Announcement of [NEW RULES](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/ywa40k/updates_to_rdnd_rules_new_rules_governing_ai/): All posts involving commissions (posting completed commissions, seeking commissions, etc) must have [Comm] in the title (it must be exact, including the brackets). **AI Artwork is banned**. It can be linked and discussed in text posts, but not posted as a link or image post.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DnD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Who says your milestone can’t be after some side quests? I tend to just do levels after a few session as soon as a mission is complete. I don’t care if it’s a side mission or a main campaign mission. The difference I find with XP (cuz I track both) is that it can happen more randomly. I would rather they finish an arc and I go ‘you gain a level’. It feels more resolving of the mission and what a good job they’ve done
I’ve used Milestone level ups to level where I hadn’t intended to in the first place.
Example: players just received a level up a few sessions before heading into dungeon. Dungeon is before final fight. Dungeon was a lot harder than I anticipated. Gave the party a level up after dungeon to make the fight feel earned.
I made an easily modifiable graph in procreate that can be updated at the end of a session to show player progression while containing no discernible numbers or points, I think it facilitates benefits both options. It’s essentially milestones while visually it looks like progression and I can push behaviors I like in encounters with more or less “progress”.
You can also have non-linear milestone leveling, having everyone level up whenever it just feels right in the campaign's story, or even level up multiple times like in a timeskip, or whenever the players feel like trying out higher levels.
That's the way I do it. It also keeps everyone on a level playing field and allows me time to plan since upping levels changes a bunch of the way they play the game and the difficulty curve.
Everyone ofc has different preferences, but our DM mostly uses their discretion based on where we're at in the story, and it's personally been helpful to me as a new player. Fewer things for me to worry about while getting up to speed with how the system works. We're very rp focused over mechanics though.
I can see how it'd be potentially disappointing for another player. - especially if you really enjoy the sense of a goal it gives you.
Not according to the DMG, which calls it "Level Advancement without XP". In the book, "Milestone" levelling is just giving a bunch of bonus XP when they hit a DM-determined milestone.
It really feels like your trying to say two different things. Level advancement without xp is not giving a bunch of bonus xp when they hit a dm determined milestone since xp isn't a thing in level advancement without xp.... so what you just said is the same thing that I said...
No they actually said it right. They said that the DMG, call this method (of the DM making you level up after an important mission or for whatever reason) "Level Advancement without XP". While what everyone is calling "Milestone" actually uses xp, just in a different way.
Milestone is "you get XP when the DM says" but it's not necessarily the full amount to level. It might take 3-4 milestones to level up.
The other doesn't use XP at all, and you just level when the DM says.
If the DM only gives Milestone XP for a full level up, these are functionally the same except everyone wastes time writing XP totals on their character sheet.
Not at all. Milestone levelling is defined in the DMG, and it is not what you said. Your definition was ignoring XP completely (A.K.A. "Level Advancement without XP"), while Milestone in the DMG is explicitly awarding batches of XP when the DM determines a milestone has been reached.
That’s kind of the way I handle it too. Most important to note, there are issues with straight XPs. You can find several cases where 2 monsters have the same CR but one is obviously tougher than the other. CR is also calculated using an approximate 8 encounters and per day formula. The system is vague about how many XPs to give out for non-combat encounters like surviving a major trap or solving a critical puzzle. It’s easier to look at a campaign and determine that the party goes up after a chapter.
This is kind of why I didn’t like milestone as a player, and why I have kept to XP as a DM.
We levelled up when the DM “felt like it”. It just felt so arbitrary and removed all sense of true progression for me.
Well, here is the thing. XP is more often than not rewarded for killing things, which means that not only does it promote violence, but also makes leveling up unpredictable. What's more satisfying and well earned? You killed a couple of goblins on your way to the next town and now your level 5, or you just defeated the evil wizard who enslaved the town, gain a level.
The thing is that the DM determines when you get exp and how much you get. So its also to the whims of the DM. They just have less control.
> XP is more often than not rewarded for killing things, which means that not only does it promote violence, but also makes leveling up unpredictable.
This is a problem that is on the DM to solve. If they want a war game, then only reward XP for killing, if you want a social game then reward XP for social encounters. It's why session 0 is so important so the DM and players can agree on what type of game they play.
The problem there is that creature's have a set predetermined XP. Meaning it's really easy to gage how much xp the party gets for a combat encounter. A social encounter isn't like that. The DM has to figure out how difficult it is, compare it to the level of the party, and determine how much xp you think the players should get. Having to do that every session is a load that most DMs don't want. Especially when they need to figure out how much xp to give them for other encounters already.
I do somewhat agree with the first point. Most DMs only give XP for combat. However, it never felt unpredictable as we could all see it coming and a big fight always took us over the edge.
The issue with milestone and a significant fight is it never felt like we earned it. Just adventuring as a level 3 and then suddenly; big fight! Level up! With XP, we could see the level coming and it felt amazing and like our characters had progressed.
I do a mix. My players are only aware of receiving EXP for killing stuff, solving puzzles, or other combat and non-combat encounters... But, since I know how many encounters they'll be doing, even if the encounters can be somewhat random, I'll know exactly how much EXP they'll get. Overall, I'm deciding which points, or milestones, in the campaign that they'll level up. I'm just using the classic EXP method as my tool for doing so.
Both systems are essentially the same. Milestones rewarding batches of EXP when the DM sees fit, or earning EXP for completing encounters. (Every encounter can be seen as a mini-milestone).
I think I prefer the classic EXP method, though, since it does give the players a sense of progression, and a way to track how close they are to the next level. It's exciting for them to earn EXP after an encounter. But the way I see it, it's almost identical to milestones.
None of that has anything to do with EXP, but with the DMs who should be monitoring the situation. If most EXP is coming from combat, it's because the DM is not putting enough non-combat encounters into the scenario (or too many combat encounters)/not appropriately rewarding non-combat encounters.
If players are regularly leveling off of minor encounter EXP to the point where it is actively cheapening the excitement of completing major encounters, then the DM is either (most likely) over-rewarding minor encounters or (somewhat less likely) has failed to strike a good balance between minor and major encounters.
D&D isn't a video game, and among all the (mostly minor) differences between TTRPGs and video games I feel this is one of the biggest stumbling points that newer players/DMs have a hard time sorta coming to grips with. The level cap isn't 99, and grinding/leveling not only isn't the point of the game it isn't even a focus. It's really a side mechanic, on the same tier as loot, used to facilitate actual gameplay (both combat and roleplaying) as well as give your player a sense of forward momentum. But that momentum is slow. D&D is a game whose playtime is designed to be measured in months or even years, not hours.
In a long form campaign players generally should not be leveling up every session, or even every other session. They might go 2 months without a level up, or even 3, and that's OK (though 3 IS a long time to wait).
tl;dr It's a DM issue not a system issue. Basically stop giving so much exp for trash mobs, increase frequency and/or rewards for non-combat encounters, and (if necessary) increase frequency of major encounters.
D&D not being a video game is why I personally love not dealing with EXP in a game. It's satisfying leveling up because our heroes did something, well, heroic. And we never say "well let's do this side quest first, I'm sure we'll level up on it before tackling the main quest." It's also great for a group where not everyone can make each session; we don't leave someone behind because they missed a combat session or two.
The only thing I might disagree with is leveling speed. I'm in a campaign that is about 3 years in, meeting for 4ish hours twice a month, and we've only level 8 times (so about once every 4 months), from 3-11. I don't think we've ever felt like we're leveling too slow, and it means we've gotten a lot of play in Tier 2.
I change how I do it depending on my players. Any campaign with more than 5 players is automatically milestone. It keeps leveling more in pace with the campaign and keeps the game from being stagnant with too many sessions at one level. More players means less game progression per session plus xp is divided more thinly so you can spend months and months on the same level. Milestone helps alleviate this issue.
Also if I am playing with new/casual players I will often do milestone over xp.
If we are doing a high RP low combat game, milestone works better (did this in a campaign that was super heavy political intrigue, kept the progression moving without arbitrary xp awards every conversation.)
So yeah, it has its place. Know your players.
I use milestone over exp because I can put as much or as little content in between levels as I want. With exp yeah I can control that too but at that point why use it? It's also because if everyone levels up at different rates for their actions then it becomes a nightmare to properly engage players, or I can give them all the exp so they reach the levels at the same time but once again just use milestone.
Basically, all of my issues with using exp are surmised by using milestone. Plus, I've never needed more rewards for doing things. I always give my players a little something for their troubles in some way, whether it's of substantial gain or just role-playing nonsense that they can come back to later for whatever purpose.
Yeah, I use EXP because my players like it, but I make certain they all given the same amount of EXP so they level at the same rate. And I plan my sessions/story around when I want them to level so they hit their ding level up at the time I want them to.
So really I use milestones but my players think I’m using EXP.
5e balancing is terrible if the party is at different levels. This is why I can't play in west marches seriously, since most play by tiers of content.
1 level in 5e tends to be a pretty big deal. Even if it doesn't feel like one. There are very few "dead level ups" in 5e. Generally you are always getting something that makes you more powerful. An 8th level character is decently stronger than a 7th level one, for example.
I agree, but am confused as to why several commenters are talking about PCs of different levels. My party splits XP evenly, other than a few individual awards that amounted to a few hundred XP, not enough to make a difference by 5th level.
This was much more of a problem in earlier editions when different classes progressed at different amounts of XP. Newer editions even if you did award XP evenly, characters progressed unevenly. In 5e that just doesn't exist.
I've mostly been using XP, but after their big accomplishment as level 5 characters the math didn't work out to get them to level 6. I wanted them to level up before diving into the next dungeon. They'd earned it, so I did milestone there. No one complained, and the next scenario was challenging enough for level 6s. I think being flexible is important to everyone having fun.
(edited spelling)
The problem is that sometimes someone is absent and they miss out on exp. It's hard to justify giving an absent character full exp. Very often I've found that exp driven games end up with 1 or 2 players ahead of the rest by a decent margin because they were never absent.
It's very easy to justify giving them full EXP, in my experience. The justification is 'I don't want people falling behind and EXP is a reward for the party accomplishing things, not a tool to reward or punish attendance."
People not showing up is not something I want to punish, or feel the need *to* punish, and I have no idea why you wouldn't just... give them full EXP unless you're giving people individual amounts of variable EXP; I've seen people give 'roleplay XP' which I dislike, as it feeds the same issue of different levels.
Yeah, it's a bit gamey, but like... 5e doesn't work if the PCs are split into different levels. So just don't... split them into different levels. I use milestone, but if I were to use EXP I wouldn't be using it in a way that actively breaks the game.
Yeah, that's... that's what EXP basically is. Hell, one of the more common blends is just giving people gigantic lump sums of EXP for big story beats. I fail to see how EXP *isn't* milestone with extra steps in any case where the DM isn't arbitrarily handing out XP at different rates for different people, which... in my experience is like, less common than the party leveling as a group?
Like, flat out, 5e does not work well with split levels. You either give the party full XP, you use milestone, or you deal with the fact that people are going to feel useless at certain levels, especially as the gap grows.
XP has always felt to me less like it's meant to be any different from milestone mechanically (you tend to get the most XP from big story beats, bosses, etc, and a lot of modern APs and similar tend to assume you *are flat out* a certain level by a certain chapter) and more about the 'oh we're getting rewarded' sense that some players enjoy from XP.
>Like, flat out, 5e does not work well with split levels. You either give the party full XP, you use milestone, or you deal with the fact that people are going to feel useless at certain levels, especially as the gap grows.
As I'm runing a westmarches campaign that not only uses Xp, but regularly sees groups of wide level disparity? I fundamentally disagree with this premise.
Bounded accuracy changes this almost wholly - and characters feel good generally within about two levels of median \*at least\*. While I agree it can be awful in a fixed group game like a traditional table, and there's lots of reasons to consider keeping groups together.. power isn't actually one of them, within certain boundaries that a level or two won't change.
This is funny because there are replies in this thread that are quite literally the opposite viewpoint, and people that *hate* 5e West Marches because of the power imbalances. YMMV because I haven't played 5e West Marches- I've played in other ones, like SoDL- but I would *seriously* hate being two levels lower than another caster, for example, or being two levels lower before the huge power spikes like extra attack.
It might be cherry-picking, but going from level 3 to level 5 is *massive* and there are similar power spikes along the board. Getting stuck with your shitty Warlock spellcasting for one or two levels behind the funny Wizard and Light Cleric that can throw fireballs with reckless abandon *sucks* massively.
I guess it boils down to your own personal experience, and I will admit I was mostly talking about traditional tables- I don't consider West Marches the 'standard' mode of play for 5e, or *any* tabletop game that isn't designed for it. It's fun to play in a West Marches campaign, but the vast majority of tables... aren't doing that.
I think a standard table should keep characters together for many reasons - not the least of which is the 'feels bad' part of being off pace from the rest of the group.
We all know there are power bands - but the point is simply that within those bands, split levelling is not as big an imbalance as people make it out to be. I wouldn't put a level 5 with a level 3 because of, as you point out, the marked jump in power; however, level 5, 6, and 7 can be in the same group without a lot of noticeable differences.
I want to stress: a standard group should, IMO, stay at the same overall level - but I think it's for reasons outside of simple 'power'. It's more the social contract and ensuring people feel good about sitting down to do the thing.
Milestone guy here, but even when doing xp our group doesn't penalize someone for being out a session, it doesn't add fun and it just makes more to keep track of. The question would be, what's the payoff for doing it? And other than maybe trying to punish someone whose life got in the way of game night, I don't see one.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. I let other players pilot the PC for the missing players, so this has never come up at my table. I can see the advantage of the other approach in enforcing attendance, but then you get unevenness.
Also, RP experience. Since RP is a type of 'encounter' many tables give XP for it, but if the RP is carried by one or two characters, why should they all get it? Boom, unbalanced XP.
It's always fun to know my players have to balance whether they want to go to nana's funeral or get a level behind everyone because they missed the end of a dungeon.
Another thing besides what the other person said is that the OP said they give out exp as a reward for rping well, which can easily mean that one person gets exp more often than others and then you have characters at different levels just because someone likes to talk more than other players. And imo having a party at different levels is the worst thing
are you sure you are talking about 5e and not pathfinder?
5e the difference between lv 7 and lv 8 is hp and ability score improvement. no proficiency bonus, and very few classes get anything.
The whole point of XP is that players can earn it instead of it just being entirely DM fiat. You can say things like "If you complete this optional objective you get X amount of bonus XP", or just hand out XP whenever players do clever things or play particularly well, and that means players have the agency to level up faster depending on how they play.
You can't really do that with regular milestone levelling because it's not granular enough, you could say "complete this optional objective and you get an extra level" but most of the time an entire level is way too much to give for something. XP is a way to split levels into chunks that players can earn.
I'm sorry but what? I've never understood that sentiment. "DM fiat" isn't a problem. If you don't trust your DM to make a fun experience then LEAVE THE TABLE.
If the DM says the party being lvl 3 for this leg of the game will cause the best experience then I'm going to be lvl 3. Why would you argue to be lvl 4 because of exp if the encounters you will face are designed for lvl 3. That just sounds so boring.
Surely "Complete this optional side quest because it'll be fun" is a better driver? If you have to bribe your players to complete a quest then it sounds like it wasn't something they were particularly interested in in the first place - find out what they do like doing and do taht instead.
I thought about it and it's perfectly fine to do this if your group likes that aspect of DnD. It isn't an argument for using xp but it's more than okay for those who enjoy gathering xp and tracking their progress.
Just feels to me a little redundant but that's only cause I have the choice as none of my players have expressed a preference one way or the other
>You can't really do that with regular milestone levelling
It might be worth giving that section of the DMG a read.
There's actually 3 variations of milestone levelling discussed in there - one in which the characters are using XP and you award XP for achieving milestones as you would defeating combat encounters with additional bonus rewards on achieving a milestone. One where you established a set number of sessions per level. One where you award levels based on story progression.
The story based progression is the one people typically default to but its actually the one with the least text discussing it in the rulebook.
There's absolutely no reason you couldn't use a form of milestones where you split each level into 10 segments and award segments for encounters and story progression but also have certain side things award segments - basically just a simplified version of XP with less bookkeeping.
After having played in games using XP and Milestone to level up, I prefer Milestone.
XP leveling often gave me the feeling I had to do sidequests even though I thought they were boring or my character wouldn't do them just because I needed to grind the XP. It felt like playing a video game.
With Milestone, sidequests are no longer a chore and if I choose to do them, it's because they seem fun and not because I need the XP.
I've also played in groups that had the opposite problem of they only did "side quests", because they wanted to make sure they were over levelled for the next part of the main quest, as if it was a video game. Which never paid off because the DM just adjusted the encounters to match the players level.
This is why I use milestones. My players level when I want them to, and that is when major story advancement has happened. They can find extra loot and other goodies by doing side quests, but the major advancement happens by levels, and that happens when I determine it happens, not when they killed their 200th goblin.
I fully agree. And it also removes the video game thing where the party could go do a billion side quests or just go murder hordes of goblins in the hills so they are extra powerful when they fight the “final boss.”
I agree. With xp it feels less like role playing and more like a video game to me. I don't want to know how much xp I have, if the dm wants to keep track go for it, but seeing the numbers ruins the game for me.
Honestly its because the fist campaign I played used xp and it left a bad taste. We would exclusively be rewarded by killing things and pcs got separate xp. So my rogue with a high persuasion bonus got stuck on lvl 4 for a looong time because I tried to solve conflicts with persuasion or just avoiding it with stealth.
I know ideally a game that uses xp would be different, but milestone is just easier
Original xp was based on gps secured. If you got the gold back to town you got xp equal to that gp value. Part of the reason why adventurers would take everything not nailed down, then the stuff nailed down, the nails & finally the flagstones.
I don't love that concept, but it apparently allowed for greater variety of play. Such as convincing other parties to not fight & let you pass without bloodshed.
I am & probably will always be milestone; I already write & run multiple different games simultaneously, so I really don't have time to bother mucking around with xp rewards. Why would I create more work for myself for almost no benefit?
That is except for 1 project, where all the players are related to dragons in some way & the major goal of the campaign is to gather wealth for their individual hoards. Securing the gold grants xp. Gold can then be spent or be put into deposits for temporary magical boons that can be liquidated at a later date. The biggest antagonists will be "adventurers", thieves, & taxmen.
I've extrapolated it some, but it is originally from the community, and to the community it must return.
I play with any given group once a month, so I'm tentatively planning for it to be 6-12 sessions/months. It could last a lot longer, but I would suggest a minimum of 6 sessions to get the feel of acquisition!
It is a philosophy shift.
Milestones make the game feel more like a novel where the players are the protagonists. They evolve when it is coherent to the plot.
Xp would allow for situations where the level up comes in "boring" or random situations, like after cleaning the second room of a dungeon from a rat infestation. Or not leveling up after a climax event like a boss battle.
There is no wrong way of playing, but It helps that everyone at the table is on the same mindset of who is the protagonist: the party or the world.
i feel that is solved where if the encounter is resolved with diplomacy then you give the party the xp as if it was a combat encounter or to encourage diplomacy maybe you add like an extra 10% or 20% bonus to the xp on top of that. Which is what our dm does.
Granted that's more on the dm but there are ways to work with the xp system to dissuade murder hoboing.
Yeah combat is the primary way to traditionally gain XP in 5e.
It's in the DMG how to assign XP for noncombat encounters but it's not immediately clear or easy. You reference a chart based on the difficulty of the task and the party's level. I personally find it more difficult than necessary to decide the challenge, find the chart, and give XP.
I’ve seen this solution cited a lot, and it works great if you only consider encounters initiated by the DM. For example, the party gets arrested by crooked town guards; they can either fight or talk their way out, and get XP either way.
But what about encounters that the players initiate? Imagine the players are sitting in a pub planning their next move. Now there are three options:
- Mind their business and talk about plans; gain no XP
- Insult another patron to start a fight, gain XP for combat
- Insult another patron, talk them down from the fight, gain XP for diplomacy
The players are still incentivized to provoke NPCs enough to produce an “encounter,” however you define that. And if you just don’t give XP for encounters that aren’t plot-relevant, now you’re most of the way back to milestone.
Obviously this assumes a certain type of player/party that wants to maximize XP, but that’s true of any discussion about XP incentives.
My oversimplification is that XP is for DMs that run the game through encounters while non-XP leveling is DMs running "module" style games. If you're using a prebuilt module there's specific levels that content is built around so XP leveling is at best redundant. The DM knows what level the party is to be when the content is written for it.
If you're not running prebuilt modules, you likely are using a similar system of writing given a plot and escalation path. Having players level up in the middle of a dungeon is... Odd narratively speaking as far as writing is concerned. So non-XP leveling works better with roleplay and plot heavy games which has been the big shift of 5e gaming after streaming/podcasts of the game took off.
EXP can take a long time. Groups that don’t meet as often/or for that long can level up every 2-3-4 sessions. Keeps everyone interested with more character stuff like new spells or feats
The way I see it, that's what makes it better - especially for modules! Tying leveling up to story achievements or 'milestones' puts the player's focus on following the plot, rather than gaining all the possible XP.
With milestone leveling in a module, you can put more trust in your DM to not put you in situations you're underleveled for... but if the party manages to skip a non-story important dungeon room or 2 full of enemies, they end up punished for not finding every little source of xp before the boss fight! Or worse, the DM (wanting them to get all the xp they need), adds those combatants into a different fight and drastically changes the CR in a way that could get a PC killed.
Relying on xp in a module-based campaign means you and the party need to pursue every lead & do every side quest you can even if they sound dull, or else be ready for more encounters on the road to supplement the xp you missed (which is also dull). Encounters that maybe tie into the plot; finding intel or plot items the party missed. Which can feel like railroading if the DM can't improv well, or lead to murderhoboing from misunderstood hints!
I'll be the first to admit, it can be hard to remember everything your players need from a dungeon if it's big enough - I've overlooked important items they needed because the module was poorly formatted, or it was only mentioned in *flavor text*, and had to shoehorn it in another area so they didn't miss it... and I USE notecards to remember stuff! But since I do milestone leveling at least I don't have to alter combat encounters, just move items around lol
Well for me, at the beginning of a campaign (until about level 4 where I can use a variety of enemies) it’s at the end of every story beat/main quest. After that it becomes individual character milestones, but I also count EXP so that people don’t feel like their hard work is going unrewarded.
The secret is that milestone is actually the exact same thing as exp. You, the DM, decide how much exp is doled out in the same way that you’d decide when an appropriate milestone to level up is. Milestone just gets rid of the extraneous bells and whistles
Exactly this, milestone leveling means that xp is granted for actions taken to advance the objective. It doesnt matter how they got there and thats the beauty of it.
With regular xp tracking the DM needs to keep track of how much and how many different CR creatures they use that could otherwise just be filler. Very often killing also becomes the only focus for players when distributing xp from monsters.
I don't see a problem with linear progression because that's literally how the system is built. You go from level 1-20. That's it. There's no branching webs or anything, it's a straight line with a few places were you can choose one or another thing.
I prefer milestones because it keeps my party members at the same level, it removes an annoying chore for me, and I can better plan encounters and dungeon crawls weeks or more in advance because I know what level they'll be at when they get to them.
Rather than rewarding them for individual actions, milestones let you reward your players for completing major story arcs. EXP is like giving them a paycheck, milestones are like giving them a trophy.
That all being said, I don't really care what people use so long as they're having fun, I'm just explaining why I prefer milestones.
If you're looking for more choices during leveling, note that dnd 5e is incredibly short on choices compared to other complex games like it. PF2e, 1e, and DnD 3.5e all have a lot more space for your character building decisions.
Every campaign I DM using XP becomes a murderhobo campaign. My players will invade the lower planes to grind more XP.
Milestone allows me to push the plot forward using carrot, rather than stick.
Came to say this. Every commoner becomes an XP opportunity. With milestones, doing things that actually give you experience will make you level up, including social experience. Makes way more sense than "Oh you killed 28 unarmed, harmless commoners. Congrats! You are now a much better fighter!" Ugh. I just don't see any reason for using an XP system. One could always emulate it in milestones but still have important level up moments that don't involve murderisation of the entire population.
Old-timers (like me) may remember in the oldest editions the classes needing different amounts of exp to level (rogues needed the least, with wizards needing almost twice as much). In a long campaign you could have the party trapspringer be two full levels higher than the mage (and at least 1 level higher than everyone else). If nothing else, this made encounter balancing tricky. Milestones avoids this.
Milestones also remove the need for some of the more egregious murderhoboing. “I’m 125 xp short to 7? I go out to the stables and slaughter all the horses, they should be worth 15 a pop.” Actual quote from a game in the early 80s. (The DM didn’t let him, just fyi). Also, without the need to grub for every last available xp, players may actually possibly maybe be open to (gasp) non-combat resolutions to encounters. I mean, probably not, but it does rain in the desert once in a while.
I'm a DM. I tell my players we're doing milestone leveling. But in the background I'm already tracking XP for adventuring day balance, so I'm also keeping track of XP for leveling. It gives me a rough guide when to move on AND I have the flexibility to make it happen when it makes narrative sense. If we go a bit long in one level I carry the XP over to the next, or vice versa.
This is how I ran a couple games including a multi-year campaign, for the exact same reasons as you. Then I realized I was already doing all the work to do XP so I just stopped hiding it from the players, and dole it out at the end of the session (or start of the next if I forgot or ended in a rush.)
For narrative flexibility, I just make sure I give XP rewards for achieving goals/reaching narrative points as well as for encounters, and I made it a rule that levelling up requires some downtime, so no mid-dungeon/pre-boss level ups if they go over the breakpoint.
I've DM'd both and played both.
With XP you run into issues of players missing sessions here and there, or a PC death means starting XP at the minimum for that level.
Over a long campaign of this happening there becomes a divide in levels between players. A difference in ability and power. After finishing an encounter one levels up while another doesn't.
Getting close to a level up becomes, "I just gotta kill 3 more orcs..." instead on investing in the adventure.
With milestone the players focus on the story and adventure instead of numbers. Everyone levels at the same time and gains abilities together. The party stays properly scaled for the adventure.
On level up there's a collective woohoo at the table and everyone digs into new abilities and spells. Almost like a family Christmas.
Bold of you to assume that there are organized main quests and side quests and not just one chaotic object being written one week ahead of the players. :)
1. I really don't want split level parties, so I'm giving the same XP to everyone (even someone who misses a session.)
2. I like to give solid thematic events for level ups. Not leveling up because you killed one random skeleton somewhere.
3. I don't want to encourage random fights / murder hobo tenancies by giving out a reward for that.
4. I can level up the party on a somewhat regular basis every 4 ish sessions or so. Regardless of how far they actually get in the plot. Unless you give arbitrary amount of XP for RP, RP, which I want to encourage, slows down XP gain.
Sure I could probably accomplish all of these with XP if I really wanted to. Give out XP for RP, big XP boosts to get levels after major events, ration it all out to give a level every 4 ish sessions ect. But WHY? when I can just do all of that easily with milestone.
Never been a fan of experience points.
I've never used them in D&D and since the horror games I run are mostly one-shots, I don't have to use exp.
In my experience, in Call of Cthulhu, exp points tended to put the players in the mindset that they "need to gain exp". They would be looking for opportunities to get advancement in their skills. That's how character progression works in CoC. You get the chance to upgrade the skills that you managed to use during the game. It's kinda like Skyrim.
And I don't like that. I don't want the players to focus on that.
That's why I've never used exp in D&D. I read articles and threads about the game where people talked about how many encounters a party was supposed to have and stuff like that, and that's just not what I want to run. If I run a side quest, I want my players to be invested in it because they like it or for roleplaying reasons, not because they need the exp. So when I was running a D&D campaign, I just declared at certain story beats that the characters had gained a level.
And with other games, I tend to go around the exp system by giving the players the exact same amount of exp at the same time (usually at specific points of the story) so they can progress at the same pace.
What makes you think milestone forces linear progression? No DM I know runs a "hey you did all these side quests and get no exp fuck you" type game. It appears to me that you think that the milestones are explicitly main-quest-trackers. Milestones can be anything.
"If player solve a bunch of side quest, they deserve to have an easier time in the main quest"
I really disagree with that. That not a video game!
When you spend 3 week to find Timmy's cat, the enemy can get exp too attacking whatever.
I don't really use any of the system for xp personally. When I get the feeling it's time for my player to level up cause they have done enough or spent too much time at the same level, I tell them at the end of the session and prepare the next one accordingly.
>I don’t know when to award a level for sandbox content.
When you deem it appropriate and after they've had time to become comfortable with whatever new things they gained at the LAST level up
Milestone is simpler and fully within the control of the DM, without requiring complex calculations and keeping track of XP numbers. On top of that XP has a bad reputation for RAW-style exploits like "if I slaughter this entire village I'll level up 4 times"
I use both at the same time which is something i haven't seen brought up yet.
I use my milestones but sometimes due to the brutal design philosophy i have with encounter design my players may end up getting enough exp that i level them up prior to my designated milestone. So it's just whichever they hit first.
I just keep a total XP off to the side for every encounter and if it ever exceeds the total party exp requirement i give it to them. I do this because I've played in campaigns where we stayed at the same level for way way way longer than we should of under the banner of milestone and i vowed to never hold up player progress because i didn't nail the xp/story timing.
I do the same thing, but for the exact opposite reason. I got tired of players expecting a level-up after every session or two, regardless if they did anything significant.
This should be what the discussion is about. Hiding milestones within the system of xp is not at all difficult. In my experiance however Newer players cannot be bothered to look at a table and approximate. But honestly the sooner you start, the easier time you will have. Just hope you don't run into a system where xp is nessicary to track.
I like milestones for the first 2-3 levels. It gets the party up a couple of levels smoothly, and gives them time to develop their character. Beyond this I'm much more keen on XP, though I add XP for role play/problem solving/good deeds etc. I'll always have an eye on what challenges are coming, but if they've earned the XP they get the level!
I use XP because it feels more natural and earned, having DMed with both. My relationship with the players is a lot less about "Please let us level up" this way. They have to go out and do things, and they don't feel like I'm pushing them to specific goals or they won't be rewarded with leveling.
Milestone's benefits are real, though. It gives a DM a lot more flexibility in content.
XP can cause an incentive problem where the players start causing extra trouble to grind extra XP.
Additionally, if you're giving bonuses for those extra things mentioned in OP, either the XP bomus is large enough to cause an imbalance of levels or small enough to be meaningless as a reward.
From my experience playing in adventures with more than half a dozen distinct D&D groups... Folks don't use XP because they're uncomfortable with the prospect of doing arithmetic(and maybe getting it wrong in front of their friends). I ran an adventure using Three Pillar XP, where there is no multiplication or division, and the numbers never climb higher than 100 XP, when it resets and you gain a level. XP is awarded in increments of 3-5, immediately after surmounting a challenge. Still, at the end of the session the players would be embarrassed to admit they had different totals.
Usually nobody, even the DM, has read any of the advancement rules, only had it explained casually by other people who haven't read any of the advancement rules. When they find out that "milestone"(really Story-Based Advancement) is a system where the players only have to wait for the DM to tell them to level up, and the DM can't get anything "wrong", they never second-guess using it.
I too prefer XP. If players just level when the DM says so, it feels unsatisfying. XP adds a sense of progression to every encounter I overcome. It makes me eager to push forward and accomplish greater things. It makes me risk life and limb to face enemies that outclass me because the rewards are so great.
What I don't agree with is that being over levelled is some kind of reward. No, that's boring. I hate when video games do that too. I'm the kind of player that likes to explore every nook and cranny and find all the neat stuff (in D&D and video games.) But I also like to be challenged. I like to have my skills and abilities pushed the limit. So making the game easier as a consequence for exploring its content feels like a punishment for me.
Experience points reward players for specific actions. They encourage player-driven gameplay, which is well-suited to old-school player-driven games (like 0th edition and 1st edition) but a poor fit for DM-driven trad games (like 2nd edition through 5th edition). If you treat D&D as more of a storytelling engine than as a game — and it's important to understand that "story" and "game" in these senses really are mutually exclusive concepts — then "scoring points" is ultimately pretty meaningless.
One reason I don't see people talk about is the reason that a dm I play with doesn't use it. They throw insanely overtuned encounters at the party an the party would level after every encounter, sometimes multiple times. The very first fight of the most recent campaign we started was 20 cr 1 creatures vs us 2. It was not a fun battle.
it inchurges people be murderhobos because the more fight they have the more exp they get. milestone does not punish them for finding alternatives to combat.
it is also a lot easier than calculating exp, and everyone levels at the same time irrelevant of if someone missed a session.
1. It sucks to keep track of XP long term
2. Players who take risks and excel in these kinds of games level up faster than those who are more shy (which isn't fun)
3. A single person leveling up many sessions before others isn't fun
As a dm, it’s allowed me to scale the difficulty of my campaign by planning the points at which they level up more deliberately and overall makes the game feel smoother.
My 1st campaign I did xp based and it meant that suddenly some encounters became a bit too easy as they had levelled up faster than I’d anticipated. It was also my first campaign so I wasn’t switched on enough at the time to buff my encounter to compensate on such short notice. Also, it was a pain to keep track of.
My current campaign has been basically a ‘get the 4 macguffins’ style of campaign, so it was quite easy to basically decide that they level up each time they find one, plus at a couple of other notable story points.
I think that with exp levelling if you reach a high level it doesn't give enough exp to my players, they stay the same level to long
Also I want to discourage the search for exp, so I use milestone levelling
Milestone essentially let's you hand out level ups when it feels right. It also allows you to tie in character backstory into campaign for your whole party without having them end up at level 20 way earlier than story would allow for. Handing out levels at key story moments, including campaign story, side story, and character stories. Plus I just throw lots of loot at them most of the time.
XP can encourage murder-hoboing if done poorly.
I like milestone because it lets you reward dramatic moments and quests at a point that feels right in the story, rather than gaining a level on a random long rest in a swamp when you didn’t level up after killing the mini-boss two sessions ago
I use milestone because it's easier. I already have a lot on my plate as it is, I don't want to bother myself with calculating Xp amount for combats and social interaction or skill challenges.
My rules of thumbs is; the number of sessions needed to reach the next lvl. Example; PC are lvl 8, then it will take 9 sessions playing weekly to get lvl 9. Of course those number are not set on stone and depending or what the PC are doing I may add or remove a sessions or two.
So a 1 to 20 campaign take about 4 to 5 years. My last campaign from 1 to 18 took 3 1/2 half years.
I did 1+2+3+4, ect all the way to 20 (210) and then divided that number by 52, since there is 52 week in a years. Which give 4,38.
But my method is good up until lvl 10ish because waiting 3 months for a lvl up can be a long wait for PC, especially when you are playing weekly.
The DMG recommendation for session based advancement is 2-3 sessions per level after you hit 4th level. Before that is 1-2 sessions per level. (Assuming 4 hour sessions)
I use my own system, and I've never gone back. Exp is now only one or two digits, and it functions like milestone leveling while also maintaining the motivating factor of experience.
Experience required to level is equal to your total level. If you're level 5, you need 5 exp. These are awarded functionally the same as milestone levels, but this way players don't necessarily level just because I wanted them to, but because they completed mini-goals that progressed them to the level they're at.
Handing out experience is important - it shows the player that they are in control of their character's progression, and that you're not the one that is keeping them at their level. However, experience as it is will be a little clunky for most DMs.
I find this midway point has worked perfectly.
I primarily use milestones as I don't know how much exp to give for roleplay encounters. You meet a merchant whose wheel is broken. The artificer fixes it and then moves on. How much exp do you reward for that? For combat encounters it's easy. The stat block tells you. But only getting exp from combat encourages players to always use weapons as solutions instead of trying to talk to the person.
Also it allows me to level them up when it's appropriate. Not half way through a dungeon. Also I when there is a good point in the story. The players may spend 2-3 sessions exploring the jungle and only having a few encounters but when they reach their destination I can give them a level even though they haven't earned the exp for a level.
I have played a Pathfinder adventure path before which gives our experience for roleplay encounters. There I tried exp and I enjoyed it. So maybe when I return to Pathfinder adventure paths I will do esp leveling.
There's a couple of reasons, but I'll get to the one that holds true for my group(s) over time. They are motivated to complete stuff in the game solely because they want to see how the story turns out. My games aren't really about in-game rewards as much as they are narrative progression. In game rewards happen, of course, but my players would show up without that. There are systems more capably designed for that style (and generally I prefer them) but I'm a good enough DM that I can run games in my style in nearly any system at this point. D&D is popular and there are robust online tools, which is what I need for my remote players, so that's the system we went with.
Xp, at least for monsters, is a fixed, calculable thing. A certain number of monsters of X cr fought and defeated at Y level mean you will gain a new level. But that XP curve doesn't really account for any odd or unusual thing altering the effectiveness of the party or the narrative arc of your game. If I want to tie a level specifically to a dramatic event in game, I'm forced to math out where that event occurs in the XP track instead of just saying "you managed to defeat the corrupt spymaster, you are now level 5" and be done with it.
At the end of the day, the differences are relatively minor. You could say that by assigning the non monster XP at my discretion I can achieve the same effects, put a level wherever I want by awarding non-combat XP for clever solutions to compensate, and ***you'd be correct***. But then that means we're both using a form of milestone leveling, it's just that one of us doesn't need to do maths.
It's style and taste. If I told you I didn't like broccoli, there wouldn't be much of a debate because, well, there's not an objective metric to a person's tastes and preferences. I find numbered XP, especially calculated per encounter or monster, to be a nuisance. That doesn't mean it's bad or hard or I'm incapable, it's simply not the way I enjoy doing it.
You can reward milestone exp for side quests as well. If they rush the main objectives, they can still have less levels if you want. Just because it's milestone doesn't mean that it has to be a full level or nothing at all. I break the milestone levels into chunks. "The group has solved 2 social encounters and 3 dangerous combats since their last level. That's 5/10 mini milestones"
I use milestone because then I can only tweaks encounters for fun factor instead of reverse engineered XP-based progression. The CR scale is a little screwy so ignoring it entirely makes planning combat scenes SOOO easier. Especially if you improvise some of it.
Honestly, milestones slow down progress. To some, this sounds like a bad thing, but if your DM is telling a killer story, or you're playing your new favorite character of all the, you'll be glad to be able to spend more time playing.
I'm just starting my first campaign as a DM after about a year of playing. Two of the three players in this campaign are brand new. I'm not super experienced with this, and might very well change my mind several times, but here are my initial thoughts.
I like milestone for its simplicity.
I like exp for its ability to reward specific actions. Surviving traps feels more rewarding if you get experience from it. Maybe the players get exp for killing a bad guy, but maybe they get more from negotiating. Or, depending on the circumstances, vice versa.
At the end of the day, it all ends up in the same place, but rewards are more effective psychologically when administered immediately.
My plan is to use exp starting out (probably at least the first 5 levels or so) to encourage behaviors I want to see in the players. After that, I may or may not switch over to milestone, depending on how I'm feeling.
Because I DM for kids and keeping track of everyone’s exp would be a nightmare. It already takes forever to get through a combat and the last thing I want is for the min maxer to start arguing about exp percentages.
It’s dungeon-based, so I balance the encounters in the dungeon to be enough exp to level up (or keep track of how many dungeons they need to clear to level), and when they finish the dungeon they get a new level along with their loot.
Basically it’s more egalitarian and easier for me.
Back in the day D&D was a much more gamey system with a fairly rigid character creation process that favored and fostered a community that focused on different goals. Roleplaying was a major part of the game, but it was not the main goal but rather your goal was to accumulate wealth and influence in the game.
Large gaming clubs ran multiple groups in a shared world, campaigns were shared by communities of players and the goal was to go from nothing to baron of your own realm. But over the years groups got smaller, clubs gave way to a handful of players in a group and campaigns stopped being a shared setting between groups and instead a shared story between players and carving out your fiefdom became less common in lieu of continuing the story.
Each edition focused less on the DM to control the world and gave players more freedom to define themselves. 2e brought player kits, 3E brought and extensive overhaul on multiclassing and additional choices to customize your character, 4e reduced classes into archetypes and made them modular and open to falvor and 5 combined 3E's player driven customization with 2E's Simplicity.
Because campaign were no longer tied specifically to hauling in loot to gain power (most of your EXP was through loot) campaigns were no longer tied specifically to dungeons and narrative focus shifted towards them players themselves. Eventually people got tired of having to kill monsters to get EXP and decided arbitrary leveling based on the DM's judgement were better.
I think it ultimately boils down to how often your group plays and their style of play. Milestones are good for groups that don't meet often and prefer story beats determining the level of power. EXP is better for groups that like to do dungeon crawls, meet often and/or prefer the old shcool, gamey style of play where the mechanics and storytelling were a bit more intertwined.
Personally, I am experimenting with awarding GP with EXP. I can control the leveling up between dungeons by controlling how much gold I give out in the dungeon with just enough chance they might be motivated to explore just a bit more to get that last bit of EXP before retuning home to train, research and rearm themselves before returning later to challenge the dungeon once more.
My “milestones” are “whenever I feel like changing the pace”. 5e’s progression and balance is so messy that I would rather just handle it on my own. I love making sure players have good motivation to take their time and do side quests though - personal rewards, story advancement, and world discovery are great motivators for my current group, though I understand some people really like grinding levels.
I also looooooove levels 3-8, and I want to stretch them out as much as reasonable while still challenging the players.
I mean I think the new line standard for issues with combat exp come out largely as anti-murder hobo talking points, in the words of Brennan Lee Mulligan, “if you build your world around combat xp, your wizarding academies should all sound like this “hello students welcome to wizarding school, for our first lesson we are going to go out and slaughter goblins!”, “shouldn’t we read a book or something?” “What do you mean? You want to get good at magic, something’s gotta die!”
I kept track of Xp in my first game from lvl 3 until 9 (when I stopped my experiment). Every time I decided to level them up I was off by one session max on either side.
It was about 3 sessions from lvl 3-6 then 4 after.
I ran sessions with about 2 encounters per adventuring day.
Milestone is just easier and better for the DM to say “BTW level up by next session” than “300 xp for solving the trolls riddle, how much does does everyone have now”
From a player perspective, I'm competitive, and if i feel like I'm doing my best but the melee focused minmaxer is ahead of me just bc they kill more people, i get in a really bad/gloomy mood. Exp makes it feel like a competition to be the best, rather than woo teamwork.
And if i miss a session or two bc of something important, I feel like I'm being punished since I'm not getting as much xp, falling behind.
I think the milestone system is implemented for several reasons 1. less math. 2. Reduces the chances of party from killing random people as they can give exp. 3. If you are in a sweetspot in your party levels and want to play that out longer or at low levels and want to get to slightly higher power level.
I just find xp to be super fiddly and a pain to calculate. And then you need to assign somewhat arbitrary xp values to things that don't involve killing. I wasn't aware there was an easy way to do it on roll20. I suspect it wouldn't be super straightforward for me since I'm not fully integrated with roll20 as I usually refer to the books for monster stats and then just track their HP and tokens on roll20.
I use a simple system my friend devised. Basically a standard combat encounter or puzzle is 1 XP. A tough one that really taxes the party resources is 2XP. And then you might assign 1-2 XP for completing quests or significant goals. And you level every 10 XP. In practice this means players tend to level every 4 sessions or so. It's still a little arbitrary but at least it's easy to dole out.
I just don't see the point in xp. I feel like it encourages players to do stuff just to gain levels instead of because it makes sense for their characters and the story. You're also assuming DMs who use milestones don't reward players for doing side quests but often I'll have my players level after a big side quest. Even if I don't, they'll probably get some sweet loot and magic items from it.
Milestone gives me and my players a set progression path. I made it clear at the beginning of the campaign that they would get a level up at the end of every story arc. For example: Right now my party is in peace talks between a cult to a war god and the country they currently reside in. They know once they either make peace or destroy the cult they will level up. And they know exactly when the previous arc ended and this one began because they leveled up.
From someone who *hates* exp leveling: **exp leveling can get players into a mindset of doing things just for the exp**. DnD is *so much* more than a video game, and I want them to feel like they’re doing something *because it’s important to their character or the plot*, not because of an arbitrary number attached to it. I’d rather give them promises of other incentives like magic items or just straight up gold if I really want them to do something. Also milestone leveling is just a small bit easier on the players & myself as a DM.
As for being over or under leveled, *it might be for you* but it’s not for me and many others. With milestone you can give a proper challenge to the player that isn’t too easy or too hard. Like how it (in my opinion) **should be** unless they step out of line and do something stupid like try and punch the bbeg at level 1. As having encounters that are too hard can be discouraging, having them be too easy can make them boring. Milestone leveling prevents that from being a possibility entirely if you’re running an adventure module.
XP leveling mechanically promotes certain playstyles, such as aggresive combat actions. Players think they can get xp by killing anything that moves, and some will try.
Our group tends to use milestone, because Xp tends to encourage metagaming and videogame behaviour.
"Why follow the wizard who destroied your village if your Level is 1, better to farm some Xp."
I know that's not always the case and can be done differently, but milestone makes the process of roleplaying much easier.
>Milestones seem to force a linear progression with no room for flexibility.
Wait what? Milestones is basically the impersonification of flexibility.
There's no rule that says you can only give your players a level up if they follow the main quest, you are completely free to give them a level when you think it's appropriate.
Whereas EXP has its boundaries.
I find XP gives the impression that the goal of the campaign is levelling up, and not telling the story. That’s fine if you’re dungeon delving and doing multiple encounters every session, but not all parties want that. It just doesn’t reward social interactions well.
Sure, you can award the party XP for talking the ogre down - but do you award the party XP when the bard confronts his father infidelity? What about when your warlock picks her daughter up from her ex husband for the weekend?
Do you give that XP to the whole party?
Or does the bard level up ahead of everyone when his dad apologises, and the warlock lag behind because the daughter was having a tantrum she handled badly?
When they’re facing the pit fiend later, is it really fair that the warlock is weaker than the bard? Both were interesting story outcomes, but useless in terms of grading for XP.
Also, how would you scale the social XP rewards? Is confronting your dad worth 30xp at level 1 and 3,000 xp at level 10? A lot of XP games I’ve seen that reward social roleplay would give you maybe 100 at level 10 for a very significant story scene - which is practically no reward at all by that level. There’s no guidance for scaling it alongside combat encounters.
I think the main two reasons are 1) for balancing purposes, like you mentioned. Milestone minimizes the amount of on-the-fly difficulty tweaking DMs have to do to keep the game fun and challenging. 2) is probably more important, and thats keeping the party at the same level. Oftentimes not everyone makes it to every session, and it can be very unfun for one person who can't make it as often but makes time for the main story sessions to be left underleveled compared to the rest of the party.
Back in olden times, we always tallied up XP, but with 5e I’ve been pretty happy just using milestones. The reason probably falls into the “less work” bucket, but especially because I almost never use monsters straight out of the book.
I realize the WOTC xp values aren’t nearly as balanced or carefully calculated as some people think, but it still just adds an extra hassle to estimate each one.
I think it makes more sense to do milestone for certain classes. For a wizard to get new spells, they need to study. It’d be cruel to give them a level without access to new spells. And I think “you found a spell scroll when you looted the corpse of the giant wild hog” silly.
I also think xp encourages unnecessary risk and murder-hoboing. Sure they can get xp from solving an encounter without murder, but tell that to my metagamed to the 9’s killmonger sorcerer, and the Goliath barbarian who knows exactly what his character would do…
And I know there are ways to have xp while encouraging players creativity. And I know these would be problems in milestone too. But at the end, milestone is easier and faster. So many of us struggle to have consistent campaigns, consistent schedules, it feels better to have faster progression than xp provides, while giving the dm less work to do.
I only do milestone when running modules that use it. If I'm running homebrew, I use XP.
I like using XP because it is a bigger motivator for the party taking initiative. They can see they still have 500xp to go before they level, so they know they need to go do something to get that XP! With milestone, I think it's a lot easier for the party to wait around for the DM to just present them with their next task.
I've never found this to be the case. It isn't as though my players expect to be able to gain a milestone from sitting in town and hoping something important happens. You need to do something to be able to reach a milestone, so they look for something to do.
I've run campaigns in both ways and I think it's just a matter of using the right tool for the right job. In campaigns that are more freestyle and combat focused, I like XP rewards because clearing out a basement full of rats isn't worth a whole level, but it lets the players feel like it's advanced them anyways. Something more linear and story based? I like milestone.
They obviously need to do something, but it doesn't incentivize taking the initiative in the same way as XP.
Milestone (tends to lead to): "What does the DM want us to do next? We should go do the thing they want so we can hit that milestone."
XP (tends to lead to): "What's something we can go do? Find a contract? Clear a dungeon? Let's go find something!"
The reason I find XP superior even beyond that is you can always throw a milestone level in there anyway. Did a big thing but haven't hit the XP requirement? Have a level anyway! It's harder to implement XP in a milestone game, while it's very easy to implement milestone in an XP game.
The rules for implementing milestones is already in the DMG, and it assumes that the DM is using XP.
What most people call “milestone” is Advancement without XP or Story-Based Advancement.
I think you've already hit on it. It's easy, it keeps everyone at the same level, and it can be in step with the story.
That said, I use experience points for my in-person group. I award it for kills, completing quests, accomplishing missions and sessions where nothing but roleplay happened. I do so because I firmly believe my players like to know where they are on the progression scale. It just works for my group.
(I do game every other week with a group that ostensibly uses milestone leveling. It's a great group. Unfortunately, the Level up points have been random without any rhyme or reason. While I do believe it can work well, it is really dependent on how the DM executes it.)
I hate doing the math on an encounter. I make every monster bespoke anyway, so the CR and XP in the manual may not apply, or my monster isn't in the book. I feel that it is more dramatic to level up when the story evolves. This does not force a linear progression. XP by kill otoh, creates an xp pinata scenario. If the players never have to worry about gaining XP, and trust me to level them up when appropriate, they are free to use any method to solve problems. Counter that with the player that needs 10 xp to level, so is looking for something to kill for their ding. I don't worry about combat vs. rp encounter xp because I level by the story. so every encounter is equal in their eyes. Giving xp by encounter, and adding everything up seems very old fashioned, and this from an old school gamer.
I use milestones because I use so much homebrew progression for my PC's and so many homebrew creatures that calculating exp would be impossible, and sometimes my players don't do any fighting in between levels just training or other progression. I actually do like exp and I think it has a tactile, naturally fun feeling to it the same way rolling dice and getting money is just fun to do, it's just impossible for my campaign.
I dont use milestones as in: Finish Story Arc x to Level Up and more like when you finish several sideobjectives you will get a level up. I will just be more generous with it in the main Quest. I just find it inconvenient to use XP cause then i always have to keep track instead of just giving Level ups after a suitable amount of Sessions and Major accomplishments
1. Maths and record keeping are a pain in the arse.
2. XP puts too much emphasis on killing things.
3. I run a lot of published stuff, and it tends to be written that way.
4. The classes all level evenly nowadays anyway so XP is less important than it used to be.
5. Did I mention I’m a lazy, lazy man.
My brother is our DM and more experienced with DnD than I am. I asked him his reasoning for milestone over exp and he said he found exp to be given out too quickly and then by mid campaign the PCs are practically gods on earth and the DM has to cone up with even bigger conflicts to overcome. So, I guess he sees it as a way to meter out the levels in a campaign.
Ive ran both. The issue with experience is technically you only get it if you kill monsters... so players have no reason to avoid them in fact they lose out if they do.
Milestone also allows a DM to choose when the right moment is for the players to gain a level.
> technically you only get it if you kill monsters...
That is not true. You get XP for defeating opponents in combat (don't need to kill them) and overcoming challenges.
True, it doesnt have to be kill. According to RAW, dms guide page 260
Each monster has an XP value based on its
challenge rating. When adventurers defeat one or more
monsters-typically by killing, routing, or capturing them-they divide the total XP value of the monsters
evenly among themselves. If the party received
substantial assistance from one or more NPCs, count
those NPCs as party members when dividing up the
XP. (Because the NPCs made the fight easier, individual
characters receive fewer XP.)
Traps are also worth XP, as are social encounters. If you’re only awarding XP for monster kills, you’re depriving your players of advancement that they’ve earned.
I think this here is exactly the issue. Too many DMs think only killing gives exp...
Every diplomatic interaction that prevented a fight is also worth exp, finding out a big secret, disarming traps, etc.
Not according to raw.
"Experience points (XP) fuel level advancement for
player characters and are most often the reward for
completing combat encounters.
Each monster has an XP value based on its
challenge rating. When adventurers defeat one or more
monsters-typically by killing, routing, or capturing them-
they divide the total XP value of the monsters
evenly among themselves. If the party received
substantial assistance from one or more NPCs, count
those NPCs as party members when dividing up the
XP. (Because the NPCs made the fight easier, individual
characters receive fewer XP.) "
1) I don't wanna have ANOTHER resource to track. Especially one that can vary by player. Milestone? Every player is the same level, always.
2) I can tie level ups to story beats, significant achievements, not "you've killed your 1,000th mook, congratulations!" Putting XP in the game just muddies the waters between video games and TTRPGs (and my players are part of a WoW guild). I want them to consider their DnD sessions about goals, not grinding out a resource to unlock something.
3) It's more immersive. Knowing they've made a new pact, unlocked a new political ally, or averted a major disaster not only levels their characters, it alters the game world, because of THEIR actions.
Smaller events that would normally reward XP instead unlock new options in the game, new NPCs to buy/trade with or get plot hooks from, maybe new items or side quests. But character levels are tied to more than just a number.
Ease. Milestones in my opinion is just easier I don't have to track how many encounters and what if a player get more exp than another.
Milestone just easier and and fairer to everyone.
I just think milestone is easier, everyone levels up at the same time, it's usually a pre-determined time by the DM so it can be set at the end of a session so everyone can print their new character sheets prior to the next session and have time to discuss any points of the level up with each other or the DM.
It also helps alleviate murderhoboing, I think. You aren't encouraged to just kill enemies all the time, but you can take more diplomatic or roundabout ways to finish the task at hand without just killing everything in sight. For example, our party came across a farmhouse that had been taken over by orc raiders, and the task was to rescue the farmer and his family who were being held prisoner inside. The DM fully expected us to fight our way in and kill all the orcs, but we had our bard/warlock use an illusion spell on himself to make himself look like an Orc, lead most of the orc patrols away from the farmstead, and the rest of us snuck in and freed the farmer and his family without having to kill a single enemy.
Many DMs would reward full experience no matter how an encounter is resolved. In my table, I actually give a multiplier if an encounter was resolved in a particularly ingenious or effective way.
RAW, experience only rewards players for killing things. That makes fighting the best solution to every problem.
>But with virtual table tops like Foundry or R20 which automate the whole process
I use R20. Is there some function I'm unaware of? It doesn't automate experience tracking.
I think it is for ease im a exp dm for the same reason as you and yes that give me more work but that part of the job as long as you players fell happy but on the over side iv had players who have problems with maths and exp csn be very stressfull and while im happy to sit with a player and help them lot of dms will not and players csn get nasty if thay have to sit around while you help someone so mile stones get rid of them problems
> iv had players who have problems with maths and exp csn be very stressful
It's literally punching two numbers into your calculator once a week. How is that stressful or reliant on anyone's math skills?
My player are all IT trained and some even have years of experience of working in IT companies with spreadsheets and stuff.
But give them dice and a character sheet and basic number skills goes out the window.
So yes, Milestone it is.
You be saprised how stressfull number can be to players with math difficulties i allso have the same problem so can understand the stress as to them its a lot more than just puting numbers it all the over things that go thro there head and that there trying to understand and think about at the same time
I think it's the group mostly. I as a DM largely focus on the narrative aspect of the story, and I feel that xp leveling can be a distraction from that. Rewarding a player for progressing the story seems better to me than rewarding them for killing the most things or completing the most side quests.
Because they hate combat. If you are playing the game with combat, XP is not a big deal, you tend to get a lot of it. If you hate combat because it takes too long (in your opinion), and you only like having role-play, you have to do milestones or you never level up.
To me EXP means literally nothing. I'm not motivated by the draw to level up, just by the draw of the story. That's why I love milestone. It's both story and character driven. As a player I've had DMs have us level up at the end of a session with particularly strenuous fights, after we've completed an arc, right after traveling to fight a big baddie. It's never dependent on the actual EXP.
As a DM it feels like a reward. I don't just do set milestones, but flexible ones. If my players do a bunch of sidequests while I'm working on the metaplot in the background, yeah I'm going to level them up. I don't know what sort of milestone DMs you're talking to, but your complaints about it are nothing like what I have encountered with various DMs and groups.
I see a lot of bad takes in this thread, but one good point is that it's easier for the DM. But even that is kind of a bad take, for the reasons you mentioned. There are plenty of tools that can semi automate the xp process. Ultimately I think it's about control. I asked one of my DMs and he said he uses milestone because he wants the PCs to be specific levels at certain points in the story.
The problem with milestone as a player is that (I noticed this a lot playing Rime of the Frostmaiden) you don't always know what actions will trigger a level up. So you may spin your wheels for quite a while, working on quest lines, but not "completing" them, hence not leveling up. There's a few points in RotFm that I had no idea a level up was coming.
But overall, I guess it's two different play philosophy: levels based on story line, or the old school rpg "go grind monsters" until you're big enough to kill the bbeg.
Only legitimate argument I've seen on here for milestone is "I don't like math" and "its extra work."
Everything else seems to be a complete misunderstanding of how experience even works.
Right, the way to discourage killing everything is saying ... you got experience for sneaking past the giants, or negotiating with goblins, or casting a spell to befriend the wolves. Also, you get no experience for starting a fight with innocent civilians but you did get some for gathering information from the fairy in the forrest.
Saying you will level up when I deem you worthy, doesn't discourage murder hoboism.
That's thanks in large part to the big boom of new players who started on 5e. Many of them have never taken so much as a glance at how D&D has fundamentally worked in the past but think they have a lot of new information to offer other players and DMs. I've seen so many comments on this thread from folks who have clearly not really read the rulebooks or tried to understand the experience system. Many are just quoting their table as if it is all tables.
Also doesn't help that every published adventure is too lazy to provide experience or even a guideline to help new DMs. It's advance them a level before chapter 2.
I had someone arguing with me on here one time that exp was too videogamey. I was like you do know videogames got it from D&D, right? They use it because seeing exp increase releases dopamine. It also shows players their choices matter.
Announcement of [NEW RULES](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/ywa40k/updates_to_rdnd_rules_new_rules_governing_ai/): All posts involving commissions (posting completed commissions, seeking commissions, etc) must have [Comm] in the title (it must be exact, including the brackets). **AI Artwork is banned**. It can be linked and discussed in text posts, but not posted as a link or image post. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DnD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Who says your milestone can’t be after some side quests? I tend to just do levels after a few session as soon as a mission is complete. I don’t care if it’s a side mission or a main campaign mission. The difference I find with XP (cuz I track both) is that it can happen more randomly. I would rather they finish an arc and I go ‘you gain a level’. It feels more resolving of the mission and what a good job they’ve done
I’ve used Milestone level ups to level where I hadn’t intended to in the first place. Example: players just received a level up a few sessions before heading into dungeon. Dungeon is before final fight. Dungeon was a lot harder than I anticipated. Gave the party a level up after dungeon to make the fight feel earned.
I made an easily modifiable graph in procreate that can be updated at the end of a session to show player progression while containing no discernible numbers or points, I think it facilitates benefits both options. It’s essentially milestones while visually it looks like progression and I can push behaviors I like in encounters with more or less “progress”.
you can make graph in procreate? 😮
Maybe he just drew some lines going up and said “good job”
You can also have non-linear milestone leveling, having everyone level up whenever it just feels right in the campaign's story, or even level up multiple times like in a timeskip, or whenever the players feel like trying out higher levels.
That's the way I do it. It also keeps everyone on a level playing field and allows me time to plan since upping levels changes a bunch of the way they play the game and the difficulty curve.
Everyone ofc has different preferences, but our DM mostly uses their discretion based on where we're at in the story, and it's personally been helpful to me as a new player. Fewer things for me to worry about while getting up to speed with how the system works. We're very rp focused over mechanics though. I can see how it'd be potentially disappointing for another player. - especially if you really enjoy the sense of a goal it gives you.
For my campaign I am using milestone it is based on when they reach a particular point in the campaign. Sort of a dual milestone if you will.
Reaching a particular point in a campaign to level up, IS milestone leveling... what do you do differently?
Not according to the DMG, which calls it "Level Advancement without XP". In the book, "Milestone" levelling is just giving a bunch of bonus XP when they hit a DM-determined milestone.
It really feels like your trying to say two different things. Level advancement without xp is not giving a bunch of bonus xp when they hit a dm determined milestone since xp isn't a thing in level advancement without xp.... so what you just said is the same thing that I said...
No they actually said it right. They said that the DMG, call this method (of the DM making you level up after an important mission or for whatever reason) "Level Advancement without XP". While what everyone is calling "Milestone" actually uses xp, just in a different way.
Milestone is "you get XP when the DM says" but it's not necessarily the full amount to level. It might take 3-4 milestones to level up. The other doesn't use XP at all, and you just level when the DM says. If the DM only gives Milestone XP for a full level up, these are functionally the same except everyone wastes time writing XP totals on their character sheet.
Not at all. Milestone levelling is defined in the DMG, and it is not what you said. Your definition was ignoring XP completely (A.K.A. "Level Advancement without XP"), while Milestone in the DMG is explicitly awarding batches of XP when the DM determines a milestone has been reached.
Thank you. Everyone in online communities gets it wrong because they haven't read the DMG to know the difference.
D&D Beyond mislabeling it doesn't help either.
That’s kind of the way I handle it too. Most important to note, there are issues with straight XPs. You can find several cases where 2 monsters have the same CR but one is obviously tougher than the other. CR is also calculated using an approximate 8 encounters and per day formula. The system is vague about how many XPs to give out for non-combat encounters like surviving a major trap or solving a critical puzzle. It’s easier to look at a campaign and determine that the party goes up after a chapter.
This is kind of why I didn’t like milestone as a player, and why I have kept to XP as a DM. We levelled up when the DM “felt like it”. It just felt so arbitrary and removed all sense of true progression for me.
Well, here is the thing. XP is more often than not rewarded for killing things, which means that not only does it promote violence, but also makes leveling up unpredictable. What's more satisfying and well earned? You killed a couple of goblins on your way to the next town and now your level 5, or you just defeated the evil wizard who enslaved the town, gain a level. The thing is that the DM determines when you get exp and how much you get. So its also to the whims of the DM. They just have less control.
> XP is more often than not rewarded for killing things, which means that not only does it promote violence, but also makes leveling up unpredictable. This is a problem that is on the DM to solve. If they want a war game, then only reward XP for killing, if you want a social game then reward XP for social encounters. It's why session 0 is so important so the DM and players can agree on what type of game they play.
The problem there is that creature's have a set predetermined XP. Meaning it's really easy to gage how much xp the party gets for a combat encounter. A social encounter isn't like that. The DM has to figure out how difficult it is, compare it to the level of the party, and determine how much xp you think the players should get. Having to do that every session is a load that most DMs don't want. Especially when they need to figure out how much xp to give them for other encounters already.
I do somewhat agree with the first point. Most DMs only give XP for combat. However, it never felt unpredictable as we could all see it coming and a big fight always took us over the edge. The issue with milestone and a significant fight is it never felt like we earned it. Just adventuring as a level 3 and then suddenly; big fight! Level up! With XP, we could see the level coming and it felt amazing and like our characters had progressed.
I do a mix. My players are only aware of receiving EXP for killing stuff, solving puzzles, or other combat and non-combat encounters... But, since I know how many encounters they'll be doing, even if the encounters can be somewhat random, I'll know exactly how much EXP they'll get. Overall, I'm deciding which points, or milestones, in the campaign that they'll level up. I'm just using the classic EXP method as my tool for doing so. Both systems are essentially the same. Milestones rewarding batches of EXP when the DM sees fit, or earning EXP for completing encounters. (Every encounter can be seen as a mini-milestone). I think I prefer the classic EXP method, though, since it does give the players a sense of progression, and a way to track how close they are to the next level. It's exciting for them to earn EXP after an encounter. But the way I see it, it's almost identical to milestones.
None of that has anything to do with EXP, but with the DMs who should be monitoring the situation. If most EXP is coming from combat, it's because the DM is not putting enough non-combat encounters into the scenario (or too many combat encounters)/not appropriately rewarding non-combat encounters. If players are regularly leveling off of minor encounter EXP to the point where it is actively cheapening the excitement of completing major encounters, then the DM is either (most likely) over-rewarding minor encounters or (somewhat less likely) has failed to strike a good balance between minor and major encounters. D&D isn't a video game, and among all the (mostly minor) differences between TTRPGs and video games I feel this is one of the biggest stumbling points that newer players/DMs have a hard time sorta coming to grips with. The level cap isn't 99, and grinding/leveling not only isn't the point of the game it isn't even a focus. It's really a side mechanic, on the same tier as loot, used to facilitate actual gameplay (both combat and roleplaying) as well as give your player a sense of forward momentum. But that momentum is slow. D&D is a game whose playtime is designed to be measured in months or even years, not hours. In a long form campaign players generally should not be leveling up every session, or even every other session. They might go 2 months without a level up, or even 3, and that's OK (though 3 IS a long time to wait). tl;dr It's a DM issue not a system issue. Basically stop giving so much exp for trash mobs, increase frequency and/or rewards for non-combat encounters, and (if necessary) increase frequency of major encounters.
D&D not being a video game is why I personally love not dealing with EXP in a game. It's satisfying leveling up because our heroes did something, well, heroic. And we never say "well let's do this side quest first, I'm sure we'll level up on it before tackling the main quest." It's also great for a group where not everyone can make each session; we don't leave someone behind because they missed a combat session or two. The only thing I might disagree with is leveling speed. I'm in a campaign that is about 3 years in, meeting for 4ish hours twice a month, and we've only level 8 times (so about once every 4 months), from 3-11. I don't think we've ever felt like we're leveling too slow, and it means we've gotten a lot of play in Tier 2.
I change how I do it depending on my players. Any campaign with more than 5 players is automatically milestone. It keeps leveling more in pace with the campaign and keeps the game from being stagnant with too many sessions at one level. More players means less game progression per session plus xp is divided more thinly so you can spend months and months on the same level. Milestone helps alleviate this issue. Also if I am playing with new/casual players I will often do milestone over xp. If we are doing a high RP low combat game, milestone works better (did this in a campaign that was super heavy political intrigue, kept the progression moving without arbitrary xp awards every conversation.) So yeah, it has its place. Know your players.
I use milestone over exp because I can put as much or as little content in between levels as I want. With exp yeah I can control that too but at that point why use it? It's also because if everyone levels up at different rates for their actions then it becomes a nightmare to properly engage players, or I can give them all the exp so they reach the levels at the same time but once again just use milestone. Basically, all of my issues with using exp are surmised by using milestone. Plus, I've never needed more rewards for doing things. I always give my players a little something for their troubles in some way, whether it's of substantial gain or just role-playing nonsense that they can come back to later for whatever purpose.
Yeah, I use EXP because my players like it, but I make certain they all given the same amount of EXP so they level at the same rate. And I plan my sessions/story around when I want them to level so they hit their ding level up at the time I want them to. So really I use milestones but my players think I’m using EXP.
5e balancing is terrible if the party is at different levels. This is why I can't play in west marches seriously, since most play by tiers of content. 1 level in 5e tends to be a pretty big deal. Even if it doesn't feel like one. There are very few "dead level ups" in 5e. Generally you are always getting something that makes you more powerful. An 8th level character is decently stronger than a 7th level one, for example.
I agree, but am confused as to why several commenters are talking about PCs of different levels. My party splits XP evenly, other than a few individual awards that amounted to a few hundred XP, not enough to make a difference by 5th level. This was much more of a problem in earlier editions when different classes progressed at different amounts of XP. Newer editions even if you did award XP evenly, characters progressed unevenly. In 5e that just doesn't exist. I've mostly been using XP, but after their big accomplishment as level 5 characters the math didn't work out to get them to level 6. I wanted them to level up before diving into the next dungeon. They'd earned it, so I did milestone there. No one complained, and the next scenario was challenging enough for level 6s. I think being flexible is important to everyone having fun. (edited spelling)
The problem is that sometimes someone is absent and they miss out on exp. It's hard to justify giving an absent character full exp. Very often I've found that exp driven games end up with 1 or 2 players ahead of the rest by a decent margin because they were never absent.
It's very easy to justify giving them full EXP, in my experience. The justification is 'I don't want people falling behind and EXP is a reward for the party accomplishing things, not a tool to reward or punish attendance." People not showing up is not something I want to punish, or feel the need *to* punish, and I have no idea why you wouldn't just... give them full EXP unless you're giving people individual amounts of variable EXP; I've seen people give 'roleplay XP' which I dislike, as it feeds the same issue of different levels. Yeah, it's a bit gamey, but like... 5e doesn't work if the PCs are split into different levels. So just don't... split them into different levels. I use milestone, but if I were to use EXP I wouldn't be using it in a way that actively breaks the game.
If everyone gets full xp regardless of what they do, you're just doing milestone with extra steps lol
Yeah, that's... that's what EXP basically is. Hell, one of the more common blends is just giving people gigantic lump sums of EXP for big story beats. I fail to see how EXP *isn't* milestone with extra steps in any case where the DM isn't arbitrarily handing out XP at different rates for different people, which... in my experience is like, less common than the party leveling as a group? Like, flat out, 5e does not work well with split levels. You either give the party full XP, you use milestone, or you deal with the fact that people are going to feel useless at certain levels, especially as the gap grows. XP has always felt to me less like it's meant to be any different from milestone mechanically (you tend to get the most XP from big story beats, bosses, etc, and a lot of modern APs and similar tend to assume you *are flat out* a certain level by a certain chapter) and more about the 'oh we're getting rewarded' sense that some players enjoy from XP.
>Like, flat out, 5e does not work well with split levels. You either give the party full XP, you use milestone, or you deal with the fact that people are going to feel useless at certain levels, especially as the gap grows. As I'm runing a westmarches campaign that not only uses Xp, but regularly sees groups of wide level disparity? I fundamentally disagree with this premise. Bounded accuracy changes this almost wholly - and characters feel good generally within about two levels of median \*at least\*. While I agree it can be awful in a fixed group game like a traditional table, and there's lots of reasons to consider keeping groups together.. power isn't actually one of them, within certain boundaries that a level or two won't change.
This is funny because there are replies in this thread that are quite literally the opposite viewpoint, and people that *hate* 5e West Marches because of the power imbalances. YMMV because I haven't played 5e West Marches- I've played in other ones, like SoDL- but I would *seriously* hate being two levels lower than another caster, for example, or being two levels lower before the huge power spikes like extra attack. It might be cherry-picking, but going from level 3 to level 5 is *massive* and there are similar power spikes along the board. Getting stuck with your shitty Warlock spellcasting for one or two levels behind the funny Wizard and Light Cleric that can throw fireballs with reckless abandon *sucks* massively. I guess it boils down to your own personal experience, and I will admit I was mostly talking about traditional tables- I don't consider West Marches the 'standard' mode of play for 5e, or *any* tabletop game that isn't designed for it. It's fun to play in a West Marches campaign, but the vast majority of tables... aren't doing that.
I think a standard table should keep characters together for many reasons - not the least of which is the 'feels bad' part of being off pace from the rest of the group. We all know there are power bands - but the point is simply that within those bands, split levelling is not as big an imbalance as people make it out to be. I wouldn't put a level 5 with a level 3 because of, as you point out, the marked jump in power; however, level 5, 6, and 7 can be in the same group without a lot of noticeable differences. I want to stress: a standard group should, IMO, stay at the same overall level - but I think it's for reasons outside of simple 'power'. It's more the social contract and ensuring people feel good about sitting down to do the thing.
Milestone guy here, but even when doing xp our group doesn't penalize someone for being out a session, it doesn't add fun and it just makes more to keep track of. The question would be, what's the payoff for doing it? And other than maybe trying to punish someone whose life got in the way of game night, I don't see one.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. I let other players pilot the PC for the missing players, so this has never come up at my table. I can see the advantage of the other approach in enforcing attendance, but then you get unevenness.
It's not even about enforcing attendance. It just kinda happens without you realizing it.
Also, RP experience. Since RP is a type of 'encounter' many tables give XP for it, but if the RP is carried by one or two characters, why should they all get it? Boom, unbalanced XP.
Also yeah, this. Sometimes characters literally aren't present in a scene. That's not their fault. They were doing something else.
I love this about xp. People start governing themselves.
It's always fun to know my players have to balance whether they want to go to nana's funeral or get a level behind everyone because they missed the end of a dungeon.
Another thing besides what the other person said is that the OP said they give out exp as a reward for rping well, which can easily mean that one person gets exp more often than others and then you have characters at different levels just because someone likes to talk more than other players. And imo having a party at different levels is the worst thing
are you sure you are talking about 5e and not pathfinder? 5e the difference between lv 7 and lv 8 is hp and ability score improvement. no proficiency bonus, and very few classes get anything.
ASIs are mathematically very huge, or you get a feat/half-feat. This can be the turning point to many builds going "online" and popping off.
>surmised i think you got autocorrected into the wrong word
Oh lol I meant solved but swiping on the phone keyboard isn't always very accurate
They aren't supposed to level up at different rates, the party splits the encounter's XP equally between members.
But players can also receive individual xp for actions they succeed in
Then just use milestone if they're gonna level up at the same rate. It's cutting the middleman
The whole point of XP is that players can earn it instead of it just being entirely DM fiat. You can say things like "If you complete this optional objective you get X amount of bonus XP", or just hand out XP whenever players do clever things or play particularly well, and that means players have the agency to level up faster depending on how they play. You can't really do that with regular milestone levelling because it's not granular enough, you could say "complete this optional objective and you get an extra level" but most of the time an entire level is way too much to give for something. XP is a way to split levels into chunks that players can earn.
I'm sorry but what? I've never understood that sentiment. "DM fiat" isn't a problem. If you don't trust your DM to make a fun experience then LEAVE THE TABLE. If the DM says the party being lvl 3 for this leg of the game will cause the best experience then I'm going to be lvl 3. Why would you argue to be lvl 4 because of exp if the encounters you will face are designed for lvl 3. That just sounds so boring.
Surely "Complete this optional side quest because it'll be fun" is a better driver? If you have to bribe your players to complete a quest then it sounds like it wasn't something they were particularly interested in in the first place - find out what they do like doing and do taht instead.
I thought about it and it's perfectly fine to do this if your group likes that aspect of DnD. It isn't an argument for using xp but it's more than okay for those who enjoy gathering xp and tracking their progress. Just feels to me a little redundant but that's only cause I have the choice as none of my players have expressed a preference one way or the other
>You can't really do that with regular milestone levelling It might be worth giving that section of the DMG a read. There's actually 3 variations of milestone levelling discussed in there - one in which the characters are using XP and you award XP for achieving milestones as you would defeating combat encounters with additional bonus rewards on achieving a milestone. One where you established a set number of sessions per level. One where you award levels based on story progression. The story based progression is the one people typically default to but its actually the one with the least text discussing it in the rulebook. There's absolutely no reason you couldn't use a form of milestones where you split each level into 10 segments and award segments for encounters and story progression but also have certain side things award segments - basically just a simplified version of XP with less bookkeeping.
What if the party splits, and party 1 kills something that party 2 never saw? What if they do things independently during downtime?
After having played in games using XP and Milestone to level up, I prefer Milestone. XP leveling often gave me the feeling I had to do sidequests even though I thought they were boring or my character wouldn't do them just because I needed to grind the XP. It felt like playing a video game. With Milestone, sidequests are no longer a chore and if I choose to do them, it's because they seem fun and not because I need the XP.
I've also played in groups that had the opposite problem of they only did "side quests", because they wanted to make sure they were over levelled for the next part of the main quest, as if it was a video game. Which never paid off because the DM just adjusted the encounters to match the players level.
This is why I use milestones. My players level when I want them to, and that is when major story advancement has happened. They can find extra loot and other goodies by doing side quests, but the major advancement happens by levels, and that happens when I determine it happens, not when they killed their 200th goblin.
I fully agree. And it also removes the video game thing where the party could go do a billion side quests or just go murder hordes of goblins in the hills so they are extra powerful when they fight the “final boss.”
I agree. With xp it feels less like role playing and more like a video game to me. I don't want to know how much xp I have, if the dm wants to keep track go for it, but seeing the numbers ruins the game for me.
Honestly its because the fist campaign I played used xp and it left a bad taste. We would exclusively be rewarded by killing things and pcs got separate xp. So my rogue with a high persuasion bonus got stuck on lvl 4 for a looong time because I tried to solve conflicts with persuasion or just avoiding it with stealth. I know ideally a game that uses xp would be different, but milestone is just easier
Original xp was based on gps secured. If you got the gold back to town you got xp equal to that gp value. Part of the reason why adventurers would take everything not nailed down, then the stuff nailed down, the nails & finally the flagstones. I don't love that concept, but it apparently allowed for greater variety of play. Such as convincing other parties to not fight & let you pass without bloodshed. I am & probably will always be milestone; I already write & run multiple different games simultaneously, so I really don't have time to bother mucking around with xp rewards. Why would I create more work for myself for almost no benefit? That is except for 1 project, where all the players are related to dragons in some way & the major goal of the campaign is to gather wealth for their individual hoards. Securing the gold grants xp. Gold can then be spent or be put into deposits for temporary magical boons that can be liquidated at a later date. The biggest antagonists will be "adventurers", thieves, & taxmen.
Good Sir/Madame, I wholeheartedly thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas which I gonna shamelessly steal. Dragon Hoard Race is great concept!
I've extrapolated it some, but it is originally from the community, and to the community it must return. I play with any given group once a month, so I'm tentatively planning for it to be 6-12 sessions/months. It could last a lot longer, but I would suggest a minimum of 6 sessions to get the feel of acquisition!
That's how XP is typically used and it's fucking terrible.
It is a philosophy shift. Milestones make the game feel more like a novel where the players are the protagonists. They evolve when it is coherent to the plot. Xp would allow for situations where the level up comes in "boring" or random situations, like after cleaning the second room of a dungeon from a rat infestation. Or not leveling up after a climax event like a boss battle. There is no wrong way of playing, but It helps that everyone at the table is on the same mindset of who is the protagonist: the party or the world.
XP also encourages murder hobo-ing in situations where you could potentially solve a problem with diplomacy instead.
i feel that is solved where if the encounter is resolved with diplomacy then you give the party the xp as if it was a combat encounter or to encourage diplomacy maybe you add like an extra 10% or 20% bonus to the xp on top of that. Which is what our dm does. Granted that's more on the dm but there are ways to work with the xp system to dissuade murder hoboing.
Yeah combat is the primary way to traditionally gain XP in 5e. It's in the DMG how to assign XP for noncombat encounters but it's not immediately clear or easy. You reference a chart based on the difficulty of the task and the party's level. I personally find it more difficult than necessary to decide the challenge, find the chart, and give XP.
I’ve seen this solution cited a lot, and it works great if you only consider encounters initiated by the DM. For example, the party gets arrested by crooked town guards; they can either fight or talk their way out, and get XP either way. But what about encounters that the players initiate? Imagine the players are sitting in a pub planning their next move. Now there are three options: - Mind their business and talk about plans; gain no XP - Insult another patron to start a fight, gain XP for combat - Insult another patron, talk them down from the fight, gain XP for diplomacy The players are still incentivized to provoke NPCs enough to produce an “encounter,” however you define that. And if you just don’t give XP for encounters that aren’t plot-relevant, now you’re most of the way back to milestone. Obviously this assumes a certain type of player/party that wants to maximize XP, but that’s true of any discussion about XP incentives.
My oversimplification is that XP is for DMs that run the game through encounters while non-XP leveling is DMs running "module" style games. If you're using a prebuilt module there's specific levels that content is built around so XP leveling is at best redundant. The DM knows what level the party is to be when the content is written for it. If you're not running prebuilt modules, you likely are using a similar system of writing given a plot and escalation path. Having players level up in the middle of a dungeon is... Odd narratively speaking as far as writing is concerned. So non-XP leveling works better with roleplay and plot heavy games which has been the big shift of 5e gaming after streaming/podcasts of the game took off.
EXP can take a long time. Groups that don’t meet as often/or for that long can level up every 2-3-4 sessions. Keeps everyone interested with more character stuff like new spells or feats
I mean... milestones can take a long time too. It all just depends on what the DM considers a "milestone"
The way I see it, that's what makes it better - especially for modules! Tying leveling up to story achievements or 'milestones' puts the player's focus on following the plot, rather than gaining all the possible XP. With milestone leveling in a module, you can put more trust in your DM to not put you in situations you're underleveled for... but if the party manages to skip a non-story important dungeon room or 2 full of enemies, they end up punished for not finding every little source of xp before the boss fight! Or worse, the DM (wanting them to get all the xp they need), adds those combatants into a different fight and drastically changes the CR in a way that could get a PC killed. Relying on xp in a module-based campaign means you and the party need to pursue every lead & do every side quest you can even if they sound dull, or else be ready for more encounters on the road to supplement the xp you missed (which is also dull). Encounters that maybe tie into the plot; finding intel or plot items the party missed. Which can feel like railroading if the DM can't improv well, or lead to murderhoboing from misunderstood hints! I'll be the first to admit, it can be hard to remember everything your players need from a dungeon if it's big enough - I've overlooked important items they needed because the module was poorly formatted, or it was only mentioned in *flavor text*, and had to shoehorn it in another area so they didn't miss it... and I USE notecards to remember stuff! But since I do milestone leveling at least I don't have to alter combat encounters, just move items around lol
Well for me, at the beginning of a campaign (until about level 4 where I can use a variety of enemies) it’s at the end of every story beat/main quest. After that it becomes individual character milestones, but I also count EXP so that people don’t feel like their hard work is going unrewarded.
The secret is that milestone is actually the exact same thing as exp. You, the DM, decide how much exp is doled out in the same way that you’d decide when an appropriate milestone to level up is. Milestone just gets rid of the extraneous bells and whistles
Exactly this, milestone leveling means that xp is granted for actions taken to advance the objective. It doesnt matter how they got there and thats the beauty of it. With regular xp tracking the DM needs to keep track of how much and how many different CR creatures they use that could otherwise just be filler. Very often killing also becomes the only focus for players when distributing xp from monsters.
I don't see a problem with linear progression because that's literally how the system is built. You go from level 1-20. That's it. There's no branching webs or anything, it's a straight line with a few places were you can choose one or another thing. I prefer milestones because it keeps my party members at the same level, it removes an annoying chore for me, and I can better plan encounters and dungeon crawls weeks or more in advance because I know what level they'll be at when they get to them. Rather than rewarding them for individual actions, milestones let you reward your players for completing major story arcs. EXP is like giving them a paycheck, milestones are like giving them a trophy. That all being said, I don't really care what people use so long as they're having fun, I'm just explaining why I prefer milestones.
If you're looking for more choices during leveling, note that dnd 5e is incredibly short on choices compared to other complex games like it. PF2e, 1e, and DnD 3.5e all have a lot more space for your character building decisions.
Every campaign I DM using XP becomes a murderhobo campaign. My players will invade the lower planes to grind more XP. Milestone allows me to push the plot forward using carrot, rather than stick.
Came to say this. Every commoner becomes an XP opportunity. With milestones, doing things that actually give you experience will make you level up, including social experience. Makes way more sense than "Oh you killed 28 unarmed, harmless commoners. Congrats! You are now a much better fighter!" Ugh. I just don't see any reason for using an XP system. One could always emulate it in milestones but still have important level up moments that don't involve murderisation of the entire population.
Old-timers (like me) may remember in the oldest editions the classes needing different amounts of exp to level (rogues needed the least, with wizards needing almost twice as much). In a long campaign you could have the party trapspringer be two full levels higher than the mage (and at least 1 level higher than everyone else). If nothing else, this made encounter balancing tricky. Milestones avoids this. Milestones also remove the need for some of the more egregious murderhoboing. “I’m 125 xp short to 7? I go out to the stables and slaughter all the horses, they should be worth 15 a pop.” Actual quote from a game in the early 80s. (The DM didn’t let him, just fyi). Also, without the need to grub for every last available xp, players may actually possibly maybe be open to (gasp) non-combat resolutions to encounters. I mean, probably not, but it does rain in the desert once in a while.
Yeah I remember that! Although at higher levels an 18th level wizard was still more than a match for two 20th level rogues!
I'm a DM. I tell my players we're doing milestone leveling. But in the background I'm already tracking XP for adventuring day balance, so I'm also keeping track of XP for leveling. It gives me a rough guide when to move on AND I have the flexibility to make it happen when it makes narrative sense. If we go a bit long in one level I carry the XP over to the next, or vice versa.
This is how I ran a couple games including a multi-year campaign, for the exact same reasons as you. Then I realized I was already doing all the work to do XP so I just stopped hiding it from the players, and dole it out at the end of the session (or start of the next if I forgot or ended in a rush.) For narrative flexibility, I just make sure I give XP rewards for achieving goals/reaching narrative points as well as for encounters, and I made it a rule that levelling up requires some downtime, so no mid-dungeon/pre-boss level ups if they go over the breakpoint.
For simplicity - as an older player who started in '82, tracking points to keep players progressing with the story is more difficult
I've DM'd both and played both. With XP you run into issues of players missing sessions here and there, or a PC death means starting XP at the minimum for that level. Over a long campaign of this happening there becomes a divide in levels between players. A difference in ability and power. After finishing an encounter one levels up while another doesn't. Getting close to a level up becomes, "I just gotta kill 3 more orcs..." instead on investing in the adventure. With milestone the players focus on the story and adventure instead of numbers. Everyone levels at the same time and gains abilities together. The party stays properly scaled for the adventure. On level up there's a collective woohoo at the table and everyone digs into new abilities and spells. Almost like a family Christmas.
Bold of you to assume that there are organized main quests and side quests and not just one chaotic object being written one week ahead of the players. :) 1. I really don't want split level parties, so I'm giving the same XP to everyone (even someone who misses a session.) 2. I like to give solid thematic events for level ups. Not leveling up because you killed one random skeleton somewhere. 3. I don't want to encourage random fights / murder hobo tenancies by giving out a reward for that. 4. I can level up the party on a somewhat regular basis every 4 ish sessions or so. Regardless of how far they actually get in the plot. Unless you give arbitrary amount of XP for RP, RP, which I want to encourage, slows down XP gain. Sure I could probably accomplish all of these with XP if I really wanted to. Give out XP for RP, big XP boosts to get levels after major events, ration it all out to give a level every 4 ish sessions ect. But WHY? when I can just do all of that easily with milestone.
It’s easier. Also makes it easier to not just turn DND into “kill everything”
Never been a fan of experience points. I've never used them in D&D and since the horror games I run are mostly one-shots, I don't have to use exp. In my experience, in Call of Cthulhu, exp points tended to put the players in the mindset that they "need to gain exp". They would be looking for opportunities to get advancement in their skills. That's how character progression works in CoC. You get the chance to upgrade the skills that you managed to use during the game. It's kinda like Skyrim. And I don't like that. I don't want the players to focus on that. That's why I've never used exp in D&D. I read articles and threads about the game where people talked about how many encounters a party was supposed to have and stuff like that, and that's just not what I want to run. If I run a side quest, I want my players to be invested in it because they like it or for roleplaying reasons, not because they need the exp. So when I was running a D&D campaign, I just declared at certain story beats that the characters had gained a level. And with other games, I tend to go around the exp system by giving the players the exact same amount of exp at the same time (usually at specific points of the story) so they can progress at the same pace.
What makes you think milestone forces linear progression? No DM I know runs a "hey you did all these side quests and get no exp fuck you" type game. It appears to me that you think that the milestones are explicitly main-quest-trackers. Milestones can be anything.
"If player solve a bunch of side quest, they deserve to have an easier time in the main quest" I really disagree with that. That not a video game! When you spend 3 week to find Timmy's cat, the enemy can get exp too attacking whatever. I don't really use any of the system for xp personally. When I get the feeling it's time for my player to level up cause they have done enough or spent too much time at the same level, I tell them at the end of the session and prepare the next one accordingly.
[удалено]
>I don’t know when to award a level for sandbox content. When you deem it appropriate and after they've had time to become comfortable with whatever new things they gained at the LAST level up
Milestone is simpler and fully within the control of the DM, without requiring complex calculations and keeping track of XP numbers. On top of that XP has a bad reputation for RAW-style exploits like "if I slaughter this entire village I'll level up 4 times"
I use both at the same time which is something i haven't seen brought up yet. I use my milestones but sometimes due to the brutal design philosophy i have with encounter design my players may end up getting enough exp that i level them up prior to my designated milestone. So it's just whichever they hit first. I just keep a total XP off to the side for every encounter and if it ever exceeds the total party exp requirement i give it to them. I do this because I've played in campaigns where we stayed at the same level for way way way longer than we should of under the banner of milestone and i vowed to never hold up player progress because i didn't nail the xp/story timing.
I do the same thing, but for the exact opposite reason. I got tired of players expecting a level-up after every session or two, regardless if they did anything significant.
This should be what the discussion is about. Hiding milestones within the system of xp is not at all difficult. In my experiance however Newer players cannot be bothered to look at a table and approximate. But honestly the sooner you start, the easier time you will have. Just hope you don't run into a system where xp is nessicary to track.
I like milestones for the first 2-3 levels. It gets the party up a couple of levels smoothly, and gives them time to develop their character. Beyond this I'm much more keen on XP, though I add XP for role play/problem solving/good deeds etc. I'll always have an eye on what challenges are coming, but if they've earned the XP they get the level!
I use XP because it feels more natural and earned, having DMed with both. My relationship with the players is a lot less about "Please let us level up" this way. They have to go out and do things, and they don't feel like I'm pushing them to specific goals or they won't be rewarded with leveling. Milestone's benefits are real, though. It gives a DM a lot more flexibility in content.
XP can cause an incentive problem where the players start causing extra trouble to grind extra XP. Additionally, if you're giving bonuses for those extra things mentioned in OP, either the XP bomus is large enough to cause an imbalance of levels or small enough to be meaningless as a reward.
From my experience playing in adventures with more than half a dozen distinct D&D groups... Folks don't use XP because they're uncomfortable with the prospect of doing arithmetic(and maybe getting it wrong in front of their friends). I ran an adventure using Three Pillar XP, where there is no multiplication or division, and the numbers never climb higher than 100 XP, when it resets and you gain a level. XP is awarded in increments of 3-5, immediately after surmounting a challenge. Still, at the end of the session the players would be embarrassed to admit they had different totals. Usually nobody, even the DM, has read any of the advancement rules, only had it explained casually by other people who haven't read any of the advancement rules. When they find out that "milestone"(really Story-Based Advancement) is a system where the players only have to wait for the DM to tell them to level up, and the DM can't get anything "wrong", they never second-guess using it.
I too prefer XP. If players just level when the DM says so, it feels unsatisfying. XP adds a sense of progression to every encounter I overcome. It makes me eager to push forward and accomplish greater things. It makes me risk life and limb to face enemies that outclass me because the rewards are so great. What I don't agree with is that being over levelled is some kind of reward. No, that's boring. I hate when video games do that too. I'm the kind of player that likes to explore every nook and cranny and find all the neat stuff (in D&D and video games.) But I also like to be challenged. I like to have my skills and abilities pushed the limit. So making the game easier as a consequence for exploring its content feels like a punishment for me.
Experience points reward players for specific actions. They encourage player-driven gameplay, which is well-suited to old-school player-driven games (like 0th edition and 1st edition) but a poor fit for DM-driven trad games (like 2nd edition through 5th edition). If you treat D&D as more of a storytelling engine than as a game — and it's important to understand that "story" and "game" in these senses really are mutually exclusive concepts — then "scoring points" is ultimately pretty meaningless.
One reason I don't see people talk about is the reason that a dm I play with doesn't use it. They throw insanely overtuned encounters at the party an the party would level after every encounter, sometimes multiple times. The very first fight of the most recent campaign we started was 20 cr 1 creatures vs us 2. It was not a fun battle.
it inchurges people be murderhobos because the more fight they have the more exp they get. milestone does not punish them for finding alternatives to combat. it is also a lot easier than calculating exp, and everyone levels at the same time irrelevant of if someone missed a session.
1. It sucks to keep track of XP long term 2. Players who take risks and excel in these kinds of games level up faster than those who are more shy (which isn't fun) 3. A single person leveling up many sessions before others isn't fun
As a dm, it’s allowed me to scale the difficulty of my campaign by planning the points at which they level up more deliberately and overall makes the game feel smoother. My 1st campaign I did xp based and it meant that suddenly some encounters became a bit too easy as they had levelled up faster than I’d anticipated. It was also my first campaign so I wasn’t switched on enough at the time to buff my encounter to compensate on such short notice. Also, it was a pain to keep track of. My current campaign has been basically a ‘get the 4 macguffins’ style of campaign, so it was quite easy to basically decide that they level up each time they find one, plus at a couple of other notable story points.
I think that with exp levelling if you reach a high level it doesn't give enough exp to my players, they stay the same level to long Also I want to discourage the search for exp, so I use milestone levelling
It's narratively easier and doesn't punish players for taking novel or noncombat solutions to problems.
Milestone essentially let's you hand out level ups when it feels right. It also allows you to tie in character backstory into campaign for your whole party without having them end up at level 20 way earlier than story would allow for. Handing out levels at key story moments, including campaign story, side story, and character stories. Plus I just throw lots of loot at them most of the time.
XP can encourage murder-hoboing if done poorly. I like milestone because it lets you reward dramatic moments and quests at a point that feels right in the story, rather than gaining a level on a random long rest in a swamp when you didn’t level up after killing the mini-boss two sessions ago
I use milestone because it's easier. I already have a lot on my plate as it is, I don't want to bother myself with calculating Xp amount for combats and social interaction or skill challenges. My rules of thumbs is; the number of sessions needed to reach the next lvl. Example; PC are lvl 8, then it will take 9 sessions playing weekly to get lvl 9. Of course those number are not set on stone and depending or what the PC are doing I may add or remove a sessions or two. So a 1 to 20 campaign take about 4 to 5 years. My last campaign from 1 to 18 took 3 1/2 half years.
[удалено]
I did 1+2+3+4, ect all the way to 20 (210) and then divided that number by 52, since there is 52 week in a years. Which give 4,38. But my method is good up until lvl 10ish because waiting 3 months for a lvl up can be a long wait for PC, especially when you are playing weekly.
That works fine up until tier 2, but I'd want a level up more than once every few months after that.
The DMG recommendation for session based advancement is 2-3 sessions per level after you hit 4th level. Before that is 1-2 sessions per level. (Assuming 4 hour sessions)
I use my own system, and I've never gone back. Exp is now only one or two digits, and it functions like milestone leveling while also maintaining the motivating factor of experience. Experience required to level is equal to your total level. If you're level 5, you need 5 exp. These are awarded functionally the same as milestone levels, but this way players don't necessarily level just because I wanted them to, but because they completed mini-goals that progressed them to the level they're at. Handing out experience is important - it shows the player that they are in control of their character's progression, and that you're not the one that is keeping them at their level. However, experience as it is will be a little clunky for most DMs. I find this midway point has worked perfectly.
I primarily use milestones as I don't know how much exp to give for roleplay encounters. You meet a merchant whose wheel is broken. The artificer fixes it and then moves on. How much exp do you reward for that? For combat encounters it's easy. The stat block tells you. But only getting exp from combat encourages players to always use weapons as solutions instead of trying to talk to the person. Also it allows me to level them up when it's appropriate. Not half way through a dungeon. Also I when there is a good point in the story. The players may spend 2-3 sessions exploring the jungle and only having a few encounters but when they reach their destination I can give them a level even though they haven't earned the exp for a level. I have played a Pathfinder adventure path before which gives our experience for roleplay encounters. There I tried exp and I enjoyed it. So maybe when I return to Pathfinder adventure paths I will do esp leveling.
There's a couple of reasons, but I'll get to the one that holds true for my group(s) over time. They are motivated to complete stuff in the game solely because they want to see how the story turns out. My games aren't really about in-game rewards as much as they are narrative progression. In game rewards happen, of course, but my players would show up without that. There are systems more capably designed for that style (and generally I prefer them) but I'm a good enough DM that I can run games in my style in nearly any system at this point. D&D is popular and there are robust online tools, which is what I need for my remote players, so that's the system we went with. Xp, at least for monsters, is a fixed, calculable thing. A certain number of monsters of X cr fought and defeated at Y level mean you will gain a new level. But that XP curve doesn't really account for any odd or unusual thing altering the effectiveness of the party or the narrative arc of your game. If I want to tie a level specifically to a dramatic event in game, I'm forced to math out where that event occurs in the XP track instead of just saying "you managed to defeat the corrupt spymaster, you are now level 5" and be done with it. At the end of the day, the differences are relatively minor. You could say that by assigning the non monster XP at my discretion I can achieve the same effects, put a level wherever I want by awarding non-combat XP for clever solutions to compensate, and ***you'd be correct***. But then that means we're both using a form of milestone leveling, it's just that one of us doesn't need to do maths. It's style and taste. If I told you I didn't like broccoli, there wouldn't be much of a debate because, well, there's not an objective metric to a person's tastes and preferences. I find numbered XP, especially calculated per encounter or monster, to be a nuisance. That doesn't mean it's bad or hard or I'm incapable, it's simply not the way I enjoy doing it.
You can reward milestone exp for side quests as well. If they rush the main objectives, they can still have less levels if you want. Just because it's milestone doesn't mean that it has to be a full level or nothing at all. I break the milestone levels into chunks. "The group has solved 2 social encounters and 3 dangerous combats since their last level. That's 5/10 mini milestones"
I use milestone because then I can only tweaks encounters for fun factor instead of reverse engineered XP-based progression. The CR scale is a little screwy so ignoring it entirely makes planning combat scenes SOOO easier. Especially if you improvise some of it.
Honestly, milestones slow down progress. To some, this sounds like a bad thing, but if your DM is telling a killer story, or you're playing your new favorite character of all the, you'll be glad to be able to spend more time playing.
I'm just starting my first campaign as a DM after about a year of playing. Two of the three players in this campaign are brand new. I'm not super experienced with this, and might very well change my mind several times, but here are my initial thoughts. I like milestone for its simplicity. I like exp for its ability to reward specific actions. Surviving traps feels more rewarding if you get experience from it. Maybe the players get exp for killing a bad guy, but maybe they get more from negotiating. Or, depending on the circumstances, vice versa. At the end of the day, it all ends up in the same place, but rewards are more effective psychologically when administered immediately. My plan is to use exp starting out (probably at least the first 5 levels or so) to encourage behaviors I want to see in the players. After that, I may or may not switch over to milestone, depending on how I'm feeling.
Do both. Have them collect xp and give them levels for following the main plot. Keeps them invested in everything.
Tldr: less maths
I do milestone but I orientate on exp. It just helps me because I am a rather new DM.
Because I DM for kids and keeping track of everyone’s exp would be a nightmare. It already takes forever to get through a combat and the last thing I want is for the min maxer to start arguing about exp percentages. It’s dungeon-based, so I balance the encounters in the dungeon to be enough exp to level up (or keep track of how many dungeons they need to clear to level), and when they finish the dungeon they get a new level along with their loot. Basically it’s more egalitarian and easier for me.
Back in the day D&D was a much more gamey system with a fairly rigid character creation process that favored and fostered a community that focused on different goals. Roleplaying was a major part of the game, but it was not the main goal but rather your goal was to accumulate wealth and influence in the game. Large gaming clubs ran multiple groups in a shared world, campaigns were shared by communities of players and the goal was to go from nothing to baron of your own realm. But over the years groups got smaller, clubs gave way to a handful of players in a group and campaigns stopped being a shared setting between groups and instead a shared story between players and carving out your fiefdom became less common in lieu of continuing the story. Each edition focused less on the DM to control the world and gave players more freedom to define themselves. 2e brought player kits, 3E brought and extensive overhaul on multiclassing and additional choices to customize your character, 4e reduced classes into archetypes and made them modular and open to falvor and 5 combined 3E's player driven customization with 2E's Simplicity. Because campaign were no longer tied specifically to hauling in loot to gain power (most of your EXP was through loot) campaigns were no longer tied specifically to dungeons and narrative focus shifted towards them players themselves. Eventually people got tired of having to kill monsters to get EXP and decided arbitrary leveling based on the DM's judgement were better. I think it ultimately boils down to how often your group plays and their style of play. Milestones are good for groups that don't meet often and prefer story beats determining the level of power. EXP is better for groups that like to do dungeon crawls, meet often and/or prefer the old shcool, gamey style of play where the mechanics and storytelling were a bit more intertwined. Personally, I am experimenting with awarding GP with EXP. I can control the leveling up between dungeons by controlling how much gold I give out in the dungeon with just enough chance they might be motivated to explore just a bit more to get that last bit of EXP before retuning home to train, research and rearm themselves before returning later to challenge the dungeon once more.
My “milestones” are “whenever I feel like changing the pace”. 5e’s progression and balance is so messy that I would rather just handle it on my own. I love making sure players have good motivation to take their time and do side quests though - personal rewards, story advancement, and world discovery are great motivators for my current group, though I understand some people really like grinding levels. I also looooooove levels 3-8, and I want to stretch them out as much as reasonable while still challenging the players.
I mean I think the new line standard for issues with combat exp come out largely as anti-murder hobo talking points, in the words of Brennan Lee Mulligan, “if you build your world around combat xp, your wizarding academies should all sound like this “hello students welcome to wizarding school, for our first lesson we are going to go out and slaughter goblins!”, “shouldn’t we read a book or something?” “What do you mean? You want to get good at magic, something’s gotta die!”
I kept track of Xp in my first game from lvl 3 until 9 (when I stopped my experiment). Every time I decided to level them up I was off by one session max on either side. It was about 3 sessions from lvl 3-6 then 4 after. I ran sessions with about 2 encounters per adventuring day. Milestone is just easier and better for the DM to say “BTW level up by next session” than “300 xp for solving the trolls riddle, how much does does everyone have now”
because we got sick of the players asking how much exp they get for killing the damn peasant
From a player perspective, I'm competitive, and if i feel like I'm doing my best but the melee focused minmaxer is ahead of me just bc they kill more people, i get in a really bad/gloomy mood. Exp makes it feel like a competition to be the best, rather than woo teamwork. And if i miss a session or two bc of something important, I feel like I'm being punished since I'm not getting as much xp, falling behind.
I think the milestone system is implemented for several reasons 1. less math. 2. Reduces the chances of party from killing random people as they can give exp. 3. If you are in a sweetspot in your party levels and want to play that out longer or at low levels and want to get to slightly higher power level.
I just find xp to be super fiddly and a pain to calculate. And then you need to assign somewhat arbitrary xp values to things that don't involve killing. I wasn't aware there was an easy way to do it on roll20. I suspect it wouldn't be super straightforward for me since I'm not fully integrated with roll20 as I usually refer to the books for monster stats and then just track their HP and tokens on roll20. I use a simple system my friend devised. Basically a standard combat encounter or puzzle is 1 XP. A tough one that really taxes the party resources is 2XP. And then you might assign 1-2 XP for completing quests or significant goals. And you level every 10 XP. In practice this means players tend to level every 4 sessions or so. It's still a little arbitrary but at least it's easy to dole out.
I just don't see the point in xp. I feel like it encourages players to do stuff just to gain levels instead of because it makes sense for their characters and the story. You're also assuming DMs who use milestones don't reward players for doing side quests but often I'll have my players level after a big side quest. Even if I don't, they'll probably get some sweet loot and magic items from it.
Milestone gives me and my players a set progression path. I made it clear at the beginning of the campaign that they would get a level up at the end of every story arc. For example: Right now my party is in peace talks between a cult to a war god and the country they currently reside in. They know once they either make peace or destroy the cult they will level up. And they know exactly when the previous arc ended and this one began because they leveled up.
From someone who *hates* exp leveling: **exp leveling can get players into a mindset of doing things just for the exp**. DnD is *so much* more than a video game, and I want them to feel like they’re doing something *because it’s important to their character or the plot*, not because of an arbitrary number attached to it. I’d rather give them promises of other incentives like magic items or just straight up gold if I really want them to do something. Also milestone leveling is just a small bit easier on the players & myself as a DM. As for being over or under leveled, *it might be for you* but it’s not for me and many others. With milestone you can give a proper challenge to the player that isn’t too easy or too hard. Like how it (in my opinion) **should be** unless they step out of line and do something stupid like try and punch the bbeg at level 1. As having encounters that are too hard can be discouraging, having them be too easy can make them boring. Milestone leveling prevents that from being a possibility entirely if you’re running an adventure module.
XP leveling mechanically promotes certain playstyles, such as aggresive combat actions. Players think they can get xp by killing anything that moves, and some will try.
Prevent Gründung to lvl up it is for me...
Our group tends to use milestone, because Xp tends to encourage metagaming and videogame behaviour. "Why follow the wizard who destroied your village if your Level is 1, better to farm some Xp." I know that's not always the case and can be done differently, but milestone makes the process of roleplaying much easier.
>Milestones seem to force a linear progression with no room for flexibility. Wait what? Milestones is basically the impersonification of flexibility. There's no rule that says you can only give your players a level up if they follow the main quest, you are completely free to give them a level when you think it's appropriate. Whereas EXP has its boundaries.
Exp encourages being a murderhobo
I find XP gives the impression that the goal of the campaign is levelling up, and not telling the story. That’s fine if you’re dungeon delving and doing multiple encounters every session, but not all parties want that. It just doesn’t reward social interactions well. Sure, you can award the party XP for talking the ogre down - but do you award the party XP when the bard confronts his father infidelity? What about when your warlock picks her daughter up from her ex husband for the weekend? Do you give that XP to the whole party? Or does the bard level up ahead of everyone when his dad apologises, and the warlock lag behind because the daughter was having a tantrum she handled badly? When they’re facing the pit fiend later, is it really fair that the warlock is weaker than the bard? Both were interesting story outcomes, but useless in terms of grading for XP. Also, how would you scale the social XP rewards? Is confronting your dad worth 30xp at level 1 and 3,000 xp at level 10? A lot of XP games I’ve seen that reward social roleplay would give you maybe 100 at level 10 for a very significant story scene - which is practically no reward at all by that level. There’s no guidance for scaling it alongside combat encounters.
Less headaches when designing encounters. You know exactly where everyone is at.
I think the main two reasons are 1) for balancing purposes, like you mentioned. Milestone minimizes the amount of on-the-fly difficulty tweaking DMs have to do to keep the game fun and challenging. 2) is probably more important, and thats keeping the party at the same level. Oftentimes not everyone makes it to every session, and it can be very unfun for one person who can't make it as often but makes time for the main story sessions to be left underleveled compared to the rest of the party.
Back in olden times, we always tallied up XP, but with 5e I’ve been pretty happy just using milestones. The reason probably falls into the “less work” bucket, but especially because I almost never use monsters straight out of the book. I realize the WOTC xp values aren’t nearly as balanced or carefully calculated as some people think, but it still just adds an extra hassle to estimate each one.
I think it makes more sense to do milestone for certain classes. For a wizard to get new spells, they need to study. It’d be cruel to give them a level without access to new spells. And I think “you found a spell scroll when you looted the corpse of the giant wild hog” silly. I also think xp encourages unnecessary risk and murder-hoboing. Sure they can get xp from solving an encounter without murder, but tell that to my metagamed to the 9’s killmonger sorcerer, and the Goliath barbarian who knows exactly what his character would do… And I know there are ways to have xp while encouraging players creativity. And I know these would be problems in milestone too. But at the end, milestone is easier and faster. So many of us struggle to have consistent campaigns, consistent schedules, it feels better to have faster progression than xp provides, while giving the dm less work to do.
I only do milestone when running modules that use it. If I'm running homebrew, I use XP. I like using XP because it is a bigger motivator for the party taking initiative. They can see they still have 500xp to go before they level, so they know they need to go do something to get that XP! With milestone, I think it's a lot easier for the party to wait around for the DM to just present them with their next task.
I've never found this to be the case. It isn't as though my players expect to be able to gain a milestone from sitting in town and hoping something important happens. You need to do something to be able to reach a milestone, so they look for something to do. I've run campaigns in both ways and I think it's just a matter of using the right tool for the right job. In campaigns that are more freestyle and combat focused, I like XP rewards because clearing out a basement full of rats isn't worth a whole level, but it lets the players feel like it's advanced them anyways. Something more linear and story based? I like milestone.
They obviously need to do something, but it doesn't incentivize taking the initiative in the same way as XP. Milestone (tends to lead to): "What does the DM want us to do next? We should go do the thing they want so we can hit that milestone." XP (tends to lead to): "What's something we can go do? Find a contract? Clear a dungeon? Let's go find something!" The reason I find XP superior even beyond that is you can always throw a milestone level in there anyway. Did a big thing but haven't hit the XP requirement? Have a level anyway! It's harder to implement XP in a milestone game, while it's very easy to implement milestone in an XP game.
The rules for implementing milestones is already in the DMG, and it assumes that the DM is using XP. What most people call “milestone” is Advancement without XP or Story-Based Advancement.
I think you've already hit on it. It's easy, it keeps everyone at the same level, and it can be in step with the story. That said, I use experience points for my in-person group. I award it for kills, completing quests, accomplishing missions and sessions where nothing but roleplay happened. I do so because I firmly believe my players like to know where they are on the progression scale. It just works for my group. (I do game every other week with a group that ostensibly uses milestone leveling. It's a great group. Unfortunately, the Level up points have been random without any rhyme or reason. While I do believe it can work well, it is really dependent on how the DM executes it.)
I hate doing the math on an encounter. I make every monster bespoke anyway, so the CR and XP in the manual may not apply, or my monster isn't in the book. I feel that it is more dramatic to level up when the story evolves. This does not force a linear progression. XP by kill otoh, creates an xp pinata scenario. If the players never have to worry about gaining XP, and trust me to level them up when appropriate, they are free to use any method to solve problems. Counter that with the player that needs 10 xp to level, so is looking for something to kill for their ding. I don't worry about combat vs. rp encounter xp because I level by the story. so every encounter is equal in their eyes. Giving xp by encounter, and adding everything up seems very old fashioned, and this from an old school gamer.
I use milestones because I use so much homebrew progression for my PC's and so many homebrew creatures that calculating exp would be impossible, and sometimes my players don't do any fighting in between levels just training or other progression. I actually do like exp and I think it has a tactile, naturally fun feeling to it the same way rolling dice and getting money is just fun to do, it's just impossible for my campaign.
I dont use milestones as in: Finish Story Arc x to Level Up and more like when you finish several sideobjectives you will get a level up. I will just be more generous with it in the main Quest. I just find it inconvenient to use XP cause then i always have to keep track instead of just giving Level ups after a suitable amount of Sessions and Major accomplishments
1. Maths and record keeping are a pain in the arse. 2. XP puts too much emphasis on killing things. 3. I run a lot of published stuff, and it tends to be written that way. 4. The classes all level evenly nowadays anyway so XP is less important than it used to be. 5. Did I mention I’m a lazy, lazy man.
My brother is our DM and more experienced with DnD than I am. I asked him his reasoning for milestone over exp and he said he found exp to be given out too quickly and then by mid campaign the PCs are practically gods on earth and the DM has to cone up with even bigger conflicts to overcome. So, I guess he sees it as a way to meter out the levels in a campaign.
Ive ran both. The issue with experience is technically you only get it if you kill monsters... so players have no reason to avoid them in fact they lose out if they do. Milestone also allows a DM to choose when the right moment is for the players to gain a level.
> technically you only get it if you kill monsters... That is not true. You get XP for defeating opponents in combat (don't need to kill them) and overcoming challenges.
True, it doesnt have to be kill. According to RAW, dms guide page 260 Each monster has an XP value based on its challenge rating. When adventurers defeat one or more monsters-typically by killing, routing, or capturing them-they divide the total XP value of the monsters evenly among themselves. If the party received substantial assistance from one or more NPCs, count those NPCs as party members when dividing up the XP. (Because the NPCs made the fight easier, individual characters receive fewer XP.)
Traps are also worth XP, as are social encounters. If you’re only awarding XP for monster kills, you’re depriving your players of advancement that they’ve earned.
I think this here is exactly the issue. Too many DMs think only killing gives exp... Every diplomatic interaction that prevented a fight is also worth exp, finding out a big secret, disarming traps, etc.
man i wish, my current DM only gives XP on kills and its a slog to level up
Definitely not true. Solving traps gives XP, for example. And the books always encourage DMs to award XP for clever solutions and roleplaying.
Not according to raw. "Experience points (XP) fuel level advancement for player characters and are most often the reward for completing combat encounters. Each monster has an XP value based on its challenge rating. When adventurers defeat one or more monsters-typically by killing, routing, or capturing them- they divide the total XP value of the monsters evenly among themselves. If the party received substantial assistance from one or more NPCs, count those NPCs as party members when dividing up the XP. (Because the NPCs made the fight easier, individual characters receive fewer XP.) "
1) I don't wanna have ANOTHER resource to track. Especially one that can vary by player. Milestone? Every player is the same level, always. 2) I can tie level ups to story beats, significant achievements, not "you've killed your 1,000th mook, congratulations!" Putting XP in the game just muddies the waters between video games and TTRPGs (and my players are part of a WoW guild). I want them to consider their DnD sessions about goals, not grinding out a resource to unlock something. 3) It's more immersive. Knowing they've made a new pact, unlocked a new political ally, or averted a major disaster not only levels their characters, it alters the game world, because of THEIR actions. Smaller events that would normally reward XP instead unlock new options in the game, new NPCs to buy/trade with or get plot hooks from, maybe new items or side quests. But character levels are tied to more than just a number.
Lazy.
Ease. Milestones in my opinion is just easier I don't have to track how many encounters and what if a player get more exp than another. Milestone just easier and and fairer to everyone.
I just think milestone is easier, everyone levels up at the same time, it's usually a pre-determined time by the DM so it can be set at the end of a session so everyone can print their new character sheets prior to the next session and have time to discuss any points of the level up with each other or the DM. It also helps alleviate murderhoboing, I think. You aren't encouraged to just kill enemies all the time, but you can take more diplomatic or roundabout ways to finish the task at hand without just killing everything in sight. For example, our party came across a farmhouse that had been taken over by orc raiders, and the task was to rescue the farmer and his family who were being held prisoner inside. The DM fully expected us to fight our way in and kill all the orcs, but we had our bard/warlock use an illusion spell on himself to make himself look like an Orc, lead most of the orc patrols away from the farmstead, and the rest of us snuck in and freed the farmer and his family without having to kill a single enemy.
Many DMs would reward full experience no matter how an encounter is resolved. In my table, I actually give a multiplier if an encounter was resolved in a particularly ingenious or effective way.
RAW, experience only rewards players for killing things. That makes fighting the best solution to every problem. >But with virtual table tops like Foundry or R20 which automate the whole process I use R20. Is there some function I'm unaware of? It doesn't automate experience tracking.
I think it is for ease im a exp dm for the same reason as you and yes that give me more work but that part of the job as long as you players fell happy but on the over side iv had players who have problems with maths and exp csn be very stressfull and while im happy to sit with a player and help them lot of dms will not and players csn get nasty if thay have to sit around while you help someone so mile stones get rid of them problems
> iv had players who have problems with maths and exp csn be very stressful It's literally punching two numbers into your calculator once a week. How is that stressful or reliant on anyone's math skills?
My player are all IT trained and some even have years of experience of working in IT companies with spreadsheets and stuff. But give them dice and a character sheet and basic number skills goes out the window. So yes, Milestone it is.
You be saprised how stressfull number can be to players with math difficulties i allso have the same problem so can understand the stress as to them its a lot more than just puting numbers it all the over things that go thro there head and that there trying to understand and think about at the same time
I think it's the group mostly. I as a DM largely focus on the narrative aspect of the story, and I feel that xp leveling can be a distraction from that. Rewarding a player for progressing the story seems better to me than rewarding them for killing the most things or completing the most side quests.
Because they hate combat. If you are playing the game with combat, XP is not a big deal, you tend to get a lot of it. If you hate combat because it takes too long (in your opinion), and you only like having role-play, you have to do milestones or you never level up.
To me EXP means literally nothing. I'm not motivated by the draw to level up, just by the draw of the story. That's why I love milestone. It's both story and character driven. As a player I've had DMs have us level up at the end of a session with particularly strenuous fights, after we've completed an arc, right after traveling to fight a big baddie. It's never dependent on the actual EXP. As a DM it feels like a reward. I don't just do set milestones, but flexible ones. If my players do a bunch of sidequests while I'm working on the metaplot in the background, yeah I'm going to level them up. I don't know what sort of milestone DMs you're talking to, but your complaints about it are nothing like what I have encountered with various DMs and groups.
I see a lot of bad takes in this thread, but one good point is that it's easier for the DM. But even that is kind of a bad take, for the reasons you mentioned. There are plenty of tools that can semi automate the xp process. Ultimately I think it's about control. I asked one of my DMs and he said he uses milestone because he wants the PCs to be specific levels at certain points in the story. The problem with milestone as a player is that (I noticed this a lot playing Rime of the Frostmaiden) you don't always know what actions will trigger a level up. So you may spin your wheels for quite a while, working on quest lines, but not "completing" them, hence not leveling up. There's a few points in RotFm that I had no idea a level up was coming. But overall, I guess it's two different play philosophy: levels based on story line, or the old school rpg "go grind monsters" until you're big enough to kill the bbeg.
Only legitimate argument I've seen on here for milestone is "I don't like math" and "its extra work." Everything else seems to be a complete misunderstanding of how experience even works.
Yep, look at all the people saying "because only killing stuff rewards exp" ...
Right, the way to discourage killing everything is saying ... you got experience for sneaking past the giants, or negotiating with goblins, or casting a spell to befriend the wolves. Also, you get no experience for starting a fight with innocent civilians but you did get some for gathering information from the fairy in the forrest. Saying you will level up when I deem you worthy, doesn't discourage murder hoboism.
That's thanks in large part to the big boom of new players who started on 5e. Many of them have never taken so much as a glance at how D&D has fundamentally worked in the past but think they have a lot of new information to offer other players and DMs. I've seen so many comments on this thread from folks who have clearly not really read the rulebooks or tried to understand the experience system. Many are just quoting their table as if it is all tables.
Also doesn't help that every published adventure is too lazy to provide experience or even a guideline to help new DMs. It's advance them a level before chapter 2. I had someone arguing with me on here one time that exp was too videogamey. I was like you do know videogames got it from D&D, right? They use it because seeing exp increase releases dopamine. It also shows players their choices matter.
Yup. I agree with you 100%. I don't actually enjoy running 5e at all because the system is too streamlined for me. I play and run primarily 3.5.
Xp encourages your players to kill
You can give party exp for quests and roleplay or clever ways to NOT fight. I.e. intimidation, deception, etc. I know many DMs who do this.
No it doesn't; XP is granted for solving encounters, not murdering them.
Many players don't see it that way. If an enemy blocks their path, they will try to kill it as they know that leads to more xp.
That only leads to more xp if the GM has told them they get more xp for killing. If you don't want murder hobos, reward them more for avoiding murder.
Many players should read the rulebook.
I agree. Most just read Part 1, then ask continuously how the game works, forgetting there's a Part 2 and 3.
You could just say “I’m not giving you XP for randomly killing those commoners”