1. How quickly do the groups out there find the characters leveling?
2. I've run into a small arch of storyline with the group faced with how to deal with a small orc tribe after disposing of some raiders from it. The problem being we ended the session midway through the scenario. And depending on how the group decides to deal with the orcs, we're looking at enough xp when combined with the xp of last session to level up twice.
My initial thought is to only give them enough xp to level up once and go halfway through the second. They're 8th level at the moment. What do you think?
How are they getting enough experience out of two sessions to level twice? Are you not splitting the award among players?
How are they getting enough experience out of two sessions to level twice? Are you not splitting the award among players?
I've been using the fast progression chart and the players have faced some very challenging competition. Another option is just to switch over to the medium chart and give out the full xp at the end of the arch and that should level them about once.
Ditch XP entirely and tell them all to go to 9th level when you/they are ready for it.
I agree. In fact, when designing encounters, I design for challenge factor, then assign an XP value to it. In the game that I'm co-authoring, we did away with experience entirely because we realized that it created a straight-jacket environment for GMs when it came to putting together a story.
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You'd be surprised at how better the game can be by giving up entirely the concept of XP points. At first players usually are cautious or reluctant, but when they don't have to worry anymore about how much XP they get whenever they accomplish something, they can focus entirely on the plot and can always foresee when they are going to level up - usually at key instants of the story, after a long time with lots of things accomplished, or after a shorter time but hard/epic encounters and events resolved.
I'm also of the "forget about XP" school. It eliminates so many ugly occurrencies...
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I like xp. I award it after every game and keep track of the total awarded. At the end of significant story goals I give a large bonus to bump them up to the next level.
Players who do extra stuff get extra XP. Clever ideas, remembering a plot point everybody else forgot, writing a journal page for your character, doing the recap at the beginning of the game. Things like that. I give enough bonus xp to let involved players be up a level periodically. It is a nice reward for them. I find even small xp rewards for being involved help to draw in all the players.
I award xp at the end of a session. I have moved away from awarding per encounter xp to keep things moving. The benefit here is that players feel they are moving toward the next level and don't have to wait for the DM to announce "time to level up".
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The benefit here is that players feel they are moving toward the next level and don't have to wait for the DM to announce "time to level up".
The beautiful thing about no-XP games is that after some sessions of practice, the players don't wait for the DM to announce the level up. They only wait for the next session, which is a big difference.
Leveling up becomes the reward for hard days of adventuring, and honestly, I have difficulties to imagine how your players would feel like "they are not advancing anywhere" simply because they don't get XP afterward. Once you go through two or three levels without XP, it usually becomes clear for everyone that they are slowly but surely advancing upon next level and upon new adventures which each thing they do. It's only a question of habitude and once it's done, it's done for good, the mystery of whether you're going to level up or not soon is also fun around the table (with phrases like "if we don't gain at least 24 levels after this fight I'm going to send these dices on you, DM").
It could also be seen as a difference in DMing, as in our games no player gets to level up before the other. The difference between people who roleplay a lot and people who roleplay less is that people who roleplay more and contribute to the table bring more interesting events for everyone (and for themselves), and usually are rewarded with an easier access to any item they need or really want thanks to their roleplay or contribution as players. Items/GP in themselves are a kind of XP, as the more you get, the more you know you're getting closer to the next level.
Ditch XP entirely and tell them all to go to 9th level when you/they are ready for it.I agree. In fact, when designing encounters, I design for challenge factor, then assign an XP value to it. In the game that I'm co-authoring, we did away with experience entirely because we realized that it created a straight-jacket environment for GMs when it came to putting together a story.
How is it a straight-jacket?
How is it a straight-jacket?Ditch XP entirely and tell them all to go to 9th level when you/they are ready for it.I agree. In fact, when designing encounters, I design for challenge factor, then assign an XP value to it. In the game that I'm co-authoring, we did away with experience entirely because we realized that it created a straight-jacket environment for GMs when it came to putting together a story.
You have X amount of XP to spend per level. If you want the party to spend more time at that level, you have to break out of the XP limit.
This.
The fundamental problem that we had in designing our game is that we have an extremely flexible monster creation system and, the way we had it figured, certain encounters could be very difficult and have little XP associated, while trivially easy encounters could be multiple levels (it's a 40 level system, so this is not an overstatement). The same thing happens in Pathfinder, but it's less pronounced.
Moving away from XP allows you to focus on the story, pace the game better, and generally increase the feeling of accomplishment as time goes on by having a qualified, rather than quantified, system of achievement in your players' minds.
How is it a straight-jacket?Ditch XP entirely and tell them all to go to 9th level when you/they are ready for it.I agree. In fact, when designing encounters, I design for challenge factor, then assign an XP value to it. In the game that I'm co-authoring, we did away with experience entirely because we realized that it created a straight-jacket environment for GMs when it came to putting together a story.You have X amount of XP to spend per level. If you want the party to spend more time at that level, you have to break out of the XP limit.This.
The fundamental problem that we had in designing our game is that we have an extremely flexible monster creation system and, the way we had it figured, certain encounters could be very difficult and have little XP associated, while trivially easy encounters could be multiple levels (it's a 40 level system, so this is not an overstatement). The same thing happens in Pathfinder, but it's less pronounced.
Moving away from XP allows you to focus on the story, pace the game better, and generally increase the feeling of accomplishment as time goes on by having a qualified, rather than quantified, system of achievement in your players' minds.
Sounds like you're trying to use Pathfinders XP arrangement in your own gaming system which is itself based on Pathfinder. I can see why the scaling wouldn't work. I agree that some fights can seem ridiculously hard. However, this is more often to do the abilities of the group or poor rolls rather than actual "hardness." Personally, I enjoy XP. I get excited when I'm just a couple dozen points from leveling and that I will probably level in the next session. If you want to elongate time at a certain level you could always include more puzzles, which are typically quite easy but you have figure them out, or mystery solving, which, again, are not really that hard but getting those first few clues to get the ball rolling can be tedious. Regardless, it's cool you have a way that works. I would be intrigued to try it on for size in a campaign.
Sounds like you're trying to use Pathfinders XP arrangement in your own gaming system which is itself based on Pathfinder. I can see why the scaling wouldn't work. I agree that some fights can seem ridiculously hard. However, this is more often to do the abilities of the group or poor rolls rather than actual "hardness." Personally, I enjoy XP. I get excited when I'm just a couple dozen points from leveling and that I will probably level in the next session. If you want to elongate time at a certain level you could always include more puzzles, which are typically quite easy but you have figure them out, or mystery solving, which, again, are not really that hard but getting those first few clues to get the ball rolling can be tedious. Regardless, it's cool you have a way that works. I would be intrigued to try it on for size in a campaign.
It was a very different system of XP, as it was based on the actual abilities of the monster. Each ability determines the monetary drops still, but it used to be drops + XP covered under this.
Some encounters could be downright impossible mathematically and, with no map, math is all you have to determine that. These encounters could have relatively low rewards due to having a pared down, but high power monster. Other encounters could load up monsters with worthless or near-worthless abilities from a difficulty standpoint, but have high value because of what they were and the number of them.
Personally, I'm quite glad to have gotten rid of XP from my games. It's a YMMV sort of thing, though. Not all groups or games operate in the same way.
We level every 6 or 7 games. I take the XP needed to go up to the next level divide by 6. I use the CR table to look at what they would have to fight to get around that many XPs. I use this to guide the evening's combat. I also give out story award XPs when they finish part of the story arc (negotiate a treaty, rescue the king's daughter, find the traitor, etc.).
I often like to throw away XP systems, but I should mention one important thing you should consider before you do: Parties where members aren't the same level. As Pathfinder doesn't currently have a RAW way (I know of) to handle PCs that need some kind of level adjustment, the XP system can be used to automatically handle it. In the game I'm in, the party consists of one character each at level 7, 8, 9, and 10 - created at those levels. The 10th level is a human, the 9th a tengu, the 8th a natural werewolf, and the 7th a half-dragon drow noble. They're all about equal in power for now, but the race benefits will start to mean a lot less at the higher levels (we expect this game to go to 20th, if not to epic), so just saying "now everyone level up" will leave the drow permanently 3 levels behind the human and he will start to be seriously handicapped later on. The XP system automatically handles this by letting him level more often - by 20th he'll probably be the same level, but at that point most of his abilities won't be too unbalanced compared to other 20th level characters. And he'll still always be the last to level up...
That's one reason I enjoy the as-is XP system. My rinky dink level 5 character being in the same fight as your nice and shiny level 15 is much more at risk and would probably learn/gain more from the same fight. So, it is an equalizing force. Also, to effectively bar (not saying you are but as presented everyone levels up at the same rate) players from joining the group or leaving is a bit limiting.
Reaper Miniatures
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I am a fan of the step system.
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/AlternativeLevelAdvancement.pdf
A different way to track character progress is to use simple measurements called Steps. GMs award Steps instead of experience points; playing for a typical game session usually earns a reward of one or two Steps per character (though the GM may award more or less based on each character’s progress).
One Step per four hours of play time is about right. A Step is the equivalent of one-fourth of a level. After gaining four Steps, a first-level character becomes a second-level character, and after gaining four more, he becomes a third-level character. Each time you gain a Step, you gain some (but not all) of the rewards of your character’s next level.
Steps are an easy and fast way to measure your character’s progress from one level to the next—they’re mini-levels that let you improve your character after every game. Because you normally get at least one Step after each game session, you know that at the end of each game you can expect to improve your character a little bit, and after four games, you can expect to gain a level.
A character class’s abilities for each level fall into four categories: Hit points/base attack bonus, saving throws, skill points, and class improvements (feats as well as all other class abilities, such as a rogue’s sneak attack, spellcasting, and so on). Every time you gain a Step, you choose one of these four categories of abilities from your next level. The next time you gain a Step, you choose one of the remaining three categories, and so on until your fourth Step, at which time you gain the fourth category of abilities and reach a new character level.
This is similar to something in Unearthed Arcana that I really liked but could never get my player's behind.
Leveling by GM fiat.
I also try to tell them what goal they can accomplish to level as early as I can without spoilering.
If that means that they sneak around the dragon or make a deal with it instead of fighting it, more's the better.
Even under GM fiat leveling, people tend to skyrocket in power from 1st-16th over the course of a few months if you don't force downtime. It's unrealistic, but it makes players happy, so is it really bad?
I and my gaming group are engineers by profession. The concept of not tracking xp is... confusing. I'm sure it works for some and I'm sure it is better than having xp for those groups, but unless I actually get into a group and see what it is like first-hand, I don't think I could really run such a thing.
One thing I do allow is the payout of XP for solving issues and getting past challenges. Taking out a monster isn't required to gain the xp; simply getting past the monster is all you need. Of course, if it is an optional encounter that has no effect if bypassed, then of course there's nothing gained from it.
For example, my players found the rat swarm living in the abandoned watch tower (Carrion Crown 1). They could have ignored it. They could have simply killed it. But in fact they used a monk to piss it off, a bard to grease the swarm up, and a cleric of burn-it-all-in-glorious-cleansing-fire to burning hands the rat swarm. I think flaming greased rats slipping and sliding all over the place deserved bonus XP. Granted, they didn't know they would get bonus for the solution, but I liked it. I also gave bonus xp for permanently disabling a haunt (by destroying the rusty scythe).
If there is no xp in the system, how do you reward interesting solutions? If the adventure is already balanced out for a specific level and you don't want your players gaining levels too soon, then what reason do they have for exploration?
It isn't an issue for plots running on tight rails, and I don't mean to suggest that such a thing is wrong, I am just wondering what other motivations the players have for doing things off the beaten path (assuming going off the path is allowed).
As a DM I stick to XP. Mostly because I have never been concerned about expanding encounters even on the fly if my players level where i hadn't originaly planned for them. I feel it is more organic. And I feel like it gives players more control over their destiny (player agency).
I feel like gm fiat leveling up is a form of railroading. It removes a form of player agency even if it is a metagame element of the game. Essentially under the normal xp system, assuming a plot that is not completely linear, players can choose what order they face certain challenges either intentinonally or unintentionally, such as in kingmaker. And by doing so you are facing certain challenges with certain abilities (you may be level 5 instead of level 4 for an encounter and thus the wizard has a whole new suite of spells to help the party deal with it).
If you just level up by gm fiat then there is no element of players directing their efforts in a different direction to gain the strength to take on a certain foe, so you might as well (if able) walk straight up to the bad guy's lair since you will just automatically be level X when you get there.
Now admittedly more linear storylines have this problem less, but in open games like kingmaker I have REALLY felt as a player like my progress was not under my control. In fact I have pushed in game for more time to be spend on kingdom building then adventuring, because at least there it felt like progress was being made when we spent time on it, as opposed to adventuring which felt like we were accomplishing a whole lot of nothing.
If there is no xp in the system, how do you reward interesting solutions?
Survival. :)
And I reward good roleplay with a Luck Point system. (mainly if the player avoids metagaming at cost to his PC)
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If there is no xp in the system, how do you reward interesting solutions? If the adventure is already balanced out for a specific level and you don't want your players gaining levels too soon, then what reason do they have for exploration?
"Despite the foul odor of sewers and burnt residutes emanating from your clothes, two women approach you while you are talking with the barman ; an old woman who seems worn out by a life of labor, and a youngster blonde with a refreshing smile - both women look alike, and you believe they may be related.
- I hear y'ar the lad who distress our town from those pesky sewer orcs ? Can't thank you enough from my old bones, young man. Please take this old shield ; it was my husband's before he disappeared because of thess monst'ars (getting a +2 light shield). It's no stuff of legend but he'll be more useful to you than to us, now we'll live in peace and without fear.
- Hello... just wantin' to thank ya' about the rats in the sewers. Grand'ma always complained about them eating the crops and giving sicknesses to people. Please get this antitoxin, it's against plagues not of these lands that the rats were carrying (getting a quest item for later which will save the king who's been attacked while traveling incognito). Also... would you like to walk a while wit' me tonight ? We don't see much passage down there and I'm sure you've got lot of tales to tell..."
If there is no xp in the system, how do you reward interesting solutions?Survival. :)
And I reward good roleplay with a Luck Point system. (mainly if the player avoids metagaming at cost to his PC)
I also hand out hero points as a reward for good individual performances and solutions. If its a group effort then I usually give out extra xp. I do keep my party even at xp regardless of circumstances because I dont like dealing with different level party members, but I am very glad to hand out specific xp every time the party overcomes an obstacle. I guess I am just old fashioned that way.
We would level once per night in my most recent play group. But we also played for 12 hours, 11am till midnight with a couple 30min breaks. If a session is 4 hours then we did about three sessions per day.
I am not sure if a no xp system would work well. But I admit I haven't played or GMed such a thing. It could be made to work... Perhaps someone could post up play tests of the system.
Granted, they didn't know they would get bonus for the solution, but I liked it. I also gave bonus xp for permanently disabling a haunt (by destroying the rusty scythe).
If there is no xp in the system, how do you reward interesting solutions?
Didn't you just say that they didn't know they were getting bonus XP? Isn't that evidence that your players will come up with interesting solutions irrespective of XP rewards?
My two cents: I'm lazy, so I usually let some other player keep track of XP. So my characters are always going when the GM (or the accounting player) says so, from my point of view. :-)