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Dungeon Master’s Guide Exclusive Preview |
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Experience Point System: Second Version Experience Points Javal and Jeremy stand within the treasure chamber, surveying the riches before them. To get there, they slew three savage trolls, bypassed several devious traps and solved the riddle of the golden golem before it crushed them. Now they were not only richer, but through their experiences grew in knowledge and power.
Experience points are a measure of accomplishment. While they partially represent training and learning by doing, they mostly illustrate the fact that in fantasy, the more experienced a character is, the more powerful he or she possesses. Experience points allow a character to gain levels, and thus are at the center of one of the most important concepts of the game. Gaining levels keeps the game moving and heightens the fun and excitement. Experience points can also be employed by spellcasters to utilize some of their most potent spells -- communing with gods, raising the dead, creating permanent spell effects, and invoking powerful wishes. When a caster chooses to do this, the loss of experience represents the terrible toll that using such powerful magic takes on his inner power. Experience points also represent the personal puissance that a character must imbue within an object in order to create a magical item. Each and every such item contains within it some fraction of its creator’s power. Standard Awards Break the game down into encounters. If you’re using monsters from the Monster Manual, some of that work has been done for you. There, you will find that each type of monster encounter has been given a challenge level. Each encounter in the game gets a challenge level, indicating how many experience points those who meet the challenge earn. The greater the danger or difficulty, the higher the challenge level. To determine the experience point award for an encounter, multiply the challenge level by 75 experience points. Thus, the more danger involved in an encounter results in greater rewards. By determining the challenge level of an encounter, you measure how easy or difficult it is to overcome. Of course, "overcoming" the encounter can mean many things. A monster is usually overcome by defeating it in battle. Other ways to overcome an encounter might include solving a puzzle, surviving a trap or learning a secret. Sometimes they can be as straightforward as convincing an NPC to help or escaping from a powerful foe. As the DM, you must decide when a challenge is overcome. Usually, this is simple: did the PCs defeat the enemy in battle? Then they met the challenge and earned experience points. Other times, it can be trickier. The PCs sneaked by the sleeping minotaur to get into the magical vault. Did they overcome the minotaur encounter? If their goal was to get into the magical vault, and the minotaur was there to guard, then the answer is probably yes. Otherwise, probably no. It’s up to you to make such judgements. Only characters that take part in an encounter should gain the commensurate awards. Characters who died or are incapacitated previous to the encounter earn nothing, even if they are raised or healed later on. Below are example encounters for a given challenge level. Use these examples as benchmarks to determine the challenge level of other encounters. Level
Award Example Modifying Awards An orc warband that attacks the player characters by flying over them on primitive hang gliders dropping large rocks is not the same encounter as one in which the orcs just charge in with spears. As a good DM, once you have played the game for a while, you will realize that circumstances can vary from encounter to encounter quite drastically. Sometimes, the character’s opponents have a distinct advantage due to surprise or cover. Other times, the PCs have the clear advantage that makes the encounter easier. Use the following as a guideline for modifying experience point awards based on difficulty. Trivial
x0 (no award) The most obvious circumstance that might change the difficulty is that the challenge level of the encounter is either much higher or much lower than the characters’ levels. As a general rule of thumb, if the challenge level is less than half of the level of a character, treat that encounter as "easy" for the character. If the challenge level is less than one quarter of the level of the character, treat it as "trivial." If the challenge level is more than the level of a character, treat the encounter as "difficult." An encounter of more than 2 levels above a character is "extraordinary" and an encounter of 5 or more levels above a character is "vicious." Another factor that can change the difficulty of an encounter is the number of characters involved. Encounter challenge levels are based on approximately four characters of the same level. Eight or more characters facing an equal challenge level will make an encounter "easy." Only three characters undertaking a challenge will make an encounter difficult, two is extraordinary while a single character taking on any encounter equal to her own level is facing vicious odds. These are merely guidelines, however, and you are the final judge of what is easy or difficult. Of course, countless other factors will routinely change the difficulty of encounters. Missile weapons and cover on the opponents’ part can make an encounter difficult, for example. If a powerful monster, like a naga has an orc squad as bodyguards, the encounter will most likely be more difficult than if the PCs encountered both separately. In such a case, modify the award for the lower level encounter by x2. Modify the awards as you see fit, but keep a few things in mind:
Group Awards Some DMs might feel it inappropriate to give individual experience awards. You might want to instead award a group a set amount of experience points for an encounter and then divide the total up among all participants. This makes it easier, for example, to reward a small group that takes on tough challenges as opposed to a larger group taking on the same challenges. If you want to give out group awards, take the challenge level of the encounter and multiply by 300. Then, divide this number among the characters who took part in the encounter. These awards can be modified using the same multipliers provided above. Miscellaneous Awards You may want to occasionally provide bonus experience points for characters who perform particularly well, for players who do a great job role-playing their character, or for someone who comes up with a really great idea. This is OK, but keep in mind that the level progression charts assume that characters advance based on encounters. A lot of extra awards will cause characters to advance at a greater than expected rate. Again, this is OK, but as DM, you should be aware of the consequences. In general, a special award of about 20 experience points per level of the character should be about right -- not so much to overshadow points earned in encounters, but enough so that the player will feel rewarded. Some DMs use these awards to encourage desired behavior in players. Used sparingly, these awards can indeed accomplish that. Experience Penalties As mentioned above, characters can lose experience points by casting certain spells or creating magical items. This is a personal devotion of power and serves a specific game function: limiting and controlling these activities, as well as making them interesting choices for players. In general, however, DMs shouldn’t use experience penalties in any other situation. While awards can be used to encourage behavior, penalties don’t really serve to discourage bad behavior. They usually only lead to arguments and anger. If a player does things you don’t want him to, talk to him about it. If he continues, stop playing with him. Sidebar: Behind the Curtain The experience point award for encounters is based on the concept that 12 encounters of a level equal to the Player Characters will allow them to gain a level. Of course, if any of the characters are human, they will gain that level slightly faster -- that’s their main racial benefit. Twelve encounters will sometimes seem very quick. This is particularly true at low levels, where most of the encounters that characters will take part in will be appropriate for their level. At higher levels, the PCs will face a more varied range of challenge levels (more lower than higher, if they’re to survive), and thus they will gain levels somewhat more slowly. Higher level characters also tend to spend more and more time interacting with each other and NPCs, which results in fewer experience points over time. With this information in mind, you can roughly gauge how quickly the PCs in your game will advance. In fact, you can control it. As the DM, you control what encounters happen, and the circumstances in which they occur. You can predict at what level the characters will reach the dark temple, and prepare for it. If you predicted incorrectly, you can engineer encounters to allow them to reach the appropriate level. Published adventures always provide a guideline for what levels of characters are appropriate to play. Keep in mind that this information is based on character power as well as expected treasure. In Chapter XXX, you can find a guideline for about how much treasure a character of a given level should possess. This is based on that 12 encounters per level formula, and average treasures. If you use a published adventure but tend to be generous with experience points, you might find that the characters in your group don’t have as much treasure as was expected. Likewise, if you’re stingy with experience points, the characters will probably gain treasure faster than levels. Of course, if you’re stingy or generous with both treasure and experience points, it might just all equal out.
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This
document came from May of 1999. It’s much more
developed than the previous system, and it is completely
different in approach. Seemingly as a reaction to the
previous, complicated, "count every last XP"
system, this version attempted to award experience points
by taking a whole encounter into account. While beautiful
in its simplicity, its lack of accuracy was bothersome.
For example, it meant that you received the same XP
award for defeating three goblins as for defeating four,
because you got XP for "a band of goblins."
