your second session.
Two more sessions played = level 3
Three more sessions played = level 4
So on and so forth.

This encourages players not missing a session if they can avoid it. But everyone misses a session here and there simply due to life, so it all stays about even overall.
Level disparities only really occur with players who come once in a while, or every other week, or what not. And thanks to Bounded Accuracy, they can still participate and contribute.

[NomGarret]

Well anything that ups the pace at this point will be noticeable. If each session has garnered X% of the next level and you start gaining 3X or 4X%, you’ll notice no matter how it’s packaged. The only way around that is lengthening the time between now and the end of the adventure. I hope you haven’t dropped hints about how close they’ve gotten, and I hope they really look forward to spending some time whisked aside resolving personal quests.

Now, what you can do to pad your XP rewards (it’s a little late to switch to milestone leveling without admitting you screwed up) is quest XP and non-combat encounter XP. Any scene that involves danger should give XP, not just the ones that involve killing stuff. If “the floor is lava” room is as challenging as a room with magma monsters, give them XP for it. Spend a little extra time in the library learning what happened to the duchess? Mystery solved! XP! These are things that are worth doing anyway, as it gives motivation to do things other than just murderhobo. Though by all means, murderhobo to your heart’s content.

[Tanarii]

I do it differently.
Your current level = the number of sessions you play at that level in order to level up.
First session = level 1
Since you are level 1, and you played 1 session, you are now level 2 upon the start of your second session.
Two more sessions played = level 3
Three more sessions played = level 4
So on and so forth.

This encourages players not missing a session if they can avoid it. But everyone misses a session here and there simply due to life, so it all stays about even overall.
Level disparities only really occur with players who come once in a while, or every other week, or what not. And thanks to Bounded Accuracy, they can still participate and contribute.
That makes for very slow advancement compared to the recommended guidelines by level 3 onwards. Which I assume is exactly what you want?
(Edit: I realized I assumed you have one adventuring day per session. If not it might be very fast at low levels, and about the same at Tier 2 levels.)

Also the reason I have mixed groups is its open table, so it works more like AL. Different players who can attend bring different characters. I ended up setting a Tier for each session because level 2 and 8 don't work that well together. But 5s and 10s together are workable. So it's specific to my campaign style.

[GlenSmash!]

DMG guidelines assume 2.4 adventuring days per level gained between 5 and 10. Tier 2 is intentionally very slow compared to other Tiers of play, which vary from 1 adventuring day for early tier 1, to 1.6 for tier 3, to (I believe) 2 for tier 4.

If that doesn't work for you, change it. Honestly if they need to go through the entirety of tier 2 in one adventure, you're best off switching to milestones, if the players are okay with it. (I've found most players will vocally demand XP, not milestones.) Failing that, you're gonna have to ratchet up XP rewards to fairly extreme levels. Tell the players why though, they'll instantly notice a jump of 5-10 fold in XP.

For reference, I run 1 session = 1 adventuring day, so about 3-4 hrs per adventuring day. I have mixed level parties but all within a given tier, so the rate of advancement isn't by the recommended guidelines, it's faster lower in a tier and slower at the end. But if I were going by the book, it'd take a player about 12 sessions, or 36-48 hrs of play, to go from level 5 to 10. And that's apparently very fast, many other DMs take 5-6 hrs to run one adventuring days worth of content, so it'd take twice as long in their campaigns.

Likewise, I made a chart a while back called Adventuring Days to level Based on the DMG guidelines. I just have my players level up when the appropriate number of adventuring days has passed.

I don't have one session = one adventuring day, but it rarely takes more than 2 sessions (typically around 3 hours or so) to get through one whole adventuring day. Some sessions may be combat heavy, some social or exploration heavy, but overall it averages out pretty good.

[Dudewithknives]

Just use Milestones, and tell them when it's time for them to gain a level. Less book keeping, less "let's go kill a rat because I'm almost level 6," less everything.
They focus on playing, you focus on keeping the game fun, and when you think they need to level up you tell them that they have.

That is almost exactly how I do it.

I just keep track of where in the story they should be leveling and let them go from there.

Leads to less instances of people fighting just for the exp and more of people trying to RP or avoid fights by good strategy or inventiveness.
It

[Anonymouswizard]

Assuming '1 session = 1 adventuring day' characters should be levelling up roughly twice per month. In practice I tend to only see that in games at early levels (unless the GM is insanely generous in awarding 'RPXP', and even then only if they award it to the entire party). Levelling up in my experience generally happens at the rate of every month or two (I like every month, but I know people who prefer slower).

I've seen many methods used for when players level. My least favourite is 'individual XP for overcoming challenges', followed by 'group XP for overcoming challenges', mainly because it encourages a lot of meaningless challenges purely for the sake of boosting levels (what, you've never had a GM throw a string of encounters at you to level up?).

Milestone adventuring is a good solution, as is 'blah XP per session, bonuses for stuffs'. I had a GM who gave out 3XP a session, a bonus XP to everybody if a player roleplayed particularly well (given out at the time), and a bonus XP if we completed one or more important goals in a session. If we could pull decent roleplaying twice and complete important goals we'd be advancing at a fair clip for the system, and our characters gained half their point value again during the course of the campaign (this was low powered and point buy). In D&D I'd have likely given out a few hundred XP per character level per session.

[DivisibleByZero]

That makes for very slow advancement compared to the recommended guidelines by level 3 onwards. Which I assume is exactly what you want?
(Edit: I realized I assumed you have one adventuring day per session. If not it might be very fast at low levels, and about the same at Tier 2 levels.)

I don't pay any attention to or even keep track of "adventuring days" unless there is a timeline of events that needs to be tracked.
There could be 5 or 6 sessions that all occur in the same "adventuring day," or one session could encompass multiple "adventuring days" by itself.
An entire session could be comprised of RP with zero "adventuring" being a part of it. There could be five of those in a row and some people gain a level while talking to NPCs.

I ignore "adventuring days" and everything related to them. I keep track of how many sessions have been played by each character.
Regardless of whether they are fighting or RPing or traveling or whatever else, or how fast or slow it is to get through the "day,", if you show up to game and contribute, you are one step closer to gaining a level. Even if the entire session is a three hour conversation in RP that only covers 30 minutes of time in game.

edit:
And I'll tell you one thing. I *LOVE* what this process has done for the RP aspect of our table, and for the fact that the idea of "kill first, ask questions later" has all but disappeared.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

If you're that deep into it and you've missed the mark by that much, you may need to just give them milestone levels.

But yeah, 6 to 8 medium encounters per adventure day is what levels groups at the rate the designers intended. If you go with less, or easier, you'll level more slowly, and if you go with more, or harder, you'll level more quickly.

As for ways to inject more exp into the game now that you're at this point - consider exploration experience, experience for defeating traps, experience for character acting.

First I forgot to add that this is a dungeon that I created. Second I already said I miscalculated the amount of time it takes to go from 5th-10th. I think I might make It a landmark dungeon for simplicities sake.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

I told you, dude. I told you that your campaign couldn't possibly get us to 10th.

As an answer to your question, give us XP for social and exploration milestones, instead of just combat encounters.

For instance, when we navigate through some rocky stretch of ocean, give us XP. When we RP our way out of being killed by an arcanaloth, give us XP.

I'm serious about that arcanaloth thing, by the way. We really deserve XP for that.

1 That did not come up once. I said it should take us to 10th and you said ok.
2 I will ad XP for milestones
3 You can have the XP

[the_brazenburn]

1 That did not come up once. I said it should take us to 10th and you said ok.
2 I will ad XP for milestones
3 You can have the XP

Thank you. Also, I'm sorry. I didn't tell you that, though I did think so. My apologies.

[MrStabby]

Just a minor point... But as DM you can also add more dungeon to support the higher level experience for longer.

[LordEntrails]

For instance, when we navigate through some rocky stretch of ocean, give us XP. When we RP our way out of being killed by an arcanaloth, give us XP.

I'm serious about that arcanaloth thing, by the way. We really deserve XP for that.

Uh yea, defeating an encounter, by whatever means is defeating the encounter and earns the XP. If you kill it, trap it, or otherwise are substantially threatened by it and yet overcome it, XP is earned.

[LordEntrails]

Just doing quick in my head math based on what others have said, if 2.4 adventuring days per level, times 5 levels time 6-8 encounters per day (is that right?) then does your dungeon have 84 encounters in it?

I hope you did at least that much math when designing your dungeon.

[Tanarii]

Even if the entire session is a three hour conversation in RP that only covers 30 minutes of time in game.Glad it works for you and your table. I can tell you right now my current players would have a full scale revolt if I ever tried to encourage a session like this. Heck, when I polled a few different sessions about the idea of switching away from XP for overcoming challenges to milestones, the overwhelming response was that would happen over *my* dead body. :smallbiggrin:

[Joe the Rat]

When we RP our way out of being killed by an arcanaloth, give us XP

This is an important point (and I think you did the right thing in adding the award). XP is not for killing things. It's for beating encounters. You kill everything, xp. You force them to flee, xp. You talk them into surrendering/ allying/ leaving you alone, you get xp. Hell, in some cases surviving something may be worth xp.

So long as there is a threat or challenge posed, xp can be earned.

I still use points (I'm a DM, bookkeeping is part of the fun!), so I don't milestone, but I also use chapter or task xp - points for reaching goalpoints, or completing tasks. You can adjust level progression easily by increasing or decreasing this making progress xp.

[Malifice]

It took my group a year and a half of weekly play to go from 4th to 11th level.

Play is fast from 1-3, slows down considerably from 4-11 and then picks up again in th higher levels.

OP if you want PCs to advance 5 levels in the dungeon, why on earth didnt you just place milestones in the dungeon (each milestone = 1 level)?