D&D Level Advancement: Milestone vs XP (Part 2 - Experience Points)

This is part 2 of a two-part series of articles on level advancement in D&D. In the first part we investigated milestone advancement. In this article, we take a closer look at how we award experience points (XP) as a tool for character growth in D&D.

The case for experience points

Awarding XP in D&D can be a great way to show the incremental advancement that characters achieve during a campaign. Instead of the broad chunks of milestone leveling, players get to quantify their character’s mechanical development, and see it grow as they embark on new adventures. For some games, experience points can feel more natural than milestone-based advancement. Why wouldn’t each individual overcome challenge contribute to a character’s growth? Players likely know the concept of experience points from video games. With a few considerations and modifications, we can let XP become an organic and flexible tool for character advancement.

Experience points shape the character of our game

Whether we are aware of it or not, experience points shape the character of our game. Therefore, we have to carefully consider how we award experience points should we use XP instead of a milestone-based approach. Players want their characters to level up. Thus, experience points become powerful incentives to influence player behavior. When we follow the “classic” method, and award experience points for slaying monsters, our players will naturally gravitate towards combat. This can make for an awesome game experience if what we are looking for is a tactical, combat-heavy style of play.

Awarding XP for more than combat encounters

Alternatively, we can award XP for other types of encounters in D&D. As with milestone XP, we can approximate the right number of XP using the combat difficulty guidelines in chapter 3 of the DMG. Stealing the keys to the Vault of the Sages from a sleeping professor might warrant easy encounter XP. The successful plead for the characters’ lives in front of Klauth, the ancient red dragon, on the other hand, qualifies for a hard or even deadly encounter. As the DMG tells us, an encounter requires a meaningful chance of failure for experience points to be awarded.

It is worthwhile to wrap our head around which kinds of encounters qualify for XP. We can even go beyond the “meaningful chance of failure” requirement. The roleplaying game Numenera awards experience points for discovery. DM David recommends we steal this rule for our D&D games. Why shouldn’t the characters gain experience for uncovering long lost locations, mysteries, and secrets of our game world? But should they also gain XP for a long fireside chat with no real risk involved? We can experiment with the types of encounters we want to award XP for. As always, we must find a guideline that works for our game, ourselves, and our players.

The XP laundry list

One challenge with this approach lies in estimating the difficulty of a social interaction, or exploration encounter. Another is in the fluidity of our D&D games. When encounters and scenes naturally flow from one to the next, it can become difficult to clearly define where one encounter ends and another begins. To award XP in D&D, however, we must have some idea of individual encounters and their respective difficulties. We can make a “laundry list” of challenges and appropriate XP rewards after each session and give it to the players.

Awarding XP after the game

Awarding experience for non-combat encounters is not an exact science. We simply have to use our best judgement to determine the segments of a session that warrant experience points. We can write down a “laundry list” of XP-worthy challenges the characters went through after the session. Doing this after the session skips the conversation about experience points after each encounter. Pausing the game to calculate XP totals takes players out of character, and introduces an obstacle to the immersive flow of the game.

Making a list of XP-worthy challenges

These challenges could have been combat, social interaction, or exploration. Whatever the type of challenge, we write down the experience points we award for each one. Then we correct the numbers of each entry on that list up or down until it looks and feels right. After a session in which the characters stole the keys to the Vault of Sages, that list might look something like this:

Sneaking into the university – 500 XP
Defeating the animated armor guards – 1000 XP
Lifting the key from the professor – 500 XP
Evading the city guard – 300 XP

Notice that some of these segments might have included more than one encounter. Sneaking into the university likely included scaling a wall, running across the courtyard, and opening a number of locked doors. We don’t have to worry about separating encounters minutely. Instead, for complex situations like these, we think of larger segments of the overall challenge.

The battle with the animated armor guards is the most straight forward. Simply add together the XP values of each armor to calculate the appropriate experience points. For everything else, we rely on the encounter difficulty guidelines in the DMG, and our own sense of the game we are running.

A list such as this one relies on our instincts as dungeon masters. But by creating one after each session, and handing it to the players, we create the sense of incremental advancement that XP is made for. At the same time, we develop a consistent framework of awarding experience points for challenges that are not combat. From a series of neatly separated encounters, such as in a dungeon crawl, to a highly complex situational session, such as a heist adventure – the framework above will serve us well, whatever game we are running.

Advancement by XP: An incremental, flexible tool

The incremental nature of experience points can feel natural and rewarding for the players. While we could award XP solely for defeating monsters, we need to be aware that this approach will push players towards combat as a solution for many situations of our D&D game. We need to be aware that XP shapes the character of our game. Thinking about which kinds of encounters warrant an XP reward is a worthwhile exercise. If we do choose to award experience points for non-combat encounters, a “laundry list” approach can streamline the process. After each session, make a list of the XP-worthy challenges the party has overcome. Adjust the numbers up or down until the list looks and feels right. With a little consideration, experimentation, and practice, XP can become a flexible tool to shape our game and let characters grow with it.