[RPG] Milestone leveling for a party of players who drop in and out

character-levelsdnd-5eexperience-points

Historically I have generally used XP for tracking character progress in my party. But my latest new campaign I intend to move to a milestone approach.

However the one thing I don’t fully understand is the best way to manage milestones for parties where players drop in and out of sessions. Up front we have accepted that due to life my players will not be able to make every session and so we have agreed that sessions will take place the character will just be missing, or be jaegured.

What is the best way to manage milestone leveling in this case, should I track player attendance and take this into account, level everyone at the storyline moments anyway, or take more of a player by player approach (which feels like doing XP just without the XP).

I know DnD published material is moving towards the milestone approach is there any official ruling from them with regards to league sessions etc?

Best Answer

Missing a session sucks. Falling behind because I missed a session sucks even more.

When I DM for a group, at Session Zero I lay out this crucial principle:

We all want to be there, so missing a session is punishment enough.

We all want to be there. It sucks to miss a game. I am not going to punish you by lagging your character behind everyone else's because you miss sessions. The Dungeon Master's Guide speaks to this a bit, in the context of experience points and Absent Characters:

As an alternative, give absent characters the same XP that the other characters earned each session, keeping the group at the same level. Few players will intentionally miss out on the fun of gaming just because they know they’ll receive XP for it even if they don’t show up.

Usually, people are in it for the game, not the experience points.

Out of game problems require out of game solutions.

If it does become a habitual issue of missing sessions, I will never handle this out-of-game-problem by punishing your character. We are going to have a conversation out of game, out of character, and see what we can do to make things better, or decide that group isn't a good fit for you. But I will never punish your player character for it.

Discuss this with your players at a Session Zero.

I do not mean to say "my way is the best way". Talk about this with your players. Maybe they're okay with falling behind. Maybe they have the self awareness to know that possibly lagging behind in character advancement will motivate them to attend when they otherwise would not. This is okay too, as long as it is something you discuss with your table.

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