Not to be mistaken with the somewhat similar thread on EXP-free RPGs.
Do you track experience points separately depending on who's involved in what fights?
Do you divide equally, even among those who weren't helping?
Do you divide only among those who helped, but give those that weren't helping a regular amount to keep things 'even'?
Do you have a maximum level gap where even those who almost never contribute to battles don't go beyond, say, 2 levels beneath the rest?
Or do you just do away with XP altogether and level everyone up when you think they've earned it?
Try not to derail things with that whole attendance issue. That's an egg of worms that we really shouldn't crack open. Let's just assume that Joe, Bob, Betty, Jill and Chris have perfect attendance.
By the way, I know I've been making a lot of threads of late, but this one actually does affect a campaign I'll be running soon. I'm trying to decide whether to count things up separately or keep people even.
I switched to levelling when it seems right to do so recently, and haven't looked back since.
The players seem to agree it wasn't worth the bookkeeping, and are happier that there's no real reason now to poke everything just to get every last XP out of it. We can focus on playing the actual game more.
The only real thing it ever did was provide an incentive, and if someone *needs* XP as an incentive you have to wonder if they're actually enjoying the game.
It also means you can play that module you really want to run next (assuming you're running published adventures), where before they'd still be a level too low for it. Or conversely, you can hold them at a level a bit longer if you want to squeeze in a couple of adventures they'd be levelling too fast for otherwise - and chances are they'll be too busy having fun playing to notice. That also means you can plan ahead a lot better too.
All of that aside from the fact you don't have to worry about the players keeping up with each other any more.
Keeping people even tends to work best for me. I go for a sort of combo between EXP and plot leveling in that I add up the EXP per encounter, divide it by 4, and when that reaches (or gets close enough to) the level up threshold I level up the party, instead of tracking encounter by encounter.
I never give people different EXP values, it helps no one, really.
XP as a concept does more damage to the game than it does good. In my opinion.
If you are determined to use XP, the worst harm it does to the game is to create unneeded player competition and unhelpful power disparity.
So if you are determined to use it, at least keep the party even.
I've had fun with XP in the past, honestly. One fight stands out where there were just two of us and we ended up facing down Ripnugget, five goblins, four goblin dogs and a gecko. We barely won, but the XP was a very nice reward.
Of course, that's what Hero Points and Action Points are for, really.
I do party xp. If they're there, they get xp even if the creature was defeated before their initiative count, or they rolled a 1, or what have you. The important thing is, they were participating. I also give challenge xp for solving problems and completing goals, so it's not just creature thumping.
I prefer xp because it gives the players rewards for what they do. Then again I also prefer open world or "sandbox" style games, so what they do is often up to them. I wouldn't want to hold them back from advancement just because they aren't pursuing the metaplot.
I've switched to leveling the party when it's thematically appropriate to the story (Paizo is thoughtful enough to state level expectations in their APs). Much like using fixed HP per hit die, and point buy for ability scores, advancing everyone at the same rate helps to eliminate yet another variable that can confound party balance and encounter design.
If I use XP at all, it's to balance encounters by using the old "XP Bucket" method. Similarly, in homebrews it can serve as a handy behind-the-scenes mechanism by which I can judge when I should have a thematically appropriate level-up point occur. However, in both these instances such calculations are visible only to me, and I don't actually hand-out XP.
Unfortunately I do find that my players gravitate towards the behaviors that I incentivize with xp. If I want them to be noble I use the palladium xp model... Self sacrifice? xp... Possibly deadly self sacrifice to aid another? Big xp.
When we play in systems that don't incentivize with xp, it can't be argued that my players gravitate towards less than noble activities and choices. They love being bad unless they're chasing a carrot not to.
I have a mild preference for story based leveling rather than using XP at all.
If I were to use xp, I wouldn't exert myself too hard to see that every character's total is always the same (so no, no xp if your character was passed out drunk at the bar) but I would be likely to offer opportunities to earn XP specific to that character, or something similar, if I decided someone were far enough behind to need it.
I've given up on XP entirely. Incentivizing is great from a narrative perspective but the bonus of A) not having to track XP and B) being able to control the pace of character advancement outweigh the benefits. When it's narratively appropriate to level, they level. If I want more of a sandbox feel, I have them level when they've accomplished something major, or a number of minor goals. Splitting the parties levels punishes players who don't attend every session (We have one who is on call all the time, he makes about half our sessions). If you want to reward the players who fight the battles instead of get drunk in bars, give them loot or recognition.
My two cents.
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Or do you just do away with XP altogether and level everyone up when you think they've earned it?
For adventures with clear level breaks, I do away with XP and level as needed for the adventures.
For adventures without clear level breaks, I track one XP total and level the party when that total determines they should.
The players earn the experience points, and they level when they are supposed to level, not when I think they should level.
I believe that the characters earn the experience points, not the players.
Everyone in the party always has the same XP total in my games. My group as a whole is VERY AGAINST removing XP from the game in any form or fashion.
Of course, the examples beg the question of why one of the party members is back in town getting drunk while the others are fighting monsters in a dungeon. That's never happened in my games. It's one thing to get separated in a dungeon or go one's own way when you get back to town, but if the party's left town to go dungeon delving it's always as a group, never leaving one or two people behind.
Or do you just do away with XP altogether and level everyone up when you think they've earned it?
Yes.
If I had players who really wanted to track their XP as a way of knowing how close to the next level they are, I'd give 'em group XP. But it'd be essentially arbitrary sums of XP per encounter, rather than as per RAW.
I give out XP. My players like the reward, and the anticipation of levelling. Everyone tracks their own XP so I don't have to worry about it. PCs get full XP if the player is there, 1/2 if not and the character is played by another players as an NPC. But it's all group XP. If a PC was alive at the start of the encounter then they get an equal share.
Greg
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I do not like the "leveling when the DM thinks it is appropriate" approach as I feel that the earning of experience points is one of the things a DM should not decide upon arbitrarily. The players earn the experience points, and they level when they are supposed to level, not when I think they should level.
EXP is just a mechanic for tracking character progress. It is pretty pointless, especially when PCs should progress at the speed of plot.
Doing away with it just lets the GM have players meet appropriate challenges when he deems that they should, not when a number tells him to. It gives more control over the game, in a good way.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You really don't understand this game at all if you think "When to level" has been a factor the player's control.
The GM controls who gets the EXP, when, why, and in what quantities.
To butcher a quote from one of my teachers in high school "The EXP does not determine when you level. I do."
so the "growth" of a character is not within the player's control at allNever has been.
To be a little more explicit than TOZ and Rynjin have been, consider RAW:
PCs get XP from defeating enemies. Who decides how many and which enemies appear? You guessed right, you do! Heck, PF even has the different XP tracks if you don't like how fast/slow your players are leveling.
Sure, going by RAW theoretically prevents you from doing something crazy like not allowing advancement after 6th level. ;) But if you're hellbent on stifling advancement, adhering to RAW is just a speed bump. (It doesn't matter how many goblins you kill, they're not worth xp to you! Oh, you want something meatier? I'll throw a great wyrm dragon at you!)
I'm still a bit torn, since my game will be using Action Points and with those it's very good to know when you're close to leveling. Sure, I could just tell them "this fight will level you up", but that feels somehow unsporting.
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He's talking about Action Points and giving your players a heads up that now may be a good time to use 'em since they'll recharge when they level anyway.
Personally I usually say at the start of a session "You'll probably level this session or the next", which can work with the Action Points problem quite well, giving them a timeframe to use them in, but not an exact "May as well do this so they're not wasted" kind of way.
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The problem being that any action points they had remaining are technically lost when they level up and refresh. Meaning "that fight just leveled you up" ALSO says "ha ha, should have used those action points!"
I should have included a "YMMY". This is how my group rolls. Of course we never use them for anything but staving off death so we always want to bank them anyways. :)
Dumped XP. Leveling when in-game achievements are met really makes more sense to me now.
edit - in the 4E game I just started a week ago (an interm game while out KM campaign is on hold) I'm thinking of leveling everyone every other session if possible.
He's talking about Action Points and giving your players a heads up that now may be a good time to use 'em since they'll recharge when they level anyway.
Personally I usually say at the start of a session "You'll probably level this session or the next", which can work with the Action Points problem quite well, giving them a timeframe to use them in, but not an exact "May as well do this so they're not wasted" kind of way.
This is probably what I'll use, actually. Thanks, Rynjin!
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I prefer to give XP, equally distributed among all PC.
I tend to give XP on situations mores so than creatures, although "defeating", "slip past", "smooth-talk" or even "having its butt kicked by" a creature usually constitute a situation deserving XP, among others.
This system isn't completely transparent; mostly because my guidelines are vague at best and I want to be able to conveniently grant just about the right amount of XP to level-up went I feel that the time is right. Bit of a mix between "RaW gives me this to work with" and "play by ear".
I prefer to reward individual behavior with action points or a similar system rather than XP. Usually, good R-P sessions are self-rewarding, so I rarely grant anything beyond the boons/reputation/social-goodies/satisfaction-of-bragging-over-the-bad-guys that they get from that R-P anyways.
The GM controls who gets the EXP, when, why, and in what quantities.
To butcher a quote from one of my teachers in high school "The EXP does not determine when you level. I do."
Or you could be like me and not really pay any attention to it. Yeah, my players are about double the level expected for the part of the AP they're in, because I tossed in a bunch of extra sidequests and monsters for them, paying less attention to the XP budget and more to "is this going to be a challenging and interesting encounter?" and making my decisions based on that.
Ended up with higher-level characters than the game expects, but I'm okay with that. I don't mind scaling the encounters up further. If I'd followed the listed guidelines for "Players should be level X when they finish plot point Y", they'd basically have lost four or five levels worth of rewards in those events. And I'm sure someone in my group would have calculated it all up out of curiosity if nothing else.
At least in my group, the players track their own XP, and level whenever they reach a threshhold. I really don't pay much attention to it, other than calculating it up and dividing it up at the end of a session. I have to ask them how close they are to leveling more often than the other way around.
Orthos, I don't mean anything critical in this. I would like to use your post as a reference to make an unrelated point. an Adventure Path is a perfect example for me of the limitations of the XP system. If you beef up encounters because of a stronger party (which I almost always end up having to do) by rule the party should get extra XP for the fight. Extra XP makes the already strong party over-level the content and exacerbates the problem of them being stronger than the written encounters. The party deserves the XP, they've earned it. One of the big reasons I like the already written APs is not having to write an entire campaign out. I work full time and goto school, I need the assistance to have a well fleshed out adventure. Keeping the party in the level range the AP thinks they should be keeps the encounters closer to where I want them to be, challenge wise. If your party is doubling up the expected level, aren't they blowing encounters up left and right?
Laurefindel, if your party gets enough XP to conveniently level when you want them to your mechanically getting the same effect I do by not bothering with XP. Do you track the parties XP? I like the idea of giving players a metric for their advancement without losing the benefit of keeping the pace what I want it to be.
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I do away with XP altogether when playing APs. I level (all) PCs up at certain logical points in the books. When a player doesn't attend, the PC gets "XP" but they don't get gold or items.
For a long time I tracked XP (even to the point of minor things) using the Rolemaster system. XP was given for doing hit points of damage, criticals, taking damage, taking criticals, casting spells, and delivering killing blows. And I tracked it all. You know what? It was a massive waste of time.
^^^ That is just administration, which isn't fun for anyone and it's a waste of time. I suppose it was good in the sense that it illustrated that I never wanted to track XP ever again.
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Or you could be like me and not really pay any attention to it. Yeah, my players are about double the level expected for the part of the AP they're in, because I tossed in a bunch of extra sidequests and monsters for them, paying less attention to the XP budget and more to "is this going to be a challenging and interesting encounter?" and making my decisions based on that.Ended up with higher-level characters than the game expects, but I'm okay with that. I don't mind scaling the encounters up further. If I'd followed the listed guidelines for "Players should be level X when they finish plot point Y", they'd basically have lost four or five levels worth of rewards in those events. And I'm sure someone in my group would have calculated it all up out of curiosity if nothing else.
At least in my group, the players track their own XP, and level whenever they reach a threshhold. I really don't pay much attention to it, other than calculating it up and dividing it up at the end of a session. I have to ask them how close they are to leveling more often than the other way around.
And yet you're still deciding exactly what I said. You made the encounters, you determined how much EXP they were worth, when they got them, why they showed up, and everything else.
You said "Yes, you may level with the EXP." that was your decision, as the GM, to make. If you wanted to, at any point, say "No, don't level yet." you could. The GM controls that. There's no way the GM CAN'T control that.
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1)Do you track experience points separately depending on who's involved in what fights?
2) Do you divide equally, even among those who weren't helping?
3) Do you divide only among those who helped, but give those that weren't helping a regular amount to keep things 'even'?
4) Do you have a maximum level gap where even those who almost never contribute to battles don't go beyond, say, 2 levels beneath the rest?
5) Or do you just do away with XP altogether and level everyone up when you think they've earned it?
1) Yes. (Theoretically - such a situation would be very rare.)
2) No.3) No.
4) No. (Again, theoretically. I've never seen this, and likely never will.)
5) Hell, no. I love XP.