Our party is in Carrion Crown.
The group consists of an elven magus,
A gnome witch,
A half orc barbarian,
And a Half-drow Heretic Inquisitor.
The half drow is using half elf stats, shes simply "drow" for flavor.
In my 'version' of the world there is no Tian-Xia, Samurai and ninja are drowish in nature. I pretty much use the 'japaneese' feel to make the drow more 'alien' vs. a mostly 'european style' adventuring party/world.
I also rob japaneese names and words for drow stuff because it's easier than trying to pronouce some of of the crazy drow stuff.
So, any, the half-drow fights with paired katana (drow sword of choice rather than short swords) and is basically a defector from her underworld nation.
I tied some drow support into the Whispering way, specifically to involve this character.
As a result in this encounter, at the rope bridge, where there should be an erinyes, I replaced it with a drow inquisitor of tar baphon, Cr8.
The drow gets a drop on the party due to the difficulty of the rope bridge crossing, and they are all hyper scared of traps for some reason even though they haven't come across one yet, they are checking every tumble weed and dust bunny for traps.
The barb crosses the bridge and midway gets beaned by flamming arrows from the enemy inquisitor.
The rest of the party is hesitant to get out in the open and no one else wants to tackle the bridge, the witch has already used her third level spells for the day fighting earlier rust monsters. (o.O)
Barb moves on bridge again and gets beaned twice more. Remainder of party wastes actions trying to 'detect' things like alignment, undead, etc etc.
Barb gets peeved rages, using raging leaper charges the drow and smacks into him in mid air, using a bite (he's a toothy half orc) as his charge attack since a weapon wasn't in hand. The barb rolls a crit and from the crit deck actually severs (bites off) the drows hand.
Since it was a charge, and the drow was standing on an outcrop of cliff over looking the bridge I ruled that A) the barb could make an acrobatics check to try and backflip and land on the outcrop with the drow, B) continue through with the forward movement of the charge in which case both he and the drow would take the extra damage of impact with the back wall, and, if the damage exceeded their con stat, make a fort save - the damage the con stat was exceeded by and become dizzy and risk falling off the cliff or c) try and make a grapple check and they could both plummet off the side of the cliff together.
Barb voted for B. took 21 damage became dizzy and fell.
The drow made his check due to dr 5 he had.
As her action the witch cast web to catch the barbarian. It was pretty cool.
the magus casts spider climb to scamper quickly across the rope bridge without risking a fall.
The Inquisitor uses bane and judgement to by pass dr and starts pelting the drow with her xbow.
The witch decides (or rather the party collectively decides) that she should use her misfortune hex on him, but to do so needs to move within 30 feet, so she tried to cross bridge and falls.
The barb who is suspended on the web she catches, uses the rope of climbing which was on his hand to swing it out to her and try for her to catch it. Which works!
Next turn the barb uses the rope of climbing to swing her up to the ledge where the drow is standing, while she casts vampiric touch in mid swing (fun stuff, risky but some good rolls were being made)
She sticks the landing, makes the touch attack, and her combat casting roll, but the drow lands two hits with his katana dropping her to 0 hp, and she falls again.
Barb catches her with rope second time and hauls her up to web.
Party inquisitor tries to cross rope bridge and falls, but makes ref check to hold on by tips of her fingers.
Drow has cast greater invisibility by this point and uses his cloak of mountebank to tele down and stomp on the inquisitors fingers.
She fails fort check, and drops in drink. Magus is over where drow used to be.
Drows next action, he dispels the witches web, sending barb and disabled witch into drink.
Both inquisitor and barb fail swim checks and go over water fall.
Inquisitor takes 6d6 damage and strips off armor, coming within 1 round of drowning.
Barb uses rope of climbing to lash onto rock outcropping and semi swing to safety with gnome witch tucked under armor like football.
Ends up taking 5d6 damage.
I have inquisitor and barb both roll 1d4, they both get a 4, so I ruled they showed up close to each other on the river bank.
The Inquisitor rolls a successful perception and heal check to realize that if the barb doesnt get healing he will die in under a minute (his rage would wear off and his damage was greater than his con could bear) and so she pops him and the disabled witch a heal.
Magus catches up by scampering along rocks with spider climb.
Here's question.
The group did not defeat the baddy, it came close to a total party kill.
But the encounter was awesome with falling, and catching and saving and leaping and a critical hit that severed the enemies hand, etc etc.
Should i reward some experience points?
I am of the opinion that the PCs should get XP whether they win or lose. In this case, I'd grant full XP. You can learn just as much from doing your best and losing as you can from winning, so your PCs should get the XP they'd have gotten if they'd won.
Give a small story reward for surviving. No more than half what they would have gotten for winning.
Give a small story reward for surviving. No more than half what they would have gotten for winning.
I disagree. I think in this particular case they learned as much from losing as they would have from winning, and I think the consequences of the loss should be story-based, not a lower XP reward.
The thing is, XP is based around a different set of assumptions than "what did you learn" its based around "what did you defeat"
Otherwize it would give more XP to lose, as there are a thousand lessons in defeat, and none in victory.
I recommend partial reward, because my gut says that giving full XP will undercut the reward when they actually come back for a victory. But half will still give a representation of becoming wiser and battle hardened.
Personally I don't like to deal with XP. It made sense when character leveled at different rates, but now I prefer to just award levels at appropriate points.
Luke skywalker is defeated by darth vader in empire strikes back, yet in the next movie we see luke has returned to yoda to finish up some training, obviously there was experienced gained as he returned to his trainer to gain the next level (must have been a good level for him, huh?)
The thing is, XP is based around a different set of assumptions than "what did you learn" its based around "what did you defeat"
Otherwize it would give more XP to lose, as there are a thousand lessons in defeat, and none in victory.
I recommend partial reward, because my gut says that giving full XP will undercut the reward when they actually come back for a victory. But half will still give a representation of becoming wiser and battle hardened.
That just seems like punishing the PCs for losing, and I hate doing that.
I do agree with you on not using XP. I generally don't use the system.
I generally prefer leveling at the right points in the story myself, less paper work, but the Players treat xp like treasure, they want to know how much they won. It's like candy so i give it to them.
While I also agree that its better to simply let the PC's level when it is time, as for an XP reward in this case I would say that giving a reduced reward is probably in line. The Xp is supposed to represent knowledge gained from overcoming a particular challenge, typically a monster or hazard. In this case, the challenge may be considered to be "escaping with their lives" as opposed to "defeating the enemy", but it doesn't seem entirely reasonable to give them the same amount for both, since one is *usually* easier.
Interestingly, I am also running this campaign at the moment, and my group reached this exact point last Thursday. The Gunslinger went out on the bridge with no one but the Eidelon for some reason, and the summoned demon killed him fairly handily. The rest of the party lured it back into the Alchemy Wing to force it into close quarters to win the fight.
I give my players little "awesome" bonuses whenever they do something really cool (using web to catch falling friends, charging an enemy and severing their hand off in mid-air certainly qualify) and those add to their XP. I would give them a partial reward for surviving the encounter, and then a little bonus for doing awesome stuff in the mean time.
My way is 25% XP for surviving a lost fight.
+ bonus XP for interesting skill uses.
While I also agree that its better to simply let the PC's level when it is time, as for an XP reward in this case I would say that giving a reduced reward is probably in line. The Xp is supposed to represent knowledge gained from overcoming a particular challenge, typically a monster or hazard. In this case, the challenge may be considered to be "escaping with their lives" as opposed to "defeating the enemy", but it doesn't seem entirely reasonable to give them the same amount for both, since one is *usually* easier.
Interestingly, I am also running this campaign at the moment, and my group reached this exact point last Thursday. The Gunslinger went out on the bridge with no one but the Eidelon for some reason, and the summoned demon killed him fairly handily. The rest of the party lured it back into the Alchemy Wing to force it into close quarters to win the fight.
ahahaha what is it about that bridge that makes everyone over cautious and send ONE guy out on it alone! Even after the Barb started taking arrow fire, everyone was still cringing to go out on the bridge.
Admittedly, the barb was the only one who had points in acrobatics, but no one int he group really knew that was what they needed....
Last night my group fought a rival group of the exact same level. The enemy group had the element of surprise. My group tried their best, but in round five the enemy had taken down their rogue and threatened to cut off his head (CdG) if they didn't surrender. The party agreed. So, even though the party lost, they fought hard and made a very tough decision (for the life of their friend.)...not to mention that it took some time....so I awarded xp. I look at it like an airplane landing...any encounter you can walk away from is a good one.
I guess it depends on what your group is use to. Me personally, I would award full experience. We're storytellers, and a pretty unique story was told.
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When I use experience points (which is only rarely). I give my PCs full experience if they lose a fight and survive. They'll go back, lick their wounds, and maybe level up and try again, or go seek out some helpful mcguffin that will help them level up and try again.
Either way, players who tried their hardest, but still lost shouldn't be punished for it.
Players who lost because they were acting dumb, and not using basic teamwork, will get reduced experience.
That's my philosophy.
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I'd be tempted to give full xp for the cool scene. I suppose I'd be a little concerned about a recurring villain being worth many times more xp than they really are if such cool scenes happen more than once, though... but, then again, so what?
The scene still played out. The campaign is probably cooler for it. Its not like they didn't do anything for it. It just didn't play out the way it might have been hoped. It was still cool. So, yeah... I would likely give them full xp.
I would also tell the players that I'm NOT setting a precedent. It worked this way THIS time.
Batman has defeated joker like 100 times over the years. Would he only have been worth the p the first time?
If killing the enemy was the goal, then no XP. (Or half now, half when they finish the job, if you want to be nice & not 'ruin' their exploits.)
If getting past the bridge was the goal, then full XP. The enemy tried to stop them, and failed. The party moves forward.
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You gain experience by experiencing different things, in this case the party experienced the full fight and thus gain full xp. The lack of the kill is irrelevant, now they just have an enemy that will eventually return.
And return with an idea of how the party fights and comes prepared! <Insert Evil Laugh>
I am going to be implementing the EXP rules from Narrative Combat when I begin my next game. It rewards EXP based on if it was a trivial, minor, medium, or heroic encounter. It doesn't use the CR at all.
I like it because I have seen some groups just face-roll stuff that should challenge them. So it takes into account the challenge the encounter actually presented and not some "should be equal" theory.
I would allow them a good amount, seeing as they went all out, and didn't shy away when things went bad. I love it when groups try despite bad rolls, adds excitement.
**Plus, just because the baddy got the upper hand, doesn't really mean it is a failed encounter. Spurs the party for vengeance and a good returning villain always is cool.
@bramble
No exp is not a measure of what did you defeat. Xp is experience. Period.
Hey, Im telling it like it is. Not even what I like or prefer. By the book experience is given for overcoming challenges. No victory, no reward.
Hey, Im telling it like it is. Not even what I like or prefer. By the book experience is given for overcoming challenges. No victory, no reward.
@bramble
No exp is not a measure of what did you defeat. Xp is experience. Period.
But they survived the challenge, that in of itself is a victory.
**Just my 2 cents.