XP question

[spaceLem]

I began my BF summer campaign on Sunday, and the first session went very well. However, I have a few questions with regards to XP.

First, if a goblin is worth 10 xp, and 2d4 appear, do I award 10 xp per goblin, or 10 xp for the encounter? There were 8, so that's a goblin warrior, which gains separate xp, so I assumed it's the former. And do I roll treasure per goblin, or for the encounter (I assumed the latter).

Second, I checked for a random encounter, which was 5 giant bees. The bees failed their morale save and didn't attack. Do players still gain xp in this situation? If not, would they have gained xp if they fought and killed the bees?

Third, I doubt the players will get past level 3 by the end of the campaign (maybe the human thief will reach level 4). There are two humans, a dwarf, a half-ogre, and a half-elf on the team. The only advantage of being human is a measly 10% xp bonus, which is practically meaningless (with exponentially increasing xp, that means the only advantage they'll have is being a level ahead 10% of the time). The half-ogre gets a bigger HD (and still gets 5% xp bonus!), and those extra HP are worth a lot. All non-humans get better vision. I feel I should I be compensating the human PCs, apart from the advantage of being humans in a human-centric world?

[Solomoriah]

I began my BF summer campaign on Sunday, and the first session went very well. However, I have a few questions with regards to XP.

First, if a goblin is worth 10 xp, and 2d4 appear, do I award 10 xp per goblin, or 10 xp for the encounter? There were 8, so that's a goblin warrior, which gains separate xp, so I assumed it's the former.

Yes. By the book, you sum the XP for every opponent defeated (generally you can include those driven off rather than slain, but if the players fight the same goblins later in the session don't award XP for them twice).

And do I roll treasure per goblin, or for the encounter (I assumed the latter).

Treasure types that are marked as "individual" treasures are rolled per creature; those that are marked as "lair" treasures are only rolled up if the player characters clear out a lair of monsters (or find some other way to get their treasure).

Second, I checked for a random encounter, which was 5 giant bees. The bees failed their morale save and didn't attack. Do players still gain xp in this situation? If not, would they have gained xp if they fought and killed the bees?

Don't roll morale at the start of an encounter, except if the player character party is exceptionally formidable-looking (in the eyes of the opponents). Giant bees, being armed with poison, aren't especially afraid of someone just because they are bigger, so I wouldn't check morale at the start of combat.

If the players don't fight the monsters, and they don't DO anything to avoid fighting them, they didn't defeat them and they don't get XP.

Third, I doubt the players will get past level 3 by the end of the campaign (maybe the human thief will reach level 4). There are two humans, a dwarf, a half-ogre, and a half-elf on the team. The only advantage of being human is a measly 10% xp bonus, which is practically meaningless (with exponentially increasing xp, that means the only advantage they'll have is being a level ahead 10% of the time). The half-ogre gets a bigger HD (and still gets 5% xp bonus!), and those extra HP are worth a lot. All non-humans get better vision. I feel I should I be compensating the human PCs, apart from the advantage of being humans in a human-centric world?

If the players don't complain, don't worry about it.

If you feel like your player characters aren't advancing fast enough, give 'em more XP. You can do this in one of several ways:

First, you can divide the XP awards by a smaller number. You have 5 PCs... divide the XP by 4, or 3, or even 2 and award the result to each PC. You don't have to tell them how it's calculated, and they likely won't double-check your math.

Second, you can just tell them up front that you want to push the game forward, and give them some arbitrary (but still fair) number of XP. Take the highest level PC in the group, and look at the total number of XP he or she needs for next level (the actual total, not the number he or she still needs); divide that by 10 (more or less, you may find a different divisor works better for you) and then award that amount to each PC at the end of a successful adventure.

It's always easier to give more than to give less. That's why BFRPG is stingy with XP.

[spaceLem]

Yes. By the book, you sum the XP for every opponent defeated (generally you can include those driven off rather than slain, but if the players fight the same goblins later in the session don't award XP for them twice).

Thanks for the response! Yes, that makes sense.

Don't roll morale at the start of an encounter, except if the player character party is exceptionally formidable-looking (in the eyes of the opponents). Giant bees, being armed with poison, aren't especially afraid of someone just because they are bigger, so I wouldn't check morale at the start of combat.

If the players don't fight the monsters, and they don't DO anything to avoid fighting them, they didn't defeat them and they don't get XP.

Okay, I definitely did that incorrectly. I'm a little surprised no one said anything, given that most of them have played or run Basic D&D before. I think I went off the description that giant bees are generally not aggressive, unless they or their hive is threatened. One of the players said that they'd heard giant bees had a great source of honey, so they'd like to return there later and check it out, so I might get a chance to correct it next time.

If the players don't complain, don't worry about it.
...
It's always easier to give more than to give less. That's why BFRPG is stingy with XP.

In this case no one complained, so it's more me worrying than an actual problem.

It's only a mini-game (7 weeks of 4 hour sessions), but I wanted to get them all to level 2 by at least session 2, and level 3 by around session 6, so I can bring something reasonably interesting at them for the finale. I can work out how much XP I'll need to give them to achieve that (I've got some good in game reasons to be generous with treasure, which can be converted to XP by handing it in to their commanding officer).

[Dimirag]

If its an auto-concluding campaign/adventure don't worry to much for the XP and level the PCs when you think is time to do it, which means that, yes, humans lose their % bonus.

In OSRPG sometimes is more important what benefit you obtain in roleplay rather than in mechanics; depending on your game style and setting preferences humans can get lots of goodies.

[spaceLem]

If its an auto-concluding campaign/adventure don't worry to much for the XP and level the PCs when you think is time to do it, which means that, yes, humans lose their % bonus.

In OSRPG sometimes is more important what benefit you obtain in roleplay rather than in mechanics; depending on your game style and setting preferences humans can get lots of goodies.

I don't think an XP bonus is really very exciting even in a long campaign. Even a 100% XP bonus would put you just 1 level ahead, so it does seem that humans are weaker. I will definitely be bringing the human-centric world into play.

[Hywaywolf]

I agree that if the party doesn't know that they are evading an enemy that you should not give XP, but imo if you roll up an encounter and the party successfully eludes it and continues on either by killing it or by not provoking it or by tricking it or by sneaking past, etc then they should get some credit for it. Its an encounter and they encountered it successfully. On the other hand, if they stay alive by simply running away that isn't a successful encounter.

[Dimirag]

I will definitely be bringing the human-centric world into play.

That will really change things once the non-humans start to suffer penalties to the reaction rolls on places where their races are scarce or nonexistent.
If most of the population is human them most of the adventurers will be humans, so you can put a limit to each non-human adventurer in a group, and most of the valuables found from dead adventurers will fit humans bodies, making it hard for a non-human to find armors, cloaks and other items...

If you let the players pay gold for acquiring skills or similar thing then you can apply that 10% discount on humans (and no other race should have a similar benefit).

Most non-human races tend to be depicted as having their member very similar one from another, so you can put some restrictions on behavior and things learned thru life, you can even make some objects not available to a class, like an elven fighter not using axes, dwarves not using bows.

If the Saving Throws of non-humans seem to much for you here's one option:
Take the Level 1 values and modify them with the corresponding bonuses, the use that value at every level except when the new value w/out bonus is lower (form that point the bonus is lost).

[Jandolar]

My only complaint about BFRPG is the rather stingy XP awards. There are ways around that though that I've used on several occasions. In the PbP I'm running (an older AD&D boxed set) I needed the players to level up quickly just to survive so I gave XP awards for good role play, great planning before an ambush/attack/etc. I also used the optional XP awards for items gained. Basically when they found an item or items I'd look up the gold value for that item and do a 1:1 conversion of gold:XP. In some cases it didn't amount to much, other times it was a massive XP award. It didn't matter if they kept the item or sold it they still got the XP award. Also when a major foe was defeated or a large plot line in the game was finalized I'd look at the character sheets and see which character was closest to leveling up then give all the players that amount +1 XP on top of whatever XP they gained for killing the foe. None of my players have the same XP amount on their character sheets due to individual accomplishments. Some level up sooner but that's the way of things.

[Longman]

A few thoughts on balancing humans...

- make it easier for them to get hirelings and retainers
- more arms and armor designed to fit them (already noted by Dimirag)
- play around with movement rules (p44) so that dwarves and halflings lose a square or two when running at double speed ad will end up behind.

Also - try making certain types of magic - especially wizard magic - a human invention and only available to humans at the start of the game. In my campaign, dwarves can only ever be clerics, elves can become a type of sorcerer, but high level wizard magic was the domain of humans only, and is in their languages.

But...all this makes me think of an original 1st edition rule which said that characters with high prime requisites got more experience. You don't get compensated for being worse - you get rewarded for being better!

Based on that, I don't think Gygax ever intended that every character should be equal.

Balance is overrated. And playing weaker characters can be quite fun.

[spaceLem]

Gary Gygax had a very different set up though - a very large pool of players who dropped in and out, so the group was never the same from week to week. Trying to balance people in such an environment is pointless.

I, however, have a group of five players, who will be the same each week, and I'm only running this campaign over the summer.

I do think that the two human players are at a disadvantage compared to the non-human players, although no one has actually mentioned it (I'll admit that I'm not the most experienced of GMs, and all but one of the players have GMed D&D in various guises, so they might be being nice to me).