I'm currently reading the LMOP scenario. I was thinking about adding some encounters if the PCs want to explore the forest or other side-story zones that aren't considered in the book.
But actually I don't want them to earn too much XP from these, plus I've never DMed before so I'm not aware at all what XP quantities represent.
The reason I'm concerned with giving them XP is that:
- It can lead to them being higher than level 5 before the end (I've asked here whether that's a serious concern)
- Maybe the PCs end up trying to farm XP by just going side-road to easily go through the following of the scenario
What I've already thought about:
Within the scenario, each encounter is specifically awarded with XP, so I might only give XP for scripted encounters, but it might look a bit disappointing for players.
On the other hand, if I award them with the full XP given in the monster's stats blocks, it might end up with one of the problems I mentioned above.
Given prior experiences as a GM or player (especially with LMOP in particular), how can I give PCs XP for encounters that aren't scripted without changing too much of the scenario level expectation?
Best Answer
I'm going to challenge your premise a bit - why not drop XP-based levelling altogether and use milestone levelling instead? In my time as a DM and a player, I've found milestone has a few advantages:
If you still want to reward the players for completing the side-encounters you can reward them with items, clues or gold instead of XP.
In general, choosing where to place milestones is an art rather than a science. If I'm running a homebrewed adventure or a sandbox campaign, I will usually use my "gut feeling" to decide when PCs have done enough to merit a level up, or use major character goals to help decide. For published adventures I will look through the book to see what levels the writers had in mind for each chapter. As for LMOP in particular you should be able to award one level per chapter, which I've based on the following: