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Ok guys, big bombshell here but I want to know how people feel about player experience points and whether or not they are actually "necessary" for a successful campaign. After recently starting a Pathfinder campaign with some friends (that I'm a player in) we decided as a group to completely eschew player exp for purposes of leveling up during this campaign.
To give a little background, my group of friends and I have played several GURPS campaigns (which give points after successful sessions with which you can buy stats/abilities for your character) and a Dresden RPG (based on FATE based on FUDGE) campaign (which allows players to modify/improve their characters after story "milestones"). We all really liked the FATE model and decided to let the GM arbitrarily choose when we level up (updating us after sessions with phrases like "1/2 way to level 3"). We decided on this for several reasons:
- Big numbers scare us (except for gold count)
- We have a new GM who doesn't have a physical beastiary book with monster EXP
- We are all planning on attending all sessions
- It gives the GM a tighter hold on party progression
- Easier for GM to balance encounters when everyone is always on the same level
- We have a mix of combat and non-combat oriented PCs who don't want to play straight up "KILL all the things for EXP!"
- We're planning on a super fast leveling campaign (1 session got us to lvl 2, 2-3 sessions will get us to 3, etc).
- It's not like this is early D&D where EXP is directly used for making potions / crafting things.
What are all y'alls thoughts on this? Has anyone else done it this way? Should we be tarred and feathered for thinking such nonsense? Comments are welcome!
-KaptainKrowbar
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When I'm running an AP, I don't track XPs,I just level the PCs around the point the books say you should.
On a more general point, ALL XP should be done on a psrty level, and should be consistent even if a player misses a session. It's massively simpler to do it that way.
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I'm doing this for my party that's running through Rise of the Runelords.
1) I don't have to track exp, do math to divide up how much exp each person gets, etc.
2) I can make them stronger when they need to be stronger, instead of when the exp claims they should get stronger.
3) They can go dick around on sidequests and stuff and it won't make the main quest something they can just roll over without any challenge.
None of them have a problem with it, and we're all happier for it, I think.
I do home brew and never award xp. Been doing it for years and its so many levels. Of simplicity.
It depends on the campaign whether or not XP should be used.
Look at Papers & Pencils: Simple Experience Points. It is a nice way to handle it while still having people feel rewarded.
I belong to the crowd of GMs that don't track experience for d20 games. I just tell the players when their character gain level every few sessions.
edit: Superfast xp like every adventure = lvl up...doesn't work for me. Your character will feel disposable and the levels you gain won't feel an accomplishment. I'll never get a real attachment to my characters that way. No time and no real events to get a bond with them.
We wanted to do a superfast campaign since none of us have been in a D20 campaign that got PCs past around level 6 yet we're all (somewhat) experienced RPG'ers. Since Pathfinder would be new to several of us, we didn't want to dive in at, say, level 5 but have a gradual (while rapid) progression.
EDIT: We also have been salivating at some of the abilities available at higher levels. :)
While I have used XP I agree it is not needed. The GM can just "level" characters as the story moves along. As a side note, I also have started games where the characters don't start at 1st level. Again, it is what ever works for your group (players and GM).
I don't assign experience points anymore.
I consider two of the best advances in Pathfinder (vs 3.5) to be: no XP differential for multiclassing, no XP differential for magic item creation. It doesn't matter how many experience points a character has, only what level they are.
I track exp because not all of my players are able to make it to all of my games, and I feel it is unfair to the more consistent players for them to not get something out of always being there. I tend to even things out by making sure that all the players have relatively the same amount of wealth and not allowing anyone to fall more than two levels behind.
In a game where all the players are always there, I can understand not wanting to track exp though.
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One reason I still see for using player exp is for rewarding good RP'ing players. Honest question here, without exp, what should be used by the GM to reward good RP? Small circumstance bonuses to skill rolls? What else?
EDIT: And what rewards should be given for good RP that would put the player at a disadvantage?
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One reason I still see for using player exp is for rewarding good RP'ing players. Honest question here, without exp, what should be used by the GM to reward good RP? Small circumstance bonuses to skill rolls? What else?
EDIT: And what rewards should be given for good RP that would put the player at a disadvantage?
You might consider using Hero Points from Advanced Player Guide as a reward for RP. You can tweak which uses of Hero are available in your game to suit your needs.
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It depends on the campaign whether or not XP should be used.
Look at Papers & Pencils: Simple Experience Points. It is a nice way to handle it while still having people feel rewarded.
Very nice article! I got pretty much the same values he had in his encounter table in a spreadsheet I worked up a while ago. I like how he normalized that into an exp chart. I'll have to ask my group what they think of that.
We only tracked XP when we had a magic item crafter and now for Adventure paths(we don't want to mess with the balance of the module). In any homebrew campaign the GM awards a new lvl when he/she feels its appropriate based on the story and previous encounters so far.
LS has a lot of good content.
You might consider using Hero Points from Advanced Player Guide as a reward for RP. You can tweak which uses of Hero are available in your game to suit your needs.
Sweet! I like how that looks. It feels real close to the concept of Fate Points in the FATE system (except rarer and more powerful).
I don't track XP, because I don't want games where it's just one sequence of ever tougher beasties to kill. My games involve rescuing damsels, stealing eggs, scaling edifices, outsmarting unscrupulous town officials and more. In my current campaign I have a pacifist monk emissary, a gnome paladin vegetarian animal rights activist, a charlatan seductress and a half orc wild mage. They'd all be dead before they got enough XP to level up if I did it the official way.
Ha! Awesome. Sounds like you've had some pretty amazing campaigns with some hilarious players. It's a shame that RAW seem to punish players who want to be creative with their character's story or personality or who don't build them as they're "supposed to" be built.
-KaptainKrowbar
I feel that in a sandbox type game, tracking experience is necessary, because you do not know where they will go, what they will want, nor will you know how strong they should be for anything, because they choose where to go. This way there is an impartial way of tracking how much they get done.
The main caveat is to make sure killing things has repercussions, so if they start killing off small villages for XP, they raise the interest of whoever deals with serial killing town-murderers, and their alignment shifts.
Ok guys, big bombshell here but I want to know how people feel about player experience points and whether or not they are actually "necessary" for a successful campaign. After recently starting a Pathfinder campaign with some friends (that I'm a player in) we decided as a group to completely eschew player exp for purposes of leveling up during this campaign.
To give a little background, my group of friends and I have played several GURPS campaigns (which give points after successful sessions with which you can buy stats/abilities for your character) and a Dresden RPG (based on FATE based on FUDGE) campaign (which allows players to modify/improve their characters after story "milestones"). We all really liked the FATE model and decided to let the GM arbitrarily choose when we level up (updating us after sessions with phrases like "1/2 way to level 3"). We decided on this for several reasons:
- Big numbers scare us (except for gold count)
- We have a new GM who doesn't have a physical beastiary book with monster EXP
- We are all planning on attending all sessions
- It gives the GM a tighter hold on party progression
- Easier for GM to balance encounters when everyone is always on the same level
- We have a mix of combat and non-combat oriented PCs who don't want to play straight up "KILL all the things for EXP!"
- We're planning on a super fast leveling campaign (1 session got us to lvl 2, 2-3 sessions will get us to 3, etc).
- It's not like this is early D&D where EXP is directly used for making potions / crafting things.
What are all y'alls thoughts on this? Has anyone else done it this way? Should we be tarred and feathered for thinking such nonsense? Comments are welcome!
-KaptainKrowbar
I use xp, but I run a sandbox homebrew game. I still use xp costs for permanent magic items and players are not all the same level. It doesn't focus on one line of adventures leading to a conclusion. For an AP where all the players level up at the same time, are all on ther same page and there are no xp costs for crafting it probably isn't as important. In short: xp, ymmv.
I find it slightly odd that the blog post shared above had to do some serious calculations to work out that it takes X encounters to level: as I recall, 3.x was built around 13.33333 encounters per level, and as soon as I looked at PF I ran the numbers to get the levelling curve. But that's just me.
The one thing that bugs me, personally, though, is that 1 XP means absolutely nothing. Seriously. Even a CR 1/8 creature is worth 50 XP. I appreciate that it allows up to 50 characters to earn 1 XP each for killing it, but how often does that happen? Would the game break if the XP numbers were a fifth of their current amounts? That way, said CR 1/8 creature would be worth 10 XP, and fast progression would level up at 260. Big numbers aren't necessarily better.
As for how I deal with XP - sometimes I'll track it, but all characters earn the same amount. In the past I've messed around with absent players only earning half, but at the end of the day it's easier for all involved to move along at the same pace.
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XP only exists as the remnant of a poor design choice made four decades ago kept alive through sheer inappropriate respect for "tradition."
It also creates all sorts of metagaming issues and is a major cause of negative gaming group dynamics.
Throw away the chains of habit and embrace plot based leveling. You'll never regret it.
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You have my blessing - - but you don't really need that.
The allocation and use of XP depends on the gaming group.
We gamed for years without it. Er... decades!
I use them. I calculate xp for every single thing: monsters, traps, story awards, etc. But that's seems right for the group I wish to run.
As for your new GM! Tell him congratulations from me, but for gods' sakes... buy that boy a Bestiary would ya?
LOL
-Pax
Plot Based Leveling doesn't always work. Such as in a Open independent Sand Box game.
Sure it does. You just have a lot of different plot threads to earn level ups from, instead of just one.
Or you just level up the party when you determine they're ready and bump up the difficulty of their encounters.
You know, just like if you had a plot.
The thing with that is I let my PC find their own missions. Handling it your way would make them feel cheated as they enjoy trying to obtain the XP to level up, gold to buy what they need, and finding challenging missions.
The thing with that is I let my PC find their own missions. Handling it your way would make them feel cheated as they enjoy trying to obtain the XP to level up, gold to buy what they need, and finding challenging missions.
Hmm. Well, there would still be gold and treasure and all that.
There would also be the fun and challenge of overcoming difficult encounters and learning how to get their characters working together as a team.
There just wouldn't be some arbitrary number that was supposed to represent all that.
I will let you tell them they aren't getting XP and instead are getting levels whenever it is thought they should gain it.
Especially since they are already upset at me trying out the Simplified XP system.
Nope. They like knowing how close they are to the level up.
Nope. They like knowing how close they are to the level up.
Well, besides the obvious fact that this is pure metagaming, there's no reason you can't tell them "you're almost there" or "you're about halfway there" or whatever else will satisfy their metagaming needs.
It does for this group. My other groups don't care... Though they get a little to invested in the game world...
It is less metagaming and knowing when to start planning for their next level.
They literally take things a level at a time.
I personally wouldn't mind XP being "in the background".
When I'm running an AP, I don't track XPs,I just level the PCs around the point the books say you should.
On a more general point, ALL XP should be done on a psrty level, and should be consistent even if a player misses a session. It's massively simpler to do it that way.
Right, that's the way we do it, and it is far simpler.
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I think if my players wanted an XP track, I'd tell them 'okay, here's how many games you have to play to reach the next level' and leave it at that. Encounters would have to be adjusted as people leveled at different rates, since keeping a steady group is hard depending on where you are. PFS scenarios are so much easier for things like that.
Wait, they don't start planning for their next level as soon as they finish leveling? o.O
Queer folk.
They only stay 2-3 levels head of their current level. This is a fully open campaign.
They each have 10+ Characters they switch to on and off periodically.
We have nicknamed this our Eternal Campaign/World.