Mistrealm

Dungeons and Dragons

Experience Points

The idea, in a nutshell, is to simplify experience point distribution for busy game masters, and still provide a decent rate of progression.

The Dungeon Masters Guide provides an alternative, a flat rate of 300xp per level, so that is what I have gone with. I total the party level, including various NPC party members, and divide it by the total number, multiply this value by 300, and that is that.

Enter your average party level, and press the button:

Well, I often round it to the nearest 25 as well...

Yes, I know this is a horrific simplification of the XP awards system, but it seems to work for us (so far). It most strongly rewards the people that show up regularly.

The biggest downside is that characters that are down in experience due to dying or coming in late stay behind the leaders, without a lot of opportunity to catch up.

On that note, I allow new players to start new characters that are one level below the average party level. It doesn't seem fair to me to let newcomers just hop in at the same ability as the ones that have been working at it all along. It also doesn't seem fair to force folks to start characters at first level, either.

I think it could still use improvement, but it has the advantage of great simplicity for the game masters who, like myself, have very little spare time to keep track of little details...

What do you think?

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