My team of players and myself are unsure about how to award the 'story xp' in the Dead Suns campaign setting. Will the story rewards be given in full to every player, or are they divided by the number of players in the team?
Lets say : the 600 xp you get for finding the Maiden. Does EVERY char get them, or are they split by the people?
I'm not a GM. That said, Dead Suns includes guidance for the GM, I'm told.
"The party should be level 3 by now" type of thing. Just use it. Computing xp is a hassle. Just tell them at appropriate points "Level up to 5 for next game".
Now I realize some groups don't like that and it removes some feeling of incremental progress. But it is way easier.
Thats the point. assuming that the average group is 4 or 5 players, with 4 players the group BARELY makes it to level 3 AFTER the fight against the final monster of the first book if you divide the story xp. With 5 Players, there is simply no way that the whole group is level 3 when you count every encounter and add every possible xp if you divide the story xp.
And leaving out xp wont work with my group. they LOVE them
That experience is intended to be divided. Level 3 after that last monster is how that xp should add up for a party of 4, which is what the AP assumes.
If you want to use xp, and not milestones, for a party of 5, you'll need to add slight to encounters so that there I'd more xp to go around, if you want people to gain levels at the same points that a party of 4 would.
If you don't want to add more encounters, and don't want to fudge XP rewards arbitrarily, just pretend there are 4 people when figuring out how much XP the party gets.
I'm running Dead Suns with 6 people, and doing a combination of adding in extra creatures into encounters, along with some slight fudging of story XP to get them where they should be at the right times.
They don't know the difference, and it's a lot less of a headache for me!
Creative Director, Starfinder
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As others have said, story awards are intended to be divided between the characters (just like encounter XP for defeating monsters). And all of our APs assume 4 players, so as others have said again, simply dividing all XP for 5 players will likely leave them short of their expected XP totals.
My Starfinder game also has 5 people. I handle the XP disparity by dividing it by 4 (as if there were 4 characters), and giving all 5 characters that amount. It means the group is technically getting more XP than they should, but each individual character gets the right amount of XP for the adventure.
Rules Questions answer: divide it like all other XP rewards. This is easily confirmed by adding all the XP rewards in the whole book and dividing it, then comparing with the adventure guidelines that say what level the PCs should be at the end of the book. Try it the other way, no dividing all story rewards, and you'll see that their level is too high.
The rest of this isn't a "Rules Questions" kind of answer, but it may help some GMs.
Years ago, while playing Pathfinder and other related games, my group all decided to stop tracking XP. I simply tell them when it's time to level up.
Everybody loves it.
I've gone through different groups, adding and replacing players as needed, and they all love it.
It's important as a GM to get the timing right on it. Level too slowly and they feel punished, too quickly and they feel rushed. Usually my cue is to notice when they start asking about how soon they'll level. That makes it easy enough.
Another cue is the adventure itself, especially if you're buying a pre-made adventure like Dead Suns. For one thing, as mentioned above, the adventure tells you what level they should be at the start and end of each book. For another, at any given point in Dead Suns, you can see that most encounters are the same CR as other encounters in the same location. Sure, bosses can be higher, but the majority are all the same CR. When you see that the next area all has encounters that are 1 CR higher than the current area, that tells you when to level them up.
It is so much easier to do it this way. I love it. My players love it. You never have to worry about them skipping an area and falling behind in XP - in fact, they might be encouraged to do so by the simple fact that it's expedient. The whole adventure just seems so much more unrestricted when the actions and rewards are not linked to a numerical scoring system.
Give it a try and see how it goes - but of course, discuss it with your players first and get them to buy into the idea. It should be a shared decision for your whole group.
Ive always wondered this so Im really glad to see an answer.
Though I am normally a by the book XP guy. I actually found myself using the milestone system by the third book and havent looked back. its just so much easier than tracking. Especially seeing as they give you level guidelines. If I were playing a sandbox game though I would use XP.