Simple question. Say the PCs are attacked by 6 ogres. That's a CR 8 encounter with each ogre worth 800xp. If, like the title, the PCs kill half the ogres, the other have deciding to flee for their lives, the PCs still get the full 4800xp, correct?
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They over came the challenge so yeah I would say all of it.
What Gaekub said. Unless the encounter is meant for something other tahn combat (like trading with the ogres or starting an alliance for example) then fleeing opponents are as good as dead opponents for the purposes of xp gain. Equipment is a different story though.
You can certainly get XP for defeating the same opponent more than once. If those ogres run away, heal up, find a couple buddies, and come back the next day, then you're facing what is essentially a new challenge and should be rewarded appropriately.
An encounter against 6 ogres is an encounter against 6 ogres, regardless of how many of those ogres are recurring characters.
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You can certainly get XP for defeating the same opponent more than once.Well, I mean, you can and any GM can, but that's not a "by the rules" answer.
I am curious. Could you please quote the "by-the-rules" answer then?
Because the only passage that I found that appears to appy is the one aboyd referenced: "Characters advance in level by defeating monsters, overcoming challenges, and completing adventures..."
Also makes it fun for those 'scripted' battles where some monsters have to get away, wouldn't it?
It's ultimately a GM call: at what point is Orc #402 'defeated'? I'd say if he runs away and loses any interest in the party at that point, he's defeated/overcome/whatever. Same as if he's hit with that Imprisonment scroll you've given your party for no reason, or if Bart the Bard seduces him into his harem.
Of course, all of these have different outcomes later. 402 there 'later on' causes trouble? New encounter, new chance for XP; after all, it's unlikely he's remembered as 402, like in the ogre chieftain example. But as mentioned, if 402 runs back to raise the alarm, no XP.
So far in the battles my group's been in, it's been obvious when NPCs are running off to regroup, or just hightailing it. If there were some question about it, I'd lean towards withholding the XP until their fate is determined. After all, in this case the PCs wouldn't know if 402 ran off for good or not. Once they finish the sweep of the area and they've got a chance to 'know' that 402 isn't coming back, cash him out for XP.
If a monster contributes to the challenge rating for encounter 1, and then runs off and contributes to the challenge rating for encounter 2, you should get XP for both situations.
Example:
orc fighters with a couple of archers. Archers hang back and shoot at the party while the fighters engage in melee. Those archers are part of the challenge, they are causing damage, drawing attention, using party resources. The fighters start to lose or all get killed off and the archers flee to join orc group #2.
Now they contribute to the CR for encounter 2, and will boost the XP for overcoming that challenge. Discounting their XP for encounter 1 is like pretending they were never there, shooting arrows and causing damage. It's not fair to the players.
I like this answer a bit better, depending on how beat up the fleeing creatures are. In this case, unlikely unless someone's tossed some return missiles at them. As always, check with your GM. Local data rates may apply.
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One option to think about that bypasses all of these options - progress-based leveling. If you're playing adventure paths, level up when the path says to. If you're playing home games, level up when you complete major story arcs.
Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.
If the orc keeps coming, you might not have overcome its challenge. For instance, if the orc decides to ambush you on your way out because you embarrassed it, that's probably just an extension of the same challenge. Especially if there wouldn't have been a different orc there if you had caught the first one before it fled.
It's admittedly a fuzzy line.
It's about overcoming the challenge and gaining from the experience, not racking up a body count.
I am going to go out on a limb and say it is the number of ogres they 'confronted'.
Basically, if there are 6 ogres, but 3 stick in the back and never do anything, and then run away after the first three get killed, then you didn't 'confront' and defeat them. There was no difference between this and fighting 3 ogres since the back 3 never did anything. It is little different then having a duel with the orc general and having his 100 men in the back- even if the men run after the leader is dead, you didn't 'confront' all 100.
Now if it was a mash up, and you managed to dodge some AoOs from eahc of them, and get some hits in, and the ogres notice half of them are dead... then yes, that is 6 'confronted' and defeated. In this scenario, you could have totally ended up engaging and killing 6 ogres, and you just got an early win condition.
Of course, you need to make this type of logic entirely clear as a general rule from the get go. Just up and not giving rewards to the party 'feels' cheap.
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Characters advance in level by defeating monsters, overcoming challenges, and completing adventures...So if on day 1 you fight ogres and some run away and then re-attempt to kill you on day 2, you absolutely did not "defeat" them on day 1. Or at least, that was the conclusion of that group, and I like their interpretation of the rule text. If you don't like that and go some other way, then you do, but really we should move the discussion from "Rules Questions" to "Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew."
That's a very unusual definition of defeat. Pretty much any time two armies fight and one of them runs away, you would say that the army that ran away was defeated, that its fleeing soldiers and leaders were defeated. This is true even if some of those soldiers return to fight the same enemy later. We say for example that George Washington was defeated at the Battle of Long Island despite the fact that the battle didn't permanently get rid of Washington.
If you're worried about your party abusing the system, then maybe you need house rules.
If the orc keeps coming, you might not have overcome its challenge. For instance, if the orc decides to ambush you on your way out because you embarrassed it, that's probably just an extension of the same challenge. Especially if there wouldn't have been a different orc there if you had caught the first one before it fled.
It's admittedly a fuzzy line.
In a case like this where an enemy is designed to flee and return, I'd treat it as two encounters with reduced CR, since an orc that flees if reduced to half health is less challenging to defeat than an orc that fights to the death, and in the second encounter an injured orc is less challenging to fight than one at full health. Of course, if it has a chance to heal before the second encounter, it might not be at reduced CR in that case. Really depends on how I think the challenge of the encounter is affected by circumstance - and speaking of house rules I use simplified XP so a rough estimate of challenge level is enough.
The only time you should NOT gain XP for critters that run away is when you design the encounter specifically as hit and run.
You gain XP for overcoming the encounter as designed. Most encounters are just designed as "get past this critter". Doesn't have to be that simple though.
If 6 ogres block your way, and you bribe them into letting you past, you have overcome the challenge. If they don't stay bribed then that becomes a new challenge/encounter.
If you kill 3 of them, and the other 3 run away you have overcome the challenge. If the other 3 come back later it is a new challenge/encounter.
If however your encounter calls for 6 ogres to run in attack you once and then run off and do this every other day until 3 of them are dead, then they get full XP for 6 ogres only once 3 of them are dead - even if that is 2 weeks later.
Now assigning an appropriate CR adjustment for such a hit and run encounter - that's another question. It shouldn't garner full XP though.
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You can certainly get XP for defeating the same opponent more than once.Well, I mean, you can and any GM can, but that's not a "by the rules" answer. That's your interpretation. It may or may not be right, since the rules text isn't perfect; it certainly isn't right for me, and I'd say running games the way I do (differently from your recommended method) is by-the-book.
I referenced a discussion at EnWorld about it. The group got deep into a discussion over text like this from the Core Rulebook:
Characters advance in level by defeating monsters, overcoming challenges, and completing adventures...So if on day 1 you fight ogres and some run away and then re-attempt to kill you on day 2, you absolutely did not "defeat" them on day 1. Or at least, that was the conclusion of that group, and I like their interpretation of the rule text. If you don't like that and go some other way, then you do, but really we should move the discussion from "Rules Questions" to "Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew."
If you kill, or cause to flee... You still defeated the monster. That said, this is kind of a gray area IMO. And one which becomes even murkier with scenarios and adventure paths.
With the six ogres, IMO you SHOULD get the full xp from the encounter. The 3 that fled abandoned the fight. They were defeated when their moral got low enough to flee.
Party then gets ambushed by a group of ogres when leaving the haunted keep. How do they know that 3 of those ogres are the ones who fled? Especially if the ogres got healed? In fact, unless the ogre tribe (which is unlikely since they are usually solitary) has a healer, it probably isn't the same 3. Those 3 are probably recovering, and six new ogres are here for revenge and/or 'good eatins'.
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If this is a random encounter - they should get exp.
If this is a Story Line Encounter - it depends a lot on the story line and what the PC are supposed to be doing and what they need to get done to complete the story.
Over all, I dislike giving out exp for encounters. There's just way too many ways for your players to do stuff you haven't planned for (How do you figure out that exp if the players do something weird, completely skipping a encounter?). Use the CR for your encounters to give you a rough idea for experience and then reward the players that experience at the end of a story arc. This gives the GM more control over how fast (or slow) the players level.
When I gm a home game, I keep a running tally of xp then award it at the end of the session. As such, how would they know if they got xp from the same exact enemy 3 times that session? For example...
Party encounters a group of 12 bandits. While they defeat the bandits, four of the twelve fled the battle when they realized things were going against them. They then later track down where the bandit encampment camp is. My notes said there was only 30 bandits total. Since 8 are dead, that means there's now 22 bandits. Further my notes say that there's usually two groups of 6 to 12 bandits each out at any given moment. A few dice rolls tell me the second group consists of 8 bandits, so currently there's 14 in the camp. Four of them are the ones that fled the earlier assault. Notes further say that this time the bandits all fight until death or capture.
The party has no way to know this. And why should I reduce the xp from the overall encounter? Those 4 bandits who escaped earlier ARE making the attack on the bandit encampment more dangerous. Yes, the encampment encounter would have provided less xp if all 12 of the initial encounter had been killed. But then it also would have been an easier encounter too.
PCs gain XP however the GM sees fit.
Is their goal to survive the attack? Full XP.
Is there goal to murder every single bandit in the area? Half XP.
Don't get hung up on the specifics, award them how you feel they deserve with how they achieved their goals.
I see no problem being able to gain XP for defeating the same creature twice. XP is kind of like being paid for doing a job. If I do a job I expect to get paid for it. If the job has to be done again then I expect I will get paid for it again. This is of course assuming I actually did the job. So let say I am mechanic and someone brings me a car that has a damage transmission. If I fix the transmission I expect to get paid. If a week later the car come back with the transmission busted again I expect to be paid for it. If the reason it came back was that I did not fix it then I should not be paid for it. But if the reason the transmission is because the car was in an accident or the owner of the car did something to break it they are going to have to pay to get it fixed.
So if the ogre’s flee and I later encounter these same ogres’s I should get XP for both encounters. If on the other hand the ogre’s retreat and fall back to another site with other ogre’s waiting as reinforcements then then I should not get XP for the second part of the encounter. As long as the obstacle is no longer a threat I get the XP. If on the other hand I have only temporarily nullified the threat than I don’t get double XP.