A question about XP

[Sir Robilar]

One thing I find difficult to grasp is how GM's are supposed to give Experience Points. Sorry if this has been discussed before, the Search function didn't give me any results.

Page 359 tells us that XP are rewarded by Encounter, not creature or challenge. I find the difference between encounter and challenge is left a little vague, but ok. After that there is a list of how much XP encounters would give depending on their difficulty, from 1XP (very easy) to 4 (extremely difficult). The descriptions of these encounters sound as if the encounter's difficulty is rated by "how the encounter went" instead of "how tough the creature fought was".

Since combat in DCC is so swingy, the difference between a very hard encounter and a cakewalk may be in some lucky or unlucky dice rolls. Take, for example, a really tough creature with 40 hit points, that the party faces at first level. Maybe the final boss of the dungeon. By chance, the creature loses Initiative, everyone in the party hits it, they do max damage and the creature is taken down before it can act even once. No resources had to be spent and there were no casualties. From my reading of the rules, this encounter would be worth 1 XP. By mere luck on the player side, the encounter, which had the potential of being extremely difficult, was no challenge at all. Is this a correct reading of the rules? And do you as GMs give out XP like that?



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One other non-related question came to mind and I didn't want to start a new thread: How do player characters identify magic items in DCC?

[GnomeBoy]

...by "how the encounter went" instead of "how tough the creature fought was"...

That's exactly it. No sense if giving gobs of XP for somebody the players pushed over. And kind of sucky to give meager XP for a lowly monster that turned out to be a major obstacle in play.

Also, an encounter can have several challenges within it (monsters, tricky terrain, traps, more monsters, etc.). But for XP purposes, go with how it all played out...

[beermotor]

I concur with what was said. I also will throw out occasional 1XP rewards to characters for "doing things" like Thieves disarming a trap or picking a pocket, Clerics turning undead successfully, good role playing stuff, things like that.

What you're going for, IMNSHO, is a NONUNIFORM rate of advancement. This is sort of in keeping with the "This game ain't balanced at all, on purpose" idea. That way, you encourage risk taking and player action. In the PBP game I'm in, characters that "don't participate" in a particular fight don't get XP for merely observing (or doing something else during the fight). I like that rule as well, although it's never come up in my tabletop game.

[cjoepar]

You have the main idea. The thought is that what happens in the encounter is what determines how much the characters learn from it. So yes, a lowly goblin that kills two characters in the party will give the survivors more experience than a Tyranasaurs Rex that slips in the mud and dies without much of a fight.

The one thing I do which deviates from the rules as written somewhat is if the party minimizes the impact of an encounter because they use their heads and figure something out, like maybe a magical trap that they had a clue about avoiding or figuring out something that creates a huge advantage for them, then I bump up the xp's a little. Anytime the players think, I want to reward it.

One other non-related question came to mind and I didn't want to start a new thread: How do player characters identify magic items in DCC?

Yes, this isn't addressed directly. It is left for you as the judge to determine how they can identify what a magic item does. They can consult a powerful wizard in town, cast the Consult Spirit spell, ask their patron, or maybe there is a library with records of some of the magical items in the region. You may even rule that a wizard or elf can make a spellcheck to identify some or all of the magic properties.

[TheNobleDrake]

XP: Yes, I hand out XP in that exact fashion, with Encounter being defined as anything that happens in which the characters can show their character, the players can think things out to find a solution, and genuine risk is involved. Combat, dangerous terrain, traps, and even tricky negotiations all count.

I had a player say "...so if we get beat down we get more XP than if we stomp the crap out of the enemies? Well, I'd rather get 1 XP and us all be alive than get 4 and have to bury a teammate, so I guess that works for me."

Identifying magic items: All of the options mentioned above (quest for it, ask a wizard, consult a spirit, experiment, etc.) all work - but the often overlooked option is built into the Detect Magic spell. If the caster rolls high enough, the properties of a detected magic item can be discerned.

[Sir Robilar]

Thanks a lot for your replies! They've done away with my confusion.

The one thing I do which deviates from the rules as written somewhat is if the party minimizes the impact of an encounter because they use their heads and figure something out, like maybe a magical trap that they had a clue about avoiding or figuring out something that creates a huge advantage for them, then I bump up the xp's a little. Anytime the players think, I want to reward it.

That sounds very fair and I will adopt this for our game. Thanks for sharing.

[finarvyn]

For a while during playtest there was discussion about alternate ways to award XP. One of the notions tossed around was to give XP by quest or mission or module, which would assume that players go off and do something grand and then get a pile of XP for it, rather than count specific kills made and gold acquired. (The old TSR SAGA system for DragonLance 5th Age does something like this.) Doing it by encounter is in many ways more logical, since one module might have ten encounters but another might have six.

On the other hand, in my home game I tend to ignore XP altogether and award when the charcters reach a significant milestone or resting place. Feel free to award as you like.

[cthulhudarren]

Has anyone had much experience with how quickly, like how many adventures it takes to level up in DCC? I know the funnel is after one adventure, I mean after this. I thought advancement in 3.x was too fast, for example.

[TheNobleDrake]

Has anyone had much experience with how quickly, like how many adventures it takes to level up in DCC? I know the funnel is after one adventure, I mean after this. I thought advancement in 3.x was too fast, for example.

By the numbers using "average encounters" we can see that 3.x took 13.3 encounters of a CR = the average party level to go from any level to the next.

By that same token of "average encounters" we can see that DCC takes:
20 encounters to reach level 2
30 encounters to reach level 3
35 encounters to reach level 4
50 encounters to reach level 5
60 encounters to reach level 6
70 encounters to reach level 7
80 encounters to reach level 8
90 encounters to reach level 9
100 encounters to reach level 10

Which means that if you are leveling up anywhere near as fast as one would in D&D 3.x, then it is likely that either you are being given too much XP for what you are accomplishing or have been lucky to survive the hell thrust upon your character.

I feel as though leveling up happens faster, but that is a matter of real time - it only takes one session of DCC to get through 4 to 5 times as many encounters as my group used to get through in a 3.5 session of the same length.

[cthulhudarren]

it only takes one session of DCC to get through 4 to 5 times as many encounters as my group used to get through in a 3.5 session of the same length.

Amen to that. High-level 3.x combat is so danged slow, but I tend to be the only one in my playing group who thinks this.

[IronWolf]

On the other hand, in my home game I tend to ignore XP altogether and award when the charcters reach a significant milestone or resting place. Feel free to award as you like.

This is how I do it for the most part too. I just sort of eyeball it, think about how many encounters the group has had and decide it if it time to level up. It saves more time for devious and cunning encounters!

[Pesky]

That way, you encourage risk taking and player action.

I completely second this. It's a drag to watch players "turtle-up" or hide their favorite PCs from danger, while throwing the ones with poor stats at the challenges (especially in the funnel). Isn't it strange how those poorly-statted PCs survive and the non-risk-takers meet some unexpected demise?

[finarvyn]

On the other hand, in my home game I tend to ignore XP altogether and award when the charcters reach a significant milestone or resting place. Feel free to award as you like.

This is how I do it for the most part too. I just sort of eyeball it, think about how many encounters the group has had and decide it if it time to level up. It saves more time for devious and cunning encounters!

Exactly. In many RPGs you have to count kills, count gold, whatever. In DCC when you count encounters you can consider a wider variety of things -- monster kills, puzzles or traps, social interactions, and so on.

I don't need to award as much gold, for example, because the gold becomes a reward and not a method of counting for level advancement.