I Messed Up...

[RighteousPauper]

So one of my players, in his travels, ran into a Balor demon and some of its minions, just regular imps and a Glabrezu (weird series of events, too much to explain). My player was ECL 12 and had a +4 LA before he bought out his LA and got dropped to lvl 1 and took a level in cleric. I let him have a few feats because he was a lvl 12 character for all intents and purposes before he got dropped to lvl 1, so he did a full charge build. He beat the initiative of the Balor demon and used his turn to charge, and one shot the Balor Demon. His compatriot, an NPC, dealt with the Imps, and my player killed the Glabrezu as well. It was meant to be a high level campaign, and I knew his character would at least be able to deal with the encounter one way or another, but I have no idea how much XP to award, as the XP calculator says that the encounter was unbeatable and therefore doesn’t assign an XP value (total cop out on the applications part, btw).

Criticism aside for letting this player get so broken (intentional, he wanted me to NPC this character eventually), how much XP should this encounter award?

[Psyren]

I believe the maximum you CAN award is one level + just under what he needs for the following level. I can't recall the quote though.

[Afgncaap5]

I believe the maximum you CAN award is one level + just under what he needs for the following level. I can't recall the quote though.

That's on page 58 of the Player's Handbook. If extraordinary circumstances (which this counts as, certainly) manages to award enough XP for multiple levels in a single adventure, your actual XP gain is just 1 single point shy of advancing two levels.

That's usually something that I ignore personally since sometimes it's fun to give a player more than one level for harrowing situations, but it might be a useful starting point for situations like this where the XP is tricky to work out.

[Blu]

Buying LA does not work like that. For a +4 LA character to buyoff just 1 point, he would need to have 12 class levels, wich would make him ECL 16.
Also buying off LA does not change his classe levels, only his ECL since he reduced 1 point of LA.

Considering you might have mean that he had 12 class levels and was elegible to buyoff his LA, he would actually still be a level 12 character, with now +3 LA and thus an ECL 15.
Also did you put his class levels on the calculator or his ECL? Because you use the ECL when awarding XP and calculating encounters

[RighteousPauper]

Buying LA does not work like that. For a +4 LA character to buyoff just 1 point, he would need to have 12 class levels, wich would make him ECL 16.
Also buying off LA does not change his classe levels, only his ECL since he reduced 1 point of LA.

Considering you might have mean that he had 12 class levels and was elegible to buyoff his LA, he would actually still be a level 12 character, with now +3 LA and thus an ECL 15.
Also did you put his class levels on the calculator or his ECL? Because you use the ECL when awarding XP and calculating encounters

What would he need to buy off his entire LA? He wasn’t given class levels at first, he was just considered a Monstrous Humanoid by my ruling up until he bought off his LA. all of the level buyouts happened at char. gen, for ease of access.

Still insanely new to the concept of LA, and it was explained to me by some friends that he could buy off all his LA points by just dropping to lvl 1 and resetting his xp pool.

[RighteousPauper]

That's on page 58 of the Player's Handbook. If extraordinary circumstances (which this counts as, certainly) manages to award enough XP for multiple levels in a single adventure, your actual XP gain is just 1 single point shy of advancing two levels.

That's usually something that I ignore personally since sometimes it's fun to give a player more than one level for harrowing situations, but it might be a useful starting point for situations like this where the XP is tricky to work out.

I know that resetting him to lvl 1 was a bad idea, but given those circumstances, it would seem kinda dinky to give him 5,999 XP for a full blown Balor Demon and a Glabrezu

[DeAnno]

These are the LA buyoff rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm)

Your version sounds like it went through the telephone game a few too many times.

[KillianHawkeye]

What would he need to buy off his entire LA? He wasn’t given class levels at first, he was just considered a Monstrous Humanoid by my ruling up until he bought off his LA. all of the level buyouts happened at char. gen, for ease of access.

Still insanely new to the concept of LA, and it was explained to me by some friends that he could buy off all his LA points by just dropping to lvl 1 and resetting his xp pool.

If you as the DM are going to allow something into the game, you really should read about it enough to understand what you're allowing rather than just taking someone's word on it. :smallsigh:

[King of Nowhere]

How much XP to award should depends mostly on how fast you'd want the charcters to advance in the first place.

that said, if you really want to do things by the book, you should set hiim at 2 level ups -1 XP, as others said.
but I doon't think it's a good idea. At high optimization you are expected to fight things with CR much higher than your nominal level anyway, because they are the only things that can make it somewhat challenging. And encounters with high CR give tons of xp. If you follow the xp rules strictly, the whole party should go from level 1 to 20 in a dozen encounters.

[Afgncaap5]

I know that resetting him to lvl 1 was a bad idea, but given those circumstances, it would seem kinda dinky to give him 5,999 XP for a full blown Balor Demon and a Glabrezu

I get that, I do. I'm just proposing that by following the RAW of the scenario, you kind of have an out for only leveling up once. it's there if ya want it. From a story standpoint, that glabrezu and balor are threshold guardians, and the character has now improved as a person. Or from a slightly different story standpoint, this is a story/world/scenario where glabrezu and balors are small potatoes and not actually worth that much XP, at least not to this player. If the character isn't really having to push themselves or learn knew things or discover more things about how the world works, then it's reasonable to say that not as much experience is gained.

Alternatively, you can reverse engineer a "true difficulty" value for the fight by taking a good look at the amount of resources the player spent in the fight. Consider any spell slots used, hit points lost, ability scores damaged, consumable items spent, daily uses of abilities used, and that kind of thing. I forget where, but I'm pretty sure that there's a chart that displays the expected resources lost per combat encounter where said combat is greater than the norm. You can use that to figure out an estimate of what the actual "challenge rating" was for the character, and use *that* to determine the XP.

Because honestly, if they're level 1 and beating it soundly, it might not even warrant the 5999 XP. Toss the character 300 XP if it was as challenging as beating a level 1 monster for another character. 12 Balor encounters from now, he might hit level 2. Or hey, did the level 1 version of the character only just barely survive? If it's challenging enough that they only escaped by the skin of their teeth then they should get XP for a deadly challenge, to be sure. Just... a deadly challenge for level 1.

[Astralia123]

My player was ECL 12 and had a +4 LA before he bought out his LA and got dropped to lvl 1 and took a level in cleric.

You don't say??

Today I learn something new, that DMs who allow this actually do exist.

And still you are not complaining about overpowered PCs.



Still I'm curious why they did not get killed by the Balor explosion. This PC did not get dropped to level 1 by draining his own levels, right?



Despite of all that, it depends on your XP policies. I know some DMs only award XP strictly according to encounter calculators and nothing else, especially DMs who allow their players do anything and everything RAW, no matter how balance breaking, unfair or bizarre that is.
If that is your case, you can possibly award them something else instead of XP (as the calculator says that encounter gives no XP), like a favorable plot twist that lead them to some treasures.
If you do not actually stick to that kind of policy, however, you as the DM is free to set encounter/adventure XP to any value, as long as you find it reasonable.

[Segev]

I am not sure we're all on the same page, here. When you say he's "dropped to level 1," what happened to all his racial hit dice?



The way that LA buyoff is supposed to work, if he had an LA of +4 and no racial hit dice (RHD, from now on), when he hits a class level of 3x(LA), he can, upon gaining enough XP to gain one more level, sacrifice that XP and instead of gaining a level, reduce his LA by 1 and be the same class level but actually LOWER his ECL by 1.

So, for +4 LA, he can do this when he has 12 class levels, and is thus ECL 16. When he has enough XP to level up to ECL 17, he may instead reset himself to the XP total for ECL 15, keep his class levels the same (12), and reduce his LA to +3.

He would then be ECL 15, and not eligible to buy off another point of LA for 3x(new LA of 3)=9 more levels, or ECL 24.

Typically, LA +3 is considered the highest you want to apply to a character if you're using buyoff, because it allows you to fully buy it off by level 20.

Here's how that works:

At class level 9, when you get enough XP to go to ECL 13 (LA+3 plus 9 class levels means you're ECL 12), you instead reset yourself to ECL 11's XP total and lower your LA by 1, making you ECL 11 (9 class levels plus 2 LA). Six levels later (because 3x(new LA of 2)=6), at ECL 17, when you gain enough XP to go to ECL 18, you instead lower yourself to ECL 16 (keeping your current class levels (15) and lowering your LA to +1). Finally, three levels later (3x(new ECL of 1)=3), at ECL 19, when you gain enough XP to level up to ECL 20, you drop to the XP total for ECL 18 as you buy off your last LA (keeping all 18 class levels you already have), and now are ECL 18 and class level 18.


If you have racial hit dice, they count towards your ECL but don't count towards your LA or your class levels for buyoff purposes.

So that LA+3 character with 2 RHD needs 9 class levels before he can buy off his first point of LA, which happens at ECL 14, just at enough XP to get to ECL 15. After that, the character has 9 class levels, 2 RHD, and +2 LA, and couldn't buy off again until ECL 21 (six levels later).

So with even 2 RHD, you don't really want to go over +2 LA (which would give you your first buy-off at ECL 10, and your second buy-off at ECL 12).

[ExLibrisMortis]

I think your best bet is to own up to your mistake, apologize to the player, and redo the entire character sheet according to the rules. Then award balor XP as you would to a character of the proper ECL.

Incidentally, what was the character in question?

[RighteousPauper]

After doing a bit of reading up, following your links and reading the comments and advice, you guys are definitely right. This campaign is high powered and slightly homebrewed, given my muck up with my players xp.

From a story standpoint, He was an Aasimar Angel of Palandine, and through events of insubordination, was stripped of his character levels and banished to the material plane, along with many other angels (Think God banishing Satan and his followers, but with more "god is corrupt" and Satan didnt do anything morally wrong). He was dropped to a first level character, but through some rolling, kept his high level gear. He spent the majority of the beginning of the campaign removing the curse that the corrupted Palandine bestowed on them, and the latter half blowing up more powerful demons. His cleric level was more of him observing the power of his own, albeit fairly diminished, divinity. He was slightly more secular than most other clerics, believing firmly in a lack of slavery and servitude to gods that just plain don't care. A god of war sympathized with him, and he started a war after healing his angels, and he fought demons, other angels, monsters, and eventually gods. He hasn't quite retired his character, but he's gotten to the point where he could be taken up at any point (house rule- all stats higher than 18= instant godhood).

He was a fun character to DM for, and there was a lot of story involved. I somewhat corrected XP and Encounters halfway through so his XP was a little more deserved and he got some difficulty out of it, which I appreciate your help all of you that replied.