Chapter 7: Rewards
Experience Points treasure, action points, and intangible rewards keep characters moving on from encounter to encounter, level to level, and adventure to adventure. Small rewards come frequently, while large rewards provide a big boost once in a while. Both are important. Without frequent small rewards, players begin to feel like their efforts aren’t paying off. They’re doing a lot of work with nothing to show for it. Without occasional large rewards, encounters feel like pushing a button to get a morsel of food—a repetitive grind with no meaningful variation. Characters gain experience points (XP) for every encounter they complete. They gain action points when they reach milestones, generally after every two encounters. They gain treasure as they complete encounters—not after every encounter, but sporadically over the course of an adventure. They gain a level after completing eight to ten encounters (including quests). Gaining a level is the most significant reward the game has to offer, but even that reward has its own tidal rhythm. Characters gain new attack powers at odd-numbered levels, and they gain new feats, ability score increases, and global adjustments to all their attacks and defenses at even-numbered levels. Both are exciting, but they feel different. This chapter includes the following sections.
✦ Experience Points: Every monster slain, skill challenge, puzzle solved, and trap disabled is worth an XP reward. As characters gain XP, they move toward new levels.
✦ Quests: Completing quests brings rewards just like completing encounters.
✦ Action Points: Action points encourage characters to take on more encounters before stopping to take an extended rest.
✦ Treasure: Whether it’s coins, gems, art objects, or magic items, treasure is the reward characters can put to use right away.
Experience Points
Experience points (XP) are the fundamental reward of the game, just as encounters are the building blocks of adventures and campaigns. Every encounter comes with an experience reward to match its difficulty.
XP REWARDS
Characters earn XP for every encounter they overcome. The XP reward for completing an encounter is the sum of the XP values for each monster, NPC, trap, or hazard that makes up the encounter. You noted or assigned this number when you built the encounter, to judge its difficulty against your players. (Published adventures note the XP value of each encounter they contain.) Divide the XP total for the encounter by the number of players present to help overcome it, and that’s how many XP each character gets. Overcoming an Encounter: What counts as overcoming an encounter? Killing, routing, or capturing the opponents in a combat encounter certainly counts. Meeting the success conditions of a skill challenge is overcoming it. Remember that an encounter, by definition, has a risk of failure. If that risk isn’t present, it’s not an encounter, and the characters don’t earn XP. If the characters accidentally trigger a trap as they make their way down a hallway, they don’t get XP because it wasn’t an encounter. If the trap constitutes an encounter or is part of an encounter, though, they do earn XP if they manage to disarm or destroy it. Say the characters avoid a hydra to get into the treasure vault it guards. Do they get XP for overcoming the challenge of the hydra? No. If the treasure was the object of a quest, they get the reward for completing the quest, which should include XP as well as treasure. But because they didn’t have an encounter with the hydra, they didn’t overcome the challenge. (If they sneak past, trick, or defeat the hydra in an encounter, they do earn XP.) XP for Combat Encounters: The Monster Manual indicates the XP reward each monster is worth. That number comes from the Experience Rewards table on this page, and it depends on the monster’s level. A minion is worth one-quarter of the XP of a standard monster of its level. An elite monster is worth twice as much XP, and a solo monster is worth five times as much XP. If you apply a template to a monster, you turn it into an elite or solo monster and therefore adjust its XP value. Likewise, if you alter a monster’s level, its XP value changes. A nonplayer character counts as a monster of his or her level for calculating XP. Traps and hazards that serve as combat complications also have levels. If the characters overcome a combat encounter where a trap or hazard presented a threat during the encounter, give them XP for the trap or hazard even if they didn’t disable or neutralize it. They overcame the challenge it presented most directly, which was its danger during the combat. XP for Noncombat Encounters: Noncombat encounters that carry risk also carry reward. A skill challenge has a level and a difficulty that combine to determine the XP your characters earn for successfully completing the challenge. A skill challenge counts as a number of monsters of its level equal to its complexity—so a 7th-level challenge with a complexity of 3 counts as three 7th-level monsters, or 900 XP. If a puzzle constitutes an encounter, treat it as a monster. If the puzzle is the entire encounter, treat it as a solo monster. If it’s part of an encounter that also includes traps or monsters, count it as one or two monsters, depending on how hard it is and how important it is for the characters to solve it.
VARYING THE RATE OF ADVANCEMENT
The experience point numbers in the game are built so that characters complete eight to ten encounters for every level they gain. In practice, that’s six to eight encounters, one major quest, and one minor quest per character in the party. If you were to start a campaign with 1st-level characters on January 1st, play faithfully for four or five hours every week, and manage to finish four encounters every session, your characters would enter the paragon tier during or after your session on June 24th, reach epic levels in December, and hit 30th level the next summer. Most campaigns don’t move at this pace, however; you’ll probably find that the natural rhythms of your campaign produce a slower rate of advancement that’s easier to sustain. If you double the XP rewards you give out, your characters will gain a level at least every other session, and hit 30th level in thirty-five sessions, or about eight months. That can be great for a campaign that runs during the school year (allowing some time for holiday breaks). If you want to limit your campaign to a single tier (ten levels), you could cut the XP rewards in half and stretch that campaign out to nearly a year. Characters gain levels a little less often than once a month.
If you want to, you can treat experience points the same way you handle action points: Tell the players that they gain a level after they complete eight to ten encounters. Don’t count really easy encounters, count really hard encounters as two, and don’t worry about precise XP totals. As with action points, harder and easier encounters balance each other out over the course of that level.
EXPERIENCE AT THE TABLE
Some DMs prefer to give XP after every encounter. That way, they don’t have to keep track of a running XP total for the session. The players are the only ones who have to worry about how many XP they’ve earned. Others prefer to award XP when the characters stop for an extended rest or at the end of a gaming session. It’s purely a matter of personal preference, but be mindful of the pace of the session. Don’t stop to give out XP if it’s going to bring the game to a halt at a tense moment.
Some DMs let characters gain the benefits of a new level as soon as they have the required XP to reach that level, while others prefer to wait until the characters take an extended rest or even until the end of a session before letting characters level up. That decision is entirely up to you. If your players are particularly slow about advancing their characters and are taking a long time to pore over the options available to them, it might be best to wait until the end of a session. If leveling up would completely shatter the pace of the session, put it off until they take an extended rest at least.
One issue that’s going to come up is how to handle experience for characters who weren’t present for a session. As with other table rules, decide on a policy and stick to it, although it’s all right to make an exception for the player who misses a lot of sessions for a good reason. The game works better in a lot of ways if you just assume that the characters all gain experience and advance levels at the same rate, even if their players miss a session. You don’t have to worry about players lagging behind the others, and players who miss a session don’t feel like they’re less effective. D&D is a cooperative game, and it’s more fun when all the players are on a level playing field, able to make equal contributions to the group’s success. All the players can share in the excitement of gaining a level at the same time. And it makes tracking XP much easier. In fact, a group could decide to delegate the job of tracking XP to a single player, who could announce when the characters go up a level. The alternative, of course, is to give XP only to the characters who are present and who participate in each encounter. If a character is dead while the rest of the party faces an encounter, that character doesn’t get XP for the encounter. If a player misses a session, that character doesn’t get XP for the whole session. The result is that players who never miss a session get ahead of those who miss the occasional game, and eventually they wind up a level or more ahead. There’s nothing wrong with that.
When the characters finish a major quest that they’ve been pursuing for several sessions, divide the XP reward among all the characters who participated in the quest, even those who aren’t present in the particular session when the PCs complete it. That’s only fair—a major quest is like an encounter that stretches over multiple game sessions, and everyone who participates deserves to share in the reward.
Even if you don’t give characters XP for sessions they missed, consider making an exception for a player who has to step out of the game for a long period because of a significant life event. When a player misses two months of gaming because of work or school or family, it’s pretty punishing to return to the game three levels behind the other characters. Discuss the situation with the other players, but strongly consider advancing the character to the same level as the rest of the group or maybe a level behind.
If letting absent characters keep pace with the rest of the group is too hard to swallow but you don’t want characters lagging behind, you can let them catch up a little more slowly. When a player misses a session, let the character lag behind for the next session, but award the character the XP he missed at the end of the session. Therefore, all the characters present have the same XP total at the end every session. If a player misses multiple sessions in a row, you might require that player to attend the same number of sessions he missed before awarding the missed XP. Ultimately, it depends on how much bookkeeping you’re willing to do in order to let the character catch up at the rate you want.
Quests
Completing quests earns rewards for the PCs. These rewards primarily take the form of treasure (both money and items) and experience points, but quests can also have less concrete rewards. Perhaps someone owes them a favor, they’ve earned the respect of an organization that might give them future quests, or they’ve established a contact who can provide them with important information or access. Fundamentally, a minor quest is worth the same as one monster of the quest’s level, in terms of both XP and treasure rewards. A major quest is worth a whole encounter of its level. As with other rewards, all the PCs share in the rewards for quests, even if the quest was meant for an individual member of the group. Completing a major quest is equivalent to completing an encounter, so it really feels like a significant accomplishment. The XP reward varies based on the number of characters in the group, just as the XP value for an encounter does. When a group of characters completes a 10th-level major quest, each individual in the group gets 500 XP, regardless of how many characters are in the group. Completing a minor quest is equivalent to defeating a single monster, and that XP reward is divided among all the characters in the group. Since minor quests are more likely to be individual quests, the number of characters in the group helps determine how many minor quests the characters complete. When a group of four adventurers completes a 9th-level minor quest, each character gets 100 XP. When they complete four minor quests, they earn 400 XP. Even though the XP reward for a major quest is the same as the reward for an encounter, don’t count a quest as an encounter for the purposes of earning action points. Characters need to complete two actual encounters to gain an action point. If you want to, you can attach a treasure reward to a quest as well as XP. Treat a quest just like an encounter for purposes of treasure. You can assign one or more treasure parcels to its completion, or you can put all the treasure in the dungeon. Sometimes the person who gave the PCs a quest gives them a payment for completing it. Sometimes the characters collect a bounty on the head of a dangerous criminal or receive a goodwill offering collected by the families and friends of the prisoners they rescued and escorted back to safety.
Treasure
Treasure rewards come in two basic flavors: magic items and monetary treasure. Magic items include all the magic weapons, armor, gear, and wondrous items detailed in the Player’s Handbook and other sources. Monetary treasure includes coins (silver, gold, and platinum), precious gems, and valuable objects of art. Over the course of an adventure, characters acquire treasure of all kinds.
MONETARY TREASURE
Monetary treasure doesn’t have a level, but it has a similar economy. Gold coins are the standard coins of treasure hoards from 1st level through the paragon tier. At the lowest levels, characters might find silver coins as well, but that mundane coinage disappears from dungeon treasures after about 5th level. In the mid-paragon tier, platinum coins start appearing in treasures. One platinum piece (pp) is worth 100 gp and weighs the same as 1 gold piece, so it’s a much easier way to transport the quantities of wealth that high-level characters possess. By the time characters reach epic level, they rarely see gold any more. Platinum is the new standard. In the mid-epic tier, a new currency comes into play: astral diamonds. These precious gems are used as currency in the Elemental Chaos and in any divine dominions that have commercial economies. One astral diamond (ad) is worth 100 pp or 10,000 gp, and 10 ad weigh as much as one gold or platinum coin—so 500 ad weigh one pound. Astral diamonds never completely replace platinum, but they’re a useful measure of wealth in the high epic tier. Astral diamonds are most commonly found in strings of five or ten, linked together in settings of mithral or silver.
GEMS
Precious gems are as good as currency. Characters can cash them out at full value or use them to purchase expensive items.
ART OBJECTS
Art objects include idols of solid gold, necklaces dripping with gems, old paintings of ancient monarchs, bejeweled golden chalices, and more. Art objects found as treasure are at least reasonably portable, as opposed to enormous statues (even if they are made of solid platinum) or tapestries woven with gold thread.
MAGIC ITEMS
All the magic items in the Player’s Handbook have a level. When characters risk life and limb in adventures, they find magic items of higher level than their own level. Players enjoy finding powerful items, and they have a strong incentive to use those items rather than sell or disenchant them for a fraction of their value. When they use their own resources to acquire magic items, they buy or create items of their own level or lower. These items are useful and can be important, but they don’t have the wonder and excitement of the items players find on their adventures—and that’s intentional.
AWARDING TREASURE
While experience points are fundamentally an encounter-based (or quest) reward, treasure is a larger-scale reward doled out over the course of an adventure. You plan treasure in terms of the eight to ten encounters it takes characters to advance from one level to the next. During the course of gaining that level, expect a group of five characters to acquire four magic items ranging in level from one to four levels above the party level. In addition, they should find gold and other monetary treasure equal to the market price of two magic items of their level. So a 6th-level party would find four magic items, one each of levels 7 through 10, and gold worth two 6th-level items, or 3,600 gp. At the start of an adventure, look at the adventure in chunks of eight to ten encounters. (Include major quest rewards as if they were encounters, and if the party completes five minor quests, include those five rewards as a single encounter as well.) Find the level of the characters as they work through those encounters, and note the parcels of treasure you will give out over the course of the encounters. If your group has more than five characters, add a parcel for each additional character, as shown below. If you have fewer than five characters, remove parcels accordingly. If you want to, you can give the characters one parcel of treasure after each encounter they complete (including one for a major quest reward, if appropriate). It’s more interesting, however, to combine some parcels into larger hoards and leave some encounters with no treasure at all. Sometimes it’s a good idea to include treasures with no associated encounter, such as a hidden cache of gold or stashed item that the characters can find with careful searching after they’ve overcome a few encounters. In any event, when you give out one parcel of treasure, cross it off your list. The trickiest part of awarding treasure is determining what magic items to give out. Tailor these items to your party of characters. Remember that these are supposed to be items that excite the characters, items they want to use rather than sell or disenchant. If none of the characters in your 6th-level party uses a longbow, don’t put a 10th-level longbow in your dungeon as treasure. A great way to make sure you give players magic items they’ll be excited about is to ask them for wish lists. At the start of each level, have each player write down a list of three to five items that they are intrigued by that are no more than four levels above their own level. You can choose treasure from those lists (making sure to place an item from a different character’s list each time), crossing the items off as the characters find them. If characters don’t find things on their lists, they can purchase or enchant them when they reach sufficient level. Each set of ten treasure parcels includes one less magic item than there are characters in the party. That’s not meant to be unfair, just to make sure that characters gain magic items at a manageable rate. Make sure that over the course of several levels of adventuring, you award items evenly to all the characters, so that over the course of, say, five levels, every character has acquired four useful and exciting items. The monetary rewards included in the treasure parcels should also allow characters to buy or enchant items of their level or lower.