Brennan & Matt Debate XP vs. Milestone Leveling | Adventuring Academy 

the funniest part is that his description of a company deadline being finished sounds like they met the milestone and as a whole, the company leveled up just like in dnd.

"NO! Says the parasite"

"O fuk super capitalism doesnt work" - guy who got golf club to da faec.

And the strength in his arms.

@@CappyK "it belongs to me" "NO! Says the church. It belongs to the Gods" "No! Says the Bard. It belongs to the love interest"

🤣🤣💯

hilarious and stupid at the same time. Also, it shows one of humanity's flaws that i seriously hate. Yes, Steve wasn't here last week. Should he be punished for it? Because he didn't put the "work" in? What work? I play for fun. My reward was being at the table last week. Let steve have his level. I don't care what steve gets, as long as I'm not treated unfairly. His "promotion" doesn't subtract from mine. I was both in school and in college usually the guy who did more than half of any group project i was in. Why? Because what they delivered was usually lazy horseshit quality, so i scrapped it and improved it. Was i angry at them? Nope, I wanted it to be better, so i put the work in to make it better, and my reward was that it ended up better. I didn't even do this for any grades, purely because i believe if you're going to invest time into something at least do it right and don't waste your time and everyone else's time. At the same time i was massively depressed due to other reasons (gruesome death of someone very close) and tended to come late to college or miss (non-group) deadlines due to a lack of motivation and daily borderline suicide contemplation that made me get up too late. Guess what? people started HATING me for getting to lectures 5 or 10 minutes to late, even though i never interrupted the lecture. It was simply envy that made them hate me. "I have to get up early and rush out the door and shit to be early and he gets to be 5 minutes late every day! what an asshole!". They think "i could have slept 10 minutes longer if i did that you prick". But nothing changes for them no matter if i am early, late or commited suicide. I don't get why people are so stupidly focused on what others do. Why get angry if someone's constantly late, if it doesn't mean any different circumstance for you? I never caused additional work for my colleagues (quite the contrary in group projects), yet they started absolutely hating me. And matt mentioned exactly that behavior with "Why does steve get to become a god, even though he was never doing anything!" What does it matter? It's not like he's taking your god-spot. Fucking Humans...

@@XpVersusVista The thing is every adventure you go on has a risk of death. Players who don't show up aren't being punished, they are getting a fair deal. You risked your character's life and levels for those experience points, and there was a chance you died and got nothing. This is especially true in old school D&D, where if you die, you start back at level 1, or at least significantly lower level than your previous character.

@@XpVersusVista I get what you're saying, and that wouldn't really bother me at all, but I don't think it's simply envy that's motivating people to feel negatively about it. If we stick to Matt's example, I think most people would be ok if both people got promotions IF the guy who was on vacation deserved the promotion in general for other reasons, just not if he was supposedly being promoted for work that he didn't do, specifically. Now, it could be argued that it doesn't map exactly onto milestone leveling in that case, but I don't think it's simple envy. It's that people intuitively feel like rewards should be earned somehow. I think there's a moral intuition being triggered in these people, not just envy.

@@canaryinacoalmine1759 This idea makes sense in theory. In practice, it's really, really stupid, and it ultimately just ends up being an anti-fun mechanic for the players. Let's say my buddies and I are running a long-term campaign. One of the players has sort of a shitty work schedule, so he has to miss every third session or so just by circumstance. We have two options: Either a) don't play because one guy will be absent, or b) keep playing and just include him when we can. In this case, we pick B because everyone else is available and he doesn't mind. In this case, what you're talking about creates a negative feedback loop where this guy keeps missing sessions and keeps getting further away from the party in level. Eventually, this means that the player is overall weaker than the rest of the party, which means he's not doing much when he does show up. All you've done in this case is minimize the amount of fun that player can have when he does show up, further discouraging him from playing at all. In the A scenario, the mechanic disappears completely and the effect is identical to milestone-based level-ups anyway, just with a number attached. There is no positive outcome in this situation-either the mechanic adds nothing or it actively drains the fun of the only players which it affects at all. Now personally, I like the number. I think the number makes players excited to know that a new level up is coming soon. But I use the number effectively as a milestone and ALWAYS give each player the same EXP value because, like I said earlier, there is literally zero benefit to the number otherwise.

I mean this is clearly why there are so many dangerous things at and around Hogwarts. The Forbidden Forest is basically an XP dispenser. /s

i mean fighing thigns and actually using magic in real life is an experience and wise lesosn aswell so hes not wrong

I was searching for this clip and that's how I got here instead :D

That’s why I like a mix, successful social encounter? Gain XP. Kill some goblins get some XP.

Well it’s up to the DM.. you could go out and kill 5 goblins at 20xp each, or you could stay and get the “sat through a masterclass by a renowned professor and learned a lot” xp which is worth 500xp... discovering new places can give Xp... uncovering clues in a mystery...

Wow this is word for word, why i do milestone.

Yup, it really is just cutting out the dumb number crunching and that's it. Bonus points, you don't get players running out to kill some random wolves because they're close to leveling up

@@Xacris Exactly my reasoning here. I'd have people trying to pick extra fights with randos, until I put my foot down and told them no, they can't get XP off of anything but actual encounters. Which, again, milestones with extra steps.

I meticulously count every single XP I get. Unthinkable that a player wouldn't appreciate it. To keep track of it is not a chore or even a duty - it's a natural law. It will be done. The process is not questioned, for it is as natural as my breath.

Same for me, sorta. I only started dming a few months ago, but I have been RPing and stuff for years. I literally just converted how I scaled rp characters in story arcs, to how I'd scale dnd characters. However, I was looking at how or what might be most effective. After reading up on xp, I realized that it was way to hard to do since I was doing, more or less, a completely Homebrewed dnd campaign. I, and my players(friends of mine), call it HomeBrew with dnd. Because it's not dnd with Homebrewed ideas, it's an entirely made up by me and a friend. I have a completely unique race system, no class system, and whole lot of other stuff. But, at the end of the day, having to Calc the exp gained from a single monster seemed to hard. So, I settled on just moving it with the story as milstone. However most level ups, so far have occurred after fights. None have actually come outside of combat yet. I have some planned. But they are still distant. Most leveling up will come from the fights.

That's just how Brennan talks and it's always entertaining. Dude has mad dramatic flair.

@@SylvaGardenia Yeah, I love how you can see Matt picking up on the conversation beats and following suit. They're both great at adapting to the conversations they're having in the moment, both in the game and out.

@@dungeonguy88 exactly this. I think Matt went in, thinking they're gonna debate, 'cause that was the prompt, brennan swooped in with, Nah nah, we're gonna play argue. Lol, so they both got into a character. Makes it more fun and less personal.

It's like watching a juggernaut...

++

My thoughts exactly! 😄

@Hunter he never called it deep dude, why are you being a prick

I think that’s the point. A milestone grants experience.

He's explaining that in using milestones, not everyone has *earned* the level-up, since his argument for exp is that it's a tangible metric to show the work and effort you've put into the game to earn your level-up. He was combining his example, using milestones as a metric, and showing how *your* effort has rewarded someone else just for doing the minimum possible effort, and getting the same result.

@@salvadortoscano2534 my god... i didn't even realize that milestone experience was actually tabletop's communism. No wonder I hated the concept of milestones the second i heard of it

Is it not a thing to reduce xp/not award for killing monsters that are not a challenge?

Then stop giving the party basic ass goblins to fight more than 5 times? I can't name a single monster in the game that you can fight 5 times with the same party and not start getting tired of them anyway

@@SquidSystem Even basic goblins can be fun repeatedly if put in a variety of situations.

@@moojoy1920 @Moo Joy I agree that you can make the same thing fun to fight over and over, but only if your DM is very creative with how they set up encounters, and at a certain point, you're just making them goblins again for the sake of fighting goblins. Graduating to more naturally intimidating foes, or if you really love goblins for some reason, homebrewed variants that pose more of a threat is just a natural progression of any d&d game and variety is the spice of life, as well as our ttrpgs.

Give your goblins class levels

He's right about XP sending characters careening out of control in like a month, though.

I feel like that’s Brennan’s trademark

Matt, probably: "Hey cool, we're having a friendly debate over levelling mechanics c: " Brennan: "No, we're having a friendly debate about who can be as /ridiculously theatric as possible" Matt: "Got it. Got it"

Matt’s a sweetheart who is ready to throw down if friends show they’re down for that kind of energy lol

@uhkingdom Matt has Brennan's chaotic energy, but needs to be invited in like a vampire.

@@miscstuff1238 Lmao yes, you can see it in early Vox Machina campaign episodes. His desired state is to be tender and forgiving, but when a certain criteria is met he will become Punished Matthew and he will depose upon you his most terrible knowledge

@@uhkingdom He really is excellent at matching the energy of others in the room, which is great for a DM because it means you're able to adapt the mood to that of your players.

I’m not into that shouty overly excited shit. I can barley watch it. The guys needs a beer and a Valium. It’s tedious and painful to Listen to.

He learned the difficulty of balancing encounters when you have a player that is 2-3 levels behind and shifted as soon as possible to Milestone XP.

Matt is only team milestone because of Ashley and Blindspot. Vox Machina was actually XP level ups for the majority of the campaign and I have no doubts he'd go back if they weren't playing a public game.

@@zedx50 That might be true but that also demonstrates the up sides to milestone. I see the merit in both but what I do like about milestone is that it allows you to balance and plan much more consistently. It lowers the burden on the DM who already has enough burden lol.

As we have seen, milestone works better for a show that has time limits, heavy rp, intense battles, and is played exclusively every week. Everything depends on the context of the story, and the amount of nat 20's they roll for those skill checks.

@@highspeedstrongstyle9061 The problem there is awarding XP to individual players and not the group. All PCs should have the same level. Use alternative means to reward specific players for specific things.

Great, now I have an idea for a high INT Ettin NPC arguing about hard numbers earning vs making his employees happy.

How do you want to do this? No, how do YOU want to do this? I insist, how do you want to do this?

Wait what - did he?

The Rat Grinders from Junior Year seem like the personification of the idea of leveling up through, well, grinding

Yeah lol! It turned into a DM-off between the two of them.

Where can I watch this?

@@MasamiPhoenix What specifically are you referring to?

@@thefullmetaltitan9732 Nevermind, I misread the original post and thought they actually co-dm'ed a campaign at some point. My bad

They are masters of "yes-and"ing and it makes for such a wonderful story.

I would unironically watch a three-hour show of just THAT. Matt and Brennan GM-narrate-off!!

Yep that was as close to a DM rap battle the world has ever known

GM-narrate-offs should be a thing

@@michellemah2674 I second that

I use a VTT so those numbers can taken care of for me. I just think Milestone levelling makes sense outside of VTT, but not for the "narrative benefits", but simply because a DM should not be an accountant. But the benefits of XP levelling is too much to ignore if the accounting gets solved by technology.

the game is supposed to be fun and Im all about not makin it too grueling. We're all in our 30s and exhausted enough

Immediately.

Such a great quote.

Im sorry But i must *you're

You're not a tyrant, you're just not paying attention. YOU ARE

@@lastwymsi I will never recover from this.

@@stewartmcdonald6163 autocorrect is evil.

I understood that reference!

I think Matt is gonna win. He is well trained by his good friends, Sam Reigel the master master debater

i hope we get to see who is the best at baiting out their players.... see who is the master baiter!!

​@@nitindasiah991 I believe the term you are looking for is a Grandmaster Debater.

@@turnityp886 I hate you and wish the worst on you for this crime against language that I too was about to commit.... so take my like and begone! Baka

I also like that everyone is the same level in the party. You're not the only one contributing to fights or getting carried.

It also means that there could be times when they do a lot in a short span of time ( talking like 2/3 sessions) where with XP they may not get the points to level up, but what they did was monumental, so it felt appropriate to level them up.

Also, milestones are better when you have players who don't do a damn thing, where if you were using the xp system, would most likely be forced to give them the same amount of xp.

@@MyAramil, writes _"It also means that there could be times when they do a lot in a short span of time ( talking like 2/3 sessions) where with XP they may not get the points to level up, but what they did was monumental, so it felt appropriate to level them up."_ So, award XP for the other things they were doing that wasn't fighting monsters...

Yeah, I find XP to be very valuable if there are a ton of potential encounters for the players to face but not a set order (best example being a megadungeon). If they beeline to a later level of the dungeon and take on some harder fights they get more reward than if they go up a few levels and fight the starter monsters, and XP takes away any work involved to determine how many milestone levels it's worth to fight high level creatures as a low level party. Meanwhile, if you have a planned set of encounters milestone is the way to go IMO.

When you see many numbers the brain goes brrrr.

exactly. I do XP when most of the stuff is improvised because then im forced to take good notes in order to send out XP which also makes it easier to remember the names of all the random NPCs. milestone is easy mode and i do that on my other 3 campaigns where i simply dont have enough time/energy to try as hard haha

@@duncanhenry3048, writes _"Meanwhile, if you have a planned set of encounters milestone is the way to go IMO."_ So, milestones for the Rail Roaders, got it!

Is that a dungeons and daddy's reference?

@@jonobody2773 nah it’s a reference to the shirt that he’s wearing. I think he got it from the pizza place he went to after a car crash he was in. He talked about it in the critical role GMs round table vid

@@ADHDandD ah ok ok but still rip Tony Pepperoni

i didn't even notice that was a real shirt?? what the fuk xD

I think the shirt should last at least 26 episodes then return 85 episodes later

Gods I love it. The two best DMs on the internet sharpening each other respectfully.

Think of all the t-shirts Sam could make from these eight minutes alone.

@@groofay lmao!

Matt is wrong and stupid. His argument relies on a massive fallacy of a bad gm/party, which exists in the XP argument as well (a bad GM control your XP, a bad player steals it). He is arguing a poorly thought out point, one that requires the opposition to be flawed while his is in a mythical 'perfect' zone. All arguments being equal, and all groups being equal, he is wrong. Meanwhile, he focuses on the "game" part of RPG... the role playing matters more, period.

@@DelightfulTyrant This is some god-tier bait holy shit

@@DelightfulTyrant Fed posts worst bait ever, forced to leave the bureau of investigation

@@Surokkh read the first sentence and immediately wanted to type back. This man has talent in evoking emotions

@@DelightfulTyrant You are a tyrant alright, but you forgot to be delightful.

Bad faith

Oh, it gets much worse than that: characters going out to stomp on anthills because they need another half-dozen XP to level up. Total BS, but the rules basically demand it. The official leveling system is total garbage and only a knuckle-dragging mouth-breather would use it given any alternative.

@@MisterMac4321 I couldn't imagine the nightmare for a DM trying to keep track of skill-leveling where instead of leveling a character you level individual skills, it might be better, but it would be a ton of work

@@msihcs8171 it's not better. It's just as dumb as going out and stomping on anthills.

@@MisterMac4321 Yup. XP works much better in point-buy systems than in class systems. Generally, power ramp is much slower because you're getting it bit by bit.

Also darken the room, single lighting on the speaker, and instrumental background music. :)

Honestly, every pantheon needs that one god that probably shouldn't be there 😂

@@RemingtonDean Zote

I've got a d&d club that I run at the library where I work. It's basically open to anybody, and it's hilarious when somebody who's relatively new shows up and we're like, "Ok, here's a premade level 8 character and, uh, good luck!" We're getting quite near the end, but still.

Like the guy in the first Gamer's movie who pops out from behind a tree while they are in marching order. "Oh, yeah, Mark's here."

Fun book series, _Spells, Swords, and Stealth_ by Drew Hayes, includes in the pantheon one Grumble, the God of Minions, who became a deity by being the test subject of a powerful mage working on a new ritual. Delightful bit of world-building there, and the series itself is a lot of fun.

Take out the "de"

@@WhyYouMadBoiCongratulations, you got the joke that sam reigel made himself by saying "Master Debater" in the first place.

I love it when master debaters and master baiters go at it I wonder if they'd argue about fish

I would watch Matt and Brennan masterfully debate each other off all day.

​@@aquamarinerose5405 I'm gonna watch that ad right after this

As a new DM that had to bullshit a way out of a TPK because the level 3 bard and cleric had to fight 9 wolves by themselves because the barbarian couldn't come for last session... starting to know how that feels.

"Group of bozos" is what always sets me off 😂

I’m actually planning to do that for my next D&D campaign, most of the levels are reached just through XP but certain levels can only be achieved through doing certain story things, or fighting certain bosses. That way the players can feel accomplished for just going around fighting goblins, but they’re never too overpowered to fight some of the bosses that are supposed to be more difficult.

​@@glitchlord9720 There is just one issue with that: What happens, when a player doesn't reach the level before the milestone level? If level 3 is the milestone. Do they jump 2 levels instantly when the milestone is reached and they are still lvl1? So that means the levels in between are kind of meaningless, especially if you reach the milestones quickly. You can just skip the levels? Or: lets do it the other way around. You have to reach the level before that to get the milestone level up. This would mean if a player is still lvl 1 and they reach the milestone they dont get it. Imagine the player would say: "can you please wait with advancing the story, I need to kill a few spiders first." as they stand before the door to the bbeg's general's throne room. Or they go ahead and just... miss the level up at the climax. A nice dm would give it to them as soon as they leveled to 2, a more strict dm could rule that they missed that milestone so now they have to wait for the next, but then everyone else is always a milestone ahead which would suck immensely. I don't think combining the two systems like that is a good idea. There is another option, but it wouldn't work with 5e without some modifications: have one path be governed by xp, the other by milestones. it could be your class levels are xp bases, while your sub class improves with each milestone. Or xp gives you ASI and Feats, maybe more resource points and spells at certain levels, while milestones unlock the more "meaty" features and skills. But that would significantly change the progression curve and would require at least some knowledge and feel for how this would impact balancing and pacing. So yeah, I'd be careful with that idea. It sounds cool, but will it work like that in actual play?

@@Solanaar ohhh, that’s a really good point…

@@Solanaar Meh, I just make X amount of battles a milestone, too. 10-ish fights? Enjoy your level, folks. Fights go really easy? Ok, make it 12-ish fights. Really struggling? 8 fights, ding.

In pathfinder the mythic levels are milestones if you use them

Or whenever certain races or classes can reroll a d20. Take your pick.

Or whenever there's too many monsters.

I believe that is Seneca the Younger

that was from operah i think

Or when you get lucky. You can't tell me that needing a break from school and then suddenly getting a snow day is preparation or opportunity

So this segment was Forbidden Kingdom?

@@deoxys1783 LOL YES.

@@TomVCunningham Gotcha ^^ Yeah I can see it

Beautifully spoken.

@TomVCunningham Okay, so if in your analogy Matt is Jet Li and Brennan is Jackie Chan, then who is Donnie Yen?

random encounters originated as punishment for the players dragging their feet/getting stuck in a loop. They barely gave any experience, they fit more elegantly in treasure=experience systems.

Yeah do a similar but opposite thing, where i mainly rely on XP, but i plan most every encounter ahead of time so o know exactly where the pace they will be going anyway. but added in i give experience for social encounters. You just convinced the king not to send his groups to war, that sounds like 1000 XP. Found a clever way to sneak around the battle o planned, that's xp too! And i lump all XP given at the end of the session. So essentially I'm saying the manner at which i give out XP is so haphazard and ambiguous that I'm basically milestone leveling

@@three9855 the xp reward for some random encounters can be too high imo, but it does make the table more invested in the encounters. And I love random encounters since they're a function that describes the world + the probability of running into elements of that world. Although treasure to xp and a nerf to combat xp would be a great change for 5e.

@@KN-oc7cu You hold onto the weakness of the middle, you lack the will it would take to escape the thin veneer of lies you have told yourself, you are so close young one. You can enter the domain of righteous kings or forever be marked as the fool that clings to their points of experience, toiling away what brainpower could be spent on envisioning a most grand adventure at figuring out what the level adjusted point gain is appropriate for a level 4 party fighting 14 goblins. Just take that last step. Have the ability to look upon yourself and marvel that you have told yourself one less lie this day. Embrace the milestone system and that too can be a milestone for which you can ascend to the next level of Dungeon master.

@@countjondi9672 my dm exclusively uses xp, and if we ever switched to milestone. 90% of our table would fucking quit. Noone at our table wants to be that hard railroaded by the dm, and meticulously planning EVERY combat encounter sounds like fucking aids.

I immagine it's like, the lair of the next boss is capped to level 5, your players are level 4.They can go do side quests but cannot go passed levl 5 before defeating the boss. But they still gather XP towards the next cap.

@@wakouf gaining xp over the cap might just end up spiking your players as soon as they defeat the boss

same in fact our GM at times blocked us from gaining level from killing weaker monsters at level 3 wolfs no longer gives XP. that said we had milestones so after we Climbed the Mountain range, we traversed the desert and we finally got to the town we was heading towards containing a magical trees. we charged the magical fuits we had carried and then ate them. we got a level and several of us got a unick trait or skill. that said if we had arrived there way to low level we would had been told that we can´t eat the fruit (like they was made of pure diamond or something).

We actually trialed something similar in one of our test games not long ago for a hybrid leveling system. You csn level through exp but some class features require milestones to unlock. You can still get stronger and level down the list but like to get that next class feature you need to wait till you meet the person who teaches it to you or wait until your next long rest so your god can visit you in a dream etc etc.

We've always done that fr feats and some other side abilities anyway as none of myself or my party like having to pick between ASI or a feat so I just say to my players that if there's a feat they want then they can talk to me about it and I'll find a way to add into the world a way for them to work for it. Like one player wanted to learn Elven Accuracy. So I put into a town a traveling Elven Hunter who the player could meet and try to persuade to teach them the ways Elves use bows. He still had to find said person and then persuade them to teach him, with gold, time and a check or two.

You can give experience points for non-combat encounters. In fact, you might even give more experience points for a clever solution to a problem that doesn't boil down to just a brawl.

Easy fix as a DM is to give Non-Combat encounters, or encounters that could have ended in combat but were instead avoided through use of RP and skills, XP values of a relevant CR

So they can’t create their own storybeats to grind xp?

@@PureGoldNeverCorrodes they could and can but I’m just pretty good at predicting where my players are headed next and what will be there waiting for them. I’ve very rarely ever been completely surprised by something in almost half a decade of DM-ing, so I just had those numbers ready

Right? And I don't have to calculate the XP of individual monsters before each session.

@@PureGoldNeverCorrodes The way games like Pathfinder WOTR do it that fighting gives very little exp while quests give a ton so all the fights that you don't have to take might give you 1 extra level over the whole game at most.

@@thewingedserpent5823 Wow. I love that.

Reminds me of the saying - never assign evil intent to what you can assign stupidity 😂

Yeah. I don't get this mutual exclusivity surrounding this. Both makes the most sense to me anyway.

As the modules are written, you get a half a level / a level / etc rather than an xp value. It's fair that XP is solely rewarded for killing RAW in 5e, but milestones are also rewarded for pre-planned events under DM Fiat, so it's still a restrictive selection of activities that could lead to advancement.

Yes. According to the DMG, what the community commonly calls Milestone is actually Story-Based Advancement or, less commonly, Session Based Advancement. Milestone is tied to XP by the book.

I take "milestone leveling" to be the same as "Story-Based Advancement" (DMG 261). I'm not clear on what the best term is for "granting XP for milestones among other things", but "XP" seems reasonable for the moment since its an option under normal XP. As a player, I despise "Story-Based Advancement". To me it seems to staunch creativity. It seems to remove decisions from the party and gives them to the DM (i.e. it tends to railroad). Playing it feels like acting in someone else's very slow moving book. Thanks, but no thanks.

You're never alone

I'm in your walls

I am also in your walls

I am also also in your walls.

There's a few of us in the walls now tbh

This is almost word for word the level system I use. I find it too easy for rolls from one side or another to difficult a given encounter is, which if you're using a milestone system, can lead to player expectation of levels even if the fight in question wasn't really anything particularly special, just hard. As a result I prefer to keep the XP number value as the norm, with major quests, events, and quality play being the factor that invokes what I call "Milestone rewards". Did you finally solve the mystery of your father's murder and get revenge for your family after a grueling fight through the psychopath's torture dungeons, filled with mangled undead corpses, horrific sewn-together-abominations left over after his "Experiments..."? Well, I don't care if the base XP number doesn't say that you level up, this is a milestone for that character. They don't happen often, but they are big for the player and the campaign when they do happen

I like to call this the story beat XP reward, and it just happens to be enough to level up at this particular moment because it makes sense.

@@TrixyTrixter this is called milestone XP by the DMG. Essentially, you don’t just give out XP for combat, but also for any major story beats too. It’s a nice in-between IMO since XP gives the players a track to pay attention to while narrative XP awards allows the DM to adjust the pace during low combat sections of the game.

I use this too. Though I rarely dm.

❤ 3.5 ❤

The superior Edition of D&D. I'm stuck as the Forever DM and never actually get to enjoy the D&D of my youth.

I prefer milestone myself but I agree with all your points. Gaining experience feels good and the asking for a level up thing can be a problem.

For sure. Xp makes things feel more egalitarian.

Hard agree, Bored Gamer. The incremental advancement you see is very rewarding, and it's also great feedback about your efforts and achievements. If you think about what types of rewards you have in a classic D&D game without XP, you'd be hard pressed to list more than 2. Money? Sure, but also everyone and their grandma will agree it feels unfulfilling in D&D. Items? Yes, sir, that's a good one. Fame? Good luck measuring that. Social status / Reputation / whatever-fancy-word-you-wanna-use? Yeah, still not easy to put a number to, but not impossible. I'll add boons, which can't be nearly as common as anything else at all. Favours, followers, real-estate... However, it's likely that you probably stopped listing after Money and Items, which is - again - typical and common for about 99% of the games out there. Even if you'd always include them, they're all difficult to use as clear, transparent rewards, and most of them can't come in quick succession, so you really space them out, as awesome as they are. Unlike XP however, which you can dole out literally every session, so there's a good reason to use it and make your players' brains go "brrrrrr" with happiness and dopamine. Finally, to anyone defending the point of "I'll give too much and they'll advance too quickly", try reading about XP for random encounters (hint: it's mega low, sometimes even zero) and calculating XP based on an encounter per party level basis instead of looking at the monster stat block (trust me, it's a ton easier and quicker). Oh, and also about requiring a good ole' downtime period after the END of an adventure for a party to be able to level up (not the mid-adventure bullshit).

XP needs to be curated by a good DM. Otherwise it doesn't work. IF you're just playing a battle sim with dnd instead of roleplaying, sure. That's fine.

@@crunkers_ people should never ask for a level up. Theres a disconnect between what system is good for what people. If you're roleplaying, milestone is much better. If you're just doing murder hobo battlesims. XP is okay, but you need a good DM who can curate that.

Smart choice!

Honestly one of the most overlooked points. Sure they both have pros and cons but one of them is objectively more work for the dm.

It's very simple math.

@@steeplewiththesnakes Very simple, and phones have calculators.

I use a much more simplified subjective XP system

Tyler, what if I told you you don't figure this out during the game and you don't need to calculate shit? Here's how it works and how you'll actually make your games better: 1. Find the XP per Encounter per Level table (DMG p82, "Combat Encounter Difficulty"). 2. Find party's average level, look at the Medium reward. 3. Note how many encounters the party overcame. 4. Give said XP for every* single said encounter at the end of each session. *Small exceptions apply such random encounters are worth barely anything, more climactic fights can be up to double. ...Profit :)