A Land Far Away

A scout listens in the shadows, unseen by two men scheming in a back alley, and gets away with the info.

How Many DM's award XP for successfully used skills? It may be the only extra XP some character types can get.

Isn't it part of the normal DM quest RP? I've ran a session in which a very sneaky PC managed to do by a very demanding sneaking task, and as I recall did get decent XP for it.

I suppose what you mean is that if a DM is awarding N xp for overcoming a threat, then the party gets kills xp on top for picking the "kill them dead" way, whereas sneaking or talking your way through does not give a bonus on top of N. At least I would strive to give a better DM roleplay award for anything more creative than "hostile npc -> go murder". In practice it's easy to let slip, though, a DM is busy enough on making things happen that instead of tabulating rewards painstakingly you just fall back to a crude-ish default.

Tagging your PCs with a "mark kill xp for this PC since this moment (and give it to me via the new player listing tool perhaps)" -tool might be useful, though. So that after the event the DM can see how much XP was already awarded due to killing monsters, and that can be considered that when awarding xp.

IMO succesful open lock and disable device checks should yield scripted XP based on the challenge, at a minimum.

Re: scripted: In cases, they do. I am certain that my PC has disarmed a trap on one of those search-check randomly locked/trapped chests in BG, and gotten something like 10xp for it not exploding. Not seen it for locks though lately, though the scripts for it are surely floating around (has to be one where it only awards once, so you can't relock and unlock all day, which is not a concern with traps since we can't "get them" to harvest and use).

Typically if someone makes "creative" use of a skill, maybe a DM will feel like a 10xp cookie for it.

However, in a long session, no one is likely "add up" a party's worth of activity. This guy scouted well, that guy kept making his concentration checks when hit during casting, someone else rolled something else well... more likely you'd see little "attaboy, good idea, thinking IC" type awards in short small group type things.

Brokenbone wrote:Re: scripted: In cases, they do. I am certain that my PC has disarmed a trap on one of those search-check randomly locked/trapped chests in BG, and gotten something like 10xp for it not exploding. Not seen it for locks though lately, though the scripts for it are surely floating around (has to be one where it only awards once, so you can't relock and unlock all day, which is not a concern with traps since we can't "get them" to harvest and use).

Typically if someone makes "creative" use of a skill, maybe a DM will feel like a 10xp cookie for it.

However, in a long session, no one is likely "add up" a party's worth of activity. This guy scouted well, that guy kept making his concentration checks when hit during casting, someone else rolled something else well... more likely you'd see little "attaboy, good idea, thinking IC" type awards in short small group type things.

Thats what I do, generally. In the middle of things when its all going crazy DM side, controlling 4 different mobs from different directions etc, I might miss it but clever stuff I hand out 10XP's like candy for. Its what the button is there for!

Brokenbone wrote:Re: scripted: In cases, they do. I am certain that my PC has disarmed a trap on one of those search-check randomly locked/trapped chests in BG, and gotten something like 10xp for it not exploding. Not seen it for locks though lately, though the scripts for it are surely floating around (has to be one where it only awards once, so you can't relock and unlock all day, which is not a concern with traps since we can't "get them" to harvest and use).

It's pretty exploitable on locks.

However, BG is pretty widely willing to give people little XP nibbles for having skills-- and that was the original purpose of the piles of mushrooms, guano, and anonymous dead bodies.

IIRC disabled traps (on BG only place I have seen it) give 1xp/DC of trap disabled (a DC18 trap gives 18 XP).

I can tell you the first time it happened to my rogue I smiled broadly

While I don't want to see a lot of XP inflation in game, I do continue to favor any/all efforts to balance combat XP and the PCs that do combat with other traditional PnP D&D PC functions.