Hoard of the Dragon Queen Spoilers
Player enters the room where all the bats go insane making it so you can't see more than 5 feet in front of you, in the dragon cultist cave (part 3). Player runs up, Arms of Hadars the bats in a 10' diameter from the player, probably wiping out 300 or so bats since they are so dense. Bats are rated 10 EXP a piece. 300 x 10 = 3,000. Player nets 3k EXP in one maneuver after passing Concentration check, DM laughs, puts head down in slight defeat, rewards player for good time and chuckle, then says CR 0 creatures will net 0 EXP from now on. Anyone else have similar stories?
It's not a video game. You reward for the challenge. You're not required to be a martinet, particularly with 5e.
Reward experience after you know what the experience was - easy, moderate, etc.
This sort of goes with the 'I set the forest on fire...how much XP do I get?'
I don't get whether you really think it goes that way or the GM didn't know at the time and just let it pass for a laugh, but figured latter it's not on the cards as much as the forest fire isn't.
Creatures are just a description until you as GM decide to use stats.
The player doesn't decide that, the GM does. If as GM a player manages to fasttalk you into thinking they decide, you've made a mistake.
Not exactly the same...
Running a custom dungeon for my group, and the super high strength fighter has been frustrated time and again by his inability to pass a STR check to kick open doors. Note: these days, with a bit more experience DMing, I'd allow it on a fail but penalise him for time taken to do so.
Anyway, he's been getting a bit annoyed. So in this one room he fails to kick open the door and, in frustration, flips a nearby table over... revealing a goblin cowering underneath. I put it in to try and relieve tension and it led to the fighter using their high strength to kick barrels against walls (they smashed open to reveal an unconscious, hiding goblin), punch drapes (and the goblin pressed flat against the wall behind them), and topple a bookcase (crushing the goblin that was trying to read a Houdini style book).
This was back in the play test. We had such fun in the end that we salvaged the session for the player and I awarded xp anyway so the characters could level up, despite the goblin kills being automatic and no real challenge to the characters.
To get the rules correction out of the way
- You don't get XP for shooting fish in a barrel. Or for killing non-threatening bats flying around you.
- If they were rabid bats attacking, even tiny creatures are assumed to occupy a 2.5 by 2.5 ft square. At 4 bats per square, that's 60 bats not 300. Make that 64 if they are in his square.
- If they were packed tighter (and an actual threat, not just scenery), it would be multiple swarms of bats.
My own story ...
We once sank a small fleet of enemy ships using a magic door. The DM probably regretted it, but he had given us a door that we could place on any wall and open the door to get to the other side (similar to the old passwall spell). Anyway, we had a lot of fun with the door until one day our home port city was being invaded by a fleet of marauding orcish pirates. So we swam out into the harbor and used the door on one ship after another, opening a door sized hole in their hull causing them to sink.
He did rule that while we had single-handedly taken out the fleet, the last (and biggest) shiip had gone down so quickly that it took the door with it.
That, and at the next full moon we had to deal with a small army of zombie pirates. We all decided we probably deserved it for ruining his plot arc.
I mainly let if happen for craps and laughs, mainly because the two Barbarians earlier in the module had their time to shine, killing high level enemies solo, so I figured, eh, what the hay, let the Warlock kill a billion bats and net a bunch of EXP just this once.
Slit518 wrote:
Scruffy68 wrote:
I can't believe people are advocating common sense.
Mistwell wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
Slit518 wrote:
If the character was completely surrounded by bats (hopefully with no other PCs in the radius since they'd also take damage), I'd treat it as 13 bat swarms, so 650 xp if that one spell actually managed to deal 22 damage to each swarm.
Slit518 wrote:
Luke Skywalker destroys the Deathstars, killing more one thousands of stormstroopers.
Mulan causes an avalanche againts againts the Hunns army.
Mowgli, from "The book of Jungle" causes a stampede of buffalos killing the tiger Sher-Khan.
Chulthu wakes up, but a ship crushes againts him.
The bridge is a trap to electrocute all the living deads.
The pirates attacks the heroes, and theses create a bombs with fresh flesh, and the smell attacks the beasts who will attack the evil pirates.
The villains assalt the stronghold, and they discover the heroes have gone, but with a little present, a bomb.
The horde of zombis pursuer a runner, and they go to a close zone where a trap of fire burnts while the hero escape with a secret exit.
Dumb. Not all bats are the same. The bats mentioned in the Monster Manual have an attack, ergo they award XP. The bats mentioned in HotDQ are merely an annoying terrain feature. If they had 300 attacks upon the PCs entering the room then you would have an argument.
Player attacks and kills 200 bats. Gains 2000 XP. Then the remaining 100 bats attack him. One by one. And once he is dead they just keep attacking his mangled corpse over and over again, picking his skeleton clean. Player learns lesson.
Slyck314 wrote:
Slit518 wrote:
First thing some of my friends did when they found out CR0 creatures still net XP was work out how many villages they'd have to wipe out to get to level 5. I'm not going to stop them, plot hooks ho!
Mazzy wrote:
Yunru wrote:
My only reservation as a DM for doing something like the OP mentions "for the grins and giggles of it" is that there are a lot of players out there that treats any DM ruling like it was handed down by the Supreme Court-- that is such a ruling, even if in jest, for the fun of it, or because it was cool (then) becomes precedent for everything that follows.
I can just see it now. Six levels later another player in that group will say, "Ok, so my spell blew up the dam, killing the whole orc town below. I should get XP for every single orc since Joe got XP for every single bat that one time." This time, it won't be funny because the player will insist upon it and will protest loudly (AKA temper tantrum) if the DM doesn't capitulate. Eevn if the DM has a very good reason not to award the xp since the player in question would advance from 7th to 14th level as a result of the xp award and break the campaign. Won't matter, since the DM set the precedence way back at level one as a joke, he will be held to it forever onward.
This obviously depends on the player(s) and the group, but I have seen enough incidents of "precedent setting" that I am now very concious of the fact that any ruling I make for any reason can and will be used against me at any time in the future. And sometimes, for not just that campaign, but for many campaigns beyond that.
Yunru wrote:
Hmmh... once it was pouring boiling water into an anthill