HotDQ: Ep. 2: The Raider’s Camp (part 1)

We started this adventure with describing and playing out Thryggvaels introduction, mentionedin his own post. When “Tryggve” joined the other characters in the Greenest keep, he found them to be quite a loose outfit, only tied together by a common enemy, the Cult of the Dragon, who had ransacked the town, humiliated Victor’s noble pride and now threatened all of the Greenfields.

Milestones

The Dungeon Master's Guide suggests two systems when it comes to gaining levels and developing characters. There are experience points and there are milestones.

A problem

The old XP model is a classic and I think it comes naturally to most players. Defeat a monster, save the prince or disable a trap and gain an amount of XP that corresponds to the difficulty of the task. Gain enough and you will eventually get over the next level threshold. However, I think that 5^th edition’s worst rule is the encounter building and XP budget system. In it, the character’s levels define a set number of XP to gain each day. It scales according to monster challenge rating and number of individuals in an encounter. Trying to figure out a well-balanced fight is a chore which involves cross-referencing two or more tables.

Furthermore, the XP system in a table RPG poses several questions. For example, what exactly happens when you gain a level and how can you reach such insights that you are suddenly twice as powerful and equipped with a new set of abilities in the middle of a fight? What about that last, killing hit taught you all of that? Where/when do players gain levels, how does experience work on a psychological level and why are players rewarded when going on killing sprees?