| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ok, I've read so many posts asking about which advancement track to use, what to change for parties of more, or less than 4 pcs, and what encounters to use, to not fall behind, that I started to wonder, how many of you guys take xps serious?!
I know, they have to be in the rules-system, but I don't use them at all!I always tell my players, that they will level up, when the time is right regarding my campaign-planning. It's so much easier to plan a campaign, and it makes it easier to insert other stuff, which is not part of an AP, for example.
In the end, it's not GM vs players, so my players know that I won't cheat them, or keep them less effective against opponents on purpose.
How do you guys do XPs? Do you use them as precisely as possible, or any other way?
There are two rules I find unneccessary in dnd. One is experience points. Dnd is a cooperative game where the focus is to immerse yourself in a world where your characters obtain goals for thier own motives. Introducing XP breaks that immersion on two fronts, 1 is that it turns a cooperative game into a competititon for monster killing and xp gaining and 2 it is an out of game statistic that breaks the immersion of the character's actual goals. I don't invite players into my campaign who seem obsessed with leveling and xp, it is a great predictor for a power gamer.
But, this has been an age old divide that isn't going anywhere. I've never played ina game where we tracked xp (nor ran one) and i've had several dms. Essentially the party levels when the party levels, as a party. Death simply gives a negative level in most cases if a player decides to assepct a res(but i've played in games where rez's are hard to come by and mostly not worth it).
The other rule is initiative individually. They are two rules that I feel regularate grown people to act as adults and break the immersion of the game. (For initiative i have a house rule where all the pcs scores are added up after a roll and the creatures scores are added up and averaged out the number of party members. Then it goes one side other side allowing for more group coordination and tactics.