It looks like Sky King's Tomb has lots of non-combat challenges but no story-based XP awards. Is milestone leveling the assumed default? If so, is this new or am I only noticing it just now?
Core Rulebook, pages 487-488:
A robust set of encounters forms the backbone of your
adventure. Encounters often feature combat with other
creatures, but they can also include hazards, or you might
create social encounters in which characters duel only
with words.
Resolving any encounter or challenge, regardless of whether or not it involves combat, earns the appropriate XP award.
I haven't actually gone through the adventure to calculate the encounter budgets and XP awards, but a greater number of non-combat encounters reduces the need to add in story XP awards as the PCs can complete more encounters before needing to rest/recover/replace resources.
Yes, but Mantle of Gold's first chapter includes many challenges that aren't rated in the typical sense. Is chasing down fire ferrets low difficulty? Moderate difficulty? The adventure doesn't seem to weigh in, but the PCs are supposed to gain two levels by the end of Chapter One. Thus, I assume milestone leveling has become the assumed default.
Sky King's Tomb does use milestone level advancement, following the recommendations presented in the overview at the beginning of each volume. In short, each chapter involves gaining one level.
Thank you. Any idea if this is just because milestone leveling suits Sky King's Tomb best, or is this the preferred model for adventure paths going forward?
Starfinder Senior Developer
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I don't believe there's been any decision for or against milestone advancement in future APs. Partly this is an experiment, partly it's a good fit for the campaign, and partly it's the developer (me) preferring the types of adventures it supports.
For me, Pathfinder's second edition is a little easier to achieve the necessary XP metrics without too many "filler" encounters—compared to the game's first edition, which was fiddly enough in encounter design that I found myself needing more encounters overall and more story awards to backstop the intended progression. Given I lean toward campaigns of exploration, interaction, urban intrigue, and infiltration, milestone leveling helps ensure I include only those encounters that I know will enhance the story, expand the setting, or create interesting memories, rather than shoehorning five fights into the middle of a social gala.
The more that a campaign involves raids, dungeon crawls, and other combat-heavy premises, the more confident I am in using classic XP tracking; I know I'll have no shortage of interesting scenes that will make efficient use of space as combats so often do.
TLDR: XP tracking vs milestone leveling isn't set in stone for future Adventure Paths, but an Adventure Path will be consistent in that choice from start to finish. Which method gets used will often reflect the Adventure Path's needs, and as developers, we're watching for feedback about what's working well and what needs improvement.
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Thank you for the insight. I agree that milestone leveling works well for Sky King's Tomb (so far, at least). I have much more to go through, but so far the encounters are incredibly fun and flavorful, so the composition of the early part of the campaign is much appreciated.
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Creative Director
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Either my post got eaten by the forums, or it's in some sort of weird limbo, or I forgot to hit "SUBMIT POST" before moving on to whatever was next... but John's post covers all the bases I was going to cover.
That said... the next two Adventure Paths, "Season of Ghosts" and "Seven Dooms for Sandpont" both use the standard XP system. As always, we include milestone suggestions in each adventure's table of contents, but my preference for the standard XP system plus the sandbox elements in both of those Adventure Paths (combined with the fact that their stories don't fit neatly into a one-chapter-per-level format) makes milestones less ideal in my opinion.
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Recently I've decided to take the Pathfinder Society approach. Every 3 storylines/modules, we're going to level up. I know that the 2e system has made awarding and tracking XP very easy, but I use a blend of published modules and my own content, so for me it's easier to view things in this way, that way I don't have to worry if I add social encounters, skip challenges, adjust difficulty, etc.
New GM to Pathfinder here... Had multiple campaigns in D&D 5e go to 20 over the last several years so I have experience GMing, but not with Pathfinder specifically.
Planning to run Sky King's Tomb as my first campaign in Pathfinder. I enjoy using experience points rather than milestone as a way of tracking session to session progress (I also use a linear progression at the gym...). I also think that XP for exertion is a good way to track if our players have a good grasp of the capabilities of their character and to keep me accountable for presenting reasonably challenging content.
So anyway, background aside, I tried figuring out the experience built into the first chapter and I'd like some guidance/correction to put me on the right track. (HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD.... PLAYERS STOP NOW!)
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Basilisk Game: minor achievement 10XP
Cloudspire Antics: minor achievement 10XP (possibly more or a multiple of this if they do something really interesting for helping her with multiple pranks?)
Diomira's Drop: minor achievement 10XP
Knights of Lastwall: minor achievement 10XP
Language Tutors: minor achievement 10XP
Round Market Firearms: shopping? no experience points*
Stickleberry Festival: minor achievement 10XP
*planning the market as a site for an additional encounter, see below.
Blood in the Water: 3xParty level+1 creatures 180XP + moderate achievement 30XP = 210XP
Blacknoon Gauntlet Rescue: 4xParty level creatures 160XP + party level hazard 8XP + party level+4 hazard 32XP + major achievement 80XP = 280XP
Vengeance at Silvercap: 2xparty level creatures 80XP + moderate achievement 30XP = 110XP
Etcherie Animal Raids: party level hazard 8XP + party level+2 creature 80XP + moderate achievement 30XP = 118XP
Burntown Temps: not sure how to count but lets say 30XP per ferret and 10XP per task plus major achievement 80XP = 250XP
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So adding all of these up before we get to tolorr crypt haunting we get:
60 for minor quests + 210 + 280 + 110 + 118 + 250 =
1028 XP. Just barely enough to push us over one level. I would love to have someone double check my math and let me know if there needs to be more added to each encounter that I'm missing.
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But assuming my math is correct, let's just say I'm considering adding a little more XP sources: (A) making creatures elite (B) adding an extra creature to each encounter (C) adding a few random encounters to bring out things going on in Highhelm like the Ash Cult and "Golden Owl" trying to redivert keep stone from Torag's Shield. Any recommendations on beefing up the encounters? XP considerations aside, my table will probably have 6 players, and the encounters need buffing anyway.
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I'd probably bump up the story awards.
Each major task tends to have multiple phases. I don't have the book in front of me right now, but if you gave 80 XP per phase for a major task and 30 XP per minor task, that would probably get you to the target of one level up after three major tasks.
I greatly appreciate milestone/story advancement in comparison to the rather fiddly bits of having to get acturial charts out to see 'how the party did'.
It gives me far greater freedom as a GM to both pace my story and my players as they enjoy the path.
Having the 4exp/1 Scenario x3 for a level for PFS2 is a happy medium in that regard.
Give people time to tell their character stories while participating in an overall one, etc.
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I'd probably bump up the story awards.
Each major task tends to have multiple phases. I don't have the book in front of me right now, but if you gave 80 XP per phase for a major task and 30 XP per minor task, that would probably get you to the target of one level up after three major tasks.
That's a good idea. My only concern is that I don't want the leveling process to be too "cheap" in terms of challenging the players because if it's too easy we won't learn capabilities of the characters... On the other hand I don't want each level to drag spending a lot of sessions just to meet the experience requirements.
I have yet to play it out but just reading it, it feels like Chapter 1 has a lot of fairly weak fluff encounters that give lots of space for roleplaying, but not a lot of specifics for challenge.
The market encounter, for example, is something I'm going to need to either develop whole cloth, or hand-wave as a blur to just allow shopping... others like the basilisk game or language tutor feel like they could use fleshing out too, a few npcs that we'll meet later could have been introduced here by the adventure... It's up to me to do the work of looking through later books to find out who those npcs are or to make them up and make them significant later in the adventure...
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Personally, I have yet to run any 2e APs, but for 1e (where I've run 6ish APs now)...I almost always use specific xp at lower levels, where the amounts and impacts of player actions vary more. Somewhere around book 3, or levels 6-9, I switch to milestones, since players not being the expected level has a larger impact on encounter difficulty.
From my player experience with 2e, assuming you are using scaling as expected, balancing encounters is much easier and less swingy. I'm more likely to stick with specific XP in most cases. Having said that, I've previously identified Malevolence as an example of poorly-designed XP rewards. If you follow the XP awards in that adventure, your players are highly likely to be under-levelled against the almost-exclusively high level enemies. Not sure how this AP compares.