Rewarding experience points is out of fashion among modern Dungeons & Dragons players, and the designers of D&D seem to recognize this. Although the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide, published in 2014, lists experience points as the default mode of advancement ("most often the reward for completing combat encounters", page 260), a quick perusal of any recent Wizards of the Coast adventure module or discussion among 5e Dungeon Masters will quickly reveal that the prevailing form of advancement is what people now call "Milestone Advancement" (what they mean is "Level Advancement Without XP" (page 261), specifically "Story-Based Advancement", but sometimes "Session-Based Advancement", and other times "player characters level up when the DM decides they do", or "Fiat-Based Advancement" - referring to all of the above interchangeably as "Milestone Advancement" seems to have won the hearts and minds of 5e players, regardless of how the DMG itself defines "Milestone"). It's gotten to the point that I wonder if XP will even be in not-OneD&D (NOD&D)'s forthcoming DMG.
People seem to prefer "Milestone Advancement" for a variety of reasons. Story-Based Advancement ties character advancement directly to the advancement of the "story", signaling to the players that they're making progress through the pre-determined plot (as defined by the DM or adventure). Session-Based Advancement makes each session count, even if nothing of note is accomplished. Fiat-Based Advancement grants DMs the authoritarian power to arbitrarily decide whenever the players advance, usually because they or the players are bored at the current level and the DM is ready to design/the players are ready to defeat the next tier of challenges.
XP tracking is viewed as another onerous burden upon the player characters, like tracking encumbrance, torches, or food and water. Nobody likes doing math and bookkeeping (i.e. using the calculator on your phone to add one number to another number and write it down), and it's a real pain to erase one number and then write down another one (all that erasing puts an unseemly amount of wear and tear on the pristine character sheet - although a large contingent of players are using some form of virtual tabletop or digital character sheet at this point).
But I like XP. I like it for a lot of the reasons that people like other methods of advancement. Tying XP gain to quest goals gives players the same feeling of progress as Story-Based Advancement and incentivizes attendance the same way Session-Based Advancement does (if XP is only granted to characters whose players show up, which I don't always do, but it is useful for open table games). Unfortunately, XP does take away some measure of the DM's draconian prerogative to advance the characters anytime they feel like it, assuming the DM isn't the type to handout fistfuls of miscellaneous XP on a whim.
The main reason I use XP is because it smooths out level advancement. Sure, with the other forms of advancement you can work out a structure so that the number of "pips" needed to level up increases alongside the PCs' level (such that "Tier 1" characters require a single bump per level, "Tier 2" characters require two, "Tier 3" characters require 3, etc., or any number of more complex structures). Most WotC adventures do this, and I have no doubt that each DM who doesn't use XP has their own structure they prefer, but it doesn't hit the same way the XP curve does.
That XP curve, by the way, does have some wonkiness in 5e. For example, it takes 21,000 XP to go from 10th- to 11th-level, but only 15,000 to go from 11th to 12th. After that, it takes 20,000 to advance to 13th and 20,000 again to advance to 14th. It takes 30,000 XP each to advance to 16th, 17th, and 18th (Player's Handbook, page 15). In short, the curve has a very random dip right in the middle and then stops being a curve. I know fellow DMs who have taken it upon themselves to "fix" the curve, but it's never bothered me enough to implement it in my games.
Treasure is Its Own Reward
I would be remiss not to mention XP-for-gold, the old-school method of advancement which has been discussed by OSR bloggers for a long time. The idea is that the players will seek out whatever gets them XP. In old-school games, the players will prioritize obtaining gold, usually by pulling it out of a dungeon. Exploring the dungeon to discover its hidden wealth becomes the primary goal of the players, and their method of dealing with the dungeon's challenges - be they monsters, traps, tricks, or the layout of the dungeon itself - is entirely up to the players, so long as they get the treasure. If they can do it in such a way as to minimize the risk to their characters, all the better.
Similarly, Story-Based Advancement incentivizes the advancement of the "story", Session-Based Advancement incentivizes attendance, and Fiat-Based Advancement incentivizes...appeasing the DM, I guess.
Were I to run OD&D or AD&D, I'd certainly use XP-for-gold. There isn't much guidance for awarding XP for anything else. I've considered using XP-for-gold in 5e, but it doesn't quite work. WotC adventures are notoriously light on treasure (not that I run their adventures), and 5e's treasure hoard values only increase by "tiers", i.e., all treasure hoards from levels 1 to 4 are approximately equal in value, then bump up at 5th-level, then again at 11th and 17th. This means that characters in 5e would advance quickly at the beginning of each tier of play, then slow down at the end of each tier until they bump up to the next one. Compare this to older editions, where dungeon level corresponds (more) directly to character level and includes treasure hoards appropriate to that level.
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| OD&D Book III: The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, page 7 |
I don't like XP-for-gold in 5e for another reason: treasure it its own reward. Gold and magic items are an incentive in addition to XP. Gold increases player character power by granting them access to better equipment, strongholds, social influence, and the like. Magic items increase PC power by granting conditional abilities and other benefits in addition to those they gain by advancing in level. XP is also being granted for navigating the monsters, traps, tricks, and dungeon and wilderness environments which stand in the way of the PCs and treasure, so it doesn't make sense to me to award XP for both overcoming those challenges as well as obtaining the treasure itself.
Murderhobo-Based Advancement
A common refrain when criticizing XP in 5e is that it's only earned through combat, which incentivizes the players to kill every creature they come upon, even if the creature is friendly or non-threatening! The players could go on a rampage in every settlement, murdering all of the villagers to accumulate that sweet 10 XP from all those helpless CR 0 Commoner stat blocks. After all, they don't get XP unless they fight, and surely they would get XP for killing all those civilians, right?
I attribute this way of thinking to that terrible aforementioned quote from the DMG, "Experience points (XP) fuel level advancement for player characters and are most often the reward for completing combat encounters." Surely this quote is actually saying that XP is only ever the reward for completing combat encounters, right?
The DMG actually does callout awarding XP for "noncombat challenges", just somewhat unhelpfully:
"You decide whether to award experience to characters for overcoming challenges outside combat. If the adventurers complete a tense negotiation with a baron, forge a trade agreement with a clan of surly dwarves, or successfully navigate the Chasm of Doom, you might decide that they deserve an XP reward.
As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure."
Okay, sounds good. Wait, why are we using the rules for building combat encounters to gauge the difficulty of a noncombat challenge? How do I do that? Does the Chasm of Doom have a stat block?
Actual Milestones
The solution for me was when I discovered what "Milestone" actually means, according to the 5e DMG:
"You can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples:
- Accomplishing one in a series of goals necessary to complete the adventure.
- Discovering a hidden location or piece of information relevant to the adventure.
- Reaching an important destination.
When awarding XP, treat a major milestone as a hard encounter and a minor milestone as an easy encounter."
Forget that first part. I only care about the last sentence. How much XP is a hard encounter worth? What about an easy encounter? What about everything else?
XP-for-Challenges
I really like the general idea of using the Easy through Deadly XP reward system for all encounters. As you noted, there are gaps between CR and how difficult or challenging a combat encounter might be. One issue I have with this system is that by looking at how challenging an encounter was after the fact, it can punish players for playing well (or reward them for playing poorly!).
ReplyDeleteFor example, if I planned a complicated trap that I thought was very likely going to result in a player death (Hard or Deadly), but they circumvented it with careful play and good use of spells/abilities, your system seems to treat that encounter as Easy or Medium. Alternatively, if I signpost a very obvious trap that is circumvented in a trivial way (an Easy encounter), but careless PCs blunder into it and someone is disabled or dies, it suddenly jumps to a Hard or Deadly encounter.
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but that jumped out to me as something that one would have to be aware of when rewarding XP using this method (specifically looking at the encounter in an ex post facto sort of way).
That's a good point, and not an angle I had considered. In the case of good play (i.e. the players overcome what may have been a much harder encounter using clever thinking) I think the DM might need to use some judgment as to the value of resources expended. The wish example I used in this post is maybe a bit misleading - the players overcame the challenge in the example very easily, but they had to use a 9th-level spell to do so. In that case, you might award XP based on resource expenditure instead (i.e., if the player overcame the challenge easily but used some of their most powerful resources, treat is as one or two levels harder than the actual difficulty).
DeleteThat doesn't quite solve the problem of poor play though, where the players use more resources than necessary to resolve what should probably have been a trivial encounter. If players got wise to this method, for example, they might start intentionally flubbing encounters just to grind more XP out of them (maybe a reach, but it's a possibility).
The other side of this is that the XP gained by the character represents the actual challenge they experienced in the game's fiction. In some ways it makes sense that the character would "learn" more from a scenario in which they made mistakes. Definitely something worth dwelling on further.
I haven't really encountered this issue in my games, but it is a valid point. In my experience, players enjoy using their flashy, powerful abilities and clever thinking, and would rather resolve a scenario quickly and/or impressively than in a more mundane or straightforward way. If they can trick an opponent or talk their way out of a fight, or cast their newest, most powerful spell to end it quickly, they probably will.
DeleteOf course, the system is entirely flexible, so if the DM wanted to incentivize players to resolve situations in more clever, creative, or cunning ways, or to mitigate challenges (engaging in smart play), you could always bump the XP amount up to the next highest level or two (if their approach to the situation was particularly impressive).
Then I'd wager that your players are not being motivated by xp gains. Either because they don't realise how its being handed out (they had what felt like a hard challenge, and were awarded for engaging with a hard challenge... despite the fact that it wasn't intended to be specifically "hard") or because they've realised that the xp they receive is ultimately arbitrary, so why sweat over how much they're being given?
DeleteYou keep saying your xp reward method is entirely flexible, and that is because it is incredibly nebulous and entirely up to the whims of the GMs assessment. You have effectively reinvented a "Fiat-Based Advancement" with a few extra steps in an attempt to justify the numbers.
If the GM can flex the method based on resources used, and creative approaches and general tempo, whilst the fundamental means of categorisation is the GMs retrospective assessment of how difficult it was when it played out, then how is it anything other than arbitrary?
Had a few skin of your teeth encounters in a row? Likely going to level up from that, but if you've been breezing through a bunch of challenges without breaking a sweat? Well then that's probably only half a level. The numbers don't actually mean anything other than acting as a clock that irregularly ticks towards the next level. The increments of which are vague and mostly irrelevant as they only really measure how much you're struggling. XP then stops being rewards for specific challenges, or incentives to play in certain ways, they're just a record of how easy things have been and a rough countdown on when you next level.
Please note that there is nothing wrong with using xp in this way. However it does mean that it is effectively no different from fiat or story based progression (except that it involves more bean counting rather than eyeballing). It's less a systematic method and more a rule of thumb.
My players are typically motivated by some combination of their own personal goals and their characters' in-game goals, as well as a general desire to adventure and go on fun and/or challenging quests. Sometimes it's to please an NPC, sometimes for gold or a magic item, sometimes to fight a monster they think would be fun to kill, and sometimes just for XP. The XP system is transparent. I've not had complaints.
DeleteI disagree that the system is arbitrary. It's based on a system, with guidelines laid out pretty clearly in the DMG. Of course, different DMs could apply the system different ways, and as with any reward system it can be more or less arbitrary with any given DM. As with those other systems, it's best when the DM has a clear idea as to how exactly they want to use it, communicates that to the players, and doesn't waver from it (or if they do, that those changes are also communicated to the players - for example, I did at one point pivot from using the CR-based XP system for defeating monsters to this one mid-campaign, and the players were made aware of that when the change was made).
It's certainly not for everyone. Different systems, editions, campaigns, and players groups may benefit from different reward structures, and it's great that there are so many options to choose from. This is the one that I've found works best for my games and my players.
That's fair.
DeleteXP is hardly needed for rpgs to function anyway. Plenty of games use no explicit levelling at all, whilst others use alternative ways of altering characters without XP. The old E6 format shows that you can also just run any system in a way that halts or curtails levelling, and still have a lot of fun and "growth". (Story progression is still progression after all)
So really, to each their own. If this works for you, then great!