5th Level Luke Skywalker and Death Star

[Mark Carlson 255]

This question came about when I started to think about the Thread Should Ships have levels.
That the problem with things blowing up and experience for people being on them.

So does Luke Skywalker (5 level) get all the exp from destroying the death star? Would he get any more or less in no one was on it? What if the empire was on the death star would he get more Exp?
And the big one what level is Luke after blowing up the death star?

The main problem I see is that in future games you have access to powerful equipment and vehicles that allow a relative novice the ability to kill a very powerful NPC easily and do you get Exp for every person on a vehicle/space ship/star port you kill?

Example 1: Darth Vader takes a nap on a Imperial Transport (and the fore is not with him) so he does not know that Imp Trans has a bomb on board set by a 1st level player who is hoping to strike a blow against the enemy by simply disabling one of their ships and causing them delays and money. But now that 1st level PC has managed to kill Darth Vader so how much Exp do they get?

Example 2: See Luke Skywalker question above.

MDC

[technarken]

Reminds me of a moment where the players in my campaign had to unleash a giant blast of energy into the sky...and then braced for the exp gain IF they hit something.

Luke gained a crapton of experience from blowing up the death star, he just didn't level because he had no Jedi to apprentice under and wanted to level into Jedi.

[ryric]

If you kill something without actually facing it in a way where it could (at least theoretically) use its abilities, you shouldn't get XP for it.

Luke gets a story award for accomplishing the campaign goal of "blow up the Death Star." He does not get XP for every stormtrooper, tech ,and officer on board.

Han gets XP for defeating Vader in a space battle. Actually, Han, Chewie, Luke, Wedge and R2 together should split the Vader XP as they all fought him.

[Hitdice]

There are no XP in awards movies, characters advance through storyteller fiat. :P

[Scoundrel the Tiefling]

Its storyteller fiat dude, how do you not know this? He gets nothing special. And he did NOT do it alone. What about all those other NPC guys out there flying around and dying? Han saved his butt too from vader killing him.

[Mark Carlson 255]

Ok Story Award, in quite a few modules I have seen award the players X Exp as if they defeated the monster if they are able to do Y.
So even if you divide the death star exp up amongst all the people who attacked it it should be quite a bit? But I guess if it was an adventure path you could just say you are now level Z.

Story Teller Fiat:
Is there a section on this so I can show it to my 9 and 13 year old nephews to aid them in building their RPG'ing knowledge? I for one have been gaming since 79 and have seen quite a few different ways to rule the above. And as I pointed out it tends to be more of an issue with advanced tech and equipment then it is with sticks and stones.

Thanks
MDC

[Hitdice]

Mark Carlson 255 wrote:

Ok Story Award, in quite a few modules I have seen award the players X Exp as if they defeated the monster if they are able to do Y.

So even if you divide the death star exp up amongst all the people who attacked it it should be quite a bit? But I guess if it was an adventure path you could just say you are now level Z.

Story Teller Fiat:
Is there a section on this so I can show it to my 9 and 13 year old nephews to aid them in building their RPG'ing knowledge? I for one have been gaming since 79 and have seen quite a few different ways to rule the above. And as I pointed out it tends to be more of an issue with advanced tech and equipment then it is with sticks and stones.

Thanks
MDC

Assuming you're speaking seriously and not just handing my own snark back to me, most newer level based RPGs include a section level advancement without XP. I know D&D 5e DMG does, and I assume the PF rules do too.

If you really want to do your nephews a favor, explain to them that while watching a movie can be just as exciting as playing an rpg, the two don't function the same way. A character in a movie is as capable and powerful as that character needs to be to make the story compelling, not as a function of how many encounters they've survived. My point here is, you keep mentioning the Death Star experience award as if A New Hope listed PF game info for all the characters and encounters, but there just wasn't any. While there have been many adaptations of Star Wars to many different game systems, it's impossible to watch the movies and know how many levels Luke gained over the course of the original trilogy.

[Here4daFreeSwag]

In other words, just level up as needed by the plot elements; no need for any XP accounting. Many of the more recent Paizo adventure paths will inform a GM of what level a party should be at during the adventure.

[Mark Carlson 255]

Well my post was a bit of both as my nephews were asking some what if questions and then wanted me to post about it to see what others would say.
I was trying to show them that the net can be a good source of information and people can provide all sots of answers as they have many different experiences.

As I freely admit that I am no Pathfinder expert and most of my games now have a significant portion of them being house ruled to either fix problems or perceived problems, provide setting specific abilities.

I also remember quite a few crazy rules of Exp and in fact some of the first house rules we came up with back in the 80's were rule adjustments to experience.
For example: in the old days (Chain Mail, Blackmore, and D&D paper books, before D&D basic and AD&D), you got Exp for gold and magic items. We quickly found that to become a problem as PC's were leveling from monsters and then gained more levels if there was a big pile of random treasure and or powerful magic items. Dedicated Exp tracking for each hit you did and any crits as well as any special things the GM decided to did.
So we decided on no Exp for magic items, then no Exp for treasure, then you could only gain 2 levels before you needed a weeks rest to reflect and absorb the info (another option was full exp for 1 level, 1/2 exp for the next and 1/4 for the next until you had time to train, as well as other variations on this theme). Tracking of hits, crits, etc gave way to shared exp among'st the party members as tracking became a pain.

Then I decided to keep Exp for the players and they could ask when ever for the total and I would give it to them as it let me provide story awards for good exp without making everyone at the table feel bad or asking "Why did I not get that?"

Now I do a number of different things such as providing bonus skill points, skills, limited set a feats, in game story awards, etc.

Thanks all. It has been a very good lesson for my nephews on the kind of responses you can receive to a question and how to deal with the info that you receive.

MDC

[Gilfalas]

technarken wrote:

Luke gained a crapton of experience from blowing up the death star, he just didn't level because he had no Jedi to apprentice under and wanted to level into Jedi.

Reminds me of the old 1st edition rule that stated, IIRC, you could never gain more XP than needed to go up more than one level per adventure.

Mind you what one 'adventure' actually was was left totally up to the DM back then. :)

[Torbyne]

While this is an extreme example, the thought behind CR as i understand it is that it is a reward for overcoming an obstacle. Using a ship to fight a ship would grant the XP value for ship scale combat. Boarding the ship and fighting through the crew to capture the vessel would grant the XP value of the crew and possibly a quest XP reward. Sneaking onboard the ship, avoiding the crew and planting explosive next to the reactor before slipping out in a shuttle and watching the ship blow up in your rearview camera would grant a significant quest XP reward. In all of these scenarios the XP earned would be different as would the feel and theme of the story you are telling. CR is already a somewhat abstract concept so it would be adjusted based on how you overcame the obstacle, you know?