Converting milestone leveling to experience leveling?

[tchntm43]

I recently picked up Tyranny of Dragons. While looking briefly through the introduction sections, I noticed that the first part of the game uses standard experience leveling, with an optional system for milestone leveling, but the second section uses milestone only. I would like to know if it's generally a difficult thing to convert milestone leveling to experience leveling.

[Ionathus]

I recently picked up Tyranny of Dragons. While looking briefly through the introduction sections, I noticed that the first part of the game uses standard experience leveling, with an optional system for milestone leveling, but the second section uses milestone only. I would like to know if it's generally a difficult thing to convert milestone leveling to experience leveling.

Not really difficult at all. Determine the amount of XP they need to reach to hit the milestone, break it up into XP chunks that seem proportionally reasonable for every challenge (combat or otherwise) between their current level and the next level-up milestone.

Milestone leveling is cleaner and helps to better represent non-combat challenges, but there's a certain benefit to having clearly-tracked progression.

Just don't break it all up into individual granular XP chunks if the gap between their levels is two digits greater ("you killed one owlbear so everybody gets 117 XP, only 23,451 more to go!"). That just gets tedious. Give it to them in nice round numbers whenever they've overcome a significant obstacle.

[tchntm43]

Not really difficult at all. Determine the amount of XP they need to reach to hit the milestone, break it up into XP chunks that seem proportionally reasonable for every challenge (combat or otherwise) between their current level and the next level-up milestone.

Milestone leveling is cleaner and helps to better represent non-combat challenges, but there's a certain benefit to having clearly-tracked progression.

Just don't break it all up into individual granular XP chunks if the gap between their levels is two digits greater ("you killed one owlbear so everybody gets 117 XP, only 23,451 more to go!"). That just gets tedious. Give it to them in nice round numbers whenever they've overcome a significant obstacle.

I mean... I usually keep a tally of what they kill or otherwise get past as an obstacle, and at the end of the adventure I add up the XP values and give it to them all at once. But for an adventure that spans more than one level increase (like Sunless Citadel), I know I can't do that. Probably with each long rest, then.

Mainly I just didn't know if the XP values for the encounters in Tyranny of Dragons, when added up, is approximately the same as their milestone values, or if it will be significantly off. If they aren't leveling fast enough, I suppose I can add in some side adventures to fill the gaps.

[Ionathus]

I don't know Tyranny of Dragons, so I can't speak to the XP values and whether they hold up under scrutiny.

I do think that XP value is tied to CR, and CR is a pretty useless indicator of challenge past level ~5, so I don't put much stock in either.

Even when I did use XP levelling, basically every session I found myself putting modifiers/multipliers on the XP earned, because I didn't feel the values on the statblocks matched the challenge my players overcame.

Ultimately I don't think XP works in 5e: it's an artifact of earlier systems, and so much tweaking is necessary to bring it in line with 5e player expectations. If you're willing to do Quest XP or Roleplay XP, you're already admitting that the system is totally subjective. So just lean into that and give them what "feels right." I'm willing to bet that "what feels right" to you as a DM and your players is going to be more satisfying for the table than calculating the dry XP values of each individual monster.

[Segev]

There is little reason to use xp-based leveling in most plot-line-driven modules. It makes sense in old-school-style exploration sandboxes, but even then only in that those lack obvious milestones to hit due to having a highly non-linear nature even Tomb of Annihilation with its extensive exploration section would make more sense to have milestone leveling with key points to find the clues as to where to go and how to get there for the main plot. It has specific needs as to party level my the time they end that segment.

XP made sense up through 3.5 due to XP being a resource in that edition, and due to different classes having different XP tracks in 1e and 2e. In the latter case, XP became the power level gauge, with class level being a separate thing that wasn't equal across all classes.

With Pathfinder and 5e homogenizing xp tracks and not allowing xp to be used for anything but tracking levels and the expectation that everyone will have the same xp total, there is no point to tracking xp unless you legitimately have no way to set milestones in your plot progression.