Well we made it.

It’s been a long and drawn out journey. But I think we have all grown because of it.

Heck I didn’t even do the obvious quote for yesterday’s post. Ok that might be more to do with me forgetting to add it than a deliberate action on my part.

But here we are the last day, the last post of this hash tag.

So once more with feeling, this last theme for me to share my shallow thoughts on is…

I’m going with the obvious interpretation of this theme. Which is probably the interpretation that the majority went with.

Within D&D players improve their characters by earning experience points (XP).

The DM’s Guide mentions a handful of ways to level up a character.

The players can earn XP during a session by completing combat encounters aka killing monsters, role play, and anything else the DM can think of as an excuse for awarding XP.

Another way giving XP is allocate XP for achieving various milestones within the adventure. Such as delivering a message, rescuing a victim from a dungeon, etc.

The DM’S Guide suggests a couple of ways to do away with XP all together for advancing characters.

The first is a session-based advancement. This sees players levelling up after completing a certain number of sessions.

The other non-XP way is story-based advancement. It’s not to dissimilar to the milestones way of awarding XP. Except instead of getting XP for completing significant goals the characters advance a level instead.

In Xanathar’s Guide to Everything in Appendix A: Shared Campaigns suggests a way of rewarding players for taking part in a play session by using experience checkpoints.

“A character reaches 1 checkpoint for each hour an adventure is designed to last.”

I like this method of levelling up a character because as Xanathar’s says “this approach ensures that a player’s preferred style is neither penalised nor rewarded. … this system gives credit where credit is due.”

It just seems fairer to me because of that.

So far (touch wood) the players in our campaign are also happy with this as well. I’ve found it makes my admin in tracking when a player advances to the next level easier. And takes that burden off the players as well as they are not having to track XP and keep a record of what they have got.

If I had to choose one of the other methods from the DM’s Guide it would be the milestones.

These two seem the most flexible and allow for sessions to take unplanned paths based on decisions at the table, and keep the admin down during game play and in preparing for a session.

I hope this last post has been a handy very brief summary of earning XP in D&D.

Phew that’s the end. No more until next year. Hopefully I’ll remember to do it at the proper time.