XP for Haunts

[Marios]

Hi,

the rules for haunts state that their XP value "is the amount of XP to award the PCs for surviving the haunt, as determined by its CR", as quoted from http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/haunts.

Yet, what does "surviving" mean? Let's assume that the party encounters a haunt and reduce it to 0 hp, but without actually destroying it. Will they get the listed XP? What if the next day the party must cross the same place, the haunt manifests again, only to be reduced to 0 hp again. Will the part get XP again? I'd say no, but the party did spend resources! If you kill two orcs in a place one day and then kill two more at the same place the next day, you'd get XP for defeating 4 orcs not 2! On the other hand, yielding XP again and again for the same haunt? Hmmm...

I'm thinking on awarding full XP for the first time my party defeats a haunt, half that amount for the second time, half again for the third and so on, up to a point when they'd get no XP at all. Does this sound as too much?

Furthermore, there seems to be no XP value assosiated with permanently laying a haunt to rest. I understand that this should be mostly tied to what they need to do in order to permanently destroy the haunt, but i guess the haunt's CR should set a hard cap to this, shouldn't it?

Thanks a lot in advance for your insight!

[brother ehhnnzioh]

I let my PCs gain the xp when they over come the haunt, so long as they aren't xp farming it.

[Brandon Hodge]

According to GMG page 243 (under XP), haunts are treated as traps when it comes to awarding XP, and if PCs either trigger it and survive (otherwise known as "encountering" it) OR defeat it, they get experience for a haunt of that CR, and any given haunt can only award XP once. You can't sit there and beat up on this poor resetting spirit over and over and expect the "infinite coins" Mario Bros. effect. This applies whether PCs manage to ultimately destroy the haunt or not, though roleplaying XP rules may still apply at the GM's discretion. =-)

If you want the call from the horse's mouth (no offense, James), you can see the following quote from James Jacobs on traps, which he repeated later in a haunts thread but I don't have the energy to search further since this is the same answer:

James Jacobs wrote:

You get full XP for a trap if you detect it/disable it, if you trigger it and survive its effects, or if you detect it and avoid it. You don't get the XP more than once (so if you detect and avoid it then come back later and disable it or endure its effects, you don't get to double dip).

There you go!

[Marios]

Brandon Hodge wrote:

According to GMG page 243 (under XP), haunts are treated as traps when it comes to awarding XP, and if PCs either trigger it and survive (otherwise known as "encountering" it) OR defeat it, they get experience for a haunt of that CR, and any given haunt can only award XP once. You can't sit there and beat up on this poor resetting spirit over and over and expect the "infinite coins" Mario Bros. effect. This applies whether PCs manage to ultimately destroy the haunt or not, though roleplaying XP rules may still apply at the GM's discretion. =-)

If you want the call from the horse's mouth (no offense, James), you can see the following quote from James Jacobs on traps, which he repeated later in a haunts thread but I don't have the energy to search further since this is the same answer:

James Jacobs wrote:

You get full XP for a trap if you detect it/disable it, if you trigger it and survive its effects, or if you detect it and avoid it. You don't get the XP more than once (so if you detect and avoid it then come back later and disable it or endure its effects, you don't get to double dip).

There you go!

Ok, i guess that's it then! I still feel that I should reward any effort taken to permanently lay a haunt to rest though, since haunts definitely are not traps - you don't really want me to quote your words now, do you? ;)

Thanks a lot for the clarification!