Quote from: Baron Opal;1014155So, you're not dividing the experience among the party? If you are, then it's 5 lairs per character, and then you don't level up until nearly everyone else does. That's 20-30 sessions for a group of 4-6 PCs. And then, it's 20-30 lairs of that quality. Or, are we assuming that a lone PC can take out the 2.5 dragons?

Gronan said solo, so I went with that. It does not take 4-6 level 15 PCs to take out a typical dragon lair, maybe 2. And no reason a lair should take a whole session.

In reality of course, while dragons are particularly lucrative, few PC groups will spend their careers hunting them. I think the important point is that 15th level PCs still earn 2/3 the XP as 10th level PCs,  and are at least 50% more powerful than 10th level PCs, so I'm not sure why advancement rate should slow much.

I think at that level of the game, the Dragon comes looking for you to steal your gold. Also, the bigger threats are the armed baronies/kingdoms around yours. If you don't manage your "base" correctly, and it is only safe from these outside threats while the PC party is "at home".... well, be prepared for a hostile and armed "welcoming party" the next time you are traveling back from a ransacked Dragon's Lair. In most of the early editions, you don't get the XP until the treasure is "secured".

Quote from: S'mon;1014170Gronan said solo, so I went with that.

Oh, missed that bit. Carry on then.

QuoteIt does not take 4-6 level 15 PCs to take out a typical dragon lair, maybe 2. And no reason a lair should take a whole session.

We have different expectations regarding dragon lairs. But, I do not dispute your math.

Quote from: Telarus;1014185I think at that level of the game, the Dragon comes looking for you to steal your gold. Also, the bigger threats are the armed baronies/kingdoms around yours. If you don't manage your "base" correctly, and it is only safe from these outside threats while the PC party is "at home".... well, be prepared for a hostile and armed "welcoming party" the next time you are traveling back from a ransacked Dragon's Lair. In most of the early editions, you don't get the XP until the treasure is "secured".

I definitely find that the key skill for high level PCs is alliance building. You want the surrounding dominions to be friends and allies - preferably they at least suspect you're a god, though of course you politely demur.

Quote from: Baron Opal;1014187We have different expectations regarding dragon lairs. But, I do not dispute your math.

I'm going by the OD&D, 1e MM, BX and BECM/RC dragon stats as written. BECM/RC Large & Huge dragons are much tougher, but have a lot more treasure. 2e dragons are a lot lot bigger & tougher. 3e dragons are more like "Sorcerer with side order of Dragon" - their design is terrible.

As I think about it, the last big game series I ran my friends through before we all went to college was against Tiamat and her consorts. And, there was a significant draconic theme throughout the 4-5 years of gaming we did together. So, what I remember probably isn't a valid basis for comparison.

Quote from: S'mon;1014092....., unless the DM simply declared there was no more gold in the world because the PCs now had all of it, which sounds both lame and unlikely.

Well then, time to journey off-world.     Or turn to a gem based hordes....gold so plebian.

Quote from: S'mon;1014092I agree with your point, but I think it's close to the opposite of Gronan's claim, which is that OD&D stalls out around 12th-14th because there are no more decent sources of XP.

Really I think EGG's Greyhawk game closed out around 12th-14th simply because it didn't run for very long, only a few years. On the rules 20th level PCs could still have been advancing at half the rate of 10th level PCs, unless the DM simply declared there was no more gold in the world because the PCs now had all of it, which sounds both lame and unlikely.

My experience is that high level PCs in D&D campaigns do stall. I guess I jumped in (mostly) not to nitpick at Gronan but to find out if we were doing OD&D "wrong" because we advanced somewhat further than they did. I have thought of several possible reasons for stalling:

• The game world runs out of resources/opponents. This might be a principled outcome of the design decisions the GM made, but is more likely that the GM is just tired of the campaign.
• There are no worthwhile challenges left (in the extreme case, if you can't get any XP for an encounter below your level; Adventurers League works a little like that, because it is hard to find high level games, and you can't join an adventure if you're outside the official range of levels it's for).
• The challenges available for high level PCs are too deadly.
• The challenges available for high level PCs are too boring.
• The game imposes some absolute limit (20th is the highest possible level in D&D 5e) or makes advancement eventually less attractive (in OD&D, the highest level spells were already available at 12th level, and additional levels added relatively little except a few hit points).
• The group drifts apart in the real world.
• The campaign is generational, and the most powerful PCs of one generation become NPCs for the next generation.
• The campaign is not generational but middling levels are just more interesting, so powerful PCs retire from active play.
• The campaign shifts to a domain management mode where character advancement is not important.

I think #3 and #4 can both be true; if everything hinges on whether a PC misses consecutive saving throws of 2, then it's both deadly (it's gonna happen eventually) and boring (if no choice of strategies can improve on this, every fight is the same rolls to see if you miss your saving throws). Wizards suffer from this; damage spells scale up in damage and non-damage spells have less effect because opponents get better saving throws and buffing spells are supplanted by magic items, so eventually spell choice moves toward damage spells and reduced variety.

Late in playing Out of the Abyss,

Spoiler

the demon princes were all summoned to one place in the Underdark, and fought until one was left standing for the PCs to finish off. The DM had each player take a different demon prince and play it through the demon prince fight. It was not that interesting; they had lots of hit points but the unusual powers they had were all largely ineffective against other demon princes (either immunities or legendary saves). It was fun because it was unique; repeating it would not have been fun.

Quote from: S'mon;1014093This is how I do it - if there is risk there is XP. So I gave 30,000 XP for betraying Chloridia and nicking her 150,000gp hoard.
But the question was about undeserved XP so I wanted to show how RAW handles the no-risk situation.

The Fantasy Trip rule should apply universally to any RPG with advancement by XP; if the players figure out how to get undeserved XP, the GM should congratulate them on their cleverness and disallow it. Betraying someone and stealing their gold is not undeserved XP, though.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1011259Don't you have a couple dozen useless posts to write declaring you have no knowledge of a particular game and no interest in buying one since you haven't bought a game in 30 years or something? :rolleyes:

Nah, I've stepped back and let you handle the useless posts since you're so good at it and seem to have lots of empty time to fill trying to prove yourself right to strangers online.

Touched a nerve, eh?

Quote from: rawma;1014231My experience is that high level PCs in D&D campaigns do stall...

• The game imposes some absolute limit (20th is the highest possible level in D&D 5e)

I guess I'm a bit unusual in having run my original AD&D campaign from 3rd to 117th level, in the case of Thrin the highest level PC - only one to reach Lesser God using my Worship Points system, but there were a few Demigod PCs using the Manual of the Planes stats. I never had trouble challenging the PCs, I had Legends & Lore for a monster manual after all.

These days though I do prefer a level cap; I like how 5e caps at 20 but you can still get Epic Boons, feats and/or stat points after that. So Hakeem the Barbarian-20 in my Wilderlands has a couple epic boons from defeating the demigod Kainos the Warbringer, son of Ares-Bane, and then Kainos' master the Arch-Necromancer Borritt Crowfinger, Last Prince of Neo-Nerath. Thus defeating the Black Sun and ending 13 years of war (game time; ca 6 years real-time, or 9 years counting the pre-war buildup from early 2009). When it started I was running Labyrinth Lord, then 4e, now 5e. I like 5e best.

Quote from: Skarg;1013965So suppose you're playing a dynamic sandbox 0D&D campaign with XP from gold, and multiple parties. One PC party is about 10th level and attacks a lair of dragons head-on and happens to almost totally die in the process, and the surviving PC is attacked by wolves and dies on his way out due to an unlucky roll while only having a few HP left. Then a 1st-level PC or two come upon his dead body and unattended wagon full of loot. They get a dragon-lair worth of XP for happening to be in the right place at the right time, yes?

No.

Divide monster level by PC level and multiply it by GP to get XP, as explained in Post 171 and elsewhere.  So if you find a million gold pieces unguarded, you have fought a 0 level monster.  Even if you are only a first level character, 0/1 = 0 XP.

Quote from: Skarg;1013965So suppose you're playing a dynamic sandbox 0D&D campaign with XP from gold, and multiple parties. One PC party is about 10th level and attacks a lair of dragons head-on and happens to almost totally die in the process, and the surviving PC is attacked by wolves and dies on his way out due to an unlucky roll while only having a few HP left. Then a 1st-level PC or two come upon his dead body and unattended wagon full of loot. They get a dragon-lair worth of XP for happening to be in the right place at the right time, yes?

Or if you were playing the events of the book The Hobbit, the dude who slays the dragon gets some XP for killing it, but the people who made it mad and happen to be where a dwarf city's worth of priceless treasure is, including a novice adventurer, suddenly get umpteen-billion XP for the loot and gain all sorts of mad combat ability, yes?

Or in a theoretical competitive game, a wizard might sneakily follow an adventuring group and let them clean out a dungeon, but then teleport their wagon of gold home to his wizard tower so he gets most of the XP for what they did, and based on the amount of gold he stole, gets to learn new spells and have more magic powers, yes?

Now, I realize that if the DM doesn't like these outcomes, his approval is needed for any leveling up, so he can just tell such players their PCs don't get to level up yet for reasons. I don't want to argue about it, but I am curious what players who like XP-for-gold think or feel about these sorts of situations?

Now you're just being an asshole and trolling with "Ha ha XP for gold is stupid," because all these things have been addressed before on this very site.

Number 1 is addressed in my post 2 posts above yours.  XP = gold * (monster level defeated/ PC level).  If you find a bajillion gold unguarded, you have fought a 0 level monster.  Zero divided by ANYTHING is still zero.  So you get ZERO XP.  This is made plain TWO POSTS BEFORE YOURS.

Second case is same as the first.  They fought nothing, they get no XP.

The third example, the wizard MIGHT get some XP, depending on the level of the adventuring party he robbed.  Yes, robbery will earn you XP.  But in OD&D at least, TELEPORT doesn't work that way.  This is on purpose.  Now, if he's at least 10th level, yeah, he could have 2 TELEPORT spells and get away with it.  And he'd get XP.  And what happens when the people he robbed decide to hunt him down would be very, very fun.

Jesus.  If you're going to snark, at least be well informed when you snark.  This just makes it obvious you aren't even fucking reading the other posts in this thread.

Quote from: rawma;1014061I think he underestimated the book value of a dragon hoard, yes, but I agree with a variant of his point; any DM that just generates a lot of sessions of by-the-book encounters without throwing craziness at the players does indeed suck. If you can't come up with crazy undead dragons appearing 5-30 or cyborg demons or whatever, you really shouldn't be a DM for high level PCs.

Look at dragons.  They live for centuries, are cunning and evil, and at least in OD&D there's a chance they can use magic spells.

Why would every entrance to their lair NOT be guarded by Magic Mouths, just for a START?  Pits, traps, shriekers, yellow mold... how many ways can you think of to guard your lair after a few hundred years?  So the dragon will probably never be asleep.

And even if it's "only" 5 lairs you have to SOLO... how long can you be that fucking lucky?  The average 11th level Wizard in OD&D has 29 hit points.  In GREYHAWK he has 27.5.  A 15th level wizard will average 32 1/2 HP in OD&D, and 31 1/2 in Greyhawk.

An ancient red dragon does 88 points of damage with his breath; half if you save.  That's 44 points of damage.  And it can breathe three times a day.

All I can say is, "Good fucking luck in soloing five dragon lairs."

XP for gold is in no way stupid; on the contrary, it's genius. But only if you want the PCs to be assiduously obtaining gold.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1014263Now you're just being an asshole and trolling with "Ha ha XP for gold is stupid," because all these things have been addressed before on this very site.

Number 1 is addressed in my post 2 posts above yours.  XP = gold * (monster level defeated/ PC level).  If you find a bajillion gold unguarded, you have fought a 0 level monster.  Zero divided by ANYTHING is still zero.  So you get ZERO XP.  This is made plain TWO POSTS BEFORE YOURS.

Second case is same as the first.  They fought nothing, they get no XP.

The third example, the wizard MIGHT get some XP, depending on the level of the adventuring party he robbed.  Yes, robbery will earn you XP.  But in OD&D at least, TELEPORT doesn't work that way.  This is on purpose.  Now, if he's at least 10th level, yeah, he could have 2 TELEPORT spells and get away with it.  And he'd get XP.  And what happens when the people he robbed decide to hunt him down would be very, very fun.

Jesus.  If you're going to snark, at least be well informed when you snark.  This just makes it obvious you aren't even fucking reading the other posts in this thread.

Sorry if that's how my post seemed to you. It wasn't my intention.

And thanks to the others who weren't offended and shared your thoughts. My take-away is that my examples were sloppy and the numerator can be zero resulting in no XP from gold, but that in the case where something minor (but non-zero) ends up defending a huge pile of loot, there's a max gain of +1 level, and also the DM is free to make exceptions or award XP in other ways if/when he likes.