Story Award XP - Divide? [spoilers]

[Mike Lindsey]

I've been running CoT for a couple months now, my players have made it through the six trials, and are already 5th level.

It seems like the story awards aren't supposed to be divided... If I divide by the number of players, they're 4-5k xp behind where they should be, but if I don't divide, they're 3-4k ahead of where the module thinks they should be.

Part of that is them managing to get every single story award so far. I've been good about not softballing anything; other than the diplomacy award for Thesing in the first bit. That one I softballed, since the diplomacy dc is based off of Thesing's stats, which weren't included. Cleric got rolled in the high 20s so I gave it to them.

What am I doing wrong?

[FarmerBob]

Mike Lindsey wrote:

I've been running CoT for a couple months now, my players have made it through the six trials, and are already 5th level.

It seems like the story awards aren't supposed to be divided... If I divide by the number of players, they're 4-5k xp behind where they should be, but if I don't divide, they're 3-4k ahead of where the module thinks they should be.

How big is the party? Once I start to give story awards, I'll probably divide the award by 4, and give that amount to each of the party members (we have 5 right now). The module assumes 4 players, but needs to be scaled for bigger or smaller groups.

I haven't done all of the math yet, but it looks like there isn't always enough XP to move the party up to the expected levels. So, you'll either need some side quests, or will have to boost the story awards or encounters. That's especially true when you consider not all parties will fully explore/encounter all XP sources.

[Sunderstone]

Just an idea.
When i had 5 PCs in my group I still divided the Story Awards by 4 (like a standard party) and gave that amount to everyone.

[Mike Lindsey]

Sunderstone wrote:

Just an idea.

When i had 5 PCs in my group I still divided the Story Awards by 4 (like a standard party) and gave that amount to everyone.

6 PCs. I went through and added everything up, tried dividing the story awards for the entire first book by 6, ended up with all of them several thousand behind where they should be.

Not dividing, they end up ahead of where they should be, but by a smaller margin.

I'll see what it looks like if I divide by 4. Looks like story awards get rarer as the adventure continues, so that at least makes it a bit better. Maybe it's just an aspect of having a six person party.

[Airhead]

With 6 PCs, you need to up the encounters by 50%. If it says 2, give them 3. If it calls for 4, give them 6.

Same with treasure.

This will keep them on the same general xp/treasure track as everyone else.

Of course, it is your table, do as you wish.