XP for treasure?

[DavidStallard]

In my upcoming campaign I'm not sure if I want to give XP for treasure or not. I know it's old-school, but one part of me thinks that it's one of the old ways that would better be left to history. The Players Handbook says that some GMs don't award XP for treasure, but then it doesn't offer any alternative. So that would mean that games without treasure XP would result in PCs who level up much more slowly. I don't want that either.

I compared the XP awards in the Monsters & Treasure book to my AD&D2E Monstrous Manual (even though I know a better comparison would probably be a D&D3.x monster book; I should do that too) and was surprised to see that the differences aren't consistent. I was hoping that I could just come up with some simple conversion like "multiply the C&C XP award by 3" to maintain the advancement rate without giving XP for treasure, but it's not that easy. It works for some characters, but others would need a x5 or x6 increase in order to roughly match the AD&D2E award.

What do most Castle Keepers here do? Do you give XP for treasure, and if not, have you come up with an alternative to prevent slowing down the character advancement rate?

[DangerDwarf]

I give XP for treasure.

[Treebore]

Others do story awards to compensate, others do completely self created XP award systems. I give XP for treasure, but I also scale it based on difficulty. However, if your going to run the game to high levels, and you want them to get their in this life time, you should go ahead and award XP for treasure.

Call it something else if you need to. Call it the "Challenge XP", after all, the accumulated wealth of the creature represents what it did in life, what it experienced, and your obtaining of it is passing that on to your characters to a certain degree. So XP for treasure is a concrete way to calculate a very abstract concept.
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

[DangerDwarf]

Treebore wrote:
I give XP for treasure, but I also scale it based on difficulty.

Critter based Treasure Types already scales that however.

[Treebore]

DangerDwarf wrote:
Critter based Treasure Types already scales that however.

No. It doesn't scale for luck of the dice, how easy the encounter turns out to be, that kind of thing. All it accounts for is that a more powerful monster should have more wealth, not how the encounter will play out. Thats the part I scale it for.
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

[DangerDwarf]

I see now.

I wouldn't penalize them in the XP department for them rolling good and me rolling bad though.

[Julian Grimm]

I do XP for treasure but I only award for things like coins, gems and the like. I don't award XP for magic items since they should be reward enough.
_________________
The Lord of Ravens
My blog

[Go0gleplex]

I'm the opposite of Julian...

I give 'em xp for the magic items but nothing for the mundane treasures. Mainly because I make them work to identify the items. *evil chuckles*
_________________
The obvious will always trip you up FAR more than the obscure.

Baron Grignak Hammerhand of the Pacifica Provinces-

High Warden of the Castles & Crusades Society

[Buttmonkey]

I give XP for all treasure, magical or otherwise. However, if the party doesn't realize treasure is magical (e.g., they collect a magical spear from a dungeon and sell it back in town assuming it is a normal spear), I only give the party the XP they would get if the magical item weren't magical. Coins, art, and valuable equipment all get 1 XP per gp of value.

Giving XP for treasure makes the level progression work properly as written and, at the end of the day, I really don't care if awarding XP for treasure makes perfect sense. I've got better things to do than sit around debating with myself whether it's a good idea. So many, many better things.

I also throw in the occasional XP award for quality role-playing and quest accomplishment.

[Traveller]

Treasure spent by adventurers is converted into experience points on a 1 [gold] for 1 [EP] basis, but only if the treasure is spent doing things like getting drunk at the local tavern, renting an alcove in the back of the tavern to use a slave girl in, and so on. Treasure donated to an institution, treasure used to purchase equipment, and the treasure lost to training, do not convert into experience points.

Magic items do not have an intrinsic EP value. To earn any EP from a magic item, the magic item must be sold to someone not affiliated with the characters and their henchmen. The coin then must be spent as noted above to earn the experience.
_________________
NOTE TO ALL: If you don't like something I've said, PM me and tell me to my face, then give me a chance to set things right before you call a moderator.
My small homage to E.G.G.

[Omote]

I never give XP for booty. To compensate I have upped the general XP awards in C&C based on many factors, which are usually arbitrary and vary from game to game. That being said, I do calculate the XP for the monsters defeated to the penny, usually.

-O
_________________
> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

[cinderblock]

I hae no prob with giving out xp for loot.

[CharlieRock]

We get XP for treasure. But it is a predetermined amount. So like, if I knock down a marble pillar and drag it off to town I dont get XP for that. But I would get XP for the actual "treasure" that was in the room with the pillars. The marble I sold to the mason's guild was just 'extra'. Same with the lizardfolk fang-necklaces my brother made.

Hasn't stopped us from doing stuff like that though.
_________________
The Rock says ...

Know your roll!

[serleran]

I do not award XP for loot, but I also use a system where there is no XP -- my method is goal-oriented. Treasure may be part of that goal, naturally, but it is not the sole factor.
_________________
If it matters, leave a message at the beep.
Serl's Corner

[Jonathan of White Haven]

DavidStallard wrote:
In my upcoming campaign I'm not sure if I want to give XP for treasure or not. I know it's old-school, but one part of me thinks that it's one of the old ways that would better be left to history. The Players Handbook says that some GMs don't award XP for treasure, but then it doesn't offer any alternative. So that would mean that games without treasure XP would result in PCs who level up much more slowly. I don't want that either.

I compared the XP awards in the Monsters & Treasure book to my AD&D2E Monstrous Manual (even though I know a better comparison would probably be a D&D3.x monster book; I should do that too) and was surprised to see that the differences aren't consistent. I was hoping that I could just come up with some simple conversion like "multiply the C&C XP award by 3" to maintain the advancement rate without giving XP for treasure, but it's not that easy. It works for some characters, but others would need a x5 or x6 increase in order to roughly match the AD&D2E award.

What do most Castle Keepers here do? Do you give XP for treasure, and if not, have you come up with an alternative to prevent slowing down the character advancement rate?

I do give XP for magic items gained during an adventure, but not for coins, gems, jewelry, or mundane (non-magical) weapons. The caveat is that the PC who gains the magic item must keep and use it, even for only a relatively short time, in order to keep the XP. Purchased magic items (such as potions) do not gain XP for the PC, of course.

I also give XP for other story- or adventure-driven events, including XP for damage done to opponents (HP x HD of the opponent), critical hits, biggest hit (most damage dealt with a single blow, which can also be via a spell), disarming deadly traps, and session MVPC, which is voted on by the players.

In general, I don't mind if the PCs advance fairly quickly at low level. That tends to balance out later on, as XP requirements tend to escalate geometrically. The additional XP gained either by treasure or the other means noted above are balanced eventually by the XP needed to advance to higher levels.

I do have a list of things for which XP is awarded in my campaign. PM me with your email address and I can send it to you, if you like. It's currently a Word 2007 .docx file, but I can convert it to a Word '97-2003 .doc file or even an .rtf file. Let me know in the PM which format you prefer (though the .docx format is the most compact.)
_________________
"You don't understand, Beaufingle", said Lungwort cryptically. "You ARE dinner." -- M.M. Moamrath

[Lord Dynel]

I stopped giving XP for treasure long ago (probably a year or so after Istarted playing). If anything, it makes the levels go a little slower, which is nice for both CK and players, usually.

If I were evr to go back to giving XP for treasure, I would only do it for magical treasure and then nly for magical treasure the players were going to keep. That might mean a 2-3 session hold time for XP from treausre, just to make sure they keep the item at least that little bit.

[Galadrin]

Oh, I definitely give XP for treasure. It's the old school form of Quest XP (aka "you completed the quest, here's a big pile of XP!").

I view experience and levels like this:

A veteran hero is not someone who is vastly tougher and beefier than a new aspiring hero, he merely has the confidence, dedication and grit that the other does not. A 9 hit-dice hero can withstand 9 sword strikes because he has proven (to himself) his ability to survive and overcome (a new hero would just faint and quietly await his death). Boromir is a good example of this - it takes a dozen arrows to fell him where a single arrow would have taken a normal peasant. Does Boromir have more blood to bleed than the peasant? Not necessarily.

XP is earned as the hero takes on challenges and overcomes them, proving his own ability. As he gains confidence, he learns how to minimise the chances that a single sword strike will prove lethal, and gains the grit to keep going when he should have fallen unconscious. Finding a big pile of gold (or whatever else that is the main goal of the dungeon-delving) is a milestone sign that the hero has "made it", at least to a new level.

That said, I don't give XP for pocket change. It must be a treasure horde and even then it must be earned.

[DangerDwarf]

Galadrin wrote:
It's the old school form of Quest XP

QFT

[Luther]

I give it for treasure, but only after the characters spend it in character appropriate ways.

So a cleric will only get the XP for treasure that he spends in promoting his religion, say by giving to the poor, helping a town in need to set up a church or by building a grand temple to his god. The mercenary fighter, however, gets his XP for all the treasure spent upgrading his equipment, wining and wenching or setting up a stronghold. There are appropriate variations for all sorts of class and background combinations. This way, characters run out of money, thereby motivating them to go find more and it reduces the amount of loose change they have to store and keep track of.

One of the other things I encourage is PCs spending money on ostentation, like jewlery and fine clothes. this acts as a sort of cash storage system that allows them to maintian large fortunes in smaller forms that can be sold later, as needed. This not only takes care of the endless jangling coin problem, but is very in character for PCs who often show off their success by these methods...
_________________
IMHO, AFAIK, YMMV.

[dkeester]

At low levels I give out XP for treasure. I stop after the characters are established (around level 5).

What I do now is take the XP for all of the monsters, traps, etc. and round up to the nearest hundred. So, if the XP for the adventure comes out to 1470 I will round it up to 1500 and give that to each player.

I figure this will keep my players leveling at higher levels, but make them work for their levels a bit more.

I also give roleplaying awards when they are warranted.

[Heavy_Crossbow]

Personally, I don't give xp for treasure. My players were a little starved for XP for a while, so I started adding a few more lucrative opportunities for XP. You might try these out:

Bad Roller XP: There's always one person in a group who rolls notoriously poorly. So to brighten their day, usually I hand out 1.5 times the regular story XP to that person. Afterall, we do learn more from our failures than our successes, don't we?

Nice Dice XP: Every once in a while, someone shows up to the table with some really sweet-lookin' dice. So I usually give them a bit of XP for taking such care with their gaming accessories. This is a rare award, and usually only a small amount of XP, but its a way to encourage people to get matching dice, color-coded dice, and to support their game store.

Acting XP: I am a bit of an ametuer thesbian (not the other one), so acting is important to me. I like to see the players get into their characters. It encourages social interaction and makes people less reserved. So if players not only role-play well but actually do the voices make gestures, and have interesting player-to-player interaction, then I like to reward them for going the extra mile. But not if it's counter-productive. This takes a special type of roleplaying group though, so only use it if you feel that your group can do it.

[DangerDwarf]

Heavy_Crossbow wrote:
I am a bit of an ametuer thesbian

Thesbian

[Omote]

Heavy_Crossbow wrote:
I am a bit of an ametuer thesbian (not the other one), so...

dammit.

But those are interesting ideas.

I give bonus XP for good dice rolls and bad, usually in combat or for a "skill check." For example, a d20 roll of a 1 or 20 usually nets some bonus XP for the player. These bonuses are capped to a maximum of one bonus per 20 and 1 rolled.

-O
_________________
> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society