Fixing Experience

“It’s all about combat”, they whine. “Only get XP for combat”, they screech.

Fine, I’ll hand you the solution.

See, I can sympathize with not wanting all XP to come from combat. Not necessarily killing stuff, but generally combat involves killing stuff. It most often involves killing stuff. I will give credit to the 5E devs for mentioning a monster can simply be defeated to gain XP from the encounter. Why is that?

Later. If you want to introduce XP for discovering locations, crafting items, getting hirelings, building strongholds or vehicles, or really any number of things, you don’t have anything to go on. Yet another strike against “You can do anything in D&D”, a perspective shaped by blinding you to other mechanics and modes of play 5e either doesn’t or can’t support. I won’t harp on that much in this essay though, don’t worry. See, this is another place in which designers can take all of 20 minutes to write down actionable advice the GM could modify as they see fit. So from here on out, you’re guilty if you don’t.

There are good reasons for wanting XP gain from sources other than combat. Your players should want to level up. If combat is all that grants XP, they’ll focus on combat, whether they like combat or not, as a means of following all of their goals. In a game whose only progression and mode of play is locked into combat, I can understand doing that. But in a game ostensibly built to support the whole of fantasy gaming? Not okay. Point being, if you want your players to view activities other than moving onto the next thing and killing it as being worthwhile in a mechanical sense, you need to adjust how XP is gained. It’s not enough to simply have some people at the table who personally value these things; establishing their value in progressing the game sets the tone for the whole table. Otherwise, you risk those people who personally value things being outnumbered, and therefore not engaging with the alternative actions or modes of play. “We can’t craft that potion, that’s two whole days of us not killing stuff. Sure, if we die, that’s a lot of days of us not killing stuff, but those two days of not attempting to kill stuff is the real problem.”

Ugh.

So I think we all understand changing how XP is gained will change player priorities, no need to harp on it. I don’t have any special insights we’ll gain from diving into that, so let’s make this essay as short as I think it can be. Back to an earlier question; why do players gain XP from monsters defeated, rather than actually needing to kill the monster?

It’s simple, and I’m going to answer it with another question: what does XP mean? It’s experience, a word I’ve avoiding (title excepted) until now. See, when your players force a monster into surrendering, they’ve actually done a few different things at once. First, they’re using their talents and skills and putting them into action to accomplish a goal. When they defeat the monster, they’ve accomplished that goal, providing positive feedback and acting as practice for the next battle. They’re witnessing the consequences of their actions, taking the events in. All of these things fall under experience; the players have gained something that better prepares them on the whole for the next battle they face. Just like everything else.

The solution is in the term, experience. How do you decide whether to give a player experience for something they’ve done or that’s happened to them? Ask yourself; does accomplishing this aid the players in the future? Yes, that’s open ended, but we have to start with open ended. Let’s go down the line of examples. Your players have discovered a location. Is it a dungeon? Is there adventure there? A monster lair? Potential stronghold? Then the players have discovered something of use to them. Give them XP! Did they discover herbs or plants useful for crafting during wilderness survival? Give them XP! Did they craft something? Give them XP!

You guys get the idea. I’m not going to go into the math of giving XP for some of these things, I think I’ll do that in another essay. This is just permission for using experience as it’s honestly meant to be. There’s a final note I wanna put here, though. I honestly can’t in good conscience end the essay without it. If you want to specifically put a focus on exploration and provide incentives for players to minimize combat’s prominence in the game, implement treasure as XP. Some people think it’s explicitly gamist, but that falls flat to me. First off, it’s a game, it’s okay to have a gamist element or two. Second, it’s easy to explain away treasure as XP. Treasure is necessary to maintain your equipment, component pouches, lifestyle, health, etc. It’s a very effective stand-in for mechanics dealing with the maintenance aspect. I’m on the record as saying treasure=XP would work tremendously well for a Witcher style game. Geralt doesn’t keep all of his cool stuff or features from game-to-game. If we were coming up with a narrative explanation for why this happens, it’s that whenever he falls on hard times, he’s unable to keep his health, equipment, or spirits in proper order so as to maintain his previous level of skill. Geralt enjoying the attention and coin of nobles is better at some things than Geralt drunk off his ass, starving, and penniless in a gutter.

You guys got it? Give people Experience for things that give the character experience. Alternatively, you don’t need to rework any of this stuff, just turn the character’s net-worth into their XP and save yourself from a ton of work and a game exclusively focused on combat.