I've been pondering running an adventure for a new group so I picked up the Plaguestone adventure to take a look at how 2nd edition adventures are laid out by paizo. After looking through it a bit I noticed what seems to be a lack of xp for combat encounter. Non combat encounters had xp listed in the text but I didn't see anything for the battles. Is it just assumed we'll run the numbers ala the system for making your own encounters in the core book. (which appears to, for example, give the very first encounter 100 or so xp) or are my eyes just skipping over the XP reward for defeating the bad guys? Thanks!
Combat encounters give exp based on the label -- Trivial/Moderate/Severe/etc.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497
Or see page 489 of the CRB.
Fantastic. Thanks. though the lazy man in me still wishes they'd just put the numbers in that bax instead of a tag to look up! ;)
Fantastic. Thanks. though the lazy man in me still wishes they'd just put the numbers in that bax instead of a tag to look up! ;)
The problem there is that the amount of xp is based on the PC level. For instance, I'm in a Plaguestone game at the moment, and we're level 1, but just hit a Severe 2 encounter, which is an Extreme encounter for level 1. So instead of 120 xp, we got 160. If we survive the next Severe 2 encounter (the GM told us we were going to hit it), we'll reach level 2, finally.
Aren't the tags also based on pc level? A moderate encounter wouldn't be moderate a level or two up or down. I figured with the new system the adventure writers should always know the current level of the party since it is a flat amount of xp.
Nope, the writer doesn't know that. But yes, if it's a Severe 2 encounter, that means it's Severe for a level 2 party.
My group must have missed a fair amount of xp, too, since we were over 300 xp short of leveling when we started running into the encounters exclusively listed as '<descriptor> 2', which is another reason to not put flat xp amounts in the book for encounters. Not every group approaches an adventure the same way, so if you manage to skip things and survive, the higher XP allows the party to catch up somewhat, which is a relief to me.
It looks very strongly like they also intended milestone leveling, 1 level per part, but they didn't call that out like they do in the APs.
And at least for part 1, to actually hit level 2 when you start part 2 requires you to do _everything_ in spite of the fact that you'd generally miss 1-2 of the things. Which is why we hear stories of level 1's hitting back to back severe 2's.
Definitely feel like as they find their footing for APs/modules, they should probably over budget ~100-200exp worth of encounters per level of 'miss-able' stuff. And there should be realistic reasons why those missable ones disappear/auto resolve w/o awards if they party has passed diffferent checkpoint/milestones (to avoid people trying to full-clear to get a leg up on the next level, etc).
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Please excuse me while I get my Somatic, Material and Verbal components correct to cast Raise Thread... lol
I wanted to point out that it is also possible to use the fast advancement speed (800xp) to level the group faster and possibly account for missing parts of the XP needed to hit the full 1,000xp.
Another thing I have noticed about my attempts to run this adventure is that the Hazards give a set of XP that does not look like they are accounted for completely in the write-up. For example:
In Hallod's Hideout, we are given a 30xp award to give the group for bypassing two of the hazards early on, but nothing is said about more hazards encountered later on/
All-in-all, I think doing milestone levelling will be the easiest for DMs who are running this adventure.
YMMV
Nifty
Late but...
Hi Nifty. the 30exp for getting past those 2 specific traps is more "story line" experience, that the players get for navigating through the traps (courageously?) to find Hallod's hideout. The later hazards (like the 2x spear launchers involved in the Hallod fight) are factored into each section already (as per the heading title, and "Severe 1" type stuff, etc.
When I ran this my players did a little around town, then found Hallod, and I leveled them after beating him, though they were only at 800 exp in all. I told them as much, but they had planned to recover for a few days in town and "resolve" the who killed Bort line, during which time they were happy to sniff around and uncover much of the undone social quests, only leaving the Ghost and Restoring the Church B sides, so I'm happy to level them early.