I'm having trouble assigning XP to my players. I understand the awards are Mild, Moderate, and High and the awards are 30, 50, and 80 respectively, but where do you find out if a creature is Low, Med, or High? I've been trying to run Doomsday Dawn, but the creatures are referenced to PF 1 bestiaries, for the most part and the few that are listed in the adventure itself have no XP level or rating or anything. The encounters seem to be rated, but the words used do not match the PFPT Book for experience tiers and there seem to be more of them (Trivial 1, High 1, Low 1, Severe 1, Hazard 2, etc...)
Can someone please direct me to an explanation of how this works, because the book is not making sense with relation to the adventure.
I've been trying to run Doomsday Dawn, but the creatures are referenced to PF 1 bestiaries, for the most part and the few that are listed in the adventure itself have no XP level or rating or anything.
Have you downloaded the PF2 Bestiary?
TABLE 4: CREATURE XP AND ROLE
Creature’s Level XP Suggested Role
Party’s level – 4 10 Low-threat minion
Party’s level – 3 15 Low- or high-threat minion
Party’s level – 2 20 Any minion or standard
Party’s level – 1 30 Any standard
Party level + 0 40 Any standard or low-threat boss
Party’s level + 1 60 Low- or high-threat boss
Party’s level + 2 80 High- or severe-threat boss
Party’s level + 3 120 Severe- or extreme-threat boss
Party’s level + 4 160 Extreme-threat solo boss
Related question -- why does the Rulebook have different numbers that don't cohere with the XP rewards in the Bestiary?
30 / 50 / 80
40 / 60 / 80 / 120... ?
So when it says in the Rulebook to plan for X mild, X moderate, and maybe a high encounter, how does that work with the Bestiary XP numbers?
Related question -- why does the Rulebook have different numbers that don't cohere with the XP rewards in the Bestiary?
30 / 50 / 80
40 / 60 / 80 / 120... ?
So when it says in the Rulebook to plan for X mild, X moderate, and maybe a high encounter, how does that work with the Bestiary XP numbers?
The 10 / 30 / 80 rewards referenced on page 339 of the playtest rulebook are generally for things outside of encounter time. A couple of examples are given but these rewards are more at the GMs whim. These rewards are good for when a character does something interesting or noteworthy.
If you're facing off against monsters/traps the rules are more specific as to how much xp each thing is worth and these are detailed on pages 13 and 21 of the beastiary.
Thank you. But I guess the part I understand is the following in the Rulebook:
"As a general guideline, in a given game session you’ll typically give up to five or six minor awards, two or three moderate awards, and only one major award, if any."
So, how long is a "given game session"? And it suggests giving XP for "finding secret areas," "locating a foe's hideout," and "mapping a dungeon" -- things that seem to lead their own rewards and which the party would be inclined to do anyway.
All in all, I have no idea what these guidelines are meant to convey in terms of frequency and types of rewards...
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Something with the XP system that is obvious in hindsight, but which did not immediately leap out at me on first reading, is that the categorisation of encounter difficulty (Trivial, Low, High, Severe, Extreme) drops down one category for each level the party goes up.
In other words, a Severe difficulty encounter for level 1 characters is a High difficulty encounter for level 2 characters, a Low difficulty encounter for level 3 characters, and a Trivial encounter for level 4 characters, with the corresponding XP adjustments (120 XP each for a Severe difficulty encounter, 80 XP each for a High difficulty encounter, 60 XP each for a Low difficulty encounter, 40 XP each for a Trivial encounter).
So, when a published module (say, Doomsday Dawn) says that a room is "High 1", i.e. a High difficulty encounter for a 1st level party, you can work out the XP reward for a higher-level party directly by dropping the difficulty and giving the appropriate reward for their actual level.
(Or you can dig into the Bestiary and adjust the encounter to preserve the difficulty for your higher level party).