Lord Crow's page

I'm on the same page as Ciaran Barnes. I've not tracked xp since the first game I ever ran a few years back, and the games I play in currently don't keep track of it either.
What I do is look at how much xp the party needs to level, look at the encounters ahead of them, and set a point where they will have gathered enough to level.

If you really do need to give out xp I recommend that you decide how much the encounter is worth and just divide that with how many group members there are and give them all an equal share, even if they aren't there for the session. There's few things worse for a player then falling behind the rest or having one guy rocket ahead of the rest.

Things I sometimes give out bonus xp for is good group dynamic and teamwork in battle and good use of role-playing both in and out of combat. If players roleplay well I sometimes even give them bonus stats to the rolls they are making or even null the roll and let them win if they do it excellently. XP can be a good tool for encouragement in that way, and personally I find that it works very well.

The only reason I have a problem with it at all is that most of the PFS games I've run so far and most of the upcoming ones only have one or two encounters between each extended rest. And because the party is just using Sleep and Slumber they are more or less just bypassing every single encounter, often not even having to fight even half the enemy force.

I wouldn't mind this toooo much if not that the group isn't that big at role playing either with only about two of them actually doing it.

So more or less they are avoiding most of the combat and role-playing, which is really what the entire game is. I'm making them get better at the second.

Thank you all for your advices, I'll try to make best of them :)
I'll use the strategy of making the enemies being a bit more spaced out when combat starts, but since its a pre-made PFS game I can't do more with the game itself.

I was hoping to try to find a way to negate it without having to change the pre-made adventure(we're going through the season 0 and 3 atm), but if that isn't possible then I'll definitely go with that.

Greetings fellow Pathfinder DMs!
I currently run a monthly Society game which I've been running with my girlfriend for about 7-ish months.
Before that I'm a sort of new-ish DM, I ran a Pathfinder game about a year before that.

Running this game I've run into a slight situation. The party is made up mainly of spell casters, who all love to stock up on Sleep and Slumber spells so every combat starts with one or more of them putting the majority of enemies to sleep straight away.
Is there any way I as the DM could deal with this outside of forbidding them to use it?

Any help would be appreciated.