Some early morning thoughts on 5e D&D

spon · March 07, 2018, 10:27:15 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028294Compared to other OSR games, characters in Lion & Dragon of levels 1-3 are generally somewhat more powerful than in most other rulesets, but when they get to higher level they tend to be somewhat less powerful (usually less hit points, for example, and slower saving throw progression) than in other rulesets.

I think that is a really good method/speed of gaining power. Lets newbies catch up quickly, and if you want to get really, really good, you have to play for a long time. Fits my sensibilities to a "T". Curse you, Pundit, I'll have to give it a look now! :-)

RPGPundit · March 08, 2018, 09:29:01 PM

Quote from: spon;1028318I think that is a really good method/speed of gaining power. Lets newbies catch up quickly, and if you want to get really, really good, you have to play for a long time. Fits my sensibilities to a "T". Curse you, Pundit, I'll have to give it a look now! :-)

Good, please do! I bet you'll like it.

Votan · March 10, 2018, 11:47:03 PM

Quote from: S'mon;1026809XP - Been playing around with this a lot. The 5e XP system is over-focused on monsters I think, and tends to make wandering monsters a source of welcome XP rather than a threat. I was giving 1/5 monster XP but been finding that too little, and tending to over-award "quest" XP to compensate. Currently going with 0.5 standard monster XP, plus XP for gold looted from the dungeon & returned home. Did that last session & seemed to work; the party didn't do great on finding treasure so total was about 3/4 what they'd have got from standard full monster XP. 11th+ PCs will get only 1/10 treasure XP though, since 11-20 treasure awards are much bigger while XP per level almost flatlines.

I think the shift away from gold as XP in 2E and 3E was a mistake unless you can do something better. CR seems to be a really bad plan. It has several awful features. My least favorite is that it makes balance wonky if you have any class with an advantage versus certain monster types. Think of Turn Undead or Rangers with favored enemies. It focuses on assaulting monsters instead of accomplishing goals. And it leads to fights needing to be balanced since they are the advancement mechanism.

Gold as XP had its own flaws, too. An award for a completed adventure quest (like Lion and Dragon) might be better. But I like the idea of avoiding monsters being both a viable and wise strategy.

Ratman_tf · March 11, 2018, 12:53:05 AM

Quote from: Votan;1028764I think the shift away from gold as XP in 2E and 3E was a mistake unless you can do something better.

My current tactic is to give xp awards for everything. Exploration, skill use, defeating enemies, treasure gained. I usually take the expected amount of xp for the session, divide by number of encounters (all types of encounters, events, etc) and then divide among features (creatures, treasure, traps, etc). And I'll give a token amount even for an empty room. I don't find it to be more bookkeeping, as every encounter location or event gets it's own xp value, and then I simply underline them and add them up at the end of the session.

Votan · March 11, 2018, 01:36:26 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1028767My current tactic is to give xp awards for everything. Exploration, skill use, defeating enemies, treasure gained. I usually take the expected amount of xp for the session, divide by number of encounters (all types of encounters, events, etc) and then divide among features (creatures, treasure, traps, etc). And I'll give a token amount even for an empty room. I don't find it to be more bookkeeping, as every encounter location or event gets it's own xp value, and then I simply underline them and add them up at the end of the session.

That is actually quite clever. And not a lot more work than summing up the XP for combat

S'mon · March 11, 2018, 05:15:58 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1028767My current tactic is to give xp awards for everything. Exploration, skill use, defeating enemies, treasure gained. I usually take the expected amount of xp for the session, divide by number of encounters (all types of encounters, events, etc) and then divide among features (creatures, treasure, traps, etc). And I'll give a token amount even for an empty room. I don't find it to be more bookkeeping, as every encounter location or event gets it's own xp value, and then I simply underline them and add them up at the end of the session.

In practice how I award XP varies a lot, especially in my online games. For roleplay-heavy sessions I may do a flat amount of XP for time played, with a multiplier based on what was accomplished. At level 8+ doing high level political shenanigans I give up to 500 XP per hour for this, so typically 1000-1500 XP for a productive 2-3 hour session. Last night with 3 level 5 PCs exploring a dungeon, there was some combat but it was mostly non combat challenges, I gave 50 or 100 XP per room explored and a total of 400 XP each for the 2 hour session. I didn't bother calculating the XP for the monsters fought as they were very low CR.

RPGPundit · March 13, 2018, 02:39:29 AM

In Lion & Dragon, none of the standard forms of XP awards make any sense. The setting itself means that depending on what a GM is doing, there might not be tons of combat. And the notion of XP-for-gold goes radically against the values of various different classes and social classes in medieval culture.

So I just have people level up by 'adventures completed'. They're free to just RP their characters however they feel those characters would be, and will advance based on that.

I think I'll probably do that for all my OSR campaigns in the future. Or the vast majority of them, at least. It works really well.

mAcular Chaotic · March 13, 2018, 03:04:12 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1029027In Lion & Dragon, none of the standard forms of XP awards make any sense. The setting itself means that depending on what a GM is doing, there might not be tons of combat. And the notion of XP-for-gold goes radically against the values of various different classes and social classes in medieval culture.

So I just have people level up by 'adventures completed'. They're free to just RP their characters however they feel those characters would be, and will advance based on that.

I think I'll probably do that for all my OSR campaigns in the future. Or the vast majority of them, at least. It works really well.

I like the idea, except, won't that mean they will go a long time with nothing "moving the needle" experience wise?

I used to only give experience for "quests completed" and that meant months of not a single XP, then suddenly a huge windfall. It made some people feel like they were making no progress. It also was hard to decide what to do if someone was absent the one session when the boss bad guy was slain.

S'mon · March 13, 2018, 03:14:12 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1029027In Lion & Dragon, none of the standard forms of XP awards make any sense. The setting itself means that depending on what a GM is doing, there might not be tons of combat. And the notion of XP-for-gold goes radically against the values of various different classes and social classes in medieval culture.

So I just have people level up by 'adventures completed'. They're free to just RP their characters however they feel those characters would be, and will advance based on that.

I think I'll probably do that for all my OSR campaigns in the future. Or the vast majority of them, at least. It works really well.

Even in non-traditional games (ie not centred around gold & killing), I definitely prefer some kind of XP staged advancement mechanic. It can be as simple as Savage Worlds "average 2 XP/session, Advancement at 5 XP" - but I find it's a very very good thing for players to have a progress track on their character sheet. One big reason I moved away from 'group XP' back to individual XP was that players don't bother tracking it if everyone has the same. XP definitely increases their/our engagemement IME, and gives a semi-objective measure not fully dependent on the GM's judgement. Advancement as an emergent property of XP gain just works better than GM declaring each advancement IMO.

S'mon · March 13, 2018, 03:15:28 AM

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1029038I like the idea, except, won't that mean they will go a long time with nothing "moving the needle" experience wise?

I used to only give experience for "quests completed" and that meant months of not a single XP, then suddenly a huge windfall. It made some people feel like they were making no progress. It also was hard to decide what to do if someone was absent the one session when the boss bad guy was slain.

Yes, I definitely find it's important to award XP each session, no matter how little.

RPGPundit · March 15, 2018, 05:38:09 AM

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1029038I like the idea, except, won't that mean they will go a long time with nothing "moving the needle" experience wise?

I used to only give experience for "quests completed" and that meant months of not a single XP, then suddenly a huge windfall. It made some people feel like they were making no progress. It also was hard to decide what to do if someone was absent the one session when the boss bad guy was slain.

That's not how it works on Lion & Dragon. A 'completed adventure' is usually one session. Sometimes, if there's a multi-part adventure, it could be a couple or a few sessions. But it's not when you complete a "quest". In fact, completing some kind of major saga gets you one extra 'adventure completed' xp point.

The whole thing is set up so that you level fairly quickly for the first few levels, and then you spend a long time taking 4-5 sessions to level up. Which is to me, more or less the ideal rate.

Of course, a GM could easily make it a bit faster or a bit slower if they wanted to.

RPGPundit · March 15, 2018, 05:39:07 AM

Quote from: S'mon;1029045Yes, I definitely find it's important to award XP each session, no matter how little.

Generally speaking, in L&D, each session completed gives you 1 xp. Maybe 2 if you were voted the best roleplayer of the session by the group.