Currently having a bit of a debate on the Fantasy Grounds forum about this, and I want to double check here that I am correct:
If you have a party of 6 players, a Severe encounter has a budget of 180 XP. However, upon defeating a Severe encounter, a party of 6 players is still awarded 120 XP, the same as a party of 4 players would receive for a Severe encounter.
Am I correct?
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Currently having a bit of a debate on the Fantasy Grounds forum about this, and I want to double check here that I am correct:
If you have a party of 6 players, a Severe encounter has a budget of 180 XP. However, upon defeating a Severe encounter, a party of 6 players is still awarded 120 XP, the same as a party of 4 players would receive for a Severe encounter.
Am I correct?
This is the relevant text you are looking for:
For each additional character in the party beyond the fourth, increase your XP budget by the amount shown in the Character Adjustment value for your encounter in Table 10–1: Encounter Budget. If you have fewer than four characters, use the same process in reverse: for each missing character, remove that amount of XP from your XP budget. Note that if you adjust your XP budget to account for party size, the XP awards for the encounter don’t change—you’ll always award the amount of XP listed for a group of four characters.
So yes, while you adjusted the budget for the encounter to make it worth the same overall challenge, you will still be awarding 120xp to the 6 party members.
Yeah, that is pretty explicit.
Different Party Sizes from the encounter building rules.
Note that if you adjust your XP budget to account for party size, the XP awards for the encounter don’t change—you’ll always award the amount of XP listed for a group of four characters.
Okay, the debate has now added a twist:
What happens if an encounter doesn't land exactly "on budget"? How much XP is awarded?
For example, say you have 5 PCs and an encounter with (somehow) 190XP worth of "stuff". How much XP is awarded?
On side is saying you award the reward for the "nearest" threat level, which would be Extreme and 160 XP in this case.
The other side is saying you apply the character adjustment in reverse, subtract 40XP from the encounter, and award 150XP.
the encounter budget rules aren't meant to be a straightjacket. Award how much you think the party earned. Did they own it like it wasn't all that, or did it get a little tense?
This discussion is specifically related to an encounter builder extension being developed, so people are looking for RAW rather than GM interpretation as much as possible. The code needs to know how much XP to assign to the encounter by default. :)
If you want an exact formula, I'd base it off ratio of how many more PCs there were than the standard 4. So 190 XP for a 6 person party would be half again as much XP. So 126.66 repeating, rounded to whatever number you prefer.
A 5 person party would be 152 XP if my math is right.
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the encounter budget rules aren't meant to be a straightjacket. Award how much you think the party earned. Did they own it like it wasn't all that, or did it get a little tense?This discussion is specifically related to an encounter builder extension being developed, so people are looking for RAW rather than GM interpretation as much as possible. The code needs to know how much XP to assign to the encounter by default. :)
That is some pretty important context. The algorithmic approach will be different than my table approach.
Ultimately the XP budget is pretty simple per the encounter table:
Trivial: 10 per player
Low: 15 per player
Moderate: 20 per player
Severe: 30 per player
Extreme: 40 per player
Each encounter has a basic XP reward structure:
Trivial: 40xp
Low: 60xp
Moderate: 80xp
Severe: 120xp
Extreme: 160xp
So if you build a severe encounter for 25 players, you would have an encounter budget of 750xp of enemies, and award each of those 25 players 120xp.
So the build for this would be; Select your encounter difficulty, input party size, here is your budget, it rewards xp based on selected difficulty.
the encounter budget rules aren't meant to be a straightjacket. Award how much you think the party earned. Did they own it like it wasn't all that, or did it get a little tense?This discussion is specifically related to an encounter builder extension being developed, so people are looking for RAW rather than GM interpretation as much as possible. The code needs to know how much XP to assign to the encounter by default. :)
Well, since you have a computer doing calculations in the background: Linear interpolation.
If the encounter budget and the actual purchased encounter creature values are different, you should be able to calculate a percentage difference between the two. Then use that percentage difference as a percentage factor of the encounter XP award.
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Pathfinder 2nd Edition hides some of the mathematics of earning experience points in order to make it simpler to hand out xp. Old_Man_Robot reveals the heart of the true mathmatics above, that the encounter budget is calculated per player character.
The examples of PF2 games assumes a four-member party, so the Encounter Budget throws a secret factor of 4 into the values. Table 10-1: Encounter Budget on page 489 of the Core Rulebook has two columns of numbers, the XP Budget and the Character Adjustment. The XP Budget is simply the Character Adjustment multiplied by 4.
And for simplicity, each PC earns xp equal to the default encounter budget. So the challenge is determined on one scale multiplied by the number of PCs, but the individual reward is given on 4 times that scale, so only that one number is involved when the party is the standard four-member size. For example, a Moderate-Threat encounter is 20 xp per player character, so the GM throws 4×20 xp = 80 xp of creatures at the party for a Moderate-Threat encounter and each player character earns 80 xp. On the other hand, a Moderate-Threat encounter for five PCs would have 5×20 xp = 100 xp of creatures, yet each PCs still earns 80 xp.
I myself run a 7 players in my campaign. Thus, if I want to give them a Severe-Threat encounter, I take the default 120-xp budget for Severe Threat, and I multiply it by (7/4) to figure out the budget for my oversized party: the 7 is the number of players, but I divide it by 4 to remove the default assumpltion of 4 players. (7/4)×120 xp = 210 xp, so I would throw 210 xp of creatures at them. Then when I reward them with the xp for the day, I say something like, "You faced a 7th-level boss worth 120 xp and three 3rd-level minions worth 30 xp each, so you earn (4/7)(120+3(3)) = (4/7)(210) = 120 xp each."
However, I use a different method for area traps and story rewards. The difficulty of those events do not depend on the number of PCs, so I do not scale them by 7/4. Thus, my xp calculations have two parts. Here is a copy-and-paste from the loot-and-xp channel of our Discord server for our campaign:
Erin S. (GM) — 12/09/2022 9:11 PM
The primal bandersnatch was 19th level, the highest level you have defeated so far. xp = (4/7)(120) = 69 xp.
New total xp is 592 xp.
Erin S. (GM) — 12/16/2022 10:03 PM
You fooled 3 baregara (12th level) and 4 blight guards (13th level). You deactived a Malicious Earth trap (16th level), negotiated with a Mandragora Swarm (18th level), and killed an advanced vemerak (17th level).
(4/7)(3(10) + 4(15) + 80 + 60) + 40 = (4/7)(230)+40 = 171.
New total xp is 763 xp.
The Malicious Earth trap is the 40 xp that is not multiplied by (4/7). The party was 16th level, so a trap of their level was worth 40 xp.
We took a break for Christmas and the next combat lasted two game sessions.
Erin S. (GM) — 01/06/2023 9:54 PM
Sam got the last ring of Dryad's Song, so let me give the xp for the last two rings, 200 xp. Experience for defeated foes waiting until end of battle.
New total xp is 963 xp.
Erin S. (GM) — 01/13/2023 9:42 PM
Orielle and Taurgreth were 17th level, the four Ironfang commandos were 14th level, the four Omox demons were 12th level, Polyhymnia was 16th level.
(4/7)(2(60)+40+4(20)+4(10)) = (4/7)(280) = 160. Add in 100 xp for restoring Dryad's Song.
963 + 160 + 100 = 1223 xp.
The party is now 17th level with 223 xp remaining.
Oops, forgot the 100xp for recovering the sardynox shard.
New total xp is 323 xp.
Thank you Mathmuse, that is super helpful. It sounds like for any given XP budget, you can calculate the XP award by multiplying by 4, and then dividing by the number of players.
That should be a really easy approach to handle programmatically.