Did the other party members take any kind of active party in the combat ?
If not then give him the xp for all 4 cr 1 creatures so that's 1600xp maybe next time the others will help out
S
Now, I want to be fair, but I also don't want his experience to outpace the other members of the group. In the last session they racked up a combined total of 805 XP from their other two encounters.
My next session is tonight and I'm just trying to have the XP totals from last week on hand when we start our game.
Basic economics -- you get what you reward. What kind of player behavior do you want in your game?
Personally, I'd spread the XP around (I find it's easier to keep party members in step with each other since then everyone levels during the same week), including people who aren't there. I'd also reward the heroic player with some sort of trinket that doesn't count against his WBL -- a potion of awesomeness or something -- as a one-off reward for being awesome.
If you're not religiously keeping character leveling in-step like a dance troupe,... hell, why not, put him at level 5 two sessions early. It will provide a buffer if he needs to go to a dentist's appointment or something and loses out on xp.
Basic economics -- you get what you reward. What kind of player behavior do you want in your game?
Orfamay is right. You give him exp for this, and you will get everyone trying to run solo encounters. His reward was being awesome for 20 rounds of combat that session.
What was the guy that was watching the rogue doing during this combat? Why did he not help?
Add up EXP for all the monsters divide by number of players. Then move on. Do not open Solo game middle of group game. That is Rude & Disrespectful to other players. We learn to share and not be a pig in a Polite society at the age 5. So you and one player playing by yourself for 20 rounds while other players did nothing but waited. That is poor GMing and time management .
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I would give him full XP for the fight. Hey if no one wanted to help him they deserve to fall behind. ALSO this is the only truly fair way to award combat XP otherwise you will get a ton of solo fights as the rest of the PCs step back all the time and watch one or two others fight while earning a full share of the XP... sharing XP rewards bad form indeed. Keep in mind however I use a multi layered XP award system fighting XP is far reduced in my games, so in my game this wouldn't put him very far ahead.
I usually give the biggest rewards for achieving mission goals followed by role playing, combat, and finally teamwork in a sort of grab bag of XP for the rest. This group sounds like they would fail all my teamwork awards and unevenly split the combat rewards... odds are good that they would be leveling rather slowly in my game.
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I stopped giving XP for adventure paths and started using the benchmarks to know when to level them up. XP is no longer a crafting resource so I don't think its important to track it in an AP.
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I like the idea of giving him a trinket that doesn't count against WBL as reward but splitting the XP with the party anyway. Perhaps he gets a token from one of the zombies that makes all of his attacks count as Bane against zombies only? It could even be a zombie finger that got stuck in him one of the times he was hit. Count it as a slotless item, just to avoid accidentally making it useless compared to later items.
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So long story short, the Rogue disturbed the zombies, and ended up killing all four of them in a combat that lasted about 20 rounds, with him taking nearly fatal damage (he was down to 4 out of 21 HP). He was able to handle it deftly because he has 19 AC and was wielding a slashing weapon which bypassed their DR. They were swinging +2 and -3 when he let then get both attacks, so they had a 15% to hit with their primary and a 5% with their secondary. So my question is, how should i go about awarding experience for that fight?
Firstly, I'd hardly call that 'deft'.
He took 20 rounds to deal with four zombies; that's an average of five rounds apiece.
And in doing so, he lost most of his hp, risking being overwhelmed by the next potential blow. He came close to being killed, if one of the hits had been a crit, or some of the hits rolled better damage.
If I'd been one of the other players, I'd have called that 'being in serious trouble'.
PF has changed undead to be subject to sneak attack, meaning that they only had to turn up for moral support, and fight defensively, to give the rogue a threefold boost in damage.
And yet, the others sat back and watched.
What were they waiting for, a written invitation to join in?
Hell, yes, this PC handled the whole encounter alone, and deserves the full xp for doing so.
It sounds like this was a tough fight, and the PC will have learned something, even if that something is "Never trust your companions to watch your back.".
That's a different scenario from when a PC trivialises an encounter with one or two actions. In those cases, the xp is waived, since it was obviously never a level-appropriate threat, regardless of what the CR said.
You've got two reasonable options:
A: Give the rogue all XP (1600 or 1200), which means you're rewarding him for searching on his own, and by comparison punishing the others for not supporting him.
B: Spread the XP around. Even if they were doing different things, they were all exploring the village and learned something.
There are two big questions you need to answer:
1: What kind of behaviour do you want to reward? Do you want to reward them for splitting up and taking risks on their own? Do you want to punish them for splitting up where they can't support each other? Either of these are reasons to go with A. But if you think it's entirely their own responsibility, A might be less relevant.
2: Do you care if one player gets more XP than the others? Do you always spread the XP around? I've been in one campaign where everybody levels up together, whether they missed sessions or not. By rewarding individual players, you make the game more competitive; it makes it possible for players to get ahead of the pack or fall behind. This will have impact on group dynamics and may ultimately undermine teamwork. But it can also stimulate initiative, especially in the more assertive players. And if one gets lucky and gets a level ahead of the rest, well, that's the consequence of this choice.
Also, what was with the guy that was supposed to support the rogue? Why didn't he help?
One note: did you buff the zombies up to Pathfinder standards? If not, the CR should be lowered by one step to 1/2 CR. Zombies in Pathfinder have 5 higher strength and thus hit more often. 3.5 monsters (Second Darkness is a 3.5 publication) are 1 CR step lower compared to PF monsters.
A comparison between the baseline zombie in 3.5 and the PF zombie shows the following differences:
Strength increased from 12 to 17
Dexterity increased from 8 to 10
Charisma increased from 1 to 10 (non-issue)
Hit Dice size were decreased from d12s to d8s
Undead are now subject to critical hits and sneak attacks.
In short, zombies hit harder and more often and are slightly harder to hit but they have fewer hitpoints.
A comparison between the Void Zombie and the 3.5 Zombie shows that the void zombie is based on the 3.5 zombie with a few alterations: The addition of the tongue, not limited to single actions/attacks, and suffers from critical hits and sneak attacks normally.
In short, converting a 3.5 Void Zombie to a PF Void Zombie it should have a 17 strength, 10 dexterity, 10 charisma, and d8's for hit dice. Then it can keep it's CR1 classification.
- Gauss
Maybe there is a third option. If you don't want to create a level discrepancy how about thinking of another reward for your players? This way you could award him for killing the Zombies, without having to deny XP from the other adventurers
Maybe give him a Hero Point for his efforts or add some special Item for him near to the Zombies. He can pick it up before the rest comes.
I'm with Saturn. Personally, if I was the rogue PC, I'd be pretty pissed at the third member for not bothering to get up off his lazy ass and come help me. It's one thing if the other person was so far away not to get there and help, but a guy who was actively waiting to help decided not to, for arbitrarily no reason.
Keep in mind, from the character's point of view, fighting zombies is a bad thing and its dangerous. From the player's point of view, this is extra spotlight time. The rogue already got his reward.
At first i thought this would be about a munchkin but the rogue played it out smart and it was a chalenge i would award him the full xp he did the work.
The one thing I was never able to understand about this story is why it took a PC 20 rounds to kill 4 CR1 zombies. I assume the players are all level 3 or higher since its books 2. I don't think I've ever played a character that couldn't one round zombies at that level.
Zombies are punching bags with low AC and bad action economy, killing them is trivial from level 1 on. Were they variant zombies to have the 1CR per? normal zombies are only CR1/2 (which makes the encounter CR2 not CR4).
I'd give the character 50% of the total XP right away, and split the rest with the remainder of the party if they contributed at all (ie, a cleric heals the rogue's wounds, the fighter giving a potion to the rogue). Otherwise, I'd let the player find a larger than normal amount of case and insist the the character keep it to himself (plus that 50% xp).
The Druid was there with her lion. She was intending on stepping in if the Rogue falls unconscious. After the fight she used a wand of CLW to bring him back up to 20, and they went on their merry way.
I'd intended to advise you to split the EXP up, but then I read this. "The druid" didn't help him fight the zombies. I'd reward the Rogue alone just because the druid was twiddling her thumbs rather than rushing to help him deal with something she ought to have found fundamentally abhorrent.
I would give him a hero point or something else nice but not break the sequence of leveling everyone at the same time. Maybe let the players know that "HEY, DONT LET YOUR FRIENDS FIGHT JUNK ALONE. THEY WILL DIE."
I think I'd split the XP between everyone *except* the Druid.
Everyone else was doing something to contribute at the time. They may not have run into combat encounters, but not through their own fault. This is one of the reasons I also like systems where skills improve through use rather than through XP.
The druid player had a chance to participate and instead hung back and watched. They were not contributing, or using any skills.
The only way I'd make an exception for this is if this were truly in character (given background notes or past behavior) for the Druid to do something like this, in which case I'd likely give them an equal share of the XP minus some kind of penalty for non-participation.
just split it evenly it alows for a better plzy if the solo player complains he got alot of solo time tell him not to wonder off alone!!
Just drop the XP and let them level up at the end of each session or every other session, depending on pace.