The Experience Awards System
Introduction
For the last ten years or so we've enjoyed playing the Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying games, we have always lacked a balanced and proper set of rules for awarding experience point bon uses to player characters perfoming acts worthy of such. The problem has been that while the Dungeon Master's Guide provides rules and guidelines for awarding experience points, those rules are not scaled to take into account how much the awards will be w orth to PCs of higher levels (than those for which the rules were obviously intended).
For instance, Table 33: "Common Individual Awards" states that when a player role-plays his character well, that character could be awarded anything from 100 to 500 expe rience points. Clearly, a thirteenth-level Fighter needing 250.000 XP to advance a level, a 500 XP award doesn't mean very much.
Therefore, we have created and adapted to our gaming a more balanced system for handing out experience awards, taking into acc ount the levels the PCs are on, thereby making sure that every action worthy of an experience award really means something to the PC(s) receiving the award. No matter what level he is on.
The rules in brief
A certain figure is calculated from a combinatio n of all the PCs' experience levels, and a function of that figure is used to determine a base unit for awarding experience. Whenever a PC performs an action worthy of an award, one to several of those experience units are awarded to the PC. Since the cal culation of that unit is based on both the total experience levels of all the PCs and on the current levels of the PCs, the system is dynamic, and therefore provides a balanced way to deal with experience awards, no matter what levels the PCs are on.
The award unit (AU)
The system involves a little bit of calculation to be performed each time one of the PCs changes level, but this is justified by one very important fact: Since the PCs are mostly adventuring together as a party, it is therefore desirable tha t the PCs follow each other in character evolution. Not necessarily advancing at the same time, but so that the players feel their characters evolve at the same rate, and not having some PCs speed past the others in terms of rising in levels.
Therefore th e system is based upon a unifying figure called the Award Unit (hereafter abbreviated AU), which is a function of all the PCs' accumulated experience. Also, the calculation of the AU is based on the current levels of the PCs, making the system scalable to any level so that awards mean as much to higher level PCs as to lower level ones.
Since the Award Unit (AU) is a function of the current levels of every PC, it needs to be recalculated every time a PC changes level.
Calculating the award unit
The procedure for calculating the AU is as follows:
1) For each PC, calculate the difference between the experience needed to reach the next level and the experience needed to reach the current level.
2) Total these differences for all the PCs.
3) Average that total, i.e., divide that total by the number of PCs.
4) Divide that average by 100.
Or, in plain English:
One AU is one percent of the average of all the PCs' differences between the experience needed for their next levels and the experience needed for their current levels.
Gaming use
You now have a base unit for handing out experience awards, one AU. From here on, (again stating the importance th at this figure is only valid until one or more of the PCs changes level,) each time a PC performs an act worthy of an experience award, the DM will give that PC anything from one to three AU. Depending, of course, on the importance of the act.
As with all exprience awards, each PCs accumulated awards should not be given out until the end of the adventure. This is because of two obvious reasons: First, it really messes ut things if a PC should change level in the middle of an adventure. And second, giving an award to a PC in the middle of an adventure reveals clearly that the PC just did something clever, which obviously ruins a lot of the suspension, and even the adventure itself.
A word of advice
The AU figure as calculated above will be inappropriate in either of two situations; either you play very often, having a slow advancement in levels with respect to the number of sessions, or you play rarely, having a rapid advancement in levels relative to the number of sessions. In either of these cases, the ca lculation of the AU figure must be modified to reflect the rate the PCs advance in levels in relation to the number of sessions you play in a certain amount of time. This modification can be done in two ways:
One way is simply to hand out more or less AU f or each PC's act worthy of a reward. For instance, if you play several times a week and the PCs normally advance every tenth session or so, instead of handing out two AU for a certain act, you may choose only to give that PC half an AU, or even a third of an AU. Likewise, of a you play rarely and the PCs normally advancing a level every second session or so, you may want to give a PC more AU per act, perhaps four or five.
The other way is to modify the way the AU figure is calculated. Instead of dividing the accumulated total by 100, you can instead divide it by 200 or 300 for slow advancement, or by 75 or 50 for rapid advancement. \par \tab Either way, the system has to be modified if the PCs' advancement in levels deviates a lot from the "norm" (this is very relatively speaking).
Afterword
This system has been thoroughly tested within our own gaming group for an extensive period of time, and it has provided us with a very easy way to make our players more conscious of their playing. Now, with this system, each exp erience award means as much to a PC of higher level as to one of lower level, and also, there is little or no discrimination between PCs of differing levels within the party.
The feedback from the players has been invaluable to the design, testing, and evaluation of this system: Annette, Cathrine, Ingrid, Olaf, and Ole-Jacob.
Comments, feedback, suggestions? You are free to email me.
Olik - Ole Andreas Ringdal
Edited for html by Magneto