Encounter Experience Questions

[Jason Kelly 830]

First off - Love the new System! I've been running 3.5 and Pathfinder for many years now. There are many exciting changes to 2e that I'm really interested in. Unfortunately, one of the more confusing ones is the new XP system. I purchased the 'Fall of Plaguestone' adventure to run and find myself baffled by the XP awards. I've seen Severe 1, Moderate, and High just to name a few but the Core Rulebook is sadly lacking in examples or full descriptions on how to decipher all this into a playable system.I have several questions:

Why are they seemingly using the 'XP Awards' and 'Encounter Budget' charts interchangeably?

What is the difference between a Severe 1 and Severe 2? What about a 'Moderate 3'? How do you calculate the XP for each?

What is a "High 2"? How do I calculate that?

If someone can point me to a link that will better explain this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Eltacolibre]

Let see where do I start with this, because its basically the same thing:

First of all the xp award is fixed for each type of encounters and all players get the same amount of xp.

Trivial you can award 40 xp or less.
Low is 60 xp.
Moderate is 80 xp.
Severe is 120 xp.
Extreme is 160 xp.

See p. 489 for more details.

The main difference to take into account, you will always the xp of a four-man party.

XP Budget is used mostly if you have a party of a different size (this doesn't change how much xp your group is awarded)

If you have 5 players for example and you wanted to do an extreme encounter:

The book suggests to add 40 xp to your encounter chart budget.

So your budget goes from 160 xp to 200 xp.

Let say for example, for whatever reason you wanted the party to fight a level 5 enemy at level 1 (extreme threat), on his own it would be 160 xp budget, now with the 40 xp you can add one creature same level as the party to do the 40 xp budget.

You will still only award 160 xp (four people) for defeating the encounter.

The number next to moderate etc...is simply for you to use as reference for average party level.

A severe encounter for a level 2 party could easily be an extreme encounter for a level 1 party.

This is only encounter xp award, there are other xp award which depends on achievement etc...for awards outside of physical encounters see p. 507-508.

[Jason Kelly 830]

Thank you for replying but what you have explained is written in the book, unfortunately it does not answer several of my questions.

What is the difference between Severe 2 and Severe 3?

Is there a numbering system described somewhere I missed?

What is High 2? I didn't see High anywhere in the book.

Here's an example from the "Fall of Plaguestone" adventure, pg 20

F7. Snake Pool Low 1

But on pg 37, I3. Lord Nar's Throne is a Low 3

What is the difference in between Low 1 and Low 3?

on pg 37 as well I2. Guarded Yard is 'Trivial/Low 3' Where the heck is that explained?!

[Eltacolibre]

A party has four people.

Severe 2 is a severe encounter for average party level of 2.
Severe 3 is a severe encounter for average party level of 3.

The numbering is used everywhere from feats, to spells, to class feats in the core rulebook.

High 2 should have said Moderate 2 aka a moderate encounter for an average party of level 2.

Low 1 is low encounter for average party of level 1.
Low 3 is a low encounter for average party of level 3.

Trivial/low 3 just mean the encounter could be trivial or low for average party of level 3.

[Jason Kelly 830]

Ah, now that is an explanation! Thanks. I still think I prefer CR, but I'm old school like that.