Experience Awards

In Dungeons and Dragons, the style of play is often dictated by how experience points are awarded. If the DM only gives away XP for killing things then he is swiftly going to be running a game where all the party does is kill things. Personally, I put a premium on roleplaying and character interaction; combat has its place, but it should not be the driving force behind a campaign. With that in mind I took one look at the experience rules in the DMG and realised that they required a fundamental change.

In the section on Adventuring on Iourn I mutter at some length about the demographics of my favourite campaign world and how rare high level characters are. I mention my preference for running relatively low-level campaigns with the emphasis on roleplaying and interaction rather than combat. If I were to award experience as suggested by the CR ratings and the Dungeon Master's Guide then the PCs would shoot up far too quickly.

Here's an example for you all. The PC Elias Raithbourne appeared in every session of both the Notoriety of Kings and Blood and Water campaigns - a total of 81 sessions. By the end of session 81 Elias barely scraped into level ten with a total of 45,415 XP. Had I followed the average experience awards suggested by the DMG Elias would have been level twenty-four with an amazing 294,400 XP! That might have pleased Marc, but it would have cracked the campaign world like a soft-boiled egg.

I know what you're thinking.... if I don't follow the DMG that means I don't use Challenge Ratings, and if I don't use Challenge Ratings then how do I balance encounters? Well, I'll let you into a little secret: I don't balance encounters. I go with whatever is appropriate given particular story-related circumstances. The integrity of the game world is more important to me than game balance. So what if your party of first level adventurers are faced with two hungry wyverns? It'll just make you think around the problem.

So here are the rules that I use for awarding experience points. This should only be taken as a guide, as the GM should have the lee-way to alter the award given depending on his whim and the circumstances. On the whole I award experience by four different criteria.

Player's Gain Experience Points For....

• Roleplaying: Each session every character receives a number of experience points for roleplaying. There is no set limit on this award, but it normally falls between 0 and 200 XP per session. This is an individual award over and above any additional XP for attaining story goals.
  

• Inspired Ideas: A player who comes up with a very good idea or solves a tricky problem deserves an experience award. These solutions must come from the player's own wit and not spoon-fed to him by the DM on the roll of a dice. The most common award would be 50 XP, but may be significantly higher. This award is above and beyond any for the story goals.
  

• Class Activities: Each session a character will get experience points if he uses abilities related to his class. Fighters receive a reward for fighting, wizards and sorcerers for casting spells, bards for singing and rogues for being sneaky. The level of the experience award really depends on the challenge the party faces, and what the activity is. A wizard might get quite a large reward the first time he creates a scroll, but it would grow less over time. Basically, if the activity can be seen as one that stretches the existing skills of a character then a reward is justified. Multiclass characters only receive the reward for class activities in the class they are working to increase at the next level. A reward is not given each time a character uses a class ability, but rather as a single sum per session. Rewards for class activities should be on a par with the roleplaying rewards, although could be considerably more at the DM's discretion. A player is not guaranteed a reward each session.
  

• Achieving Story Goals: Each adventure is divided into scenes (encounters in D&D-speak). In each scene there is a goal and each goal has a related XP reward; in most cases this award will make up the bulk of the experience points gained by players. The reward is not based upon the challenge rating dictated in either the DMG or the Monster Manual it is a set figure. Experience points are therefore accrued arithmetically while the number characters need for the next level increases exponentially. This drastically slows down advancement.

If the goal is achieved the award is divided between all the characters (and the NPCs) who participated in that stage of the adventure - even characters who were not directly involved. Characters completely absent from that part of the adventure won't get any experience points. The finale of an adventure is treated much like another encounter. Characters do not receive encounter awards and an extra award for completing the entire thing - all the encounter awards added together can be seen as the award for the adventure.

Story Goal experience can vary from 100 XP to 25,000 XP depending on the nature of the threat the PCs face, their personal power levels, their goals and the importance of the task at hand. There is no upper limit to the amount of experience the PC could enjoy. In practice story goals are unlikely to be more than a few hundred experience points per session, and usually less than 1000 XP for any one adventure.