I give XP to my players for solving encounters, including social and puzzle encounters. Whether or not they solve encounters with enemies through combat or peaceful means is up to them because they get xp either way.
I used the "encounters on a budget" chart from the DMG to model social experience rewards. For each character, when they need to talk to someone important or do something to further the narrative, I would grade it as Easy Medium Hard or Deadly. In order to balance it out with the experience value of real combat, only the individual characters that impacted the social encounter would get the reward. I was leveling the playing field for that campaign, so all individual experience was being distributed evenly so the party was always the same level. I could definitely tell that players were more engaged with enforcing Hard and Deadly social encounters and pushing narrative. Hell, it meant they could argue within the party itself and earn experience for it. Someone turning to a disenfranchised ally and making a valid argument as to why the party should work together for a mission is one of the most experience-worthy things that can happen at one of my tables.
Great discussion and video. I think XP exclusively for combat is fine. For social and environmental encounters I provide other rewards: • Social: allies, favours, inspiration, letters of authority, access to boutique services, retainers, keys to the city etc • Environmental: rare plants, reagents, animals, minerals, precious and normal metals, gems, stones etc. Gear is rewarded in all three pillars.
A few years ago I decided to abandon awarding XP in favor of the group levelling when they achieved a significant milestone. I had been constantly struggling to calculate the XP, including for combat and social interactions, hurriedly so that I could make my bus. When my players defeated Count Strahd, along with several of Strahd's cronies at the end of Curse of Strahd, I threw my hands up and announced that the group had levelled. I have been quite satisfied with the milestone levelling method ever since. It requires me to look carefully at the adventure I am running, and determine what is really significant. Is it beating a legendary monster that is terrorizing the countryside? Helping some Kobolds recover their clan's dragon? Cleaning out the Augean stables? Finding a lost city in the jungle or desert? Once I determine what is important to the adventure I can sprinkle clues pointing the players in that direction. I don't see myself going back to calculating XP at the end of a session anymore.
One fix for the problem you're talking about that I like is to just steal the XP system from Numenera/Cypher system. WebDM did a video about Cypher a while back, but the basics are simple. When the Players do something that pushes the game forward the DM gives them one or more XP. When they roll a natural 1 they get two XP. One to keep and one to give to a party member, but if they don't give those XP back to the DM the DM throws a complication at the party. Cypher basically treats XP like Milestones, but it hands those Milestones out mid session, lets players stock up on them and spend them like Inspiration charges, and offloads the leveling pace and bookkeeping onto the players. docs.google.com/document/d/1vez-IGHmL3zf_DZjM6OCUKBo90bIWXlnEwfD7X_1l5Y/edit?usp=sharing
Haven't used XP in forever. Accomplishing a major goal, finishing a major element of the campaign, getting through a dungeon or region or series of combats? Level up. Takes all the competition between players out of the formula and makes it about group accomplishment.
Rules Cyclopedia, pages 122 to 129. It gives solid rules for all of this: xp for roleplaying, accomplishing goals, and exceptional action. Monsters are worth a tiny amount of xp. Gold is where it is at!
You used to be able to gain xp for spell research and crafting magic items. Then in 3e (the very worst edition) it got switched to charging xp instead of granting xp. No idea what the rule on than is now. I just cherry pick 5e, I don't play it.
Great content as always! Love the idea of XP for searching out secrets for a Wizard in a tower. Very Ars Magica with the Magi sending out Companions and Grogs. Love it!
I love that we're getting more videos lately. This is such a great subject! You guys always give me so much to think about after I watch the video. I often watch/ listen to these videos over and over again on my drive to work and everytime I rewatch there's new things I glean from them.
I would love if you guys did a video specifically on parties and what kinds of random tables & features you would have, Jim's insight into that would be amazing.
I’ve started giving pcs exp for personal character development, you defeated that personal villain? Exp for you! You found your legendary atrifacg after years of searching? EXP BABY! You successfully raised a strange changing baby for your fey goddess? E! X! P! It gives the players a reason to do personal things beyond “well what else can we do?” Which feels as in character as a plastic machine gun. So exp and levelling in my games have basically been reduced to the content, not the value. So to speak. Not sure if it’s good and definitely not sure if I explained it right but I like it so far
I like to do basically the same thing, but mechanically I run it through the XP rules outlined in Cypher System. It's basically milestone, but the milestones are also advantage charges and you get them for rolling 1's, 20's, and doing things to move the game forward.
I've yet to hear a good argument for giving one player more XP than the others. The campaign follows the adventures of the party. The PC's get XP for overcoming challenges as a party. The XP gets handed out to the party. That said, I definitely think players should be rewarded for going above and beyond at the table. I just tend to hand out in-world rewards for those things. Prestige, NPC's owing favours, that sort of thing. That way, the players who aren't into that sort of thing (which is okay) aren't being penalised on the XP front, while the players who are get rewarded in kind.
@@nickwilliams8302 I have, in the past, tended to agree with this line of argument that levelling players differently is stupid however the way I’ve got my current world set up I do not want to punish the other players for one player having to do a particularly difficult personal task (for the pc not the player) I toyed about with waiting for all of them to have reached these goals and then level them up, or have each level correspond to a particular achievement per character but the maths didn’t work out so with the ‘mini game/ puzzle’ I have designed for levelling up in my campaign this just felt like the most natural fit
@@nickwilliams8302 go back and watch the video on Cypher system web DM did a year or so ago. Cypher gets around those problems by turning XP milestones into a communal resource the players pass around, use for rerolls, or use as action points are used in older editions and other games. Yes, if all your players are greedy fuckboys who hoard XP like dragons then the system won't work. But if keeping all the PCs on an even field is important to you then just say everyone has to be on the same proficiency bonus tier before anyone can level to the next tier.
I find rewarding XP for all three pillars feels bland for something that just needs different rewards. "... raised a strange changing baby for you fey goddess"? You are now favoured of the Fey Goddess and call upon a her in a moment of need. It will be unique, rewarding and memorable.
Ah, yes... those "Social Times"... I remember, back in the day, when people would meet at doorways. You could stroll down the sidewalk chat with neighbors. *sniff* Getting me all wistful...
I wish the DMG would just have a table for experience points awarded for social encounters. You could divide it between Easy, Medium, and Hard encounters, based on the difficulty of things like social checks, or the risks involved. It doesn't need to be this entire sub-system. I just want something, rather than nothing. I'd like the game to give me help, rather than making me figure it out on my own. In the game I've run, I can think of two instances where social applied. First was when the players were trying to get past a dire wolf, which they through animal handling checks and bribing with food. I seem to recall giving half XP for that, compared to a combat encounter. The second was when the PCs were carousing with some bandits, and I gave them the option to earn some XP from succeeding on a skill challenge revolving around carousing, like arm wrestling matches or performing music. I gave them all a small amount of XP for success.
In old D&D, XP was awarded for getting past the obstacle (monster), regardless of how you achived it. That Dire wolf example would have awarded full xp. They got past the problem, reward them for it.
For those who are interested the Dragon Age Tabletop RPG (and I think fantasy Age as well) has a great XP system in my opinion. XP is awarded for all types of encounters (Social, exploration, combat, etc). It has a simple scale. It awards a fixed amount of XP depending on if you rate the encounter easy, average, hard, or very hard. I find this works well because XP is actually earned depending on how much the players were challenged. If they destroyed your triple deadly encounter easily, only 100 XP. If they almost died fighting the low level goblins because they were low on resources, maybe they earn 300 xp. And of course whether an encounter was considered hard is open to DM interpretation. The Required amount of XP for leveling up is also designed so that the required XP doesn't increase exponentially like many other games. Usually It's about the same number needed for every level. This means that players that tackle more difficult encounters will level up faster. If the encounters become easier and easier than players will advance slower. It's a very simple system and I love it.
Watching the video as I type this comment! I was hoping you guys would cover this, thank you so much! Edit: OH GODS, rule of stool made me laugh *way* too hard. I'm definitely gonna be running more social interactions in my games now.
Googled "Rule of Stool" and it took me to some weird Hub website. Not sure my players will be into it. Gonna see at this next session. Thanks for the video!
We had an AMAZING party in my Waterdeep Dragonhesit campaign, no idea if it was from the book or added in custom by the DM, but my char is a noble who does what nobles do, is in an incestuous relationship with her sister and her sister's husband. The party we were all invited to was a party thrown by my character's fiance from an arranged marrage and she legit asked a fellow PC to stab her to get her out of it. Oh it was the best social awkwardness I'v ever experienced in a TTRPG
My party went to a ball in the underdark, the warlock spiked the 3 punch bowls with 3 diffrerent drugs, long story short the paladin and ranger had a four way with the big bad's sister and her black dragon boy friend! That got real wierd real fast! The nest session was basically the movie the hang over, they all had solo adventures that got just as crazy.
For GM's who like a scriptable mechanic, I liked your idea of assigning "encounter equivalents" for non-combat activities and achievements. They can preset the values it and give out partial or full XP depending on how well or how fully the party (or specific members) solves and benefits from the situations. I do this intuitively as "development points" as an XP category, but I never tried to translate it directly to an equivalence mechanic. Could be handy for remembering to reward each kind of story arc, sequence, or scene. In a way, this is similar to the increasing number of GM's embracing the idea that the party will all level together for completing particular strategic phases of the campaign, which saves a lot of paperwork and encourages multifaceted, cooperative group play.
A rule of thumb that I like to use for RP based experience is to tally up all the results of non combat related rolls (failure or success) and give this to players at the end of the session as experience. For example: performance 15 pickpocket 10 persuasion 5 intimidation 10 xp gain: 40
I think D&D’s extreme combat focus does the hobby a disservice. If all you reward is violence, you disincentivize so many other approaches. If there was more reward focus on social and environmental play, the rules would become more robust to support those things, leading to a better game overall.
In old school DnD, defeating creatures in combat awarded comparatively little XP. The bulk of experience came from obtaining treasure and exfiltrating the dungeon with it. Creating a vastly different gameplay dynamic, where players were incentivized to sneak around, negotiate with monsters, and even pit different dungeon factions against one another. The objective was to get the treasure and get out; given that and how deadly old school DnD combat was, getting into a fight was a sign that something went badly wrong.
@Aaron Hamric, I completely agree. I figured out a simple trick that has helped me with my groups killing everything. I award the XP for any NPC if it's defeated, evaded, negotiated with, or if it's slain in combat. Once I introduced this idea to my players, murder hobo was gone and now they prioritize talking, then sneaking, knocking out if applicable, and fighting if necessary.
@Colin Deal your mark system just sounds like story based milestones with extra steps, players never know how much progress they made and you fudge the results from what you set in your head anyway so it might just be easier to drop the smoke and mirrors and do story based milestones.
@Colin Deal "did the group make meaningful progress towards their goal?" this is the primary question in story based advancement, the DM doesn't control the narrative, the PCs do. Whatever the PCs goals are is the story, you just level them up any time that it feels like they have made enough progress to justify an increase in power.
My group is experimenting with the older XP for Gold rule, where every GP spent grants 1 XP. I'm hoping that it also leads to interesting social encounters as well, bribing guards, trying to hire monsters, offering to buy dropped scales from the dragons who shed them, all that fun stuff.
A while back WebDM did a video on Cypher System and how it differs from D&D. The XP system in Cypher is particularly good at rewarding players based on what they roll and how they engage the game world. Think of it basically like Milestones are handed out in game and then used as initiative charges or traded between PCs, then cashed in for leveling up between sessions. docs.google.com/document/d/1vez-IGHmL3zf_DZjM6OCUKBo90bIWXlnEwfD7X_1l5Y/edit?usp=sharing My homebrew might not work perfectly for Dragon Heist, but you can always tailor the XP payout triggers to the things you want your players doing.
I was thinking the next time I run a game, I would just ask players, as a group and individually, on a regular basis "what are your character's goals?". And then award XP when they overcome challenges to achieve or move towards those goals.
I look at the potential combats a party might encounter and the experience they can get from those, then I say, okay I will put equal xp in the other pillars so that they can mine xp from those other encounters as well. For instance, if a party creatively explores or socials their way around a combat encounter, they absolutely get the xp related to that combat encounter.
My first D&D campaign, the DM would throw like 5-10 xp at people depending on how much he liked their RP. That was the ONLY non combat exp we got. it was soo annoying to feel like nothing mattered but combat. I really only enjoy milestone. (5-10 exp, maybe a 20 or 50 if he REALLY liked it, which never increased as we leveled, so we would get 10-50 exp per non combat session lol. Even when we were level 6+)
I feel like XP should be tied to age. Maybe all characters naturally gain “Experience” over time. This isn’t anything close to what the game rewards the players, but it is a fact of life. However, Player Characters will over time gain a significant increase in Experience by doing something significant. It’s not killing the Goblin that gives the players Experience; it’s clearing out the Goblin Camp. It’s also convincing the local lord, finding a great treasure, or whatever else it may be. All of these acts give Players Experience, but Experience will always increase slowly over time.
@@markfaulkner8191 I LOVE Ars Magica. I’ve been trying to get my friends into it and been thinking of how to get the DnD Magic System more like it. It’s such a beautiful System!
@@TheOtherWhiteNerd You don't want that, trust me. Ars Magica + D&D = 3.x edition (the *worst* edition). They were written by the same guy (Jonathan Tweet). To get into Ars, you have to love crunch. And homework. And it helps if you hate combat. I know I am bashing the game. It is one of my favorites, but I find myself returning to D&D because I just want a simpler game that plays.
Payment for finding locations is straight from the fallout game series. Someone in those games is always paying for information on new sites. That approach would work well for a hex crawl kind of adventure.
Geezer here.... 4 plus decades... And it seems we still need to explain xp. RAW or otherwise xp systems work great. As long as you give experience for everything. I recall 30 plus years back... A new player all but dropped of shock when Everyone at the table received a big xp award for making a big bads lieutenant a ally. If using xp it should be for every success. For my table no show equal No XP. Other than that it is an equal split. This "new" milestone idea makes me laugh... We always gave a xp chunk for "milestones". No matter what the achievement made. Great vid.... Game on.
I feel like there's a place for XP for Gold in this discussion. Gold can be acquired through all three pillars: Charting new lands, raiding ancient ruins, finding loot-laded rooms hidden behind secret doors; looting fallen foes, hunting bounties, and selling extracted materials; blackmail, trade, favors from friends. You can even get creative in proactively mining fot XP: Oh, are we going to rescue your brother from some cultists? I'm a noble; let me talk the mayor into putting a price on the heads of these ne'er-do-wells!
The XP rules in Cypher/Numenera are fantastic. I expanded on them to reward Wisdom and Intelligence rolls in ways that allow characters with high bonuses or expertise in Insight, Survival, and Investigation to speed up leveling for the entire party. docs.google.com/document/d/1vez-IGHmL3zf_DZjM6OCUKBo90bIWXlnEwfD7X_1l5Y/edit?usp=sharing
I like the old 2e rules on rewarding xp based on specific class/race actions. I also prefer asynchronous xp gain in the party, as I feel it incentivizes communication between party members for everyone to benefit over the course of a session. Participation should have merit. In situations that would warrant inspiration, I would instead see as areas for xp rewards. Modifying to 5e rules, I look to successful use of tool proficiencies, skill checks, features/traits. RPing personality traits.. all things you would expect to happen in the course of a session, but depending on the party/players, may require clear rewards to bring to the table.
I do 500xp per session, or of I use some of the lower cr monsters that don't add up to much. I might do more when they need more, they're all level 5 almost 6.
@@TH3MIN3R3000 different type of drum set up makes a different sound effect, the one i wrote is closer to the original, the one you write is more a modern electric accompanying rock set up style
Could you give XP for casting a new spell? I feel like it would make sense, because it is literally the first time someone casts a spell that they weren't capable of before. Maybe after a few castings of the spell they no longer gain XP from that spell anymore.
Why isn't whether an encounter considered to be "easy" or "hard" determined by the players' experience of the encounter at the table? You could have a red dragon that turns out to be easy, and you could have a band of goblins that proves to be hard.
If we're talking about awarding XP outside of combat it should go without saying that Cypher is a great place to look to steal ideas. I like taking the XP system from Cypher and expanding it out to reward rolls and table talk that move the game forward or prove the players are engaging with the game world. docs.google.com/document/d/1vez-IGHmL3zf_DZjM6OCUKBo90bIWXlnEwfD7X_1l5Y/edit?usp=sharing
@@BNRmatt makes sense, could be fun to create a terrain map of certain areas and being a ranger allows you to bushwack a bit off road without loosing your way
This is where skill-based systems (versus level/class based systems, like D&D) are superior; you gain experience in whatever skill(s) you use. My biggest conundrum is which, success or failure, should provide the most experience? In my experience with life, training and practice (prior to performing the activity) are far more determinate of advancement and whether or not you actually succeed or fail. How does one model this in a ttrpg? I think to preserve the "game" aspect of TTRPGs, gaining experience (increasing skills and attributes), needs to be codified and not up for GM discretion.
First, Great vid as always! Second, I know you guys are trying to inspire and not just hand out cookie cutter house rules, but sometimes I'm a little frustrated when you show us a great idea (like XP for social encounters) but then don't clue us in on "How you do it at your table". OK, frustrated rant done, you guys do really inspire, just sometimes I need a concrete place to start. I had been thinking of this since I saw you guys talk about "Whatever you give XP for is what your players will do". I have been thinking of Giving XP for "every Accomplishment via Skill Use". As an example, an "Accomplishment" could be 1) opening a locked, trapped chest 2) succeeding at a non trivial social encounter 3) Navigating an environmental hazard, or using survival to feed the party. Although any Accomplishment may require several "Skill Uses" by multiple party members, the party earns XP for the "Accomplishment" not each and every "Skill Use". Although (in the case of a locked chest,) there may only be one Skill Use needed. No XP for trivial Accomplishments i.e. no XP for opening an unlocked chest or asking a farmer for directions or climbing a tree for a better view, even if you have the player roll for flavor. I'm thinking XP should be based on the most difficult Skill DC involved. Perhaps XP = DC, (or XP = DC x Level or XP = DC x Proficiency Bonus.) It's been a while since I DMed, so I'm not sure how "Skill Heavy" this is going to make things so I'm not sure if there should be any multiplier or not. (For comparison, a single Goblin is worth 50 XP.) Also, the less pressure, or risk, there is the less XP. Opening a series of foot lockers after all the bad guys are dead by a group of adventurers who realize that soldiers are not likely to have trapped their own foot lockers may earn little if any XP, whereas opening the Wizard's chest in the middle of the stealth portion of an infiltration mission, because the party is hoping to find a much needed Healing potion or other useful item to help bolster their next combat, may be worth more XP than normal, since the risk of lethal, magical traps is real. You could let the players know the formula or you could just let them know they "Learned Something by Accomplishing that", or something in the middle.
I've been playing D&D long enough to know that you can give XP for a wide variety of things, however there's never any guidance as to how much XP to give. Monster XP awards are based on how difficult the monster is to defeat in combat - it might be easier or harder to outsmart it or persuade it to leave you alone, depending on the creature. Do you give more or less XP, depending? How much more or less? How do you determine the difficulty of a social encounter, or an exploration milestone? I feel like combat is usually going to be the "hard road", so you're usually going to be giving more XP for combat, which takes us right back to incentivizing combat above all else.
I try to base the XP based on how much table time it takes up to persuade or outsmart a creature compared to killing it. If the fight would last 30-40 minutes and you finish the encounter in 10 minutes through social interaction you get 1/2 XP, if you spend 20 minutes reasoning with some lowly bandits that would take 5 minutes to kill I might reward more experience.
Aight I haven't been here in a few months, did Jim lose weight or something? Idk if its just the new look but he looks more handsome in the last few vids I watched
I'm commenting before seeing the full video: I feel like giving XP for Social or Environmental Encounters is just Milestone Leveling with extra steps, not to mention I find that it ends up being implemented in a manner that doesn't give XP equally unlike how everyone gets combat XP equally regardless of impact. Obviously though, I think avoiding and pacifying encounters should advance your character and go toward milestone leveling. Inspiration is just so perfect for situations where a single or couple of individuals deserve a little bonus.
Ultimately, DnD is the game wherein you kill monsters with powers. All other mechanics and functions that aren't killing monsters with powers have flimsy, bare excuses for mechanics. And that's a fine game if that's what you're into! It just strikes me as somewhat pointless for so many folks to try to make DnD into something it's not with reams upon reams of bolted on systems from other games... At what point do you just admit that it's time to play a different game?
I don't see any reason a DM can consider their social or environmental encounters in the same way they consider their combat encounters, easy, medium, hard and deadly, and award XP accordingly. This is why I prefer games that award XP at the end of a story rather than the end of a session. You can consider the entire set of sessions in terms of difficulty measure the outcome to award appropriate XP. It's also why I prefer games that don't trivialize "experience" by calling it XP.
