About special circumstances and XP awards

[Conradine]

If a group of ogres are meet while they are entangled in quicksand, thick vegetation or similar natural traps and the party manages to kill them easily with ranged attack and spells, I think almost everyone would agree that the encounter is not worth his full CR in experience.


But if the advantageous situation is created by the PC's through careful and deliberate planning?


Pratical example: a 1st level party spends month working ordinary jobs and saving money, cultivating poisonous herbs and / or breeding snakes / scorpions / spiders; they buy raw materials and forge their own weapons and armor, raise and train hunting dogs, prepare poisonous pastes to apply on weapons and arrows.

Then they spend weeks traking a Dire Bear and luring him into a trap using sheeps or goats as bait, and kill him using every trick in the book (hunting dogs to attack and distract, irritating powders to numb the bear's scent, nails and tied ropes for a quick escape on the trees, beartraps and caltrops soaked in poison ecc. ).

Should they get the full CR 7 award?

[Doctor Despair]

I'm of the mind that they should be rewarded for their ingenuity, personally, as otherwise it punishes players for not just walking face-first into every enemy they meet. However, we do need to do something to avoid the situation where PCs devise some way to effectively XP-farm with no risk to themselves.

It might be reasonable as a compromise to award partial or no experience for the no-risk combat, but instead award XP for the creation of the trap. Thereafter, further use of the trap wouldn't grant more XP, as their character didn't learn anything new from the "encounter."

[137beth]

I'd say they should get the full reward.

Is this an elaborate trap to make a paladin "fall" by either not getting enough XP and hence "falling' down a level, or getting XP through dishonorable means and thus falling?

[Conradine]

Nah, no paladins.

I like the idea of characters who expend extraordinary effort in order to minimize the danger.
I find it realistic. Because in real life, hunters do not want to die.

[Crake]

If the players put in the effort to set a trap/ambush, then yeah, 100% they should get full xp. The only time xp rewards should be adjusted is if the stage as set by the DM is adjusted in favour of one side. If the players take the time to adjust the stage in their favour, that is part of their efforts toward the encounter itself, and should be rewarded in full.

[Zancloufer]

Considering the amount of (in game) time and money spent on killing that bear don't see why they shouldn't get full EXP. Heck depending on how much (in game) effort was spent I might even round up the EXP gained from 900 to 1000 to represent how much work and effort they put in.