XP Guidelines for Old-school D&D

Here’s a guideline I've been working on for XP to be awarded per session in 1st edition AD&D.

Before we continue, please note that this guideline is not a milestone system by another name. Rather, I've introduced it into my own Greyhawk campaign in order to provide: 

(1) a baseline against which I can check whether the XP actually being awarded in an adventure, in accordance with the DMG, is commensurate with the challenges being faced and the desired rate of advancement; and/or 

(2) a recommended XP to be awarded per session to ensure a graduated rate of advancement based on the average party level.

Here, average party level is worked out by adding the levels of all party members; e.g., a party of seven characters, consisting of three level 5s, two level 6s, one level 7 and one level 8 would have an average level of 6 ((5+5+5+6+6+7+8=42)/7= average level of 6). As a rule of thumb, I'd treat multi-classed characters as being one level higher than their highest level. 

In the party described above, the average level is 6, and since fighters occupy a middle ground in terms of experience required to advance, we treat the average member of our party as being a level 6 fighter.

Here comes the tricky bit: we must decide what the "desired rate of advancement" is. This is entirely arbitrary, and should be based on your group needs and expectations. And remember that ultimately this is a guideline and should be adjusted to reflect the circumstances from session to session.

In my home group, I'm assuming that the amount of time spent at each level should increase exponentially, at least until about level 9 or 10. Concretely, the number of sessions before leveling up to the next level is made to be twice the current level; e.g., our hypothetical level 1 "fighter" character will advance to level 2 after two sessions, whereas as a level 5 character would advance to level 6 after 10 sessions.

Remember, this rate should be set according to your group needs. For example, you might say that it takes two sessions to advance through levels 1 and 2, and then four sessions for each level thereafter - it's entirely your call.

The next step is to work out how much XP to award our hypothetical average "fighter" characters in order to advance at that rate (by way of example I'll continue to use my rate of twice current level in sessions).

If a level 1 "fighter" requires 2000 XP to get to level 2, and our desired rate of advancement is two sessions (2x1=2), then the fighter requires 1000 XP per level in order to advance.

The following table shows the XP that "should" be awarded per session in order to achieve the desired rate of advancement explained above: 



Note that it should be immediately apparent that the XP being awarded per session may in fact fall from level to level. This is due to a mismatch between the XP rate increases in the level advancement table and our desired rate of advancement. For example, in order to achieve level 3, the average character will take four sessions, and although the amount of XP is still just 2000, it must now be divided by four rather than an advancement rate of two. If this doesn't sit well with you, you can adopt an advancement rate that is not exponential, or simply rule that the XP awards never actually decrease below that required for a previous level (e.g., treat the 500 and 667 of levels 2 and 3 as 1000 XP as per level 1).

Let's move on with my assumptions and decisions, and ask perhaps the most important question: what do we do with this? Well, that depends on the two points I raised at the very beginning, but let's assume we're using this baseline as an actual XP award (2). If the average level is 6, each player could be awarded 2917 XP at the end of each session (at least, until the average level changes again, at which point it must be recalculated). 

Not every character receiving that XP bonus will be a fighter, of course, and in my opinion that's the benefit of awarding XP per session, rather than milestones.

Thieves and clerics will continue to advance more quickly, while rangers, magic-users and paladins will advance more slowly. Accordingly, we can maintain that important part of game balance, although we should bear in mind that this almost certainly changes the relationship somewhat. Also, if the thief is level 8 but the average party level is 6, it might be said that the thief is being "held back" by receiving 2917 XP per session rather than 8929 XP. I can only get a feel for the real impact of this system by implementing it, but ask you to remember that 8929 XP per session would be for an average ("fighter") character and therefore much more than the amount required for a thief, and therefore the lesser award is a better reflection of the challenges being faced by the party.

Well, I think I've covered the basic idea, some options and enough here of the potential issues for now. Please listen to my podcast episode on this topic for more ruminations [https://anchor.fm/menion/episodes/Old-school-XP-Guidelines--RuneQuest-Reminiscences-e1h12ll].

Comments

  1. Jacob72Saturday, 16 April, 2022

    I'm a bit confused by this method, as I think the key to it is the "desired rate of advancement" as you call it the tricky bit and the table presented doesn't have what that rate is.

    This advancement rate is in fact your design objective and how it is determined needs to be explicit. My own view on that metric is that it should be (avg level) + 1 sessions.

    Is it possible for you to elaborate on how you've determined this please?

    In my own BX games I've moved away from the rates for monsters as described there and went to what is used in S&W (and I believe OD&D used) which is to use 100xp per HD. For special abilities (*) I award 50xp per level and then divide by the PC's level if the monster's level is less than the PC's level.

    This scheme is closer to that in OD&D than BX or 1e and gives quicker advancement at lower levels and then equalises at 5-7 before slowing down at higher levels. This I like because it improves survivability and keeps players at the sweet spot levels while making high level PC and NPC rarer.

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    1. MenionTuesday, 19 April, 2022

      Thanks for the comment, Jacob. You are quite right that the specific rate of advancement is down to the group.

      In my case, 10 sessions to reach move from level 5 to level 6 feels about right. This is because most sessions are around just 3 hours in length. If we take Moldvay Basic D&D’s suggested rate of advancement to be four or five sessions, and assume each session back in the day to have been around 4 to 6 hours in length, my rate of advancement is actually pretty close: faster at low level, approximately the same at mid-level, and slower at high level. Another factor I need to take into account for my table is not to ensure the PCs don’t level up faster than the intended level of the adventure, as this would quickly result in the adventures becoming too easy (one module typically takes us about 12 sessions) and require work to rejig them. We’re on our third year of the campaign, so any advancement faster than the current rate would probably be too fast.

      As for how the table was devised, my explanation appears to have been insufficient; it was as follows:

      “The next step is to work out how much XP to award our hypothetical average "fighter" characters in order to advance at that rate (by way of example I'll continue to use my rate of twice current level in sessions). If a level 1 "fighter" requires 2000 XP to get to level 2, and our desired rate of advancement is two sessions (2x1=2), then the fighter requires 1000 XP per level in order to advance. The following table shows the XP that "should" be awarded per session in order to achieve the desired rate of advancement explained above: …”

      Basically, what this means is that I took the amount of experience required to go up each level as a fighter in 1st edition AD&D (actually I may have used OSRIC because it rounds the numbers down) and divided that amount by my rate for advancing to the next level (which I set at two times the current level).

      By way of further example, a level 3 fighter needs 8000 xp to advance to level 4, but remember, they already have 4000 xp. In other words, they need a further 4000 xp to reach the total of 8000 xp required for level 4.

      Since I’ve decided that six sessions are required for our hypothetical fighter to move from level 3 to level 4, we can obtain the precise XP per level by dividing 4000 (XP) by 6 (no. of sessions). This gives us 666.666667, which I’ve rounded up to 667. If you look at the table, you’ll see that this is indeed my recommended XP per session. Assuming that the average level of the party is level 3, this XP per session is then used as a guideline or baseline XP award for any character regardless of that individual’s actual class or level.

      I hope that helps explain my method a little better. I’m sure it sounds more complex than it really is. The essential part is that you can arrive at XP per level by: dividing [the amount needed to get from the beginning of one level to the beginning of the next level in the fighter class] by [your desired rate of advancement]. Note that the baseline XP per session is based on the hypothetical fighter with just enough XP to qualify for that level, and is not directly related to an individual PC’s XP, class or level.

      I hope that helps.

      Delete
    2. Jacob72Wednesday, 27 April, 2022

      Yes! Thanks for the clarification.

      Delete

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