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I don't see why, as a GM, you can't adapt your rules to how the game is going
This! I constantly see questions and comments from GMs who forget (or their commentary makes it appear they have) that they are 100% complete control of their campaign. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want regardless of what the printed books, designers, developers, or the rest of us say. Course, if they piss off their players there won't be a campgin, but otherwise, they can do whatever.
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That seems really strange to me
Agreed. The only reason to "force" the players into a particular encounter when using milestone rewards would be because it is essential to the ongoing storyline. Perhaps it introduces a new major NPC. Or reveals important, necessary information. But, even then, the GM should be able to shirt those downloads to another upcoming encounter without much trouble and without having to adjust the milestones to any great significance.
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It worked wonderfully for many years until playing APs essentially became a race to the end
The last time my players created this problem for me, I ran a campaign with very limited transportation magic. Not only did it curtail the "zip to the boss" issue, but it allows for overland travel and chase encounters for much longer in the campaign than is normally possible.
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Is this really a discussion about the difference between milestone and XP based progression, or is it about how players perceive the differences? A lot of the discussion is framed around how players engage with each style.
What I mean is, I don't think that when it all comes down to it, XP and milestone progression are much different. It's more a matter of player perception, which of course changes from player to player. In my experience, if a player comes to the game with that more MMO, video-gamey type of mindset, they will game either system in an attempt to hasten their progression, or get that feeling of reward from growing in power.
And that's why I think the difference between the two methods generally boils down to the difference in how players feel rewarded, rather than any intrinsic difference between the methods themselves.
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Is this really a discussion about the difference between milestone and XP based progression, or is it about how players perceive the differences? A lot of the discussion is framed around how players engage with each style.I'm primarily looking at it from a player interaction perspective, myself. I'd like to weigh in more on how it affects the GM side of the game, story pacing, encounter balance, etc., but I just haven't had enough experience as a GM running the game both ways to make that call. I have been a player in both kinds of campaign though, and talked to my players about doing things either way, so that's where I'm personally coming from.
Coming from a primarily GMing perspective, I'd say my major change in experience from XP to milestone is in the freedom of changing existing content. I typically run APs or modules, and when I was using XP, I ran into quite a few issues with modifying the content - people levelling up earlier as they focused more on something than the book expected, meaning I needed to cut content elsewhere or adjust the rest of the adventure was the most common. If a particular dungeon got to be a drag and the group would have more fun with it bering shortened, you needed to take XP into account as well (or just arbitrarily give a Story Bonus, I guess). With milestones, I just tend to make the changes that fit the story the group is telling, and not worry about it so much. If it's been a long time since a level, I'll look at handing one out and changing some content - but primarily I find the content I add or change is to tell a more interesting narrative, not because of mechanical limitations.
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Coming from a primarily GMing perspective, I'd say my major change in experience from XP to milestone is in the freedom of changing existing content. I typically run APs or modules, and when I was using XP, I ran into quite a few issues with modifying the content - people levelling up earlier as they focused more on something than the book expected, meaning I needed to cut content elsewhere or adjust the rest of the adventure was the most common. If a particular dungeon got to be a drag and the group would have more fun with it bering shortened, you needed to take XP into account as well (or just arbitrarily give a Story Bonus, I guess). With milestones, I just tend to make the changes that fit the story the group is telling, and not worry about it so much. If it's been a long time since a level, I'll look at handing one out and changing some content - but primarily I find the content I add or change is to tell a more interesting narrative, not because of mechanical limitations.Is this really a discussion about the difference between milestone and XP based progression, or is it about how players perceive the differences? A lot of the discussion is framed around how players engage with each style.I'm primarily looking at it from a player interaction perspective, myself. I'd like to weigh in more on how it affects the GM side of the game, story pacing, encounter balance, etc., but I just haven't had enough experience as a GM running the game both ways to make that call. I have been a player in both kinds of campaign though, and talked to my players about doing things either way, so that's where I'm personally coming from.
On my side, I never actually cut content if players level up in advance because of extra stuff I added. I'll either keep things as it is and let players be stronger or buff important encounters and give pcs more exp than they would have otherwise gotten.
Never had really problem because of this xD
With milestone leveling the DM can control the speed of leveling based not only on set goals, but also player expectations.
You level at the same moment be it through XP or milestone levelling. So that's not a difference.
If you're playing slow with lots of table talk and very few encounters completed, then the DM hands out xp it can be demotivating to the players who start counting how many sessions to level based on xp per session.
That's the reason why I say XP levelling is harder to handle for the GM, as you have to predict your player's behavior and award a proper amount of XP, through story awards or challenge XP, for them to level at the same moment than milestone levelling.
XP and milestone is viewed the same by the players as long as they are leveling at a pace that is keeping them engaged. One is not more player friendly than the other and both can interfere with player fun if leveling at a pace that is too slow.
Agree. XP levelling is more player friendly as you have a sense of progression. With milestone levelling, you never know when you'll get a level. And if the progression is a bit slow or fast for whatever reason, it feels way better with XP levelling than milestone levelling as you saw it coming.
My table xp had the exact same effect as you list above: they felt compelled to get through as many encounters as fast as possible to maximize experience. They didn't want to waste their time engaging with encounters because all they wanted from the encounter was experience and treasure.
That has nothing to do with XP or milestone levelling. In both mode, if you go fast, you level up faster.
The difference is that XP levelling encourages players to be thorough, when milestone levelling encourages players to skip things. I think it's better for players to be thorough and explore everything than to get to the next level as soon as they find stairs.If players want to lvl or they get bored after 3 sessions, then you can plan for leveling every 3 sessions increasing challenges within the adventure as needed to ensure the players are still challenged that leveling speed.
Edit: As a side note, what you are describing is session levelling. It's neither XP nor milestone levelling. It has the advantage of giving a sense of progression like XP levelling and it eliminates any attempt at optimizing progression. The drawback is that you are not encouraged to engage with the world. If your players spend 3 sessions at the tavern they gain a level the same way than if they were actively exploring a dungeon.
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You level at the same moment be it through XP or milestone levelling. So that's not a difference.
Not true. Not sure why you're making this statement when with milestone leveling a party could avoid or miss half the encounters and still level, but with xp leveling they would be forced to go find more encounters to level up.
That's the reason why I say XP levelling is harder to handle for the GM, as you have to predict your player's behavior and award a proper amount of XP, through story awards or challenge XP, for them to level at the same moment than milestone levelling.
No, you don't. When I used xp leveling, the players went and found more encounters to gain experience. I didn't have to predict anything. The players either found enough encounters to gain enough experience or they had to keep looking. Not sure why you think this.
Experience points are one of the simplest ways for a DM to determine when someone levels. They just track the experience. When you hit the number, you get a level. Did it for years.
The players just go and find enough encounters to level. Very simple for the DM and players. No predictions required. It was all on the players to find enough encounters to level. The DM just had to point them in a direction.
Agree. XP levelling is more player friendly as you have a sense of progression. With milestone levelling, you never know when you'll get a level. And if the progression is a bit slow or fast for whatever reason, it feels way better with XP levelling than milestone levelling as you saw it coming.
Player's sense of progression comes from gaining new abilities at new levels and treasure. They could care less if it is done with miletone leveling or xp. They really don't care. Xp leveling is not more player friendly as players don't care how they gain levels or get treasure.
That has nothing to do with XP or milestone levelling. In both mode, if you go fast, you level up faster.
The difference is that XP levelling encourages players to be thorough, when milestone levelling encourages players to skip things. I think it's better for players to be thorough and explore everything than to get to the next level as soon as they find stairs.
Thorough? Is thorough a good way to see a world? You have to go and kill, interact, or defeat every encounter or monster? I don't think that is a natural way to interact with the game world myself, which is why I shifted to milestone leveling.
Milestone leveling means you can miss large numbers of filler encounters and still level. You can spend an hour role-playing if you are accomplishing a key goal and not have to worry it only gives you 30 xp for a single encounter. You can ignore monsters that don't require defeating or interacting with to get the appropriate xp.
A few recent examples in an AP, the players ignored a slurk as nothing more than a random pond monster going about its business and left a trapped giant scorpion alone because why kill a creature going about its business. There was no point in engaging in the encounters as they weren't forced to engage an encounter just to get xp.
That's what I like about milestone leveling for players. They have absolutely zero pressure to force themselves into encounters that are just there as filler. They aren't hunting xp. Instead they are engaging with the world in a fashion that is natural to their character and motivations.
Edit: As a side note, what you are describing is session levelling. It's neither XP nor milestone levelling. It has the advantage of giving a sense of progression like XP levelling and it eliminates any attempt at optimizing progression. The drawback is that you are not encouraged to engage with the world. If your players spend 3 sessions at the tavern they gain a level the same way than if they were actively exploring a dungeon.
No, that's not how it works. They do not get to sit at the tavern and level. Not sure why you think that.
I very much do milestone leveling. I don't require they have to clear out the entire level like they would have to do for xp leveling. If they finish the key parts of the level while leaving half the level unexplored, they still level.
Whereas if I were still using xp, they would have insufficient xp to level unless they cleared out nearly every room and engaged every hazard. That is a very unnatural way to engage with the game world in my opinion.
I moved away from xp leveling to avoid what you look at as thorough, which to me encourages the murder hobo style of play. You look at an area as clearing it like an MMORPG to gain all the exp and treasure possible regardless if this would be a natural way for your character to act.
If you're a stealthy group and you sneak by the goblins without fighting or engaging them, there is no need for you to go back to get the xp by exploring their caves. Just let them be and move to complete the narrative your character is involved in.
At this point I've made my point quite clear that I much prefer milestone leveling. I find it allows players more options for engaging the world in a way that doesn't encourage them to kill and clear every encounter in a given AP or dungeon. It takes a lot of pressure off players to seek encounters to xp "farm." It allows a DM to view the adventure narrative as most important versus having to clear and kill or defeat every monster, hazard, or encounter before advancing.
Experience point advancement encourages a farming, murder hobo style of play that pushes players to view encounters as experience points rather than living, breathing encounters they should interact with in a natural way. That is what I've experienced over the years. I'm glad Paizo and 5E both moved to milestone leveling, which allows players to focus on the story elements without needing to farm experience to advance.
That's how I see it.
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My party also ignored a slurp and went around a giant scorpion.
They got the XP for bypassing the scorpion by finding a secret route around it. If they later engage with it, they won’t gain additional CP for doing so, but they might earn story XP for doing so based on how and why they do so. The slurp they went back and fought anyway, but I had not awarded them XP for it because they went around it without even making a single check.
I agree that the differences between XP and milestones are largely superficial, but especially in a mega dungeon, you have to make some pretty arbitrary decisions about when to level up you PCs with milestones. If you party finds a series of stairs to the third level of a dungeon while they are level 1, and have barely looked at half the stuff on level 1, so you want to level them up to 2 or even level 3? Probably not. XP is a pretty reliable way to show players where they are as far as when the game will grant them a level up. If they push into a bunch of very difficult encounters, they will level up pretty quickly, but they will see the XP rewards from those fights and know the encounters are higher level, as opposed to just wondering if it was bad tactics and luck that made it a challenge. I think some GMs have this idea that they need to control exactly what level their players are at all times or the game falls apart. This is a tiny bit true if you throw really hard encounters at the players and have only the objective of killing PCs as a monster objective, for what happens if your players are under leveled, but it is not really a big deal if the party ends up earning too much XP or if you have complex motivations on your powerful creatures. Complex, changing motivations on powerful enemies is what really makes or breaks a good sandbox.
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My experience with exp is that you get level about every three sessions and players take about 3 sessions to complete part of ap between level ups anyway <_< In 1e at least, 2e in average goes bit faster, starfinder as well since its shorter ap volume wise.
Never seen players being "forced to find more encounters" in ap either. I've yet to seen players attack random animals for exp if the animal doesn't first as well.
Which is another side benefits of exp ;P See when random slurk attacks you and you get exp for it, it feels better than when random slurk attacks you but gm gives you nothing for it. As far as I can see in your case, you were like "random slurk is filler, I don't want to have it attack pcs so it will continue sleeping and ignoring them, so I'm happier with milestones because it means players will still level up after they are done with first level of mega dungeon", but its not argument for exp vs milestones mechanics wise, just your preference wise.
Also you keep claiming I don't care about exp when I keep saying I care about exp when I'm a player ;D
(also again I don't think its particularly hard to determine whether to give pcs exp for avoiding encounter or trap. Like one matter is 1) did they solve situation or problem encounter provided 2) will encounter become relevant later on yes/no and 3) were they even aware they avoided an encounter?)
On sidenote, after thinking back to Princes of Apocalypse, I think I can confirm on some level that in 5e I think milestone definitely add to "let's ignore all encounter, find boss, get out" mindset. Because 1) encounter loot is unrewarding and you don't do much with money anyway 2) because all encounters are pretty deadly so you just want to avoid them so you don't die 3) if you assassinate boss and get out, well you are alive and more powerful.
Like when I was playing that campaign, I was scared of all encounters in dungeons because we kept our ass kicked, so we ended up pretty much just sneaking through entire dungeons as best as possible until we found cultist bosses to kill :p
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Lots of things
What you are describing is bad XP levelling. That's why I say XP levelling needs more work to work.
I personally don't award less XP to a party that loves to sneak around than to one that loves to kill everything. That's the whole point of predicting what your players will do. If your players love to sneak around and avoid encounters, then you need to award more story/completion XP and less combat XP. If your players love to kill every single monsters in a dungeon (I have players like that, and moving to milestone levelling wouldn't change their behavior) then you award less story XP and more combat XP.
At the end of the day, be it through milestone or XP levelling, you level at the same moment in the story, because that's the whole point of both systems. But XP levelling gives a feeling of progression, and allow players to feel rewarded for a good session. It's more player friendly but asks for more work on the GM side.
If your players don't have fun tracking XP, then you should go for milestone levelling. My players love to track XP, so I use XP levelling.
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I've run it both ways in PF1 and PF2, and both pretty much seem the same to me. I usually use experience these days to keep track of when the party should level up, but I also make sure to award experience for sneaking past enemies/noticing danger and avoiding it while still completing the quest. I think the built-in mechanic of giving story awards also helps to make things flow better if they still come in under the expected level.
It also hasn't really been a problem in PF2 that the party 'outlevels' the dungeon, as there will usually be more challenges/dungeons later on that they will be pressed to overcome. I think inflating or dropping content from dungeons because the party has leveled up past the expected would cause more harm than good. They'll already get less exp for the reduced risk, and it can be fun to let the players feel powerful against foes that could have caused them big issues earlier on. It also becomes more reasonable to have various encounters that would now be trivial pile onto each other to make a real threat.
In any case, maybe this conversation should be in another thread than 'Extreme / unfair encounters'?
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Eh, the extreme encounters thing has been pretty discussed to death, hear and elsewhere. And I want to throw my 2 cents on the XP thing now. :P
Personally, I normally just use milestones, but have been known to switch over to XP midbook if it feels appropriate. Aside from the sandboxy mega dungeon stuff, some APs just have really cool ways to reward it.
Carrion Crown has a book where you not only get XP for doing research and finding clues but for making successful deductions based on those clues. And you can get even more XP by presenting those clues in court. I rather like stuff like that.
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Eh, the extreme encounters thing has been pretty discussed to death, hear and elsewhere. And I want to throw my 2 cents on the XP thing now. :P
Personally, I normally just use milestones, but have been known to switch over to XP midbook if it feels appropriate. Aside from the sandboxy mega dungeon stuff, some APs just have really cool ways to reward it.
Carrion Crown has a book where you not only get XP for doing research and finding clues but for making successful deductions based on those clues. And you can get even more XP by presenting those clues in court. I rather like stuff like that.
I like those sub-systems alot too, but I also like to keep them under the hood. I had too many players passing on cool things to do in favor of what they assume/know to be better value things for better scores.
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I use milestone leveling exclusively now, but if I were to give out XP again it would only be for story progression/quest completion. Say the party has a quest to stop some bandits from attacking a town:
Kill all the bandits - mission accomplished
Kill some bandits and drive the rest away - mission accomplished
Intimidate/negotiate the bandits into leaving - mission accomplished
Bribe the bandits into leaving - mission accomplished
Killing the bandits is riskiest, but can yield the most monetary reward in the form of loot. Bribing the bandits is easiest but leaves the party with less/no monetary reward. There are of course many more ways to accomplish the goal than what is listed above, limited only by the party's imagination and resources. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses, but it is up to the players to decide what is best for them.
This has been the case since RotRL - exhibit A: Malfeshnekor.
However 2nd edition has made the potential cost of the GM not noticing it's a very tough encounter higher.
Most helpful to me personally is to make sure that, if the encounter is extra tough, to have the text clearly signpost this multiple times! Then I won't miss it in a hurry, and can mitigate as needed with situational adaptations. So extra-clear signposting of these tough encounters is my suggestion. Put a red warning icon in the margin or something. Perhaps with a suggestion of how to soften up the encounter a bit if the GM wants to.
Other than that, based on James detailed feedback, it seems Paizo have things well in hand when it comes to fine tuning their encounter design. Thanks for the details James!
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One party’s “filler XP” encounter is another party’s opportunity to learn their character’s abilities and how to work together. Rushing through levels can deny players the opportunity to learn their character’s strengths and weaknesses. It can also be opportunities for the party to take prisoners, investigate their environment and learn clues about what lies ahead. Skipping lower stakes encounters to move the story along can lead to reinforcing the idea that only the higher level solo monsters “matter.”
Most helpful to me personally is to make sure that, if the encounter is extra tough, to have the text clearly signpost this multiple times! Then I won't miss it in a hurry, and can mitigate as needed with situational adaptations. So extra-clear signposting of these tough encounters is my suggestion. Put a red warning icon in the margin or something. Perhaps with a suggestion of how to soften up the encounter a bit if the GM wants to.
Every second edition encounter should have the difficulty labeled. If you have the PDF simply ctrl-F for severe or extreme and highlight it as desired.