XP for creatures that can't hurt anything....

[Murdock Mudeater]

Looking at Familiar options, I noticed that my Toad is worth 50xp. How are they worth any xp when they don't even have any attacks listed on their profile?No defenses either, just a mass of flesh that is very slow and drowns in water... Like, is a character able to level at all if they just kill enough defensless creatures? I know, up to the GM, but I'm curious why they'd even give it an XP value when it clearly isn't worth anything at this level. Not even sure how I could use a Toad in an adventure so it was worth the xp for the players to kill it. Thoughts?

[Matthew Downie]

Formulaic monster design. Everything has hit dice and a CR. Everything with a CR has an XP value. There is no CR zero.

Presumably finding and catching toads is pretty difficult, and you might run into dangers while trying, so it's not completely unreasonable, if a wizard was paying you to gather toads for magical reasons.

No worse than getting rewarded for killing cats or whatever.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Also with no attack, the hedgehog. There's also a bunch that are physically incapable of ever doing damage (always doing 1 nonlethal). I was going to say toads and hedgehogs could make unarmed strikes, but since they're both Diminutive I don't think they can (1d2 Small->1 Tiny->undefined).

It's basically just a consequence of standardized monster design and... medium-centrism? I mean, that toad is super deadly to whatever bug it eats (which we don't have stats for). It chows down on those. It's just not a threat (as in not having an attack) to humans (well, and a bunch of other animals). Skunks regularly eat toads, but with their 1d3-4 bite and 1d2-4 claws it's going to take a while. And the entire game is designed that way, basically. A cat will only ever do nonlethal damage with its natural weapons until it overflows. But I've watched a cat do lethal damage (to a bird). They can play with their food. They can also just snap its neck in an instant. Except in Pathfinder, where they need to spend 3 rounds pawing at it to get the nonlethal to roll over to lethal, then another 3 rounds to kill it. The cat just "can't hurt" things bigger than it and even that's sorta BS. I have large claw marks on my thigh where the cat started slipping and dug in (and slid anyway). The game is designed around medium things attacking stuff, go smaller and weaker than average humans and things get weird.

So the toad has an attack. It just only works on things even smaller than we have a size category for and who don't have any stats at all. You're right, it probably shouldn't be worth EXP. Of course, we wouldn't have stats for it at all if it wasn't a familiar, and once you give it stats you have to categorize it, so that's why it ends up supposedly worth EXP. Do you really think any of the other CR 1/8ths are a threat?

[Snowlilly]

Social encounters have CRs and XP, even though weapons are never drawn and nobody gets injured (at least physically).

[PossibleCabbage]

Snowlilly wrote:

Social encounters have CRs and XP, even though weapons are never drawn and nobody gets injured (at least physically).

So one should award 50 xp when they successfully convince the toad to assist the party in a social encounter?

I guess that checks out.

[Knight who says Meh]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Snowlilly wrote:

Social encounters have CRs and XP, even though weapons are never drawn and nobody gets injured (at least physically).

So one should award 50 xp when they successfully convince the toad to assist the party in a social encounter?

I guess that checks out.

Toads have a stealth check of +21. You get 50 xp for just finding one.

[PossibleCabbage]

Knight who says Meh wrote:

Toads have a stealth check of +21. You get 50 xp for just finding one.

I guess this accounts for all of those surprisingly high level children who live near wetlands. Find 40 toads, and all of a sudden you're level 2.

[Knight who says Meh]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Knight who says Meh wrote:

Toads have a stealth check of +21. You get 50 xp for just finding one.

I guess this accounts for all of those surprisingly high level children who live near wetlands. Find 40 toads, and all of a sudden you're level 2.

No xp for them until they are 15 years old!