@Adeptus Players want XP because they want progress, and they will be inclined to do things that give them XP. If you give them no XP for that encounter, they will be less inclined to handle situations the way they did there in the future, and the lack of XP will feel like a "you didn't do it right" punishment.
So, they'll take your hint and murder the next thing they find in that situation instead, so they can claim its XP.
If you give them XP anyway, they'll learn they can still progress doing things that way and be happy to leave that on their list of available options.
They could've stood there picking their noses and the outcome would've been the same... but they did make effort toward active problem-solving, despite failing to see it all the way through.
But very seriously if they outright failed, next time they might think twice about "wait, why don't we just kill the thing immediately?" which is probably undesirable.
I agree with BESW here. Charmed pretty much would make the convincing completely trivial, though personally I'd have added my own caveat that the succubus's freedom couldn't come out of someone under certain mental effects...
@Dorian Mmm. Anyone who puts a succubus in a trap that can be broken by trivial application of a succubus's most iconic ability? Is either not a very smart person, or was setting up a Xanatos gambit.
@BESW Not well defined by the adventure... she was a possible source of information (part of which was lies anyway). I think it was mostly a "you can't fight everything, and not everything is what it appears to be" lesson for the players
Partial xp makes the most sense, I might also let them know that they are indeed only getting partial out of it, with some note about there having been multiple ways that could have gone. Possiby even bring the succubus back to assist, troll, and/or hamper the party in the future somehow.
Unless they did get a significant amount of information out of her.
Because every party of PC's needs to be reminded that every action could have long standing consequences, even one that seems insignificant.
Definitely partial then. No info gained afterall, and that was part of the "reward" from successfully maneuvering that encounter.
They did not successfully maneuver that encounter, thus for that they shouldn't get full xp. Heck if they just squashed her with no info gain I wouldn't give them full xp either.
I have some qualms about saying, "You only get partial XP because you also didn't find the secret surprise I didn't tell you was there." But that's pretty typical 3.5 thinking, so when in Rome...
That's literally what the encounter was there for though. Digging up said info, determining whether it was truth or lie, etc.
Just like an encounter with the fairy in the pond with the gold/silver weapon and the weapon you drpped in and blah blah.
The only way I'd grant full xp for something like that is if the PC's solved the riddle and answered truthfully and honestly. Even if they kill the faerie and loot everything they still didn't "win" the encounter
Yes, but it seems... off... to say "Because you didn't get the unknown reward (info), you won't get the known reward either (XP)." It's a feast-or-famine scenario dependent on hidden variables.
They didn't get the info: that's a reward they failed to acquire. Are we really going to also shirk them on OTHER rewards solely because they didn't find the secret bonus?
If you're arguing for less XP because they didn't conclude the encounter with their own agency--okay, that's supportable.
If you can't find the key to open the chest, you don't get its contents. If you don't find the chest, you don't get its contents. You blow up the chest and destroy its contents, you don't get them.
All of her (semi-)useful information was history of the place. Which came from the piles of books in the room she was trapped in. Once she was gone (and they made sure she was gone not just invisible) they searched through the books. Rolled well on search, so I gave them a map of the place (as it was when abandoned by the original occupants)
No that's more like "You chased away the monster that had the key, when you were supposed to barter with him and get the key. You don't get XP because this was a social encounter, not a combat encounter."
XP is gained for overcoming challenges, whether they're known, obvious, or not. They did not overcome the challenge of wheedling information out of the succubus. They did not defeat the succubus. They did not free the succubus of their own accord. They did not succeed in any part of this encounter that I can see.
They didn't even identify that she was a succubus.
However, depending on the effort put forth and the thinking in place, depending on the specific context, I might give them partial xp.
One way is, there are several possible objectives the players could have achieved. They get full XP if they achieve all of them, otherwise they get partial XP.
The other way is assessing what the players actually knew about, and how they dealt with it.
As a trivialised example: the players beat the necromancer's lair, save the city, overthrow the zombie-dragon, and bring peace to the realm.
And then the GM holds up a finger and says: "Ah! But! You did not kill the necromancer's assistant Igor, so you only get one quarter XP." "He had an assistant? We didn't even know about that. You didn't even mention that." "You didn't ask or investigate or find out!"
Bluntly, "you didn't succeed because you didn't do the things you didn't even know were available to know about because I never told you about them" is a dick move.
Actually it does relate. Because they missed a plot hook.
You don't notice the thief that has a special envelope with something useful in it, you can't get the xp for catching the thief and getting the envelope
The XP system in D&D can go in all sorts of directions though.
And a lot of it falls to the DM.
Since pre-printed modules aren't usually clear on what the challenge is, the DM has to figure out whether the PC's get anything out of it.
And heck, most of the time the XP is listed assuming "murderhobo run, kill, loot, xp" with only a few exceptions here and there and most being highly skill check based modules.
@Dorian This makes sense, but it's not really related to the actual scenario at hand. An encounter was had, and concluded. We're talking about how much XP the encounter's conclusion is worth, not about the XP which may be missed in the future because of how it concluded.
The prize of that encounter isn't killing the thief, it's getting the envelope from them. Whether it's by pickpocketing, lies, diplomacy, or intimidation, or one of the many other ways PC's can use to get it from them.
Should they get less than the normal reward for taking down a creature of the thief's challenge rating if they miss the extra part of the encounter, though?
If they don't know about it, they could be chasing him due to sense motive, just noticing a suspicious person coming from a place they're investigating, and etc.
No, you still get xp from beating the thief, but you don't get xp for completing the challenge.
This is why creature combat xp should be kept separate from challenge completion xp. And why many modules fail because they don't account for any of that.
I didn't say you don't get xp for completing a combat.
I said you shouldn't get the full xp for a challenge if you don't complete the challenge.
I don't know what the module is saying the challenge is so I can't figure that out.
sigh
Why the frick do I bother talking to people when everyone misunderstands everything I friggen say and then they ragequit left and right?!?!?!!?
I should just cut out my tongue, gouge out my eyes, and chop off my hands, the I can't communicate with anyone anymore. Then everyone will be freaking happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They were suspicious. They failed to identify exactly what she was, but figured she wasn't what she seemed. They got the info that she had another way, without most of the misinformation. They didn't attack her, when they were mostly sure she was something bad. They only failed based on one saving throw (which, as pointed out, was a pretty big flaw in the imprisonment. And I only used Charm when it looked like they were going to leave). I think I just talked myself into full XP...
@Dorian I was poking you for saying the S- and F- words. Go ahead and say hell all you want, I don't pull people up on that.
@Dorian We understand you perfectly. What has made us decide to leave the discussion is the examples you provide, and the constant shift in tact.
I don't know the word for it, but in situations where there is a disagreement over a phenomenon, there is a survival strategy that follows this pattern: The impetus for the argument gets brought up. At some point, you put forward thing A. When thing A begins to get criticised or come under threat, you bring up thing B and reframe the argument in the case of that. When that comes under threat, you bring up thing C.
That loses the plot fast and undermines any ability to actually discuss A, B, C or so on and settles those matters.
In cases like the point I left, you brought up the case of failing to find the envelope on a thief the players were chasing. When I pointed out that was unrelated, you suggested the letter wasn't known to the players, but that means they have no reason to chase the thief in the first place, which means the entire discussion lost the plot.
Then, making entirely different arguments from moment to moment, that do not appear to have any connection from our perspective, without any apparent acknowledgement of the shift, is also going to result in us being unable to discuss anything with you because you're shifting around so much.
At that point, to us, it seems you're not putting forward a solid scenario (A B C) or position we can actually discuss. You're maneuvering to remain in a winning position. Neither of us wanted to deal with that, so we told you so and disengaged.
Idle observation: there's a D&D house rule I've encountered multiple times (so it's probably somewhat prevalent), which makes PCs immune to social skills such as Bluff, especially in a PvP context. General feeling being that such things are better left to roleplaying, which is to say, non-magical mechanics influencing player behavior are undesirable/immersion breaking.
At the same time, some games with greater focus on roleplaying, like Fate, are quite happy to have game effects "force" PCs to do things. In fact, Fate is built upon one such mechanic.
One group eventually settled on the "PvP immunity" clause.
That is: they felt it was fair game for PCs to use mechanics to manipulate the world, and for the world to use mechanics to manipulate PCs, but not for PCs to use mechanics to manipulate each other.
So I think its underlying motive was a playstyle that valued player cooperation even when PCs were at odds?
...and now I'm remembering a... level 3 or 4 character who could reliably get 50 on their Diplomacy checks, turning anyone they met into fanatical followers.
For some reason, it feels cheap to go "I roll Bluff and beat your Insight, so stop asking questions", but it feels just fine to go "In this conflict we're trying to figure out if you can get information out of me, and it looks like you fail your Overcome check, so nope."
That's not even going into the consent-based mechanics like compels.
I guess the difference is in the expectations from each game. We routinely expect D&D to be about combat, with actual roleplaying left up to the players, and use of mechanics there feels intrusive. Whereas in Fate we expect mechanics to resolve any and all scenes, including social ones.
@Magician alternate phrasing, "D&D has terrible social skills"
@Magician Might also be that in D&D, players aren't so keen to go along with the idea of "you know it's a lie, but your character doesn't, so they're going to walk right into the metaphorical spider-web so carefully laid out for them."
In Fate, it's more like: "oh boy! time for fate points!"
@doppelgreener Except same people who invoke PvP immunity clause also condemn meta-gaming. Both are "bad roleplaying".
Deer god, entire generations of players who had to come up with ways to roleplay in D&D, entire RPG culture built around rules of conduct meant to prevent the behavior the system often encourages. Not that D&D is in any way anti-roleplaying, it's just not really pro-roleplaying either.
I caught a fringe of this culture when I started playing, back in 2000s, in the heyday of forums. Russian RPG community was extra weird due to half of its participants never having held an official rulebook. It was all very word-of-mouth, guru teachings.
Some of my early players get hit with it when they went online in the mid-2000s looking for build guides, but we were isolated enough --and I avoided the forums enough-- that it was treatable.
Our biggest challenges were learning to stop believing the RP/group-dynamic advice in the books was going to be useful.
Interesting. Someone has made an output sheet for PCGen that is in the right format for kindlegen to read it. So in a couple of steps, you can have your PCGen character sheet on your Kindle.
(There's also an Android viewer for the native PCGen character files, which I keep meaning to try out, but keep forgetting to copy my char onto my phone.)
The trick is to keep it simple by just using the same pan for everything except the spaghetti: toast the nuts, set them aside; add the onion, garlic, and red pepper, then just before the pasta's done toss the kale into it. Take it off the heat and add lemon juice, and you're done.
I really want to answer them but I think I need to wait a few more sessions until I have enough GMing experience under my belt to be able to provide actual wisdom on the matter.
@BESW hey, one thing you may want to add re: that stunning thing
make stunning less effective. Instead of bam, you're paralysed, make the player have to work to reach that point. They can paralyse so and so limbs or parts, they can't paralyse all of you unless they keep going.
@DavidReeve advantages require setting up, and depending on the desired results, nothing is wrong with either - they're just different ways of approaching the same thing.
well there wouldn't be much difference between spending your turn on a stunt and spending your turn on an advantage, except that the stunt would require you come up with your own rules for how it works and what it costs
anyone know 5e and have time to walk this guy through character creation? rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/61826/… I can set you up with a chat and give him access
> Because I [describe some way that you are exceptional, have a cool bit of gear, or are otherwise awesome], I get a +2 when I [pick one: Carefully, Cleverly, Flashily, Forcefully, Quickly, Sneakily][pick one: attack, defend, create advantages, overcome] when [describe a circumstance].
And in Fate Accelerated, it recommends +2 to a combination of an approach, action, and situation as a standard stunt you should totally consider picking up.
