Homebrewery Link
Overview
Encounters should warrant the granting of xp to the players. Now the simple interaction with another sentient being may not necessarily be grounds for experience, but here is a helpful time based table for what can be reasonably granted. The amount of XP should be split evenly among the entire party, if you don’t mind players leveling separately from one another feel free to break up the xp amounts or give bonuses to players you felt did an extra good job roleplaying.
Difficulty
The time table displays the baseline CR you should base your xp off of, from their modify the CR from -2 to +2 from the baseline using the following guidelines:
- Simplistic -2: Depending on the encounter if it falls in this category it might not be worth xp, however, the simple act of stealing a key off a drunk may warrant some xp gain depending on how it was discovered that he had said key, and how involved the entire party was in the operation.
- Easy -1: These encounters are usually important, but low risk, like successfully getting the suspicious local map maker to show you his secret dungeon guide
- Baseline: Expected difficulty
- Difficult +1: This encounter had some high DCs, or required above average levels of thought from your players.
- Hard +2: This encounter is intended to be failed, very hard to succeed at, or was improvised entirely by your players. Perhaps the adventurers beat the enemy that was “supposed” to knock them unconscious, or instead of simply knocking the guard at the gate out, they used leverage to ensure him and his cronies won’t bother them during their heist.
Keep in mind that even if you haven’t “planned” your encounter to be anything but baseline, that you may want to increase or decrease the xp based on how your own players did in said encounter. Did they surprise you with an extra clever solution to your already devious puzzle? Bump that modified CR up by 1! Did they struggle to come to an agreement simply trying to open your normal door? Drop it by 1! Its up to you!
CR To Apply by Encounter Time
Session Time is the Realtime spent by the players to complete the encounter
APL = Average Party Level, keep in mind CR’s go below 1. So if your APL is 2 and they have an easy 30 min encounter that makes for a CR of 1/2.
| Session Time | CR |
|---|---|
| 30 min | APL - 1 |
| 1 hour | APL |
| 2 hour | APL + 1 |
| Full Session | APL + 2 |
| 1 & 1/2 Sessions | APL + 3 |
| 2 Sessions | APL + 4 |
| 3 Sessions | APL + 5 |
Other Modifiers
- Add +1 to CR for every 2 characters past 4 rounding up.
Examples
A DM has prepared a heist encounter for a full session length with 4 characters, its planned to be difficult relative to his players APL which is 5, a lot of preparation is needed or high DCs are at play. His players pull off the heist successfully, and even manage to steal some extra documents to reveal the mansions owner as a crook! This much of an overachievement should count towards a Hard encounter. Their final CR should be 9, Full session APL + Hard encounter. Distribute 5000 xp to the party evenly, or not, its up to you!
7 players of level 2 are given an easy encounter that last 1 hour, and another baseline encounter that lasts for the remaining 2 hours. Both encounters go as expected, the first’s CR is 3 (APL 2, easy -1, 3 players over 4 +2) 700 xp, the second is CR 5 (APL 2, 3 players over 4 +2) 1800 xp, that’s 2500 xp distributed to 7 players making roughly 350 xp each.
Experience Points by Challenge Rating
| Challenge | XP |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 or 10 |
| 1/8 | 25 |
| 1/4 | 50 |
| 1/2 | 100 |
| 1 | 200 |
| 2 | 450 |
| 3 | 700 |
| 4 | 1100 |
| 5 | 1800 |
| 6 | 2300 |
| 7 | 2900 |
| 8 | 3900 |
| 9 | 5000 |
| 10 | 5900 |
| 11 | 7200 |
| 12 | 8400 |
| 13 | 10,000 |
| 14 | 11,500 |
| 15 | 13,000 |
| 16 | 15,000 |
| 17 | 18,000 |
| 18 | 20,000 |
| 19 | 22,000 |
| 20 | 25,000 |
| 21 | 33,000 |
| 22 | 41,000 |
| 23 | 50,000 |
| 24 | 62,000 |
| 25 | 75,000 |
| 26 | 90,000 |
| 27 | 105,000 |
| 28 | 120,000 |
| 29 | 135,000 |
| 30 | 155,000 |