[D&D 3.0/3.5] The kid two houses down

[jburneko]

Hey Ron,

I don't know if you know this but the XP chart in 3.0/3.5 is balanced so that it takes 13 and 1/3 encounters of challenge rating equal to the level of hte party to gain a level.  It assumes a party of four.

So,

For first level it takes 1000 XP to reach second level.  This means the XP for a CR 1 creature is (1000/13.333) * 4.  You then divide that number by the ACTUAL number of party members to get the per character amount.

In your case, you have a bunch of 3rd level characters.  I takes 7000 XP to reach 4th level or a gain of 3000 XP.  So, a CR 3 creature is (3000/13.333) * 4 or 900 XP.

The above I'm certain of.  This next part I'm little fuzzy on.

I believe the chart scales up from there so that a creature of CR eight levels greater than the party nets enough XP for the party to gain a level so for a level 3 party a CR 11 creature is worth 12000 (3000 * 4) XP.

The chart scales down so that a creature of CR nine levels less than the party is worth nothing.  But I'm not sure how the scale works at the lower levels.

Don't know if that was helpful.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse,

Yeah, I knew about that. I'll say this, though - 13+ fucking full-scale fights to make it to the next level? What, do these people think we're going to play for 12 hours at a stretch, once or twice a week, for years?

... uh, wait a minute. That is what they're thinking.

I'll have to look up the points for role-playing, "story," and similar. Speed it up a little. The paladin and the barbarian should both definitely get something for the decisions I mentioned.

Best, Ron

[Thunder_God]

It's not "defeat" as much as overcome. Noticing a trap and simply walking around it, seeing a monster and simply skulking through. I'd say they overcame it.

[Ron Edwards]

No, they didn't.

They defeated, overcame, etc, five hyenas. The other two were not overcome, defeated, avoided, tricked, frightened away, bought off, or given hyena treats. The players did and achieved nothing regarding the well-being or presence or continuation of the encounter, regarding those two hyenas.

Some twenty-year-old telling me what constitutes a defeat in D&D? I don't think so.

Best, Ron

[Thunder_God]

See, you're too old-school, we've had been redecorating the dungeons with all these new and blue veils!

Seriously, why were they called off? Suppose you kill 30% of an Orc Tribe and then the leader of the tribe decides to negotiate with you, if negotiation succeeds you can by a direct reading of the rules give them XP for the whole Tribe!

Well, guess we'll disagree!

[ffilz]

If you do larger than "full scale" fights, it will be less than 13 encounters (for example, if you throw encounters with 2 CR 3 creatures, it would only be 6 or 7 fights). Their target is about 4 4 hour sessions to make a level. If you run harder encounters, and your players are fairly time efficient, it's quite possible for that to shrink to 2 4 hour sessions to make a level.

As to XP for 5 or 7 hyenas, I think that's in judgement call territory. I think Ron made the right judgement call for his game. There have been all sorts of debates about what constitutes defeating opponents (if you cause an avalanche and wipe out Orcville, how much XP do you get?).

There are no official guidelines on XP for non-combat/non-trap stuff (oh, the other thing in the DMG is stuff on how to determine the CR rating of traps). Many people give an XP bonus of 50xLevel for non-combat stuff.

Frank

[Kintara]

Yes. My experience has been that the typical encounter has an EL of a level or two above our level (depending on how high-powered the game is).

[Ron Edwards]

We are not disagreeing, Guy. You are flatly wrong. The leader did not choose to negotiate nor to pull out for tactical reasons of any kind. The DM (me) called off the hyenas in order to finish the fight more quickly, for real-world reasons, with a very lame and embryonic in-game excuse to back it up. The party ended up effectively encountering and fighting a five-hyena foe. Don't argue with me any more.

Hey Frank,

There have been all sorts of debates about what constitutes defeating opponents

Yeah, and I'll bet they're just as much ass as they were back in the 70s, or a few posts up in the thread. If the party deals with the encounter in any way, then it's worth its points. The issue here is whether the other two hyenas were part of "it," and they were not - they were merely Color, as it turned out.

I thank everyone for your help with XP calculations, especially Dirk, but really, I get it, so no more explanation is necessary. Especially the tough parts, like you get more if the monsters are tougher ... OK, will stop being obnoxious now, I promise.

Seriously, Frank & Kintara, that makes sense about the estimated time, and my plans seem like they'll make things more efficient. The next session should be mainly social conflict, and after that, the ghast and his undead hyenas ought to be pretty tough.

No official word on XP for social encounters? Interesting. Or maybe I mis-read you. My interest is this - let's say there are three or four pretty high-skill NPCs, and the player-characters end up coping with them socially (all the skills listed earlier). Now, I'm thinking those NPCs could merely be rated in terms of level, and thus I could derive a CR (or "social CR") for them, and hence calculate XPs from there.

And that's sort of interesting, because repeated dealings with them could generate more XP, given that said encounters really were conflicts with significant outcomes in terms of advantage or status.

See, I don't recall any discussion of that sort of thing from way back when, although I admit the last issue of the Dragon I read was maybe in 1982. What's the word on that now?

Best, Ron

[Storn]

No, they didn't.

They defeated, overcame, etc, five hyenas. The other two were not overcome, defeated, avoided, tricked, frightened away, bought off, or given hyena treats. The players did and achieved nothing regarding the well-being or presence or continuation of the encounter, regarding those two hyenas.

Some twenty-year-old telling me what constitutes a defeat in D&D? I don't think so.

Best, Ron

REally?  Even the most die-in-the-wool counter moving SPI lovin' combat crunch miester has to deal with morale.  Let's interview those two hyena and see how they feel about things?  

"For Hobbitron News, this Lance TaleStrong, bringing you the latest from Dungeoncrawltopia.  Tell me, Black Spot Hyena, how you felt about your fellows being massacred by the reputed GoodGuyFour?"

"Ah... man...  i"m sad.  I'm glad my tale is firmly between my legs though.  I gots away.  Shame about my compatriots."

"Newsflash!!!  Hyena uses "compatriots" in a sentence!!"


Sorry, just couldn't resist.


I would seriously like to point out the great social dynamic rules in Demagogues and Dynasties by Atlas Games for d20.  yeah, it ain't straight up, outta WotC's bench... but it is d20.  

[Storn]

Crap, is there a way to edit?

Because I didn't mean to imply that there should be XP for the two hyenas... just putting myself in their shoes, albeit jokingly.

As for the XP for social situations, Ron, I don't know.

After a couple of sessions of running d20, I threw up my hands.  I was running sessions of lots of NPC interaction and politics.  It was a crime syndicate game.  Combat happened, just not that much of it.

I fell back on my Hero background of the usual XP was 3 xp per Ep.  So I just did that.  And granted 500 xp per session... maybe more if it was a long session of major growth and pace.  Which IS kinda suggested in the DMG... but not particularly forcefully or well.

[Thunder_God]

I'm afraid you'll have to fudge it if you want any sense in social encounters.

The other option is to define when it's a conflict and when the characters gain their goals(even if the other sides also gain their goal) give them XP according to the Level/CR of the NPCs. Since their abilities and Skills are reliant on their level it's a scalable CR conflict like anything else. You need to decide though if said interaction is worth XP.

[ffilz]

Actually, they do give some guidance for social encounters. The NPC still has a level, these days, NPCs always have levels, none of these "0 level humans" - there are "NPC" classes in the DMG which aren't quite as good as PC classes, a human with a normal PC class has a CR equal to his level, one with just an NPC class has CR equal to level - 1. They point out that "defeating" or "overcoming" the challenge gains you the XP. So if you set up a social encounter with an NPC that's a 4th level Aristocrat (one of the NPC classes), that's a CR 3 encounter (the main thing the NPC classes don't get is all the bonus feats and such that normal PC classes get).

given that said encounters really were conflicts with significant outcomes in terms of advantage or status

The rules don't come out and say it like that, but I that statement is a very functional statement for deciding when an encounter is worth XP (that combined with your comment about 2 of the hyenas being "color" is some good ammunition for evaluating the avalanche destroying Orcville - most of the orcs killed that way are just color).

See, I don't recall any discussion of that sort of thing from way back when, although I admit the last issue of the Dragon I read was maybe in 1982. What's the word on that now?

It really isn't any better today, except they have a little note mentioning that yes, if you talk your way past the CR 2 ogre, you get the same XP as if you killed him. The trouble of course is that since the system doesn't really provide a social conflict resolution system, or at least not one many folks (myself included) are really satisfied with, it leaves people not really sure what to do. So the folks who really want social conflict drift the rules and start talking "system doesn't matter" and folks like me tend to set it up so almost everything is a fight. I think there is room for a middle ground.

Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Well, here's my current view on how I'll do it, which is pretty much 'ported from the way we played, back then, mediated through a bunch of Champions over the next decade. In other words, "You all might have cargo cults, but our tribe knows how to do it right." Oh well.

1. In any sort of hostile encounter which could be a fight, any non-fighty way to deal with it that works is worth the XPs. By this logic, defeating a foe in a fight is only the default way to handle it. Sleep'em, trick'em, use the terrain, make a cool saving throw when the DM says you gotta in response to your unusual tactic, and if it works - hey! XP are XP, just as if you fought'em.

2. In any sort of conversation with conflicts of interest involved (note here I'm talking about consequences for future encounters, like if you'll have to fight the guardsmen to get out, or whether you get hired for lots of money), then NPCs' levels get factored into the CR just as you're describing, Frank. (Geez, that -1 is sure clunky ...) So interesting verbal duels and arguments, or perhaps even seductions if I weren't playing with an 11 year old, would count.

Clearly the DM guide logic is all ass-backwards, and they should be figuring the "NPC level" backwards from the amount of XP you get from winning an argument from him, and make it the same as CR. But what can you do.

Best, Ron

[ffilz]

Yea, the -1 is clunky. Monsters are even worse (look in the "improving monsters" part of the SRD for some insight on how monster CR works)... They have a really good idea with this CR thing, but it needs another round of cooking. One place it ends up really falling apart is when you try and use monsters as PCs. A monster PC has a level equivalent of 1 level per hit die, plus an adder for cool abilities. But the monster's CR doesn't equal this effective level. So you can have the absurdity of a PC stone giant who is effective level 18 who fights an NPC stone giant. Both PC and NPC have exactly the same stats. The PC gets no XP for defeating his fellow stone giant, because a stone giant is CR 8.

Ignoring all that mess, your plan sounds very workable. But it's certainly no surprise given the guidance (or lack thereof) provided that lots of people drift the system and give flat awards per session.

Frank

[greyorm]

Ron, as I recall, one of the bits in the DMG states that social encounters should be given an amount of XP equal to the CR rating of the individual/monster being interacted with, and only if there is some real danger to failing the interaction (ie: the PCs don't get what they want). I don't have the time to grab my book and look it up, but I am fairly confident the ruling was basically as such, by example: negotiating with the 3 HD mayor earns you the same XP as fighting a 3 HD ogre. It's a kludgy sort of system, but it works if the negotiations/social interactions are with individuals who can provide social stuff that is level-appropriate in some fashion.

Also, you're being way over-harsh: "defeat" in D&D has officially changed meanings since you and I were in our role-playing diapers. As in "the rulebook says THIS" official, all old school arguments from the 70's about what constitutes "defeat" aside. If the hyenas showed up and left, without actually contributing anything to the fight (no rolls, etc.), then don't give XP for bypassing them. If the hyenas did attack the party at any point, I don't care if it was GM-fiat that made them pull out -- the party effectively bypassed an obstacle, they get XP for it. Same as if they snuck past a sleeping 20th-level ogre guard without waking him up: they get full XP for the encounter because dice were rolled and the danger was bypassed. Simple.

(There are also tons of optional XP rules in the DMG for modifying how this works out in play, which pretty much work out to eyeballing it.)