Sir Lysander's page

There are merits both ways; I'm not a fan of the 3.x Edition method of XP Pool / Number of Players = XP per player because that can easily reward inaction and penalize inventiveness, but I also see where trying to divide XP based on incrementally cumulative actions can make it a nightmare of calculus to figure out how much each individual character gets.

We're playing in several (overlapping) campaigns, some of which are using more-or-less a pure "X Number of Players kill CR Y creature, thus Z/X XP per character" with some role-play bonuses, whereas I've done a more undefined roleplay and general campaign progress XP. The Xp-per-creature-encountered method has started a bit of an arms-race, where players are metagaming their characters to attack everything on the field to get a cut of the available XP, where on the other hand, I find myself having to tell the players (as a theoretical example) why one's well role-played and "on campaign" small set of actions were worth more XP than another characters multitude of actions (and general running around) weren't worth as much, despite the medium-sized undead horde they cut through. It's caused a lot of reevaluations, but nothing decided.

Pax - THANK YOU for that article. That hit the nail squarely on the head as to what I could *feel* was missing (and I haven't gone past the pre-production 4E dross) from 4E and slipping away from 3.xE.

And I completely agree that Mr. Mearls must have been smoking something. Legolas, the ranger. Why not use the guy Tolkien actually CALLED a ranger as the archetypical Ranger?