Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jwraper Aug 18, 2014 10:39:36	I am running Horde of the Dragon Queen for D&D encounters at my FLGS.  I noticed that the adventure states that the heroes should earn no more than 300 XP for the first episode.  Is this a mandatory rule for the Adventure League?  Reviewing the missions, it seems very possible they could easily earn more than 300 XP.  I understand that I could try to manipulate the encounters so that only 300 XP is possible, but that seems like an unnecessary pain in the ass.   I guess what I want to know is if I can award more than the 300 XP during the first episode of this adventure.  If I can't, I expect to have several disgruntled players accusing me of cheating them out of XP...
#2 Amagoran Aug 18, 2014 13:03:59	I actually just posted about this last night and got a pretty good response. Basically, the XP limit allows players to miss a session or two, which is how Encounters is designed. I think explaining it like that at the start of the sessions (and letting them level up when they hit it and keep gold) will probably handle the situation.   Here's a link to my post, with the response.
#3 DocSun Aug 18, 2014 13:09:41	The general consensus is  that the idea is that since this is a weekly thing that players can not always make it is ment to be a way to make sure people dont get too far ahead or left behind if they have to miss a day.   What most DMs seem to be doing as well is being upfront to their players about that fact and then asking if they want to just have a flat or reduced exp gain, a one time reward for the episode, or if they just are willing to play to the cap and then just enjoy the story and the other rewards such as favor/renown/Gold/MagicItems.
#4 WelkerJ Aug 21, 2014 7:54:21	I would like an official response from an Adventurers League administrator.  I have players that show up every week and have expressed that they feel penalized.
#5 Dooflegna Aug 21, 2014 8:22:54	WelkerJ wrote:
#6 shivafang Aug 21, 2014 12:22:53	WelkerJ wrote:
(Reply to #4) TheBreen	WelkerJ wrote:
#8 JoeVelociraptor Aug 22, 2014 8:16:53	Yeah, one of our tables hit 268 XP/player in the first week, even dividing everything by 4.  Mine only got to 187 XP/player, but they'll easily hit 300 by week 2 (of the 6 weeks we're planning for episode 1).  We talked about just giving 50 XP/session, and using Inspiration as the "extra reward" for anything else, but that only goes so far.   I can also see this getting problematic once D&D Expeditions gets going, as the intent seems to be that you can take the same character, as long as they're within the level limits, to do that as well, then come back & keep playing them in Encounters.  If you're limited to 300 XP for the first chapter of Encounters, but can get more XP over in Expeditions, you'll end up being better (and potentially having more magic items) than everyone who just shows up for their weekly Encounters game.
#9 JoeVelociraptor Aug 22, 2014 8:26:02	There's also a kid coming in next week to one of our tables who has a level 3 character, totally legal, because she went to Gen Con.  It's going to be hard to manage a balanced feel at the table with everyone else at level 1 for the next 4-5 weeks, hoping they don't get killed by a kobold arrow while she steals the show.
#10 jwraper Aug 22, 2014 10:27:14	Well, there's also something I did not take into account.  This entire episode takes place between 9pm-6am.  According to the rules, a character can only level up after a Long Rest or the end of an Episode.  Due to the constant chaos happening in town, it is not possible to take a long rest.  We also came to a consensus that Encounters adventures were designed to level up at a slower pace and to provide those players who missed a session or two two have an opportunity to catch up on XP with the rest of the group.  In our group's case, this is what happened.  One of our gamers left to take care of a family emergency.  The rest of the party maxed out their XP but didn't finish the episode.  We will almost certainly finish up the Episode by next week and that player who couldn't make the last session will likely earn enough XP to hit the 300 xp cap as well.    I did get some negative feedback about how it didn't bother them that couldn't level up until the end of the Episode but it did bother them that any XP they earned wouldn't carry over into their character's 2nd level.
(Reply to #7) jwraper	TheBreen wrote:
#12 TheBreen Aug 22, 2014 10:50:57	The biggest problem I see with the XP cap is home play. The published Horde of the Dragon Queen adventure does not include an XP cap per part, although it does include the text, "If you are using the milestone experience rule, the characters reach 2nd level at the end of this episode."   Since it's perfectly legal to run the published adventure at home, we could have some characters with 500* xp at the end of the first episode, while those who play at game stores are capped at 300 xp. Home players are unlikely to have any idea about xp caps until they take their characters to a game day or convention. Then what?   [Edit: Ahhh, ninja!]
#13 shivafang Aug 22, 2014 10:51:19	jwraper wrote:
#14 Skerrit Aug 22, 2014 15:06:23	shivafang wrote:
#15 pedro2112 Aug 25, 2014 21:41:09	jwraper wrote:
#16 cave2626 Aug 26, 2014 5:28:06	We’ve had an interested twist on this problem at our FLGS. The PCs at my table all hit the 300 XP cap by the end of week 2. I’ve told them the episode will likely run another 1-2 weeks but they won’t earn any additional XP. So one player decided to change PCs for the remainder of the episode. He already knows that his first PC has earned the appropriate XP to level up at the end of episode 1. Rather than lose any additional XP rewards he’s bringing a new PC to the table to get the overflow XP his first character was ineligible to receive.   Personally I don’t think this is in the spirit of how the program was intended to run, but there’s nothing that explicitly states that he can’t do this. In fact many of the players like this idea and plan to do the same thing.   The other argument is that any PC who’s hit 300 XP should be able to level up immediately and finish the episode as level 2. They won’t earn any more XP but they will get to play as level 2. The text says PCs can level up at after a long rest OR at the end of a session. My instinct was to say no, but it is stated in the adventure that this is how it’s supposed to work.   Thoughts?
#17 dragonfather Sep 07, 2014 23:23:12	I really don't understand why there NEEDS to be an XP cap for the adventure episodes. I figured the catch up clause for level 4 to 5 and 8 to 9 was intended to allow people who fell behind because of missed session or players skipping content sneakily to catch up to the appropriate level. Setting an XP cap doesn't make it more freeform, it's just angering players who can consistently make it every week to flesh out the group by forcing them to not gain any rewards for their efforts and their time. Or you get the situation like cave2626 mentioned, where since it's AL, the players can just swap out characters per session to avoid the no xp limitation and now all the rule has done is create a volatile party comp, moreso than the usual 1 or 2 missing players each session. Players don't like sitting around helping the guys who missed 3 sessions catch up because you threw extra fights into the adventure by design just for them while the dedicated players get shafted or have to play a different character. My adventuring group had the same problem of hitting 300xp in the first two sessions, with another 3-4 to go and everyone was sitting there looking at the episode material and saying... hey we literally get no gold or magic items from the entire episode and it's just a bunch more kobold and cultist fights, can we skip to the end duel fight and handwave this crap so we can move on to the next episode? This is boring killing wave after wave of kobolds and getting nothing out of it except a random chance someone might get double crit and die because we are all level 1.   I mean, no offense, but if you want to combat the whole 80% of players never make it past level 3 (or was it 5?) thing, making it so your first published dnd 5E AL adventure has the level 1 episode be a gigantic 20 combat slogfest with no long rests is not the way to go about doing it.
#18 Oraibi Sep 08, 2014 1:26:04	cave2626 wrote:
#19 Gerlof101 Sep 12, 2014 11:23:00	Well, at our local FLGS we had three tables (1 DM and 6 PC's) running episode one at the same time, having sessions of 3 hours. Our party was the first to finish in two sessions. Thing is, when we did the first session we did 'Seek the keep', 'The old tunnel', 'Sanctuary' and 'Prisoners' and ended with 230 xp each (without the xp for 'Prisoners', DM had to calculate it). Then we had our second session with two new players, we did 'Save the mill', 'Dragon attack' and 'Half-Dragon champion' and the new players got 165 xp, but we, the players who had been there in the first session (including the paladin who faced Langdedros, survived for 6 rounds and did 24 damage, before being slain) only got 70 xp.  And that stung and felt a bit unfair.   As I understand it ; entry criteria for the HotDQ storyline with episode 1 'Greenest in Flames' are player charakters of level 1 or 2 (since players can level in expedition adventures beforehand). Also considering that when you play through the entire episode your charakter will likely not reach level 3 (our party did reasonably well, but we only scored 395 xp in total) it seems unneccesary to have an xp-cap for the episode. Better, in my opinion, would have been a level-cap for the start of each episode with the option for players not to level their charakters at the end of an episode if that would take their charakters above the level-cap for the following episode. That would have had a much better 'feel' to it and we, the players, would have felt less cheated out of our hard-earned xp.