I was just thumbing through my Dungeon Magazine when I happened to look across the new adventure in #130 (I don't run an Eberron campaign, so I haven't run any of the adventures). What is with the XP given for the visions in the latest Age of Worms adventure? They amount to about a half-level of experience in total - just for seeing something; no threat, no activity on part of the characters needs to be taken, they just get XP for seeing something. I don't think I've ever seen an adventure hand out XP for just seeing something, and it seems just...wrong.
Awarding XP just for seeing something is surely a matter of taste.
IIRC, in the adventure itself it was stated that these XP awards equate learning information about Kyuss, which is ok to me. Alternatively, you could award free points to appropriate knowledge skills, religion or arcane being probably the hottest candidates for this. But at that point, you leave the rules as written. The XP awards are a way to simulate this within the rules. Perhaps you could have the PCs putting skill points towards these skills next level to make it somewhat better fitting.
And to gain these visions, the PCs have to go through some pretty grueling trials, IIRC, so XP is not totally unearned.
Stefan
Another thing I think is going on here is that they want the party to be 20th level by the end of the AP, and thus might occassionally have difficulty fitting in enough encounters. So, when in doubt, they just hand it out (It being XP). If you can think of some replacement encounters to award XP, rather than just seeing visions, go right ahead, and post them here. It would be interesting to see some alternatives.
I foresee trouble with the vision thing, since I might want to use a non-XP rewarding vision at other points in this campaign or another, at which point the players would complain about not getting said XPs. So, alternatives are welcome.
The first alternative that comes to mind is to use the other denizens of the complex. Place keys or solutions to puzzles, traps, etc. in the posession of the other creatures found in the ruins.
I believe there was the mention of a beholder...
I don't really see this as a big deal. I mean, it's just XP for advancing plot-lines...
Besides, I don't know how other DM's do it, but I give the XP for the previous session at the beginning of the session. The players don't have know WHY they got that much XP for just visions...
I equated it to storyline or roleplaying xp. That being said, I thought the reawrds were a bit out of hand. While some are sort of difficult to trigger, the party receives the first vision when they enter the city --> a CR13 (IIRC) xp reward for walking into town?! I haven't worked out the specifics of it yet since my group is just finishing up 3FoE, but I like the idea of some freebie skill points for Knowledge skills.
Creative Director
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I had a feeling the XP awards for the visions would have a reaction like this.
There's several reasons we hand out big XP awards for viewing the visions:
1: When the PCs experience the visions, they're learning a LOT of key information about the deep history of Kyuss and the Age of Worms, information that they probably can't learn anywhere else. In addition, it sometimes takes some fairly difficult tricks or accomplishments to trigger a vision. In D&D; the concept of "learned knowledge" is modeled by experience, so it makes sense on one level that being magically infused with knowledge would translate, game-mechanic-wise, into XP points.
2: We needed to have the PCs reach 15th-level by the end of the adventure, and the adventure was running really rather short on encounters. This is mostly due to the fact that it has an extensive non-combat opening and a large section at the end with new monsters, leaving relatively little space in the middle for as many encounters as we normally have. Handing out XP for seeing the visions makes up for the missing encounters.
3: We want the PCs to track down and see these visions, because they not only answer a lot of questions about the campaign they've been playing, but also foreshadow events to come. For some players, the thrill of learning this informaion may be enough for them to look for visions, but for the ones who aren't as interested, the XP points are a nice reward.
4: Since the visions advance the campaign's story so dramatically, they serve as the always nebulous "story awards" mentioned in passing in the core rules.
5: The XP are a way to reward the PCs for making it into the second half of the campaign. Not all rewards in D&D should manifest in the form of treasure; there should be other types of rewards as well. This adds variety to the game and is one of just many tools to maintain player involvment and interest over the course of a 12-part adventure.
In the end, if you feel that handing out XP for merely seeing visions is lame, you should cut it from the adventure when you run it. Keep in mind, though, that you'll be robbing your PCs of a lot of XP that they'll need later on; you'll need to replace the lost XP with other chances to gain more XP, perhaps in the form of additional battles or encounters in the adventure or a side-adventure.
If you're running the Age of Worms as a campaign, handing out XP for these visions will NOT hurt your campaign; they're designed to do what they do for a purpose. The important thing is that your PCs are 15th-level when they hit "Prince of Redhand."
James, thank you for offering some of the behind the scenes logistical stuff that we might not be privy to (not enough space). But I think the reaction stems from the fact that there are so many of them in one adventure at one site.
If they were dispersed throughout the campaign it might make more sense but to dump them all in one adventure at one site because that one adventure was thin on xp seems a bit too "retrofitting."
I wonder if there might be an opportunity to spread these visions out throughout the campaign in places holy to Kyuss or the Ebon Triad. Or if any character gets infected with a worm they have visions of Kyuss' past.
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I wonder if there might be an opportunity to spread these visions out throughout the campaign in places holy to Kyuss or the Ebon Triad. Or if any character gets infected with a worm they have visions of Kyuss' past.
I Don't think Places holy to the Ebon Triad would work, as they're just being used by Kyuss's forces, but I guess it might work.
As for the Worm-Infection Idea, Great, but I think the vision should occur After the worm is removed from his/her body. Otherwise it's just too easy. Also, the XP award could also be for getting the worm out of the character's body.
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Creative Director
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I certainly wouldn't suggest spreading the visions out. The reason they manifest in Kulluth-Mar is because that's where Kyuss became a god; that type of immense magical effect has lasting changes on the surrounding environment. Additionally, the fact that these visions all appear in one localized area helps to set up Kuluth-Mar as a unique location in the world.
Personally, I think that the visions add an interesting and creepy element to the adventure. If you don't like handing out XP for non-combat encounters, by all means cut out the XP awards for the visions (but be prepared for your PCs to be too low level for the rest of the campaign if you don't add in more opportunities for XP somewhere along the way), but stripping the visions entirely from this adventure would ruin the adventure's purpose.
I think the visions are a brilliant way to fill in some backstory, but i'm definitely giong to make receiving the visions a bit more challenging and xp worthy. For example Vision One will be received upon entering the obsidian ring and result in stunning the players long enough for kyuss worms to begin crawling over or through their boots. Other visions might require actually using a knowledge worm or after being possessed by the ghost of a cultist.
i'm sure there's plenty of opportunity for encounters in the surrounding ruins to make up xp if you don't want to use story rewards at all.
Thanks for the answer James, in the back of my mind I had assumed the main reason was to advance the characters in level before the final encounter or next adventure. If the characters have to overcome some hefty trials to trigger the vision, I won't mind awarding the XP (had not looked too closely at what it took to get TO the visions in the adventure, to tell the truth). However, the very first vision, which is awarded merely for entering the city seems very suspicious. Personally, I'd either not award the XP for the first vision, or delay the XP award until the characters figure out they can trigger the visions. I know that'd be very hard to write into a published adventure, but that's the way I'd handle it at my own game.
However, I will say that awarding XP for merely witnessing events is a very dangerous path. Arguably someone could design an encounter where a party merely witnesses a battle between two powerful NPCs and just gets XP for watching the show. Which might lead to NPCs following the PCs around and watching them fight monsters so they too can become powerful wizards and warriors from merely having watched the "experts" at work. ;)
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Creative Director
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I disagree that "merely handing out XP for witnessing events is a very dangerous path." As the DM, you are in 100% control of how often and how fast you hand out XP to your PCs. You control how fast they level up and when they level up, as you need for your campaign. For Age of Worms, we have a very strict schedule of what levels PCs have to be due to the nature of each adventure. When an adventure comes in short on XP, we have to shore it up somehow. In "A Gathering of Winds," we were able to do so fairly unobtrusively by throwing in a few Ad-Hoc experience awards here and there for accomplishing important story goals. For "Spire of Long Shadows" the shortage was even worse, so we took a more radical approach to ensuring that the PCs are high enough level for the next in the series, while at the same time introducing (I think) an interesting and exciting reward for the PCs for uncovering some of the greatest secrets in the campaign. The XP awards for the visions in "Spire" are therefore a unique creature; one you shouldn't expect to see appear in Dungeon again. What you SHOULD expect to see in the future are more instances where we recommend awarding XP for non-combat encounters or for other reasons.
For a stand-alone adventure, this will never be an issue; we don't need to ensure the PCs are at X-level at the end of a stand alone adventure. For Campaign Arcs and Adventure Paths, we do. Plus, we tell you at the start of "Spire of Long Shadows" that your PCs will gain 2 levels during the course of play, so it's not like those XP you hand out for the visions is "extra XP." It's not.
In the end, if you hand out XP as lump sums at the end of a session or the end of an adventure, there's no reason that the players should ever know that they got XP for "doing nothing." And if they DO find out, and that knowledge spurs them to look for more visions (aka try to find out more about the campaign's history and plot), that's even better!
I'm working on my descriptive narrative that I will use for my players as/after they receive each vision. I hand out xp at the end of each session, so they won't know they're getting xp for witnessing the visions, but I want them to feel *different* after the encounter.
I think I'm trying for the feel of a data download in the Matrix... eyes fluttering... "whoa... I know kung fu...." type of thing.
It might be interesting to introduce the avatar of a deity after the first vision; an event to signify that viewing the vision is an achievement very few have witnessed. (And 13th level is a good time to include avatar-level intervention, I think. It opens up the possibility of deity-level intervention in the future, if you're keen on that kind of thing.)
Another thing I'm considering is having the visions physically affect the PCs for short durations... one PC speaks in a language nobody understands for 1 hour; one PC can cast a 0-level spell at will while in the spire; one PC's handedness changes (wow... these visions make me feel I'm in 2nd Ed!).
Since the visions award XP, I want the players to feel that they are experiencing something unique.