Does your GM hand out EXP based on individual contributions or in a lump sum to the group?
We currenlty get exp as a group and divide it evenly among players.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to hand it out on an individual basis. I would give it out in the following categories.
Damage done to enemies
Skills used in adventure
Role Play
Cool and unique ideas or actions performed
What do you think?
General xp from killing and such is a group pool divided. If a PC does something above and beyond then they can earn individual xp.
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Killing and quest xp should be evenly divided.
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I give out XP on an individual basis. This rewards the players who make more of an effort to come to game. Granted, the ones who can't come can choose whether or not they want their character played. If that character contributes to the encounter, they get full xp.
I give XP based off the AP:
* Defeating opponents (killing, knocking out, making run away, or even sweet talking)
* Completing goals
Roleplay gets other perks, mainly GP and boon related.
Cool & unique actions can get hero points/action points, or whatever system you want to use.
Skills used - skills help make an encounter easier.
The XP is rewarded by the challenge of the obstacle/encounter.
Whether you give XP by individual or group depends on how much you want the group to level at exactly the same time and have everyone be exactly the same level.
I give everyone the same amount of experience. The reasons are:
1) I have some players that are better role players than others, in my opinion. They would disagree. Should my bias make one or more of the characters more powerful?
2) It keeps all the characters on the same playing field. It's easier for me as a GM.
3) If I gave out XP for things such as "damage dealt" then the guy who wants to play a healer is not able to get bonus XP that the fighter gets simply because he's playing a fighter. If I give it out for skill use, then the rogue has the advantage. If I give it out for unique ideas, then the shy player(s) will be behind the more outspoken players. The smarter (I don't want to use that term but it's the only one that fits) players would be advancing faster than the others.
I do give out bonus XP for role playing but that is done as a group. I generally grant XP as if the party had defeated an encounter of equal CR to the party. If they did really well, I may grant the party a +10% bonus to XP.
I used to give out bonus XP to characters based on what they individually had done. In 2nd edition there are several charts that can help give you some guidance if you go that route. I found it was a lot of work to give out the XP and even more to keep the characters at the same level.
Our group is pretty happy with Group XP (everyone has the same and levels up at the same time). But we earn Bonus XP for exceptional acts. This Bonus XP can be turned in for bonus traits, feats, skill points, gold, ... pretty much anything as long as you have enough bonus XP and its reasonable.
This system allows our GM to reward people on their play styles. Also when Bonus XP is awarded generally everyone in the group agrees that its worth granting that person the bonus - so its not favoritism or nepotism.
This seems to work with our group...your mileage may vary.
You would not have much of a problem in the short term, but long term some players will pull ahead of the others. A higher level character can do more damage and make higher skill checks more often and thus pull ahead more.
What is likly to happen is one or two players will start to pull ahead and be one, then two, and about the time they get three levels higher than most of the party you will start to have problems. The ones who are likly to pull ahead are going to be power gamers like me. Their character can do the damage and are good at least a few skill that have a lot of uses. So each level will be a bigger differance in power level between players.
Now this does not mean your ideal cannot work it just means you should think about it before you try it.
Also, you will have a lot more paper work for and possible for your players as well. Your ideal would work best in a one on one game.
I hope this helps.
General xp from killing and such is a group pool divided. If a PC does something above and beyond then they can earn individual xp.
This.
I don't often GM, but I've played under the same GM for years, and that's how he does it, and how I like it. I believe it creates more of an opportunity for greater diversity of character concepts. If everyone is concerned with getting the XP for kills, everyone's focusing on more lethal characters, not necessarily more interesting ones. When the kill XP are pooled and divvied, then people can relax and focus on ROLE playing, and on contributing to the story outside of combat. And the combat-oriented characters still get made and played, after all, there is a ceretain percentage of the population of any gaming group who just want to kill things, and they're going to create characters who do that very very well.
I give everyone the same amount of experience. The reasons are:
1) I have some players that are better role players than others, in my opinion. They would disagree. Should my bias make one or more of the characters more powerful?
2) It keeps all the characters on the same playing field. It's easier for me as a GM.
3) If I gave out XP for things such as "damage dealt" then the guy who wants to play a healer is not able to get bonus XP that the fighter gets simply because he's playing a fighter. If I give it out for skill use, then the rogue has the advantage. If I give it out for unique ideas, then the shy player(s) will be behind the more outspoken players. The smarter (I don't want to use that term but it's the only one that fits) players would be advancing faster than the others.I do give out bonus XP for role playing but that is done as a group. I generally grant XP as if the party had defeated an encounter of equal CR to the party. If they did really well, I may grant the party a +10% bonus to XP.
I used to give out bonus XP to characters based on what they individually had done. In 2nd edition there are several charts that can help give you some guidance if you go that route. I found it was a lot of work to give out the XP and even more to keep the characters at the same level.
There are ways to mitigate any perceived inequity regarding Good roleplaying/individual accomplishement XP. The best one is to be STINGY with such XP. Give it out, but not by the bushels. This makes players work for it, which enhances good roleplaying, and it also means that as a percentage of overall XP, it's a bit of an edge, but not an overwhelming one.
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Just to be clear when i talked about awarding bonus xp for going above a beyond. I wasn't talking RPing per say. thought that is one way to earn it. Mostly it is about doing things that pretty much everyone agree's made the whole gaming night better. Perhaps something like a village is under attack and some goblin is about to cut down a kid. The fighter leaps over, not trying to attack only put his body between the kid and the goblin to insure the kid is not hurt. Willing taking the damage for a for sure chance of saving the kid. Things like that I award bonus xp for, if anything with my group the other players often try and talk up the bonus xp i give. :)
Does your GM hand out EXP based on individual contributions or in a lump sum to the group?
We currenlty get exp as a group and divide it evenly among players.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to hand it out on an individual basis. I would give it out in the following categories.Damage done to enemies
Skills used in adventure
Role Play
Cool and unique ideas or actions performedWhat do you think?
We used to track experience points individually but gave up as it was a considerable amount of extra work for the DMs (we rotate that duty) and we weren't really seeing any benefit. We did however see one or two costs:
1. Someone could get really lucky and pull ahead of the rest of the group, which increased their chance of earning experience points and so it continued...
2. It creates an incentive to do 'out of character' things - charging into battle to get the last experience rather than hanging back like your cowardly demeanour might suggest. Sure you can punish such OOC actions or you can reward IC cowardice - but balancing out exactly how much you should do so is really just trying to even out the experience you're allocating anyway - so why not pool the group's experience in the first place and be done with it?
Admittedly we don't have the problem other groups seem to of having people missing various sessions. If we're not all there we play boardgames or something instead. Similarly, we don't mind if people want to have a 'quiet' week and not participate much - so we don't really want to punish them via less experience if they're in spectator mode for a while.
Ultimately I think it's entirely a matter of group style - we've recently moved to abandoning experience altogether (which is working well for us). Now we just spend an 'appropriate' amount of time at one level and the DM declares by fiat when it's time to advance. This method has the least amount of record-keeping/calculation of all.
We used to track experience points individually but gave up as it was a considerable amount of extra work for the DMs (we rotate that duty) and we weren't really seeing any benefit. We did however see one or two costs:
1. Someone could get really lucky and pull ahead of the rest of the group, which increased their chance of earning experience points and so it continued...
2. It creates an incentive to do 'out of character' things - charging into battle to get the last experience rather than hanging back like your cowardly demeanour might suggest. Sure you can punish such OOC actions or you can reward IC cowardice - but balancing out exactly how much you should do so is really just trying to even out the experience you're allocating anyway - so why not pool the group's experience in the first place and be done with it?
Admittedly we don't have the problem other groups seem to of having people missing various sessions. If we're not all there we play boardgames or something instead. Similarly, we don't mind if people want to have a 'quiet' week and not participate much - so we don't really want to punish them via less experience if they're in spectator mode for a while.
Ultimately I think it's entirely a matter of group style - we've recently moved to abandoning experience altogether (which is working well for us). Now we just spend an 'appropriate' amount of time at one level and the DM declares by fiat when it's time to advance. This method has the least amount of record-keeping/calculation of all.
Good points from everyone. I can see that some would pull ahead and some might be motivated to do out of character actions.
One thought is you could set up a system that rewards the behavior your want. If you only reward combat results, then that will be the focus. But if you set up a significant amount of EXP for staying in character and role play, then that behavior will be emphasized, hopefully.
It is supposed to be fun right? I am actually just looking for ways to spice up our game and thought EXP would be on way to do this. It seems like all we do is battle. Most of our group is interested in just going from room to room and killin whatever baddie is in there. I am wondering if there is a different way to run things that would make it more interesting for me. But before I suggest something I want to hear what works for others.
There are ways to mitigate any perceived inequity regarding Good roleplaying/individual accomplishement XP. The best one is to be STINGY with such XP. Give it out, but not by the bushels. This makes players work for it, which enhances good roleplaying, and it also means that as a percentage of overall XP, it's a bit of an edge, but not an overwhelming one.
If I only have one or two different ways to get XP, that would be true. When I was doing it in 2nd Edition, there were dozens of different ways. I just got tired of it all and found that I didn't need it and my players don't mind.
I certainly don't think that my way is the best way. It works for me and my group which is good enough for us.
One thing I am toying with is a way to give people more Traits. I'm thinking of using those as rewards instead of bonus XP. I haven't come up with a system for it yet. I like to give minor awards to characters based on what they have done. For example, there was a dwarf in a game I was running who managed to "find" every water trap I had. He was running around in full plate and still managed to make his swim check, every time. I gave him a feat that I had seen that allowed him to swim better in his armor. Everyone at the time liked the idea but I didn't do anything else with it.
My thought is that if they aren't really getting an edge for their "advantages" then why give them out at all. I like to use more tangible rewards.