Player-Picked XP House Rule?

[Afgncaap5]

So, I've been mulling this over for a bit: I generally see players who fall on a curious spectrum when it comes to handling XP after a missed session. On one end, you have the players who want all the XP gain, and would like it if their XP could just always be set at whatever level the player with the most XP has. On the other end (and admittedly, it's a little more rare to see people all the way to this side) you get the "character curator" players; they like getting XP, sure, but they also like that XP to be *earned*. Basically, one side is the "keeping up with the story difficulty" player, and the other end is the "pushing myself from nothing to the top" player. And there's benefits to both preferences, but most of the time whatever XP method one uses is, alas, going to penalize somebody. If everyone at your table is on one side or the other then your choice is clear, but split groups are tricky.

It occurred to me, though... why not just let the players choose their method for gaining XP? Then the player playing Tempest Claymore can keep his or her XP maxed out while the player playing Sir Patrick the Brave can keep their meticulous tally mark of every noble deed they've done to get XP, even if they wind up two or three levels behind the rest of the party by the end of a lengthy campaign.

The biggest problem I can see with this is another kind of player, the one who insists on everyone doing things the same way, because otherwise what do the rules even mean? I'm... honestly kind of fine with that person disapproving, though. And going to the trouble of codifying it as one of my personal house rules is sorta for their benefit. "The rule is, the player chooses if they get XP or not" or something.

[BowStreetRunner]

...most of the time whatever XP method one uses is, alas, going to penalize somebody.
I've never experienced this with any of the groups we played with, to be honest. Although back when we played 1st edition in the 80s we did stick rigidly with some of the modules, by the time we were in 2nd edition and beyond the DM always tended to be more in control of the story. Thus, if someone was falling behind the curve enough that the DM felt the party wasn't up to the story difficulty, a side quest usually opened up to allow the lower level players to catch up. In all that time I've never encountered a player who argued about it when told that they didn't get XP if they didn't show up.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by BowStreetRunner
In all that time I've never encountered a player who argued about it when told that they didn't get XP if they didn't show up.

This. In my experience it’s always been the baseline assumption that no-show means no XP. Can’t recall anyone ever raising an issue about it.

[Elkad]

My players just loan their characters to one another, so it's rarely an issue.

Makes DMing easy as well, as I don't have to re-jigger encounters on the fly because the Wizard is missing.

[jdizzlean]

our game = no show, no xp. Seems fair, but it makes the DM's work a little more complicated as over time we'll have sometimes 3-4 different levels of players, so you get to fudge a few rolls now and then to avoid a TPK.

if you don't show up for work, do you still get paid? (ignoring salary vs hourly of course)

[InvisibleBison]

if you don't show up for work, do you still get paid? (ignoring salary vs hourly of course)

This is assuming, of course, that the player's absence means that the character is absent as well. Not everyone plays this way. If you simply have another player take over the absent player's character, it makes no sense to not award the character XP.

[BowStreetRunner]

This is assuming, of course, that the player's absence means that the character is absent as well. Not everyone plays this way. If you simply have another player take over the absent player's character, it makes no sense to not award the character XP.
Right. I should have pointed out that most of our games the characters were either considered to be conveniently absent when the player wasn't there (man, that was a reaaaally long trip to the latrine!), or the PC was considered 'background scenery' and didn't actually do anything. A couple games were surprisingly lucky in that we almost never had someone miss a session (I soooo miss high school and college). But in the occasional game where another player ran the character then the character got full XP.

[Elkad]

Until 3.5, we didn't even put new players (or replacement characters) in at a party-similar level.

You started at 1 and hid/ran like hell every fight, maybe sneaking in a crossbow shot or a Magic Missile if it looked safe. Sometimes you died, sometimes you gained 1.999 levels per encounter and caught up fast.
Missing sessions (and thus xp) is much the same.

Having a wildly disparate party works if the group wants it to work. Though it helps if you have old-school group sizes, where 6 means "ahh, we need more players!" and 10 was "just right".

[NerdHut]

I've tried three different XP systems in my three campaigns to date. Two of them have been subject to the rule of "no show, no XP."

I first tried the standard XP system, where each character gets XP per the encounter. Due to some optimizers, I had to throw harder monsters their way, so XP totals were bloated. Plus it's complicated and frustrating to keep track of. Nobody complained about falling behind, though, because we all understood that you can't level up if you don't play.

Then I tried the method of "This seems like the right time to level up the whole party." It worked, but didn't feel quite right. Everybody leveled up at the same time, which was fine, but determining the right moment for that level milestone felt weird to me as the DM.

The system I'm using now is a simplified, bounded XP system. Smaller numbers (each level costs the same amount of points) makes it much easier to track. Everybody who plays gets XP per session instead of per encounter, so it's easier to pace. Lower-level players gain extra XP to help them catch up if they've missed a few sessions. And there's an XP floor based on the rest of the party's level, so you can never fall hopelessly behind the rest of them. We have one player who misses a lot. He's fine with the fact that he's two levels behind the highest level player, because he knows he's played less and he's still powerful enough to get the spotlight from time to time.

TL;DR: of all the problems I've had with XP systems, "no show, no XP" has never been one of them.

[Yahzi]

In my game, XP is tangible, like gold. They get it from the heads of the monsters they defeat. They get to divide up anyway they want.

They promoted the cleric first, even though he missed the last two games, because they like being healed.

[Gnaeus]

Most of my groups now have dropped XP entirely and just level when the DM (or the AP) says.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

In my game some players can't come to play every two weeks.

when they are missing I make with them a game on the phone or in Skype if they have the time.

Last one was a half-minotaur that played with a chaos artifact, he was sent into a fighting arena and was forced to fight.

in the end he showed up in a dwarf temple in the furnace just when the party got to the temple(he got himself in jail and got some metal blocks in the head after he said "I am a demon" and the clerics failed to banish him).

he got the same amount of XP the party got.

An artifact of chaos is the best way I know about.

The other player that can't come to all the meeting is a thief, the party always meet her in a shop after she finished to sell her loot from traveling.