Experience Quandry

[allensh]

My group dislikes...no, hates...no, absolutely LOATHES the idea of experience for magic items going to the person who winds up with that item. They are pretty much insisting that I simply pool item experience and divide it evenly among the PCs. Does anyone else do this? How many of you don't even give XP for magic items? I am almost ready to simply scrap item experience completely..but they already are complaining about not advancing fast enough (we're 3 weeks into Return to the Keep On The Borderlands and they aren't 2nd level yet, which apparently annoys them).

Allen

[Death Slaad]

Hmm,

I really do not know why there seem to be so many problems with xp
About your question: I would never give XP for using an item, I would never give xp for creating one.

I use Combat XP and Story awards, thats pretty much it.

About your group leveling to slowly. I do think leveling every 4 weeks is a good thing, which works great in 3.5 if you half the XP (It was ment to have that rate of advancement, but the "power creep" makes you level faster) so I think at least a rogue should have leveled after 3 weeks. If your players are anything like mine, up the story awards, that should help. (Or let them find some treasure, if you use that rule)

[serleran]

I never give XP, though I used to award the maker of said items XP for actually doing something other than killing monsters. I think treasure should be its own reward. Otherwise, you get a sliding scale. Give 400 Xp for monsters, but 4000 for items and now the party is up a level where they fight bigger monsters, get more XP for killing them, but also, much more for the items carried, and it just keeps going. Once it starts, it doesn't stop.

[Treebore]

The party earned the item, irregardless of who ends up using/keeping it. So the party divides the xp's between them.

The only thing that gets divided unevenly is the gold, magic items kept by a player reduces their share of the GP. However, the xp's are earned and divided before the treasure is sorted.

[Omote]

I just don;t give out XP for magic items unless it is relavent to the particular senario, or character action. Even then, I do this very rarely.

TB gives a good suggestion, divide the XP amongst the party members that looted it.

.........................................Omote

FPQ
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[gideon_thorne]

When dividing the spoils, one ought to calculate the relative value of xp for various items and sundry. THis way the xp spread is the same, even if some folks end up with magical goodies, and some don't. Hence another bit of logic to add to the rationale of the gp=1xp system

There is 'experience' required to learn a magic item

There is 'experience' bought and paid for by treasure.

Either way, its still experience.
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Peter Bradley

[Treebore]

Those are definitely reasons I thought of when I decided to use the treasure=xp rules. Besides, I do a sliding scale based on difficulty, and I find the ende result is the same in terms of xp award, and going the treasure route is fun, and my players get all excited over treasure for one extra reason, treasure also=xp, even if variable.

Wow! Thats a pretty long run-on sentence.

Summary: I found that coming up with complex xp award rules variants got me to the same "place" as just awarding xp for treasure and magic items.

If you don't like it, then think of it differently. Such as, "Its a simplified abstract method for determing xp's rather than keeping track of every little "action" that deserves a reward. In the long run it all equals out, so why add such a tedious element as tracking xp's, when just doing it so abstractedly gets you to where your going?"

Still, if a player does something exceptional I still give them a few (variable) hundred xp's to give specific acknowledgements.

Plus, like I said earlier, the treasure xp (not so much the magic item xp) is varied by me with the difficulty modifer. Which I also use to control the pace of advancement when I feel a need to slow things down, or speed them up at high levels.

[babbage]

I used to award experience for items until I saw what it was doing to the party. You have to remember that it is only supposed to be awarded after a certain amount of time using the item, but still...

So (and because of other issues) I hit on the idea of 'experience waypoints'. To find out more (mainly because I can't be bothered to type it all out again) please check my experience thread.
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[Nelzie]

allensh wrote:
My group dislikes...no, hates...no, absolutely LOATHES the idea of experience for magic items going to the person who winds up with that item. They are pretty much insisting that I simply pool item experience and divide it evenly among the PCs. Does anyone else do this? How many of you don't even give XP for magic items? I am almost ready to simply scrap item experience completely..but they already are complaining about not advancing fast enough (we're 3 weeks into Return to the Keep On The Borderlands and they aren't 2nd level yet, which apparently annoys them).

Allen

That's all I do.

I award XP equally, except for seperate personal story rewards such as Playing their character's personality well.
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[Veritas]

The only time I've ever awarded xp for a magic item to only one character was when that character figured out what the item was, completely on his own, without benefit of Identify or any other spell. Other than that, I've always just divided the total xp between all the characters.

[Jyrdan Fairblade]

I always divide XP from the gold and mundane treasure for the group, rather than by who gets what. But the XP for magic items goes to the person that gets the item.

Still, I don't think it would ruffle too many rules-feathers to switch to a communal pool of XP for them. Heck, in the long run, I don't think it would make that much of a difference in advancement.

[Treebore]

Jyrdan Fairblade wrote:
I always divide XP from the gold and mundane treasure for the group, rather than by who gets what. But the XP for magic items goes to the person that gets the item.

Still, I don't think it would ruffle too many rules-feathers to switch to a communal pool of XP for them. Heck, in the long run, I don't think it would make that much of a difference in advancement.

Exactly.

[Maliki]

I give out XP for monsters, then add story XPs when the adventure is over. If I feel the party is leveling too slow I up the story XPs, or if the party seems to be frustrated with slow advancement I up the story XPs. I never give XPs for mundane treasure (too much bookkeeping) or magic items (I tend to give out non-standard treasures and don't want the extra work work of figuring the XPs for unique items).
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[miller6]

Treebore wrote:
The party earned the item, irregardless of who ends up using/keeping it. So the party divides the xp's between them.

The only thing that gets divided unevenly is the gold, magic items kept by a player reduces their share of the GP. However, the xp's are earned and divided before the treasure is sorted.

These days I don't worry too much about xps, but for CKs who do, I agree with Treebore with an exception occurring in a situation where a party member intentionally avoided helping or actively hindered the party's success - so they don't get a share of the experience.

Brian Miller
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