(1) Players open a chest a trigger a poison needle that the book says is CR4. Guy makes his save and takes no damage. Does the group get the xp for beating a CR4 encounter (1,200 XP). Seems like way too easy for that much XP.
(2) How much XP do I give my group for an encounter with an Otyugh (cr4)? 1,200 XP even though they chose not to engage it? It was basically in a pit, and they threw a couple of dead bodies to it, feeding it. And then moved on and decided not to fight it. Though they could have probably just killed it very easily since they were 30ft above it and just rained down arrows on it without any threat to themselves. again, seems like too much to give them CR4, 1,200 Xp.
Thoughts?
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1) I typically give XP on traps if they overcome the trap. Either through Disable Device or some other good idea. Opening it and taking damage doesn't produce any XP
2) Maybe give them a CR 2 or 3 for a good idea, but not the full CR 4. Not unless the otyugh was in the way of their objective. Then, if they used a good idea to by-pass the encounter, they get CR 4 XP.
Play with it and have fun.
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Your always able to in your own games adjust the experience for a given encounter as you see fit if things turned out to be too hard or easy. It is considered very bad form to penalize the players for being clever or to reward them richly for being lazy.
Surviving a trap is the a legitimate way of overcoming it and should grant experience. It was a challenge put forth to the PC's and they survived it. A close call that will hopefully teach them a lesson about trap finding.
It's hard to say for your second question as it seems like it really isn't an encounter at stated. More like dungeon dressing or something along those lines operating on the assumption the players don't actually need to go down into the pit. If they did need to be down that pit and distracted the monster to get by it certainly seems fair to reward their clever thinking and give them full experience.
(I really like how the you lot here decided that dropping rocks onto a helpless creature while being completely safe is worth some experience but having a potentially near death experience due to poison isn't worth anything at all.)
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Where in the Pathfinder rules does it specify how experience is awarded for traps?
Normally if you have an encounter where the players have a tactical advantage, the CR is reduced. In the case of the Otyugh, if the Otyugh could not attack them then the CR of the encounter should be significantly reduced, possibly to zero anyway. If the Otyugh could not climb out of the pit to get at the party, and the wizard could have killed it by just casting ray of frost over and over for 2 HP damage per round until it died, then I would not be granting any XP for it at all whether they killed it or not.
Normally speaking though if a party bypasses an encounter through cleverness or roleplaying they should get full XP for it, though they probably won't gain any treasure.
Look in the gamemastering section of the CRB for more stuff about CR.
Peet
Wizarddog, that explains how experience per challenge is mathematically *determined,* not the adjudication of how it is *awarded* for being overcome.
Two different things.
Alright; I'm going to assume at this point that there is no official listing in the Pathfinder rules as to how to adjudicate the awarding of experience. The closest I can find is a vague line in the CRB on page 399 under Awarding Experience -
"Keep a list of the CRs of all the monster, traps, obstacles, and roleplaying encounters the PCs overcome. At the end of each session, award XP to each PC that participated.
Unfortunately, these lines (nor the larger block of text it was taken from) does not define what it means to "overcome encounters." While it sounds obvious, it isn't, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist.
The reason I bring this up is because the best source of information I can find on the subject comes from a paragraph in the D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide - page 39, Challenge Ratings for Traps:
Overcoming the challenge of a trap involves encountering the trap, either by disarming it, avoiding it, or simply surviving the damage it deals. A trap never discovered or never bypasses was not encountered (and hence provides no XP award.)
Ten years ago, it was possible to get XP from a trap just by having your biggest burliest guy plow through it and take the hit like a champ, if that's what they decided was the best course of action.
...and that's how I've been adjudicating it ever since reading that ten years ago, up until today with Pathfinder (until someone can point me to an official source that states otherwise.)
As for the matter with the monster in a debilitated/hampered state, I can not find a ruling within any Pathfinder documents about reducing experience gain, however Paizo has set precedent with their APs in which they do so.
In the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition Adventure Path, the players encounter a room with a group of monsters separated in their own individual holes. The adventure recommends awarding only 9% of their actual XP value, justified by the fact that they're stuck in 20-foot deep pits and have no ranged attacks with which to defend themselves.
1. I'd definitely give xp for the trap. You don't take away xp from the party if someone gets injured by a creature, why would you for getting injured by a trap? The encounter was survived.
2. There might be some experience there for avoiding the encounter (because that's often as good, if not better, than engaging in and surviving the encounter), but if it really was as simply as walking by a pit that the creature wasn't going to be able to get out of, I wouldn't give very much, if any (even if they did kill it). Avoiding the encounter should be something like sneaking past a door when failing meant catching a fireball in the face from the wizard or bluffing your way pass the bad guy's guards, etc. On the other hand, avoiding encounters which pose no legitimate threat (or overcoming encounters which pose no legitimate threat) shouldn't be highly rewarded. A monster out of melee reach with no ranged weapons stuck in a pit with no cover, concealment, spell abilities, etc. doesn't pose a legitimate threat to anyone.
That's how I see those issues, anyway.
So if a rogues disables/bypasses a trap you get exp and if you just stumble into the trap you get the same exp?
Yes. However, if the trap is disabled or bypassed, then the party has not lost HP/health status/whatever, and they are in a better position to survive the remaining encounters.
Either way, from a storytelling perspective, I can imagine the party learning something from the way the trap triggers to avoid them in the future.
An example: Should Westley and Buttercup have received experience for the Lightning Sand trap? It nearly killed them both (Buttercup for falling in, Westley for jumping in to rescue her), but in the process they learned how to avoid the other sand traps.
The simple rule is:
If an encounter is an obstacle that the players overcome, then they learn (get XP) from their success. Defeating a monster, disabling a trap, etc.
But if there is no obstacle and the PCs just entirely avoid even having an encounter, then there is no XP (such as with the otyugh in the pit - they never did encounter him, they only saw him and moved on). Consider if they're walking down a country road and a dragon flies overhead. They look up and see him, but it keeps flying off into the distance and they never see it again - would you give them XP? No, of course not, because seeing a monster is not encountering it, and definitely not overcoming the obstacle.
As for springing traps and surviving them, that can be counted as learning from their mistake, but all they really learn from setting off a poisoned needle trap is that poison makes their finger itch a little (they made the save) and maybe they should look for traps next time. No XP, but maybe the characters (players) will learn from their mistake and find the traps before they spring them, in which case, they can get XP for disabling them then.
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The simple rule is:
If an encounter is an obstacle that the players overcome, then they learn (get XP) from their success. Defeating a monster, disabling a trap, etc.
But if there is no obstacle and the PCs just entirely avoid even having an encounter, then there is no XP (such as with the otyugh in the pit - they never did encounter him, they only saw him and moved on). Consider if they're walking down a country road and a dragon flies overhead. They look up and see him, but it keeps flying off into the distance and they never see it again - would you give them XP? No, of course not, because seeing a monster is not encountering it, and definitely not overcoming the obstacle.
As for springing traps and surviving them, that can be counted as learning from their mistake, but all they really learn from setting off a poisoned needle trap is that poison makes their finger itch a little (they made the save) and maybe they should look for traps next time. No XP, but maybe the characters (players) will learn from their mistake and find the traps before they spring them, in which case, they can get XP for disabling them then.
This is the way I aways thouhg it was done.
1. I'd definitely give xp for the trap. You don't take away xp from the party if someone gets injured by a creature, why would you for getting injured by a trap? The encounter was survived.
What if it wasn't a trap? What if they encounter an ogre and the ogre beats them all up - let's assume the ogre isn't hungry, so it just knocks them out and wanders off. How much XP do they get for being wiped out by the ogre? The encounter was survived.
As I see it, you have to overcome the encounter. Simply surviving it is not the same as overcoming it. Survival teaches you to be more careful next time (something every adventurer should know deep, deep down to the core of his very bones), but overcoming it teaches you how to use your skills in new ways, find weaknesses, triumph against adversity, work as a team, etc., all the stuff that adventurers need to practice and improve if they want to survive - in other words, that practice is numerically equated to XP as a measure of when and how much they improve from all this learning.
1. I'd definitely give xp for the trap. You don't take away xp from the party if someone gets injured by a creature, why would you for getting injured by a trap? The encounter was survived.What if it wasn't a trap? What if they encounter an ogre and the ogre beats them all up - let's assume the ogre isn't hungry, so it just knocks them out and wanders off. How much XP do they get for being wiped out by the ogre? The encounter was survived.
As I see it, you have to overcome the encounter. Simply surviving it is not the same as overcoming it. Survival teaches you to be more careful next time (something every adventurer should know deep, deep down to the core of his very bones), but overcoming it teaches you how to use your skills in new ways, find weaknesses, triumph against adversity, work as a team, etc., all the stuff that adventurers need to practice and improve if they want to survive - in other words, that practice is numerically equated to XP as a measure of when and how much they improve from all this learning.
Those circumstances aren't analogous. Are you putting stock into the save being made? Would it be different if the save was failed then spells had to be cast and heal checks made to cure the poison? You don't award less experience if the parties fight a wizard and make the saving throw on the fireball. Similarly, if one character blows initiative and gets one-shotted in the surprise round, knocking him or her out, why does that character get experience for the encounter?
Experience is an abstraction. Encounters are put in place for the party to overcome. It doesn't matter if the party overcomes it by beating it to death, talking it to death, sneaking past it, tricking it to go somewhere else, stumbling through it, or whatever way they can dream up to overcome it. If the players come up with a particularly clever way of solving the problem, award them extra for creativity!
But I'm not going to be bogged down in determining if the way the party overcame the encounter was "good enough" to constitute an award. Talking your way past the ogres isn't necessarily any better or worse than them pummeling the barbarian while the rogue knifes them in the back and the paladin smites their evil souls. If there was actually some kind of encounter (even as minimal as getting stabbed by a needle on a trapped chest), I'll award them for getting past it. After all, if he failed enough saves in a row, the character could have died. How many failed saves are necessary for the encounter to be threatening enough? Doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to get into weeds that far. The trap didn't result in a TPK, so they'll get experience for it.
As for the wandering but satiated ogre question, I honestly would probably award experience in that situation. Why? They were all knocked out. In order for them all to not die, they'd have to not only stabilize themselves, but recover. The chances of that actually happening aren't particularly good, so I wouldn't have any qualms rewarding it. But again, it's not really the same situation as the trap.