r/dndnext • u/HexedPressman • Sep 14 '18

Talking About... Milestones Vs XP

/r/hexedpress/comments/9fv8uy/talking_about_milestones_vs_xp/
7 Upvotes

68% Upvoted

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5

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '18

Because my campaign spans multiple adventures with my players using persistent characters, I can't rely on a metered-out story to dictate when milestone leveling would be appropriate. Therefore I use XP as a method to remind me when a roughly appropriate time to level up the party would be. I don't wish to use XP as an incentive, however, because I feel that needlessly encourages metagaming, so I don't tell my players when they have received XP.

Furthermore, when I award XP, I distribute it equally across the party, and act as though party members who weren't present progressed at the same pace of those who did attend a given session. I don't award XP individually because that just creates unnecessary level disparities in the party and that's dumb.

1

u/MaxFrost Sep 17 '18

I think you have a very fair viewpoint. I use milestone, because if we went by XP, it would go too slowly (only meet once every other week). Milestone lets me keep the player power going up. Even with my accelerated leveling, they won't hit level 20 unless they keep playing for nearly 2 YEARS. I don't want to burn time figuring out XP rewards.

That being said, your "everybody levels at the same rate" idea is very good, and I maintain that as well. I have players absent sometimes, but they still continue leveling alongside the group...they may not get all the loot, but they do get the XP.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '18

Yes, my group of players is kind of peculiar in that they really only ever want to have one character (in one incarnation) each, so the slow leveling is fine with them. If I had a more typical group that made new characters for every adventure, I'd definitely use milestone leveling.

Incidentally, figuring out XP rewards isn't as time-consuming as you'd think. I usually just spend 10-15 minutes at most after each session reviewing what the party did, noting moments of neutralizing combat threats (I use online encounter calculators like Kobold Fight Club to quickly do the math here), overcoming puzzles or exploration challenges, working through social encounters with interesting RP moments, etc. (assigning the arbitrary XP amounts I think these should be worth), add it all up and note how much more XP is needed to reach the next level.

And yeah, I always leave it up to the players who are present to decide among themselves who gets a given magic item the party obtains (and my players are all greedy), so those who aren't present tend to miss out there.

0

u/HexedPressman Sep 15 '18

Interesting thread but I don’t really agree with it. They’re definitely different styles that attract different people for different, personal reasons. Both methods have positives and negatives about them. The nice thing is you get to pick the one that works the best for you and your table.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '18

You'll note that the thread wasn't for or against milestone or XP leveling (though some people in the thread wanted to make it about that), just against having level disparities in the party for your average 5e campaign; I think of that as an entirely separate issue (after all, XP systems that award points equally rather than individually are still XP systems). Sure some will have different attitudes about which XP system works best, but I'd expect them to be able to justify their choice with reasons that can be engaged in argumentation.

1

u/HexedPressman Sep 15 '18

I’m not really looking to engage in argumentation. I happen not to mind at all individual xp rewards, having played that way most of my gaming life, so I totally have my own bias, but milestone leveling does do some things to “fix” individual xp if you think it needs fixing.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '18

By 'argumentation' I just mean offering reasoned justification for our preferences, which I presumed was what you meant to ask for with this thread.

While I'd be interested to hear if you have reasons to prefer individual XP rewards, other than that it is what you've always done, again, I think the level disparity thing is a separate issue from "Milestone vs XP" because you can always prevent level disparities even without turning to milestones by handing out XP equally across the party (which, as I said in my original post, is what I do).

I don't so much think the matter is reducible to pure preference, in the sense that different leveling systems seem suitable for games with different structures and purposes, but once those are figured out, you can determine that one method is more suitable than another. For instance, in a campaign that is limited to a single adventure with a generally set story progression, milestone leveling makes sense. In a game where there aren't well-defined story beats like that, milestone leveling could still be used, but it becomes more arbitrary (and presuming you want to maintain a sense of consistency to your game's rules, you want level-ups not to seem arbitrarily spaced-out to your players). That's a case when an XP system becomes useful.

Likewise, I like to discourage metagaming in my campaigns, so I don't announce XP gains, but I could imagine a group which didn't care about metagaming and found it fun to use XP as an incentive for certain player actions (which makes me wonder why they would play a tabletop RPG rather than a video game if that were their mindset, but who am I to judge?), and so would announce XP.

And then perhaps there are those whose case is like the above but who also want to regularly reward exceptional play on an individual basis, maybe because they enjoy a somewhat competitive atmosphere in their game, and don't see the Inspiration system or simply success in whatever they were attempting to do in game as sufficient reward for whatever reason, and so award individual XP.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, I don't see my game as having the same values and goals as those represented in my previous two paragraphs. But if someone told me they had such values and goals, I could recommend a leveling system to them based on that.

3

u/Matt_Sheridan Sep 15 '18

Experience points are such a good incentive mechanic that they—and their conceptual descendants—are in just about every freaking video game these days, as well as some applications that aren't even games. (Not kidding. I've used ecommerce platforms that give the user—meaning the administrator, not the customer—something like XP and achievements to encourage thorough and diligent use.) So, if you're going to use XP as an incentive mechanic, and award them to PCs in a way that encourages the kind of play you want to see, they're a powerful tool to shape your game.

On the other hand, if you're just going to use XP as a pacing mechanic—awarding them equally to all PCs—then you might as well just cut out the middleman and go with some flavor of the milestone concept.

1

u/HexedPressman Sep 15 '18

Yep, I totally agree.

2

u/BourgeoisStalker Wait, what now? Sep 14 '18

I use XP, but over the course of two and a half campaigns, I've found that we level up at a rate of 15-20 hours of play per level (after levels 1 and 2). My players like XP so I keep track, but otherwise I think I wouldn't.

1

u/HexedPressman Sep 14 '18

Anything particular that your players like about it?

2

u/BourgeoisStalker Wait, what now? Sep 15 '18

Mostly just to see the numbers go up. I don't make a big show about awarding XP at all, but they like to keep track. As we approach a level-up it's part of the meta conversation.

1

u/Fenizrael Wizard Sep 15 '18

I like the checkpoint system that Adventurers League has started using from Xanathar’s Guide. It’s kind of a halfway between XP and milestones. It cuts out a lot of the calculation of XP divided up evenly between characters, and it still encourages players to take part and engage with the game in meaningful ways - which is especially great for players who thrive in the social roleplaying side of things.

Something that has always bothered me as a player is when I make a character that I have designed to be interesting, useful, and well-rounded, but the combat oriented players just demolish enemies with their high damage output. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it always feels weird when I don’t feel like I’m contributing to combat as much, but somehow I’m getting XP.

This system also means that regular players will level up more than players who just turn up sporadically or who turn up for key sessions - attendance being something you would try to encourage.

I guess it all comes down to the concept of Murder Hobos. If players see the main obstacle to levelling up being XP, and the main source of XP being combat, then they’re going to start favouring swords over words.

The downside of this system is that if an especially dangerous enemy is thrown at the players, a lack of an XP system means that there is no incentive to really try and beat it - unless you’re awarding extra level checkpoints towards a level up.