Earning Experience

[saskganesh]

• I give XP for defeating, (not necessarily destroying) monsters/foes. This can include negotiations.
  XP for travel . Typically 5 XP per mile in dangerous territory, 1 XP in Civilised. I modify this *5 if its "new territory" for the players.
  Destination points. Getting to a new town, Inn, landmark, city. Amount is variable
  "Mission" points. Finishing a story/adventure arc. Reaching an Important Goal. Longer quests have stages and those each have rewards. To date they have been 100-200 points each. And increasingly these goals are player defined, rather than patron given (my group has a patron who is essentially a living plot hook)
  "Session" points. Players who show up to play get bonus 100XP. Now that the party is 3-4th level I am upping this to 150 XP per session.
  Characters who don't have a player this week are treated as NPCS, get 1/2 XP . They don't get session points.
  I don't give XP for treasure, but am fiddling with XP for money spent. My players are not poor, but they are not rich, so it really hasn't come up yet.
  RP bonuses as well.

It takes about 5-7 sessions to level on average. Characters who are played every week advance more quickly of course.

[SmootRK]

Travelling XP is an idea I have not heard before. Will think about that one.
My thoughts are the XP is earned from the (often) random encounter that occurs, but it does stand to reason that good rolls (in favor of the players not encountering such random encounters) is every bit a factor as great rolls 'to hit' or damage in combat.... hmmm.

[dymondy2k]

I do alot of yours.. I think completing the encounter, even if that means not killing the creature should allow them the XP. I noticed early on in BFRPG though that the progression can be extremely slow so I went for a 1gp=1XP for gold and treasure found to help speed up progression a bit.

[SmootRK]

I do alot of yours.. I think completing the encounter, even if that means not killing the creature should allow them the XP. I noticed early on in BFRPG though that the progression can be extremely slow so I went for a 1gp=1XP for gold and treasure found to help speed up progression a bit.

I like the gold for xp, but like it actually 'spent'. It seems like a burden to the low level characters, especially those like MU with their costs for inscribing into a spellbook... but at later levels when treasures are more readily available the mechanic really shines to siphon off excess treasure from the characters. And, it serves a productive purpose, rather than just declaring X amount of treasure is gone for expenses, thieves, etc. (although some of that can happen too).

[dymondy2k]

Smoot.. I find the great equalizer for getting rid of extra money is to make healing potions available for purchase but don't make them cheap! I use the magic generation in BFRPG to calculate the costs.

[MedievalMan]

Funny, I just found a table I never knew I had full of alchemical items for purchase and Healing Potions and Extra Healing Potions are listed. Healing Potions being 400 gp per pop and Extra Healing 800 gp per container. Its a cool list I should probably include it in my game.

As for the topic of the thread I am actually having a difficult time getting any of the characters in my current game XP. They often die every other session and get reset to 0 and people are justifiably getting frustrated. Just last night the longest surviving character (with 171 XP) finally died. Is it me or is the game ludicrously deadly at 1st level? I am struggling to figure out how anyone survives to make it to 2nd.

[saskganesh]

Travelling XP is an idea I have not heard before. Will think about that one.
My thoughts are the XP is earned from the (often) random encounter that occurs, but it does stand to reason that good rolls (in favor of the players not encountering such random encounters) is every bit a factor as great rolls 'to hit' or damage in combat.... hmmm.

I swiped it from Rolemaster.

IMO, experience should reward desired behavior; I like to encourage play "out of the dungeon" and thus I like to have players looking forward to exploration and travel as well as interacting with their environment beyond just combat.

[Hywaywolf]

I agree that if you want a game to go a certain way you reward the players for playing the way you want, especially at lower levels when giving 50 xp for a funny conversation between a PC and a NPC that amuses the whole gaming group, or if a player takes a lot of time and effort to negotiate a better deal when selling goods, hiring canonfodder, or when agreeing to take a job. You can't expect players to act out every transaction to increase storytelling if there is no reward for it.

And if you get tired of the routine of I swing at the orc, I swing at the orc, I attack the orc, I swing at the orc, then reward the player who makes his attacks varied and interesting. Or like in Joe Carrs game, when we entered a room and found 4 "enemies" setting up a barricade on the opposite of the room to hold back a different enemy, one of the players immediately ran to the barricade and started to help with the baricade and called out, "we're your reinforcements" and the enemies looked stunned until the rest of us got the gyst and piled in side by side with the "enemy" to wait for the other enemy. As everyone has said, we got the experience for defeating the "enemy" but the guy who came up with that awesome ploy could have been given bonus xp on the spot to encourage smart roleplaying.

[saskganesh]

That's an awesome ploy. Great stuff.

[SmootRK]

So, what are the best ideas for XP rewards for Low Level Characters? What ways are best to give them a boost right away so that they spend a minimum amount of time at first level?

Personally, I try to set up encounters that they must overcome that do not resort to actual combat. For instance, they might be tasked with retrieving an item from a certain merchant. This merchant wants a particular task performed for them. They must then head over to third party and convince/barter/trade something valuable... then return to each in turn. All very "computer fetch & return quest-like" but it can get characters a little experience, put some resources/money into the hands of the characters (in order to better equip), meet some npcs that may prove to be great for hooks, and otherwise get them engaged with the campaign over the swing at orc sort of adventure.

First level characters are (as pointed out above) quite delicate.

What are other such techniques or ideas to get the 1st level characters the xp they need to get to second quickly?