Experience Points Award

[Kirby J. Parasol]

I'm trying to figure out how experience points are granted in this game. All I could find is table 4 in the 2e bestiary. But if I'm reading that correctly, it means that an encounter with a challenge rating equal to the party only grants 40xp to each player character. If THAT'S true...say you play once a week. You'd need six or seven encounters every night to gain ONE level...per month. Maybe this is what Paizo intended, but this definitely doesn't sound correct to me. Am I missing something?

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Start with table 5 (XP per encounter), not table 4 (XP per creature). If the XP total is 40, e.g. one creature of the party's level, the difficulty is rated Trivial. If you want a Low Difficulty or High Difficulty encounter you should be aiming for 60-80 XP, which might be a single higher-level creature or might be that 40-XP guy plus lower-level minions. This should level your party up in a month with only 3-4 low-to-high-difficulty encounters per weekly session.

(Oh, and when your PCs are low enough level to be fighting some level 0 monsters, remember to apply the adjustments for those hidden in the last line of Choosing Creatures under those tables. Really should have been a footnote to table 4.)