Handling experience awards

[Learn34]

So I'm in a bit of a pickle when it come to dolling out XP awards for the fights my party get into. The specific steps of calculating experience awards in the DMG make it clear that players are only supposed to get experience for those challenges which they help overcome/defeat. The problem this leads to is that party buffers get more experience than beatsticks, because the buffer gets a share of everyone's xp, while the beatsticks only get a cut of the monster(s) they hack at.

In my party, this has led to sore feelings on the part of those players who chose beatsticks and/or are otherwise only hitting one thing at a time, and in general pushed most of the players to focus more on trying to game the XP award system rather than make the best tactical decisions (e.g. Player A healing Player C, who's taken barely a scratch, to get a cut of the XP from all the monsters that player helped defeat INSTEAD of healing the dying NPC right next to them.)

I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster, mainly because one of the PCs wasn't contributing to fights and I cannot punish that enough. While that PC has notably died and been replaced by a Marshal+OtherStuff (thereby passively buffing the party), I still hold to the principle that players should be rewarded commensurate with their contribution.

Does anyone have an alternate XP award system that doesn't involve GM subjectivity, punishes non-contributive players, and is simpler than the DMG's default (i.e. doesn't require me to track every single players actions), or am I just screwed by my intransigence here?

Does anyone

[BaronDoctor]

Out of game problems (disinterest in combat) should be dealt with via out of game conversations about expectations. Trying to resolve these sorts of issues with in-game solutions is going to cause lots of unintended problems and a lot of ill-feeling.

The fact that you feel you want to punish certain behaviors rather than understanding their source and what your players want suggests a certain degree of incompatibility of expectations and desires and having a conversation about THAT will do more than any XP system ever will.

[Elves]

I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster,
That's how it's intended dude. If they were in the encounter they get an equal XP cut.


mainly because one of the PCs wasn't contributing to fights and I cannot punish that enough.
This is a problem you need to talk to the player about. Don't use ingame solutions for out of game problems. But if it has to be an XP penalty, penalize them, don't also punish everyone else.

[King of Nowhere]

In my party, this has led to sore feelings on the part of those players who chose beatsticks and/or are otherwise only hitting one thing at a time, and in general pushed most of the players to focus more on trying to game the XP award system rather than make the best tactical decisions (e.g. Player A healing Player C, who's taken barely a scratch, to get a cut of the XP from all the monsters that player helped defeat INSTEAD of healing the dying NPC right next to them.)

I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster,


so, if character A is more powerful than character B, and therefore capable of contributing more, you will reward A by making it even more powerful, and you will punish B by making it even weaker in comparison. Yes, that's a great way to fix unequal contribution problems!
By the same principle, you should also consider breaking the legs of runners who are lagging behind and expect them to run faster afterwards.


Does anyone have an alternate XP award system that doesn't involve GM subjectivity, punishes non-contributive players, and is simpler than the DMG's default

Do you even realize what you're asking?
how are you even going to measure objectively the contribution of anyone?
So, buffer gives everyone a +1 to every hit roll, and he gets experience for every monster. but he gets the same experience as the fighter guy who dealt every single hit point of damage to the same monster? shouldn't the guy who dealt more damage be rewarded more? but wait, how about the guy who tanked attack? the guy who debuffed the monster? if a guy tried to attack and failed to hit for bad luck, are you going to punish him by also not giving xp? how about the guy who failed to contribute because the encounter played against his weaknesses?
there is no objective way to measure and reward any of that. and you are not only asking for it, but you also want it to be simple.


or am I just screwed by my intransigence here?


yes. absolutely.

all you are doing is setting up perverse incentives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive). and the only players you are actually punishing are those that are trying to contribute to the party instead of gaming the reward system. I can't imagine anything worse a rule could achieve

EDIT: see also goodhart's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law):
"All metrics of scientific evaluation are bound to be abused. Goodhart's law [...] states that when a feature of the economy [swap economy for contribution to fight for your case] is picked as an indicator of the economy, then it inexorably ceases to function as that indicator because people start to game it."

[Learn34]

That's how it's intended dude. If they were in the encounter they get an equal XP cut.

Go read the actual steps for calculating XP awards for players in the DMG(p37). It specifically says that for each player, I check the CR of each creature that specific player helped defeat, compare the Player ECL to creature CR, find base xp award in lookup table and divide by number of people in party. Sum the results and you get 1 players xp reward for an encounter. So, as I said in this initial post, RAW players only get XP for the challenges they specifically overcome.


Out of game problems (disinterest in combat) should be dealt with via out of game conversations about expectations. The fact that you feel you want to punish certain behaviors rather than understanding their source and what your players want suggests a certain degree of incompatibility of expectations and desires and having a conversation about THAT will do more than any XP system ever will.

I speak and work alongside all my players on a near-daily basis. I and other players unhappy with Player A's lack of contribution have spoken to him outside of game, repeatedly. He just isn't willing to put his character in any danger or engage with the mechanics (he isn't even willing to build his own character, that's been done by another PC & friend of his). Were the larger social/community situation different, I'd just kick him because the kind of game I'm running (RAW-focused 3.5, currently EtCR) is not one that's actually up his ally (anti(or at least uber-simple)-mechanics/TotM play with an emphasis on social manipulation and/or joke characters e.g. a greatsword-wielding rogue with lots of bells on him). As-is, that's not an option, and so I have to balance/congel a table which consists of:

the aforementioned Player A,
Player B(rules are nice but shouldn't get in the way of his fusion LoTR/gritty historical reenactment where each party member does only 1 job[incidentally, this is the guy who builds Player A's characters])
Players C&D (Blizzard IP veterans with relatively little TTRPG experience), &
Player E(new to TTRPGs and/or RPGs in general, currently playing a psychedelic Evoker[Fire]-Wizard)


so, if character A is more powerful than character B, and therefore capable of contributing more,...how are you even going to measure objectively the contribution of anyone
Volume of contribution is not referenced in the DMG's award system, only a binary distinction. Literally any mechanical engagement with the encounter is contribution. Aid Another? Yep. Provide Flanking? Yep. Get Punched in the Face? Yep. Pick a lock/open a window so the party can escape/sidestep the encounter? Just about exactly the example given by the DMG for how overcoming an encounter does not necessitate killing monsters. What I'm trying to avoid is ad-hoc modifications of "everybody gets a cut of everything", which ended up worse for the part of the party fighting a smaller group of enemies.


if a guy tried to attack and failed to hit for bad luck, are you going to punish him by also not giving xp? If he never hit, threatens, distracts, or otherwise mechanically interacts with the encounter (e.g. an archer who misses every shot)? Yes, I would deny him XP for the encounter, exactly as the rules state. Note that a melee at least provides punching bag & threatens an area, potentially negating the need to hit anything.


how about the guy who failed to contribute because the encounter played against his weaknesses? That would be the price of building an ineffectual character, and/or be an opportunity for those with specialized capabilities to shine and catch up on some xp.


all you are doing is setting up perverse incentives...EDIT: see also goodhart's law: Yes thank you I didn't create this post specifically because I already recognized that as a problem and was looking for a solution which would not just p***-off the other chunk of my table who do contribute to encounters.

[King of Nowhere]

Yes thank you I didn't create this post specifically because I already recognized that as a problem and was looking for a solution which would not just p***-off the other chunk of my table who do contribute to encounters.

And we are all telling you, there is no solution, at least not in an xp reward system. i linked goodhart's law specifically because it states that there is no possible reward system that would not encourage gaming the system instead of actually contributing to the fight.
As for applying the rules by the letters, the very first thing the dmg says is that rules must be judged with a bit of salt. i believe the part about contributing is meant to apply to players who were in another room during the fight, or who run away as soon as they saw the monster.

so, let's try to solve the problem of your players not contributing? why do they not contribute?
- maybe they have a bad build. in which case the proper course is teaching them to build their character better.
- perhaps they have bad strategy. again, the proper course is to teach them
- on the other hand, they could be casual players not interested in taking an advanced course in charOP. Or perhaps they are in it for the lulz, and they don't care about being effective. In which case the question is, are the other players ok with it? you mentioned in your opening post that the guy not contributing irritates you, but you did not specify if it irritates the other players. if the rest of the table is fine, let them be. if there is a schism, then it means some people in the group have different gaming styles. in which case the whole group needs a long talk, in the end of which someone has to compromise their style, or has to leave the group.

trying to punish people who do not conform to your expected gaming style has no chances of working. if they are ineffective for lack of skill, punishing their characters does nothing to make them more skilled at building. if they do not want to contribute more, they may play more seriously or they may leave. which is exactly the same outcome that talking would have had, except that talking is faster and causes less hard feelings.

finally, if you really are set on setting up xp rewards, then there really is no better system than using your personal judgment on a case-by-case basis. you may not like doing that, but i'm pretty sure you can tell easily who's contributing and who isn't, and this way at least there will be no incentive to gaming the system, or to do stupid actions just to get a "contribution" point.

[Elves]

Your question is if your stubbornness on this is causing a problem. You have yourself noticed that it is. There's a reason most people don't play this way.

XP awards are described on a per-character basis because the party may include people of different levels, not out of a philosophical commitment to some very specific idea of "fair contribution".

Certainly, in an encounter with multiple creatures or additional elements like traps, etc, helping to defeat any portion of it contributes to defeating the other portions of it.

[Thurbane]

Agree with everyone else: if you have a player who is not contributing to combat, and it's not because the character is incapable of doing so, then it's not something XP penalties or other in-game solutions are likely to fix.

If you're already talked to the player about this, and haven't reached a solution, it sounds like the type of game that player enjoys is not compatible with your group.

If you try to mange it with XP penalties, all you'll end up with is a character that still doesn't contribute, and is less able to do so and more likely to die due to lagging behind in levels. I'm not sure that would really achieve anything...unless you are trying to persuade the player to leave the group by becoming disenfranchised after multiple character deaths?

[Remuko]

Youre interpreting the exp rules wrong. the party overcomes challenges together. they all help defeat an encounter just be existing there. punishing player/character for being unable to contribute will only make the problem worse.

[Troacctid]

Go read the actual steps for calculating XP awards for players in the DMG(p37). It specifically says that for each player, I check the CR of each creature that specific player helped defeat, compare the Player ECL to creature CR, find base xp award in lookup table and divide by number of people in party. Sum the results and you get 1 players xp reward for an encounter. So, as I said in this initial post, RAW players only get XP for the challenges they specifically overcome.
Here's what it actually says.

Only characters who take part in an encounter should gain the commensurate awards. Characters who died before the encounter took place, or did not participate for some other reason, earn nothing, even if they are raised or healed later on.
It's clear that participation is determined on a per-encounter basis, not a per-monster basis. But even if it were on a per-monster basis, a fighter who singlehandedly takes on a minotaur as the rest of the party battles three gnoll warriors has contributed significantly to the latters' defeat by drawing the minotaur away so that everyone else is free to attack the gnolls without being gored.

[Thurbane]

I would also argue that all characters present during a fight have "contributed" by being there, simply by offering more targets to enemies to divide their attacks.

Bob the Rogue hanging off to one side and not hitting anyone during a fight is not the same a Bob hanging out down at the tavern miles away while the rest of the party fights...

[Fizban]

I would also argue that all characters present during a fight have "contributed" by being there, simply by offering more targets to enemies to divide their attacks.
Exactly. The meatshield contributes by getting hit (channeling attacks into a single more well-defended point, increasing the efficiency of healing and other resources). Even non-meatshields can get in the way and force enemies to spread their attacks rather than focusing a single party member down. And even if none of your class features work, you can try aid another, tripping, grappling, or be the person activating miscelaneous magic items.


The real problem here isn't the xp rules saying someone shouldn't get xp. It's the fact that the whole group agrees that a particular player is not contributing to the game, and yet for some reason won't just kick them. The solution to a problem player that won't change their behavior is to remove the problem player.

[RNightstalker]

So I'm in a bit of a pickle when it come to dolling out XP awards for the fights my party get into. The specific steps of calculating experience awards in the DMG make it clear that players are only supposed to get experience for those challenges which they help overcome/defeat. The problem this leads to is that party buffers get more experience than beatsticks, because the buffer gets a share of everyone's xp, while the beatsticks only get a cut of the monster(s) they hack at.

In my party, this has led to sore feelings on the part of those players who chose beatsticks and/or are otherwise only hitting one thing at a time, and in general pushed most of the players to focus more on trying to game the XP award system rather than make the best tactical decisions (e.g. Player A healing Player C, who's taken barely a scratch, to get a cut of the XP from all the monsters that player helped defeat INSTEAD of healing the dying NPC right next to them.)

I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster, mainly because one of the PCs wasn't contributing to fights and I cannot punish that enough. While that PC has notably died and been replaced by a Marshal+OtherStuff (thereby passively buffing the party), I still hold to the principle that players should be rewarded commensurate with their contribution.

Does anyone have an alternate XP award system that doesn't involve GM subjectivity, punishes non-contributive players, and is simpler than the DMG's default (i.e. doesn't require me to track every single players actions), or am I just screwed by my intransigence here?

Does anyone

I have an alternate system of DMing for you if you're interested: STOP LOOKING TO PUNISH PLAYERS!

If you'd go back and read what you posted, there's a crap ton of talk about punishing players and getting screwed by your misunderstanding of the EXP rewards. Last I checked the cardinal rule of playing any game is having fun. It's going to be hard to do that with such a focus of punishing players. Rewarding desired behavior always works better than punishing undesired behavior.

[Kelb_Panthera]

So I'm in a bit of a pickle when it come to dolling out XP awards for the fights my party get into. The specific steps of calculating experience awards in the DMG make it clear that players are only supposed to get experience for those challenges which they help overcome/defeat. The problem this leads to is that party buffers get more experience than beatsticks, because the buffer gets a share of everyone's xp, while the beatsticks only get a cut of the monster(s) they hack at.

As others have pointed out. This is not just wrong but wrong-headed. It can only go exactly one way in the long-run; a gap opens up between PC levels and makes planning encounters that are challenging and fun for everybody increasingly difficult until, eventually, it becomes impossible. That aside, others have pointed out how you've outright misinterpreted the text. XP is awarded for overcoming challenges. The combat challenge, by far the most common, has step by step on how to generate XP for the party as a whole and then explicitly tells you to divide it -evenly- amongst the PCs.

DMG2 and a numer of other official and unofficial sources will all tell you the same; if a PC is present for an encounter and not completely insensate for the whole thing, give them an equal share of the xp for that challenge being overcome.


In my party, this has led to sore feelings on the part of those players who chose beatsticks and/or are otherwise only hitting one thing at a time, and in general pushed most of the players to focus more on trying to game the XP award system rather than make the best tactical decisions (e.g. Player A healing Player C, who's taken barely a scratch, to get a cut of the XP from all the monsters that player helped defeat INSTEAD of healing the dying NPC right next to them.)

This surprises you? Have you never played an MMO or a looter-shooter online? Any resource that's not or can't be evenly distributed will have players fighting each other over it and bitter feelings will abound whenever someone doesn't get what -they- think is their rightful reward. Doesn't matter that everyone had an equal shot at it, doesn't matter that you feel like you or they contributed more or less than the other guy, it just gets everybody irked. Since those are internet randos, nobody really cares. In a hyper-social game like D&D where everybody has to arrange their schedules and actually knows each other? Why don't you just gather up for a fight-club. Actually beating the tar out of each other would probably cause less bad blood.


I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster, mainly because one of the PCs wasn't contributing to fights and I cannot punish that enough. While that PC has notably died and been replaced by a Marshal+OtherStuff (thereby passively buffing the party), I still hold to the principle that players should be rewarded commensurate with their contribution.

Hold right the hell up there, bub. Punishing -anybody- that's not in your direct charge ain't your job. You're not his parent, you're not his supervisor (I hope), and you're not his parole officer. Life lessons are not for you to teach him, especially over an elves and sorcerers game. Either you're willing to accomodate your player's wants with your game or you're not. If you're not, show him the door. You're not doing him, yourself, or anyone else at the table any favors by keeping someone there on a mutually distasteful sense of some social obligation.


Does anyone have an alternate XP award system that doesn't involve GM subjectivity,

No. Of course not. It's simply not possible to have any kind of abstract award system like XP that isn't handed out at the GM's discretion unless you -only- want to hand it out for killing monsters and split it evenly amongst everyone present. This -will- create perverse incentives that lead to you basically playing a table-top version of Diablo. If that's what you want, I think there's a d20 diablo supplement floating around in the 3rd party aether.


punishes non-contributive players,

This, however, shouldn't even be a consideration. If you feel the need to punish -players- for anything, you've already taken a severe misstep somewhere and need to start backtracking ASAP. Punish PCs for making legitimately stupid tactical or strategic decisions (no "you didn't read my mind so now you're screwed" crap) if that's the kind of game you want but the players are your social peers, not your students in life.


and is simpler than the DMG's default (i.e. doesn't require me to track every single players actions),

You're doing that because of a severe misinterpretation not because it's what the game rules actually tell you to do. The game devs are on record all over the place as saying almost exactly the opposite. That aside, your second desire above is in -direct- conflict with this one. Pick one or the other, you can't have both. And by that, I mean pick this one because the other is outright toxic behavior.


or am I just screwed by my intransigence here?

Yes. Quite rightfully so in the apparently unanimous opinion of the thread.


Now for something that might actually help rather than just telling you off, no matter how well warranted, I'm going to suggest a different way to look at this equation that might make the intended method more palatable for you.

What is XP? It's an abstraction and mechanization of the idea that people learn through experience, thus "experience points." This is necessary because a game without a sense of growth becomes stale pretty quickly and if that growth is fundamentally arbitrary then it doesn't feel earned, voiding its appeal. Milestone leveling is a thing and I'll circle back around to that at the end.

So now we know what XP is and why we have it. Now you have to consider when and why to award it.

In this game the why is pretty explicitly "for overcoming challenges." That's not necessarily killing monsters. It's setting and achieving a goal in a given encounter. Sometimes that -is- killing the monsters but sometimes it's just escaping from them with your skin, safely navigating through a hazardous environment, outmaneuvering a foe in a verbal conflict, or recovering the macguffin whether the gaurdian creatures/ traps are destroyed/disabled or not. This does require some degree of GM judgement.

When then becomes a fairly simple matter; when the goal of a given encounter is achieved. You can make it binary, they either did or didn't achieve their intended goal and thus either recieve or don't recieve their XP award.

Personally, I like to give a partial reward if secondary goals are achieved. In the typical combat encounter the goal is "kill the monsters" but there's also a secondary goal of "walk away from the encounter stll breathing." I'll give full xp for the former and half for the latter, should they fail at the former, most of the time. IMO, this is a solid reflection of the principle of learning from failure without creating the perverse incentive that you gain more from failing in the gaming sense despite the fact people often learn more from their failures than their successes.

Moving on, there's -who- to award and this is the part that's got you messed up.

You don't have to be an active participant to learn from an experience. Merely witnessing a thing such that you can derive information from what you have seen can also contribute to growth.

Look at any fighter looking back on tapes of his or his opponents' fights. They're very much experiencing those fights as they watch them even though they're not currently participating in one. Spotting their own or the other guy's mistakes, learning to close up their own gaps and spot the foes' are all invaluable and, honestly, easier to do from outside observation than trying to figure it out on the fly while somebody's trying to punch you in the face. Back to the game; this same principle can be applied to seeing, for example, how a bugbear fights and what strategies they use while fighting or how the rogue goes about both pin-pointing a trap's trigger mechanism and what he looks for when he decides to start checking for them in the first place. Just because you're hanging back while the fighter mops-up the bugbear or the rogue deftly bypasses mechanisms you don't really understand doesn't mean there was nothing there for you to learn.

Since you -can- be learning by merely being present for an encounter you should recieve -some- amount of XP even if you never had to make any roll or checks yourself.

Now for some complications:

killing your first bugbear -should- be a bigger learning experience than killing your 5th. Unless you hit a level up in between, though, you'll get the same for both. The reason for this is two-fold; modeling diminishing returns on an encounter-by-encounter basis would be tedious in the extreme and almost certainly lead to severe plateauing. Plateus are bad game design since they stop, however temporarily, that sense of growth that keeps you coming back for more of the game. Tedium is a death-knell for a game and this system is complex enough that it's already so tough to avoid that a number of rules get outright tossed by a substantial number of groups. You would not believe how many groups look at actually managing WBL or carry capacity and just say "nope. Not doin' that." A fair number even say that about XP itself and I'll wrap up on that matter after a bit more.

By the same token, merely observing an encounter would probably be less of a learning experience, provided you're totally safe from it, than being an active participant but zero XP certainly isn't appropriate.

Because these complications don't lead to anything good for the game itself, never mind the intra-personal dynamics they can create, they're simply laid aside.

Everyone who participates in an encounter, even if it's to a manifestly lesser degree than some other participant just gets an equal share anyway. If things are being handled properly, the number of encounters where any PC can't meaningfully contribute should be both relatively rare and distributed roughly evenly amongst all party members. For simplicity's sake, we say that any XP they get that might rightfullly be in excess of what they -should- be getting logically for a given encounter is made up for in encounters where they do the lion's share and others cannot contribute.

By keeping everybody on -roughly- equal XP footing, they level at approximately the same time and stay at relatively similar power levels to one another. This makes your job as a GM in actually building encounters that are both fun and challenging -way- easier than it would be with a spread of several levels between different PCs.


Which brings me to milestone leveling. While I personally like the relatively objective standard presented by XP awards, and some system esoterica were built on the idea that some things are potent enough to warrant either being restricted in their use with a cost that has great psychological weight or even the legitimate cost of actually slowing a character's progression somewhat, there is an argument to be made for having the PCs level together on achievement of major plot-oriented goals rather than trying to model personal growth to a more nuanced degree: simplicity. This is a -monstrously- complex gaming system. So much so that it's easy for aspects that are less exciting to the minds of some groups to become excess fat in need of trimming. Anything that doesn't contribute enough to either the fun of playing or the reward of growth can find itself on the chopping-block if it doesn't twist the meta too much. This is usually minutiae that take a while to tabulate, and require some degree of enjoyment to be derived from resource-management itself. XP is no exception.

For many groups, the XP system as-is and a milestone system aren't functionally different. Since no one is willing to actually spend XP and level loss is too severe a penalty to actually inflict on a PC because the psychological weight of such a loss is unbearable, everyone ends up leveling at the same time anyway and this often coincides with "boss fights" that accompany major plot-points as well. There's simply no point to tracking points in the thousands, encounter by encounter, if you can just cut to the chase and say "you defeated the baron's plot. Everyone gains a level."

It's not to my taste but I understand it.

Hopefully, this will get you looking at this matter in a new light. If not; well, hey, I tried.

[Max Caysey]

I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster, mainly because one of the PCs wasn't contributing to fights and I cannot punish that enough. While that PC has notably died and been replaced by a Marshal+OtherStuff (thereby passively buffing the party), I still hold to the principle that players should be rewarded commensurate with their contribution.

While I think this is a very bad choice as a DM, . I don't mean to be a jerk but this make very little sense to me... Either give them exp or don't! And if you choose don't, then good luck keeping your players... Your system will eventually make some players different levels, and I think that as a whole make for some bad DM'ing.

If I were you, I would give them all an equal share of the exp, as long as the players were in the local and thus had to roll initiative. If your players aren't choosing to participate, maybe that's on you... maybe you've let them make a character that does not fit the setting/scenario/campaign to the detriment of the player. I have build social characters or stealth characters who did not hit or attack enemies, but supported the group by stealing equipment or got who got favors and stuff. I basically went into total defence and waited for the others to kill the enemies while I did my thing... which was not attacking. If my DM told me he wouldn't award me exp because I didn't attack I would have been out of there.

If the player refuses to participate in the game on a more general level, then simply ask that person whats up, and if you can't come to an agreement let that person go... your whole "i need to punish my players" is just a really bad idea. If you need to punish a player, that player should not be in your group...

[Crake]

Here's what it actually says.

It's clear that participation is determined on a per-encounter basis, not a per-monster basis. But even if it were on a per-monster basis, a fighter who singlehandedly takes on a minotaur as the rest of the party battles three gnoll warriors has contributed significantly to the latters' defeat by drawing the minotaur away so that everyone else is free to attack the gnolls without being gored.

This is probably the most succinct explanation of how the xp rules ACTUALLY work, and I fully agree with this statement.

[Tiktakkat]

I stopped bothering with xp calculations and just tell the players know when it is time for them to level up, typically at the end of an adventure section. Saves time and effort on something that contributes virtually nothing to the game experience, along with bypassing the item crafting issue and similar mixed level calculations.

As for whether players contribute "enough" and whether I should be "punishing" them for essentially not playing the game the "right" way, not only do I agree with others that such is a out of game issue, but I would also suggest it is a DM issue, and can be "fixed" by including more encounters that allow such a player to contribute more. Do recall that the guidelines also permit xp for non-combat encounters and successes. If a non-combat contributing player is soloing those encounters, then overall calculations should even out.

Or, you know, just not bother and leave the judgments as to when the group as a whole has done "enough" - combat and non-combat - to merit leveling up. You could even use the time saved doing individual xp calculations to design those alternative encounters, so win-win and all that.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

So I'm in a bit of a pickle when it come to dolling out XP awards for the fights my party get into. The specific steps of calculating experience awards in the DMG make it clear that players are only supposed to get experience for those challenges which they help overcome/defeat. The problem this leads to is that party buffers get more experience than beatsticks, because the buffer gets a share of everyone's xp, while the beatsticks only get a cut of the monster(s) they hack at.

I need to ask about this.

Party of 4 characters get into an encounter with 6 monsters (all at the same CR).

Character A casts Haste on the whole party, plus damages some of the monsters.

Character B deals damage to three monsters.

Character C deals damage to four monsters.

Character D deals damage to two monsters.

Every one of those characters should get an equal share of the experience for that whole encounter.

Character C isn't going to get twice as much XP than character D because he injured twice as many monsters. That's absurd. That gets players in the mindset that they need to go around and tag every mob at least once like they're playing WoW.

The party is a team, the team defeated the encounter with a team effort, the whole team gets all the xp evenly. Chances are the issues you've described are a direct result of your unfair xp distribution in the first place.

[Thurbane]

We used to run some of our 1E games on a similar basis - not sure if it was the official rule at the time, or just house rules. You only got XP for a fight if you inflicted or received damage.

Which led to ludicrous situations where a character would sit out combat until the last round or two, then run in front of a monster inviting a hit. :smallfrown:

[Learn34]

/sigh. Seeing as this is not dying as I'd hoped it would by not responding, I'll see about closing this out:

1) Seeing as I and all of my players, who are all engineers whose jobs rely on being able to correctly read & write both legalese and processes, agree that how I have described the XP system in the DMG is correct, y'all aren't going to convince me otherwise. The normal, even-distribution of XP is definitely RAI and a good way to do things, but not RAW.

2) On perverse incentives, XP, and power-gaps:
I KNOW. I had hoped for something that could either obfuscate the mechanics to my players or otherwise automate the task, but apparently that's not an option absent switching to a digital system and writing my own XP algorithm.

As for the power gap: I have that even without level differences as a result of (recurring theme here) nigh-incompatible gaming cultures at a single table. Prior to Player A's PC death, I had a rogue 6(Player A) and [Goliath, Battle-Jumping, Spike-Chain-Tripping WhirlingFrenzyBarb1/PugilistFighter1/Warblade3](Player C) in the same party. I explicitly encouraged the latter path at session 0. I told them to build powerful characters, that the game world would be mostly Status Quo and any tailoring would be targeted at their weaknesses

3) On me being a bad DM for trying to get one player to actually participate:
The current social situation is such that I cannot kick this player. Where I not running a module, I'd be baking up social encounters/skill challenges for most sessions so he'd be getting his style of play in. None of the people at the table are willing to tell him he's got to figure out something else to do every other Friday, but they all also want him to do something other than trying to roll diplomacy-as-NPC-mindcontrol, so I have limited levers with which to modify his behavior, and it falls to me to do so. The situation has in practice, if not in underlying theory, been resolved by building him a character which contributes without him having to actually do anything.

3.5) On me being a bad DM for wanting to punish a player for not engaging: Whether talking to a person away from the table or modulating rewards/encounters in-game, the intent & mechanism is the same: apply negative stimuli (peer pressure/XP penalties) to modify behavior. That's punishment. I will concede that I need to check the anger I would feel as a player and address this in a less antagonistic manner.


I'll leave this around so y'all can continue to talk amongst yourselves, but literally none of you have been helpful in resolving this conundrum. I did not need an essay on the philosophy around XP systems and rewards, though I respect and appreciate the effort that went into writing it. I needed either a way to pull the curtain back over the Wizard of Oz or a way to incentivize someone who frankly has no business playing 3.5 to engage in encounters. As mentioned, the solution ended up being to make him a character which contributes by existing and has enough AC that he thinks he won't get hit. With everyone contributing to encounters, I can go back to the easy mode of using any of the online encounter calculators.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

That approach is both nonsensical and completely immersion-breaking. Furthermore, by helping to defeat a given monster, a character has prevented that monster from attacking the rest of the party, thus entitling them to a share of the xp rewards from the monsters those characters defeated. It works the same way as healing a party member for a few points, instead of reacting to the damage the monsters dealt, they're proactively preventing those monsters from defeating the other party members.

The DMG says to treat encounters and those who participate in the encounter as a single entity, not give individual rewards for those monsters who PCs damaged. It does say on page 37 that PCs who don't participate in an encounter at all, or who died before it took place (not during it), gain no reward from that encounter. It has instructions per individual character in case characters aren't equal levels and would get different xp totals:

Four characters, at levels 6, 7, 8, and 9 respectively.
Six opponents, two each at CR 3, 4, and 5.

The 6th level character gains one-fourth of the xp for their level: (600+600+900+900+1200+1200)/4= 1350 xp.
The 7th level character gains one-fourth of the xp for their level: (525+525+700+700+1050+1050)/4= 1137 xp.
The 8th level character gains one-fourth of the xp for their level: (400+400+600+600+800+800)/4= 900 xp.
The 9th level character gains one-fourth of the xp for their level: (338+338+450+450+675+675)/4= 731 xp.

[King of Nowhere]

1) Seeing as I and all of my players, who are all engineers whose jobs rely on being able to correctly read & write both legalese and processes, agree that how I have described the XP system in the DMG is correct, y'all aren't going to convince me otherwise. The normal, even-distribution of XP is definitely RAI and a good way to do things, but not RAW.


perhaps you are not native english speaker and your manual is translated (poorly) in another language? because that's the only explanation i can come up with why your DMG apparently contradicts my dmg.
but given that there are many rules lawyer in this forum, and yet this is the first time i ever heard your specific ruling, i can safely say that there is something wrong with your dmg.

regardless, the dmg says that if you drown a character, after a certain number of rounds he'll be brought to 0 hp. so, you take an unconscious character below 0 hp, you start drowning it, he will heal. that's pure RAW. which proves you cannot and should not try to follow strict legalese interpretation of raw.

[Kelb_Panthera]

perhaps you are not native english speaker and your manual is translated (poorly) in another language? because that's the only explanation i can come up with why your DMG apparently contradicts my dmg.
but given that there are many rules lawyer in this forum, and yet this is the first time i ever heard your specific ruling, i can safely say that there is something wrong with your dmg.

regardless, the dmg says that if you drown a character, after a certain number of rounds he'll be brought to 0 hp. so, you take an unconscious character below 0 hp, you start drowning it, he will heal. that's pure RAW. which proves you cannot and should not try to follow strict legalese interpretation of raw.

That's not legalese. It's (poorly written) computer code. Legal handling requires respect for precedent and intent of both the legislature and the parties in legal dispute.

Almost nobody that gets called a rules lawyer actually argues like a lawyer*. They argue like a coder and the person they disagree with is a machine in severe need of debugging.

*well, they do seem to follow one old lawyers' adage; "If you've got 'em on the facts, pound the facts. If you've got 'em on the law, pound the law. If you've got 'em on neither, pound the table." Lotta table pounding gets done on internet forums.

[Learn34]

Nah, been speaking English my whole life, you're just (erroneously) giving precedence to a descriptive summary paragraph rather than the enumerated steps of a processes.

4. Divide the base XP award by the number of characters in the party. This is the amount of XP that one character
receives for helping defeat that monster.
5. Add up all the XP awards for all the monsters the character helped defeat.


Quote from DMG p37, left-hand column. Emphasis mine. If I gave a technician a test procedure and they gave precedence to the plain-english descriptive summary over the actual process steps, I'd have to get another tech to run the procedure again. (If I or someone on my program approved a procedure based on said descriptive paragraph, rather than the exact process steps, we'd have just wasted a gob-smacking volume of money.)

If step 5 said "Add up all the XP awards for all the monsters in the encounter" we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

We can debating the meaning of "helped defeat" but I already said that literally any mechanical interaction counts. Running away and hiding until the fight is over withuot ever interacting with the enemies (even visually, given prevailing environmental conditions in the module I'm running) does not count.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Right, so if character A gets a cut of a monster's XP because they healed character B who's fighting that monster, then character C who prevented a second monster from going and teaming up on character B helped character B enough to get a cut of that as well. And character B stopping his monster from going after character C gets a cut of his monster's XP. Because unless combat is a 1-on-1 duel, it's a team effort that should be rewarded as such.

[An Enemy Spy]

I love how you come in asking for help with a problem, people tell you how to fix it, and you get mad because you can't stand to be told you're doing something wrong. Everyone here is trying to help you out and you're taking it as an insulkt to your intelligence.

[Thurbane]

I love how you come in asking for help with a problem, people tell you how to fix it, and you get mad because you can't stand to be told you're doing something wrong. Everyone here is trying to help you out and you're taking it as an insulkt to your intelligence.

Honestly, the OPs reading of how to calculate XP is different to what appears to be everyone else on the forum, and everyone else I've played 3.5 with IRL.

It seems like the advice OP is looking for is to calculate XP the way the rest of us do, which should cause less player friction or dissatisfaction.

On the other hand, though, OP doesn't wants characters who contributed less to get an equal share of the XP, so I'm honestly not sure what else could be suggested?

[rel]

So, if I understand correctly, you want to have different party members getting different levels of XP to reward certain behaviors?

You could just do that.
Define the problem behaviors and your XP system in session zero, then decide on XP for each session and apply a modifier based on PC behaviour.

e.g. For defeating the lord of dread, I'm awarding a base 2000XP to each party member.

For burning down the orphanage and killing the prisoners, Warlock Von Evilpants is given a .5 adjustment for a total of 1000xp

For cowering in a pocket dimension while summons do all the work, Angel Summoner is given a .1 adjustment for a total of 200XP

for spending the entirety of the adventure /dancing and trying to seduce random NPC's, Casa-gnome-ver the Bard is given a .2 adjustment for a total of 400XP

for ignoring the adventure, the other PC's and everything else and spending the session killing kobolds in the nearby mines Farmington Grindsalot the druid gets a .05 adjustment, 100XP

for playing a PHB only monk and general heroism Kung Fury gets a modifier of 5, 10,000XP

[RNightstalker]

Hopefully the OP will answer a clarifying question: the PC in question that wasn't contributing anything to the fights, were they not contributing because they didn't hit anything or always had crappy rolls, or did they just sit in the back and not even try to hit the bad guys?

[Max Caysey]

/sigh. Seeing as this is not dying as I'd hoped it would by not responding, I'll see about closing this out:

1) Seeing as I and all of my players, who are all engineers whose jobs rely on being able to correctly read & write both legalese and processes, agree that how I have described the XP system in the DMG is correct, y'all aren't going to convince me otherwise. The normal, even-distribution of XP is definitely RAI and a good way to do things, but not RAW.

2) On perverse incentives, XP, and power-gaps:
I KNOW. I had hoped for something that could either obfuscate the mechanics to my players or otherwise automate the task, but apparently that's not an option absent switching to a digital system and writing my own XP algorithm.

As for the power gap: I have that even without level differences as a result of (recurring theme here) nigh-incompatible gaming cultures at a single table. Prior to Player A's PC death, I had a rogue 6(Player A) and [Goliath, Battle-Jumping, Spike-Chain-Tripping WhirlingFrenzyBarb1/PugilistFighter1/Warblade3](Player C) in the same party. I explicitly encouraged the latter path at session 0. I told them to build powerful characters, that the game world would be mostly Status Quo and any tailoring would be targeted at their weaknesses

3) On me being a bad DM for trying to get one player to actually participate:
The current social situation is such that I cannot kick this player. Where I not running a module, I'd be baking up social encounters/skill challenges for most sessions so he'd be getting his style of play in. None of the people at the table are willing to tell him he's got to figure out something else to do every other Friday, but they all also want him to do something other than trying to roll diplomacy-as-NPC-mindcontrol, so I have limited levers with which to modify his behavior, and it falls to me to do so. The situation has in practice, if not in underlying theory, been resolved by building him a character which contributes without him having to actually do anything.

3.5) On me being a bad DM for wanting to punish a player for not engaging: Whether talking to a person away from the table or modulating rewards/encounters in-game, the intent & mechanism is the same: apply negative stimuli (peer pressure/XP penalties) to modify behavior. That's punishment. I will concede that I need to check the anger I would feel as a player and address this in a less antagonistic manner.


I'll leave this around so y'all can continue to talk amongst yourselves, but literally none of you have been helpful in resolving this conundrum. I did not need an essay on the philosophy around XP systems and rewards, though I respect and appreciate the effort that went into writing it. I needed either a way to pull the curtain back over the Wizard of Oz or a way to incentivize someone who frankly has no business playing 3.5 to engage in encounters. As mentioned, the solution ended up being to make him a character which contributes by existing and has enough AC that he thinks he won't get hit. With everyone contributing to encounters, I can go back to the easy mode of using any of the online encounter calculators.

Your interpretation of the exp system is just wrong, and its that error that is creating the situation your are in. Perpetuation your wrongful interpretation will perpatuate your poor experience ingame, by exacerbating the very thing equal exp is meant to mitigate. Its like you are actively trying not to rectify your own mistake.

I have no doubt you are a cleaver boy, but your interpretation of the rules for dealing out exp is wrong. Full Stop!

When you read the calculation example in the DMG, page 37... that exp are based on number of party member (equal share) and level. Its not difficult at all. If the character in question rolls initiative, and does not leave the battelfield as is run away, that character recieves exp as per the rules. You might not like that but its nontheless how it works in D&D 3.5.

[King of Nowhere]

Nah, been speaking English my whole life, you're just (erroneously) giving precedence to a descriptive summary paragraph rather than the enumerated steps of a processes.



or, to put it another way, you are intentionally ignoring a large part of the instructions.

[MoiMagnus]

4. Divide the base XP award by the number of characters in the party. This is the amount of XP that one character receives for helping defeat that monster.
5. Add up all the XP awards for all the monsters the character helped defeat.

So if I understand correctly your reading, if a party of 4 defeat a monster, but only one of the member attacked the monster of did anything you consider as "contributing", they win 1/4 of the XP and the remaining 3/4 are lost.

For me, that's pretty clear that there is an implicit rule that says that "every member in the party is considered as having helped the monster to be defeated".
But even if you don't acknowledge this implicit information, it's quite unambiguous that no character can win more than "total XP of the defeated monsters divided by number of characters in the party", even if they were the only person to contribute.

[Crake]

We can debating the meaning of "helped defeat" but I already said that literally any mechanical interaction counts. Running away and hiding until the fight is over withuot ever interacting with the enemies (even visually, given prevailing environmental conditions in the module I'm running) does not count.

I certainly don't imagine anyone disagrees with you on this point. Is this the sort of behavior your problem player is engaging in? Because such actions certainly don't warrant any xp gains on that PC's behalf, and I've docked xp for players actively not participating in this way before. If you're not even a part of the fight, you get no xp, I'm sure everyone agrees.

Now, if a player is actively disengaging from fights while the rest of the party engages, I'm not sure xp rewards are the right solution, it just seems like that character is fundamentally at odds with being a PC, they avoid risk and confrontation, and are more suited to be an NPC instead.

[zlefin]

So I'm in a bit of a pickle when it come to dolling out XP awards for the fights my party get into. The specific steps of calculating experience awards in the DMG make it clear that players are only supposed to get experience for those challenges which they help overcome/defeat. The problem this leads to is that party buffers get more experience than beatsticks, because the buffer gets a share of everyone's xp, while the beatsticks only get a cut of the monster(s) they hack at.

In my party, this has led to sore feelings on the part of those players who chose beatsticks and/or are otherwise only hitting one thing at a time, and in general pushed most of the players to focus more on trying to game the XP award system rather than make the best tactical decisions (e.g. Player A healing Player C, who's taken barely a scratch, to get a cut of the XP from all the monsters that player helped defeat INSTEAD of healing the dying NPC right next to them.)

I refuse to just dole out XP as if everyone contributed to every monster, mainly because one of the PCs wasn't contributing to fights and I cannot punish that enough. While that PC has notably died and been replaced by a Marshal+OtherStuff (thereby passively buffing the party), I still hold to the principle that players should be rewarded commensurate with their contribution.

Does anyone have an alternate XP award system that doesn't involve GM subjectivity, punishes non-contributive players, and is simpler than the DMG's default (i.e. doesn't require me to track every single players actions), or am I just screwed by my intransigence here?

Does anyone

for the most part you're screwed by your intransigence.
But if you want a simpler one, here's one:
Tally the XP for the whole encounter,
At end of the encounter, hold a vote amongst the party as to whether each player contributed. Each player gets a share of XP based on how many votes they get (eg if 2/5 vote they contributed, they get 40% xp).

It doesn't require DM subjectivity; and punishes anyone the party deems to have not contributed; and it doesn't require you to track player actions, and is overall a bit simpler.

[Xervous]

for the most part you're screwed by your intransigence.
But if you want a simpler one, here's one:
Tally the XP for the whole encounter,
At end of the encounter, hold a vote amongst the party as to whether each player contributed. Each player gets a share of XP based on how many votes they get (eg if 2/5 vote they contributed, they get 40% xp).

It doesn't require DM subjectivity; and punishes anyone the party deems to have not contributed; and it doesn't require you to track player actions, and is overall a bit simpler.

Why yes, we the board of directors approved raises for ourselves since we all did a great job. Yay us.

[Telonius]

This may not exactly be a popular way of handling it, but my group has thrown out XP altogether, and gone to a "milestone" system. After a particular point in the campaign (usually after a major fight), DM says, "Okay, everybody levels up now," and we level up.

Any "XP Cost" listed in the rules are converted to coins, 1 XP = 5 GP. (This is usually most important for item crafting, but also applies to some spells and other random things).

It saves a whole bunch of mathematical and social headaches on all sides.

(EDIT: Probably goes without saying, but multiclass XP penalty is not a thing at our table).

[BaronDoctor]

This may not exactly be a popular way of handling it, but my group has thrown out XP altogether, and gone to a "milestone" system. After a particular point in the campaign (usually after a major fight), DM says, "Okay, everybody levels up now," and we level up.

Any "XP Cost" listed in the rules are converted to coins, 1 XP = 5 GP. (This is usually most important for item crafting, but also applies to some spells and other random things).

It saves a whole bunch of mathematical and social headaches on all sides.

(EDIT: Probably goes without saying, but multiclass XP penalty is not a thing at our table).

I do this too. It's just easier this way, to be able to say "yeah, come back next time at level 8."

Fewer fiddly bits to track, especially if the logical intent of the fiddly bits is to create an expectation of "encounters should be about X difficult for a given party, and after about Y encounters of that difficulty you level. Any means of getting a total of X*Y encounter-difficulties will get you there as long as you're not abusing the system"

Even the Artificer Craft Reserve is easy enough to reskin as "a box of unique hides, inks, and materials useful in creating magic items but useless for any other purpose. As you level, some of the old inks dry out and the hides start to crack but you've found new ones in your adventures."

[Jay R]

A PC should get experience by the encounter, not by the individual monster. If five trolls attack the party, then each member of the party is threatened by each troll, even if that troll never actually engaged each PC.

If the party loses the encounter, and only one ice toad services, that toad will eat all the PCs, not just the one it engaged. So every ice toad is a threat to every PC.

In The Three Musketeers, when the Musketeers fight the Cardinal's Guards, one musketeer often comes to the aid of another. So no matter who they engaged first, the entire party of PCs is engaged with the entire party of enemies.

To make this clear, consider two fighters. One does 73 points of damage to one troll, killing it. The other does 4 points each to all five trolls. Obviously, the first fighter was far more instrumental in the party's victory over all the trolls, even though the second one dealt damage to more trolls.

Or consider the fighter who engages the hill giant, but through a series of poor rolls, fails to hit it. Nonetheless, he keeps that giant off the wizard, and so the wizard gets off all his spells. He was a crucial part of the victory.

The PCs should be allies; don't make them rivals. Specifically, don't make kill-stealing a boost for advancement.

[Thurbane]

I certainly don't imagine anyone disagrees with you on this point. Is this the sort of behavior your problem player is engaging in? Because such actions certainly don't warrant any xp gains on that PC's behalf, and I've docked xp for players actively not participating in this way before. If you're not even a part of the fight, you get no xp, I'm sure everyone agrees.

Exactly. If a PC dodges a combat altogether, and goes and hides or leaves the area without engaging the monsters at all, or being engaged by them, then it's totally fair and within the guidelines for that PC to get no XP for that encounter.

"Characters who died before the encounter took place, or did not participate for some other reason, earn nothing, even if they are raised or healed later on."

[Twurps]

I could hop on the bandwagon here, and try to explain how OP's reading the DMG wrong, but:
1) that bandwagon is getting enough traction as it is.
2) I really don't feel like spelling out the DMG to see if we actually do it 'right' when what we do works great for us.

So instead let me try and contribute with this approach:

@OP: first: let's assume you are right, your reading is correct and the way you hand out is how it is supposed to be done.
second: under this assumption, the 'right' way of doing things leads to some unwanted side effects, that you have experiences for yourself and have analyzed and understood pretty clearly.
third: Being an engineer I'm sure you can see the futility in doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Thus, continuing with the first point, will in the future lead to the second point.

That just leaves 1 question: Would you like to be right, or would you like to be happy/resolve the problem?

[Elkad]

I got skimmy towards the end of this, but for me it boils down to.

If someone isn't contributing to fights, then what's it matter if you give him the same XP to keep up with the rest of the party anyway? His new level won't contribute to the next fight either.

But I've likely handed this problem off to the players in perpetuity anyway by using Yahzi's (https://forums.giantitp.com/member.php?191902-Yahzi-Coyote) Tael system (XP is a physical commodity). I just give them a pile of XP with the rest of the loot, they decide themselves how to share it out.

[King of Nowhere]

this is what happens when a guideline is taken at strict grammatical value while ignoring its intent

[RNightstalker]

The PCs should be allies; don't make them rivals. Specifically, don't make kill-stealing a boost for advancement.

I actually played with a DM that only gave experience to the PC that landed the killing blow...so on a positive not this guy isn't that bad.


Honestly, the OPs reading of how to calculate XP is different to what appears to be everyone else on the forum, and everyone else I've played 3.5 with IRL.

It seems like the advice OP is looking for is to calculate XP the way the rest of us do, which should cause less player friction or dissatisfaction.



or, to put it another way, you are intentionally ignoring a large part of the instructions.



That just leaves 1 question: Would you like to be right, or would you like to be happy/resolve the problem?



If someone isn't contributing to fights, then what's it matter if you give him the same XP to keep up with the rest of the party anyway? His new level won't contribute to the next fight either.


Shhhhhhhhhhh!!!! What have I told y'all about trying to make sense?!

[Crake]

This may not exactly be a popular way of handling it, but my group has thrown out XP altogether, and gone to a "milestone" system. After a particular point in the campaign (usually after a major fight), DM says, "Okay, everybody levels up now," and we level up.

Any "XP Cost" listed in the rules are converted to coins, 1 XP = 5 GP. (This is usually most important for item crafting, but also applies to some spells and other random things).

It saves a whole bunch of mathematical and social headaches on all sides.

(EDIT: Probably goes without saying, but multiclass XP penalty is not a thing at our table).

The issue I've always felt with a milestone system as both a player and a DM is that it feels like it actively discourages players engaging in minor sub-plots, as they offer no real incentive beyond maybe some loot, but you'll get that elsewhere anyway, so it's irrelevant. It just leaves players beelining for major plot points.

That said, I've always had an issue with leveling as a progression path anyway, it's always felt like such a contrived barrier between players and the villain. "You must reach X level to continue the story" basically.

[rel]

You could make the main plot non-obvious, non-urgent or non-existent or provide special bonuses like magic items or custom powers through sub quests.

That should help incentivise a more rambling type of campaign.

[Zombimode]

That said, I've always had an issue with leveling as a progression path anyway, it's always felt like such a contrived barrier between players and the villain. "You must reach X level to continue the story" basically.

Yeah, this is not always an issue but it can definitely cause some awkwardness.

In my current RHoD campaign my players had the actually quite creative and reasonable idea to use whatever leverage they have over the Ghostlord for holding his phylactery to get him to cast Speak With Dead on the severed head of Regiarix to divine the location of the Fane of Tiamat. Their plan was then to be NOT present at the siege of Mitrix (the Brindol in my campaign) but instead go straight for Azar Khul. They were barely level 9 (two of them still level 8) at that time. But to have any chance to survive and defeat Azar Khul they would need to be at least level 10, better level 11.

Luckily I was able to use one of the NPC followers to point out that killing Azar Khul wont stop the Red Hands main army. While that is I think a reasonable point I definitely WAS scrambling for a way to goad them back to the Battle of Brindol.

[Kelenius]

I guess according to the method suggested by the OP, if a party of two level 20 paladins and a cleric are fighting two dragons, the cleric drops a single bless on them and chills for the rest of the combat, while each of the paladins soloes a dragon, the cleric contributed more than the paladins and should get more XP.

[martixy]

Don't.

Don't handle experience rewards in any way. Don't handle experience. Just tell your party to level up at the end of the adventure or the current campaign arc.


To address Crake, I feel like your problems with the idea are related more to the way you and your players play the game. Your whole post seems to hint at a distinct focus on beating the game. Or at least on the "game" aspect. Most players I've met get off more on the fantasy aspect - playing a specific character, going from zero to hero, engaging with the narrative, exploration of the setting. Among those, I've never met a single one who skipped on a plot because it didn't offer some meta reward or who thought of in terms of "leveling up so you can beat the end boss" (rather than say, "gaining more power or allies so we can kill the damsel and save the dragon/nation/world/...?").



for the most part you're screwed by your intransigence.

Thank you for this word.

[Learn34]

On the idea that it's okay to deny someone exp for hiding from the encounter, but not for running in at the last second to poke the single enemy that's still clinging to life:
IMO this is the same thing. I am not going to tell this player that he's not welcome at the table, nor am I going to say he cannot play the thing he wants, but I can and have said I'm not necessarily going to support it and use every tool in my tool box to modify his behavior until he's playing the same game as the rest of the table.

Elkad and zlefin is notably the only people who actually gave me an usable answer, so thanks to them for that. I'll propose Elkad's suggestion to the table this Friday, though I kinda think it'll turn into a bloodbath. Then again, the players may well reject my proposal to switch to that system. Milestones are definitely out as it denies players with LAs, item creation feats, and similar their due power (LA buyoff, self- or Unseen Crafter-built items, etc.)

On table attitudes regarding roleplay vs rollplay vs gameplay: The table is split with myself and 2 players being gameplayers before role/rollplayers, 1 even split game/roleplay, 1 almost-exclusively role/rollplay, and 1 new player.
As I have said repeatedly, I have multiple different cultures at this table. I have 1 player(Player E) new to RPGs in general, who is likely only here out of pandemic boredom/repeated invitations from a colleague who's also at the table. I have two players (C & D) in addition to myself who view this as a game first, narrative experience second. We come to D&D because it offers the possibility of a reactive narrative without railroads, but the minimum requirement is still designing a competent, objective/(mechanical-role)-oriented character. Player A is generally against mechanics beyond "Roll dice and add unchanging numbers" and has expressly said he doesn't like or want a character which grows or changes in any mechanical fashion. But I haven't seen him ever actually engaged in the role-play based character growth he claims to desire either (note that every other game I've played with him has been under player B as GM). And then Player B is only vaguely concerned with the rules, so despite having played 3.5 for a good chunk of his life he didn't understand how LA worked and had houserules like "metamagic is free and applies to everything". That went out the window as soon as I talked about slapping twin & maximize on Disintegrate, and playing with me has generally been akin to (from my perspective) getting thrown from the kiddy pool into the deep end. He's done admirably as a player(he's built all of player A's PCs and is currently a Dark Air Goblin [Custom, Sniper-inspired class]), but his lack of respect for the rules is why the last adventure our group was on under his auspices fell apart.

Side note: it was player B who introduced me to D&D in the first place ~ 3yrs ago.

[Tiktakkat]

To address Crake, I feel like your problems with the idea are related more to the way you and your players play the game. Your whole post seems to hint at a distinct focus on beating the game. Or at least on the "game" aspect. Most players I've met get off more on the fantasy aspect - playing a specific character, going from zero to hero, engaging with the narrative, exploration of the setting. Among those, I've never met a single one who skipped on a plot because it didn't offer some meta reward or who thought of in terms of "leveling up so you can beat the end boss" (rather than say, "gaining more power or allies so we can kill the damsel and save the dragon/nation/world/...?").

My players are happy to go for the meta-rewards, and I am happy to provide them.

The more they do those sidequests, some of which are not so "side", and otherwise interact with NPCs, the more they get free followers and castles and kingdoms and such, along with in-game explanations as to how they can get exposition dumps, resolve skill and feat based challenges without having the required skills or feats, get magic item access and upgrades, and similar things. While the meta-rewards themselves to do not provide power, not having to pump character resources into them effectively does.

It also helps that I have played with some players over 20 years now through multiple campaigns, and regularly refer to the achievements of past characters. Engaging a sidequest so your PC is the local ruler hiring the PCs in the next campaign does not provide any power at all, but it provides quite a bit of narrative reward.


Milestones are definitely out as it denies players with LAs, item creation feats, and similar their due power (LA buyoff, self- or Unseen Crafter-built items, etc.)

You can milestone an LA buyoff just as easily as you can milestone a level increase.
Likewise the xp required for item creation - or just convert it to extra gold cost.

[Elkad]

Elkad and zlefin is notably the only people who actually gave me an usable answer, so thanks to them for that. I'll propose Elkad's suggestion to the table this Friday, though I kinda think it'll turn into a bloodbath.

Which?
XP as a physical commodity?
They were stealing / hiding it from one another in the first session. One player hit L3 before anyone else got to L2.

I fully expect it to have character deaths at some point. Most likely is the 5 lagging behind kill the XP leader, but he might preempt it.

We tried milestones last time. Group consensus was they didn't like it.

[Learn34]

Which?
XP as a physical commodity?
They were stealing / hiding it from one another in the first session. One player hit L3 before anyone else got to L2.

Not quite. Admittedly I'm thinking more a fusion of XP as a commodity and what zlefin proposed: I precalc to total XP bounty through the normal method (assume everyone contributes to every monster), then once they're cleared, obviated, or otherwise "overcome" the encounter I say "Y'all get [] XP, you figure out how you want to distribute it via table/out-of-game discourse."

[Batcathat]

Not quite. Admittedly I'm thinking more a fusion of XP as a commodity and what zlefin proposed: I precalc to total XP bounty through the normal method (assume everyone contributes to every monster), then once they're cleared, obviated, or otherwise "overcome" the encounter I say "Y'all get [] XP, you figure out how you want to distribute it via table/out-of-game discourse."

While that sounds pretty interesting as a kind of social experiment, I don't expect it would end very well. Then again, I'm not the best at guessing people's responses to stuff and I'm honestly rather curious, so I kinda hope you do try it and report the result.

[King of Nowhere]

Not quite. Admittedly I'm thinking more a fusion of XP as a commodity and what zlefin proposed: I precalc to total XP bounty through the normal method (assume everyone contributes to every monster), then once they're cleared, obviated, or otherwise "overcome" the encounter I say "Y'all get [] XP, you figure out how you want to distribute it via table/out-of-game discourse."

i can't see this ending well. either the players will share equally regardless of contribution, so you will be unhappy, or they will kick out the guy not contributing, so you will still be unhappy. and there is a significant chance they'll turn against each other instead

but far from me to discourage an experiment. try it, and let us know how it went.

[Learn34]

i can't see this ending well. either the players will share equally regardless of contribution, so you will be unhappy, or they will kick out the guy not contributing, so you will still be unhappy. and there is a significant chance they'll turn against each other instead

but far from me to discourage an experiment. try it, and let us know how it went.

So important point that I think I addressed but might not have: the non-noncontributing player is now playing a character that passively contributes(enough Marshal levels to provide a 60' AoE buff aura), and he's expressed excitement at playing a "ditzy cheerleader" caricature. I still don't know that this will go well, but the 100% a**hole xp-starvation combined with peer-pressure has resulted in a resolution of the initial problem. I figure things are either going to, as I said, turn into a bloodbath OR they'll dole out the XP as a metagame currency to maximum effect: get everyone near equal-level, then dole out extra for the Cleric to craft certain desired scrolls or supplement the Wizard.

[martixy]

My players are happy to go for the meta-rewards, and I am happy to provide them.

The more they do those sidequests, some of which are not so "side", and otherwise interact with NPCs, the more they get free followers and castles and kingdoms and such, along with in-game explanations as to how they can get exposition dumps, resolve skill and feat based challenges without having the required skills or feats, get magic item access and upgrades, and similar things. While the meta-rewards themselves to do not provide power, not having to pump character resources into them effectively does

"Meta" in this case is a term meaning the game mechanics as opposed to the fantasy. XP is meta. Rolling dice is meta. Knowing you need 3 successes for a skill challenge is meta. The castle and accompanying retinue you get is not meta, it's part of the fantasy. The allies and exposition dumps are not meta.

Got the impression this point was misunderstood, so I figured I'd clarify.

[Tiktakkat]

"Meta" in this case is a term meaning the game mechanics as opposed to the fantasy. XP is meta. Rolling dice is meta. Knowing you need 3 successes for a skill challenge is meta. The castle and accompanying retinue you get is not meta, it's part of the fantasy. The allies and exposition dumps are not meta.

Got the impression this point was misunderstood, so I figured I'd clarify.

Except they are functions of game mechanics:
According to RAW, a follower requires a feat.
A castle requires WBL or a feat.
Exposition dumps require skill ranks and a successful roll.

So those things are more than merely part of the fantasy; they are hard-wired into the rules system, and that makes them meta by that definition.

As it goes, there are even references to providing them as rewards instead of the standard, tangible items and wealth as an "option".
I have taken that and made it standard rather than optional, as part of engaging players with the fantasy.