So I DM for a group that enjoys a good balance of combat and non-combat sessions.
In a recent encounter, the group played smart and managed to avoid a deadly confrontation with a couple hulking golems that were guarding a tower entrance by leading them away, playing on their scripted intelligence and abnormally slow movement.
I like to award this kind of play by giving the group the full Experience reward for their CR (The numbers are, of course, very loosely house-ruled because of our lack of material right now) as if they had defeated the monsters through combat.
I feel like I'm doing the right thing. Not every problem has to be solved by smacking it to death with the business end of a broadsword. That's my opinion anyway.
How do you guys handle non-combat? What are some cool house-systems you have implemented for calculating rewards and/or dealing with diplomacy, alternate solutions and clever plays?
If the group played smart and role played it out I would give full xp. I always encourage players to think outside the box. The only time I would reduce the xp is if there were no consequences for failure or no personal cost to the player. In your example, the players could have gotten pasted if their plan failed so full xp. However, let's say another group had a teleport spell scroll they used to get by the golems then I'd probably give half xp. They used a valuable item, afterall. Even this one is iffy. After thinking it over, I would probably still give full xp. However, like I put in a latter response if the teleport spell breezed them past an entire dungeon's worth of encounters, then I don't think id be doling out full xp for multiple encounters avoided with a single spell.
Edit. Took out example three totally missed the mark, rambling way too late
hallows1999 wrote:
In my opinion, succesfully dealing with any encounter, challenge or obstacle party comes across should give them full experience regardless how they do it.
For those with different opinion I ask why would you prefer combat to other solutions? Why would it be more rewarding or superior than sneaking, talking or otherwise solving the situation?
Maybe a bit loaded question, but I want to know your reasoning.
I want my players to get creative. I dont mind if GM occasionally gets surprised. If whatever they are trying makes sense and has a chance of succeeding, why not let them try? This edition is pretty good because it is easy to call for ability check or two on the fly to determine how it all ends up working.
Someone once said that game can go 3 ways: 2 that the GM prepares and the one that players choose. I found this to be fairly accurate.
Did the party defeat the encounter in any way? Yes? Award full rewards AND if needed award Inspiration or anything else you believe would be appropriate. Players should always be rewarded for dealing with situations you throw at them. Doesn't matter how they chose to do it or if combat was involved or not.
Even modules will often times have different xp totals for encounters depending on how the pc's play things out. I almost always give full xp for my encounters. Especially, if it is something clever. Out of the box thinking should always be encouraged. Its rare that I do a reduced. Its only in situations where one outcome would be drastically more dangerous than the other. Example, let's say there is some crumbling wizards tower that the party has to reach the top and retrieve such and such. And said tower is chocked full of dangers and encounters. The mage casts fly on the dwarf. He flies to the top bashes his way through the ceiling swipes object and flies down. Clever, yes, but should the party really get full xp for all the encounters they bypassed in the tower? My third example in my original post was not very good. I was going for a bag o rats trivial kind of example but failed. That's what happens when I'm rambling way too late.
As an aside I once had a DM, that would give -xp. 
At the begining of a new session he would give you an itemized breakdown of the previous session's xp. An you would get negative xp for things like: Not playing alignment, talking out of character, punching npc...
shivafang wrote:
hallows1999 wrote:
Avoiding an encounter does not equate to defeating an encounter, unless an encounter is designed to be avoided (live to fight another day is a valid lesson). An encounter is not always combat.
Teleporting past some hill giant guards is nowhere near the same as engaging them, whether that engagement it outsmarting them or killing them outright. At my table, experience is commensurate with the level of engagement.
Jharii wrote:
I just don't reward experience at all. Players level up when they've completed a segment/a number of segments. It makes it much easier on everyone. I don't have to worry about fights being avoided under-powering my players, and my players don't have to worry about tracking XP (and can't go kill forests full of deer to level up quicker).
Yunru wrote:
Noctaem wrote:
Yes it does make it a penalty. Your player(s) say(s) he wants to lure the monsters away to get into the tower instead of fighting them. You allow this to happen and then remove XP from the potential reward of the encounter from your player(s). You're punishing your player(s) for using tactics other than straight combat. You're not encouraging out of the box thinking, imagination, inventiveness. What you're doing is telling your player(s) that if they don't do what YOU want, you're going to punish them in some way. This is bad DM'ing. Never punish players for doing something you ALLOW them to do. Can I climb this rope without an athletics check? Yes, you can. Ok I do so. Ok you fall down and take damage. That's basically what you're doing. Unless you make it crystal clear for your players everytime you arbitrarily decide to punish them based on their actions and they accept that punishment, this is bad DM'ing. Depending on how bad you do this, you might even fall within Wheaton's Law. How often do you arbitrarily make decisions which punish or negatively impact your players?
I for one would not enjoy playing with a DM who arbitrarily decides that because the party found an alternate means to defeat an encounter/situation/skill challenge/etc... , which that DM ALLOWS to happen, we would then be punished for it by only getting half the XP or whatever arbitrary number he/she decides to give or half the rewards. That's garbage. As a DM you are the window that the players get to use to look into the game world. You should never punish players arbitrarily and especially not for being creative. When you make arbitrary decisions they should be for the benefit of your players whenever possible. I've played with DM's like this and it is honestly the worst feeling to know that your DM just decided for no reason to make your attack miss because he simply wanted it to. Or decided that the NPC wasn't going to be helpful simply because he wanted to and regardless of player input and so on.
Jharii wrote:
In relation to non-combat means of winning an encounter I'll usually give between half and full XP. If there's still significant risk of failure involved it's usually full, with less risk mitigating the points downward a way. Also, they still need to "defeat" the encounter in some fashion. So for example, say there's an ogre guarding a chest with an item that would help you in your quest, but isn't absolutely needed. Finding a way to get the ogre away from the chest to allow you to get the item would be a non-combat means of "winning" the encounter. Seeing the ogre and deciding to just ignore it and go without that item doesn't count as "winning" the encounter even though you avoided it, because the end result didn't reach the same story goal that the default (killing) the ogre would.
Additionally, I'll usually give some percentage of XP for actually retreating/avoiding a fight against something that is most likely going to kill you if you engage in it. One thing I routinely do when I start to establish a new gaming group is before the game I'll explain my DM style which, in part, is that I like a more story-esque game than a table top simulation of Diablo and I like characters not people simply looking for bags of XP, etc. And that in general PC's don't always win and the world isn't tailored to just your particular story.
Once that's done, usually in the first few games the story will lead to a situation where there's a threat of some sort that is clearly beyond the PC's, but with multiple oppertunities and avenues to avoid the fight. If the PC's are in "everything is a bag of XP and our DM would never put something in front of us that we couldn't take" mindset and run and attack the thing, they'll probably die (depending on the group, situation, etc I may leave it as a TPK or may essentially allow a reboot with some kind of negative coming from it as a lesson). If they avoid it, I'll usually reward them with good XP to indicate that yes...it's OKAY not to try and kill EVERYTHING you see.
Beyond that, I'm trying to figure a way to adapt my 3e homebrew additional XP system. Throughout a game I'd give a tally from 5 to 25 points each time a player roleplayed in a way that made me take note. Could be as simple as a nice explanation of how they're attacking, or a good bit of back and forth about two characters background, or a player actively playing out one of their flaws, etc. At the end of the game I'd tally up each players RP XP total and give it out to them.
RP XP was kept seperate from normal XP. At the end of any session players were able to convert RP XP into normal XP at double it's worth (so 50 RP XP became 100 XP). Or for 100 RP XP they could purchase "fate points". Fate Points basically worked as a form of gambling currency. At any point a player could wager [X] amount of fate points and say what they're hoping fate will do for them. It could be as simple as wagering 1 or 2 saying they hope to hit on their next attack all the way up to wagering 20 points hoping for their PC to get a message from their diety to restore their faith and anything in between. Wagering fate never guaranteed what you asked for would happen, and if the amount you wagered didn't match up well with what you asked for it may have no effect what so ever. But it was a neat little way to reward players for RPing and also a neat way to essentially "fudge" some things during the game for a more cinematic game.
With the advert of advantage/disadvantage and inspiration I may look into other ways of going about the process going forward.
Noctaem wrote:
Noctaem wrote:
Zyph wrote:
Our games are mostly non-combat, with some fights mixed in, but very rarely the sort of dungeon grind.
Hence we mostly use "level up when the DM says so" rather than bother tracking XP. We've started on a few games for the novelty value but it wears off.
This way players don't feel driven to behave in a way other than whats fun and what they think their character should do.
To me roleplay is it's own reward. It's why I play the game. I don't think you'll really encourage it with XP unless the players want to do it anyway.
I personally think the Inspiration mechanic is a far cooler way of immediately recognising cool roleplay.
Esp. because the player can then trade it to another player.
Edit:
I will admit I was amused by the idea of XP instead soley being based upon the 1GP worth of loot you manage to get back to civilisation and spend. 1GP = 1XP!
Preferably on something cool, but with little in-game benefit.
Castles! Huge Parties! Elephants!
(Ok elephants are pretty boss)
Doesn't matter about whether you kill or trick the monsters, instead, just get their loot!
Encourages very silly plans to get valuable furniture out of dungeons, across pit traps etc.
Noctaem wrote:
I don't agree with any insult slinging from earlier, but I do think that it is a form of punishment to not give the party the full experience of the encounter. They beat the encounter, regardless of how it was done. If they used their brains to do so, I would even perhaps toss an inspiration out to whoever thought up the idea in addition to the full experience.
But to each their own.
Illithidbix wrote: