Experience Rewards For Good Ruling

[gsamons]

I'm starting my first birthright campaign, and I drew the lot of being the dungeon master. Heh. Neither I, nor my group has ever played the Birthright campaign, so I've made the rulebook required reading for everyone. That said, on the the point. After reading the entire thread about Elminster, and his comparison to Cerillian mages, the topic broke down into an argument about epic level campaigns, and eventually how individuals rewarded their regents for good ruling. This sounds like an incredible idea, and I was wondering if any of you could help me come up with a good guildline for various experience rewards (ie a successful battle, a successful domain action, etc.) I'd like for my campaign to advance, but do it rather slowly.
Thanks for all your help.

Geoff

[Osprey]

Exactly how slow are we talking? One level every x sessions, where x=?

In my own campaign, my characters might level up every 3-4 sessions (on average). I based this on wanting to see a 2 -year campaign (with 2 good 5-hour sessions every 3 weeks or so, and occasional shorter 1-2 hour meetings) advance to epic proportions by the end of it. However, we only meet during the school year (c. 8 months), so in reality I'm talking about 20-25 sessions per year, which works out to around 5-8 levels of advancement each year of play. As I started the PC's out as regents, I let them begin at 4th level (ECL). So by the end of it all, they might be reaching levels 14-20. But I consider that a long haul for a continuing game, and if we actually get there I'll be impressed.

Since most BR campaigns intersperse adventuring and politics, it's very easy to tweak advancement based on the frequency of adventuring and the challenges encountered therein. If you throw in xp for rulership, you should consider keeping adventure xp low if you want slow advancement. In the DMG they talk about story-based xp, which is essentially what you're giving for Regent actions. They mention that if you give story-based xp, you should lower the xp awards for defeating monsters, traps, etc. in order to keep advancement in check. Personally, I like slightly faster advancement to let players feel that they have dynamic characters, and because a game never sees the higher levels given the time limit of most campaigns (rare is the campaign that lasts more than a year or two of real time).

Given these parameters, I'll reprint what I've set out for xp awards. These are fairly high by the "slowed advancement" standards, so you may want to tweak them down for your own game (halving them might work well). XP is awarded only for successful domain actions.

Agitate: 100 xp per level of loyalty adjustment
Contest Holding: 50 xp per level destroyed
Contest Trade Route: 50 x GB income destroyed
Create Holding (level 0): 50 xp
Create Province: 100 xp
Create Trade Route: 100 x GB income
Create Ley Line: 50 xp per province crossed
Research Realm Spell: 100 xp per spell level
Rule Holding: 100 x new level
Rule Province: 200 x new level (this cannot be a Realm Action, and RP cannot be spent to improve your chances, so it is usually much harder than Ruling Holdings)

Modifiers: High level actions are much more difficult (and tend to succeed only at higher levels), so I added multipliers to keep advancement steady at higher levels (much like having a higher CR):

Rule, Contest Holdings and Provinces (based on new level when Ruling):
Level 1-3: x1
Level 4-6: x2
Level 7-9: x3
Level 10: x4

These may seem steep, but keep in mind that very few provinces and holdings ever make it beyond level 6, and 4-6 represents an advanced level relative to most of Cerilia.
Other Domain Actions are more like variable Story-Based Awards, because the effects are less quantified. I generally award anywhere from 100 to 1000 xp (1000 only for extremely difficult and well-wrought actions) for successful Diplomacy and Espionage actions.

I don't give xp for most Court actions, although a clever Decree might earn a small 50-100 xp award.

The easiest tweak to slow things down is to halve the xp for ruling holdings (to 50 xp x new level), since Realm Actions with a good Court can add up to lots of xp very quickly.

WAR: This is trickier. I've monkeyed around with xp for this, and the best system I've come up with looks something like this:

To the winning Commander of a battle: 100 xp x (total muster GB of enemy troops destroyed - muster GB of friendly troops lost).

I might also add a story award (100-500 xp, rarely more) for the strategic value of the victory. For instance, capturing an enemy capital is worth this kind of bonus.

All PC's can earn xp in battle if you roleplay heroic encounters with enemy regents and heroes / villains. Just use standard DMG awards for encounters of this sort.

So there you have my complete Regent xp award system. I hope it at least gives you a start to thinking about one way to do it.

You can always consider assigning Challenge Ratings to various Domain Actions as an alternative system a bit more in line with the DMG.

Good luck!

-Osprey

[Azrai]

In the 3. Edition all experience awards should be based on Challenge Ratings. I would not hand out XP for every domain actions, only for important ones. Set a CR for this actions.

I

[Dragaar]

The point of Awarding Experience is not merely developing characters with every action... Only the most important ones.
For example when a fighter 7th level fights against a goblin (or even 2 or 3) does not get experience, because his actions are not considered noteworthy. He definitely has encountered those creatures before in his carrier, and defeated them many times.
Thus regents should get XP awards depending on the new things they encounter each time, and the way they resolve them, based on their characters, and Role-Playing.

Just my two coppers worth.

[Kalahan]

For my partie i used a method to reward my payer for ruling.

To give experiences points to your player for ruling consider two thing: First the base difficulty and in second the number of regency points he spend to perform the action.

To determine the CR use the difficulty before spend of any regency point minus ten. Adjust the amount of experences points like the rule in dungeon master guide, more your player spend regency point, less experiences points are gain:
Normal for no RP spend
Like less difficul encounter For RP spend to make difficulty less than ten. <_<
Like defeat for failed action :P

This method reward the player who take some risks to rule their domain B)

[irdeggman]

There was a variant for this presented in the BRCS-playtest.

BRCS – playtest, Chap 8 pg 150

Variant: Experience awards for domain actions.
Regent characters gain experience for overcoming domain level threats through domain actions. Experience given for routine actions (base DC 14 or less) should be no more than 50 XP x the regent’s level. Difficult actions (base DC 15-19) should provide no more than 75XP x the regent’s level. Very difficult actions (base DC 20+) and actions that are significantly opposed by the opposing regents should provide no more than 100 XP x the regent’s level.


While a simplification it is pretty easy to implement and not vary hard on the calculations (a big benefit for DMs) while not granting too large an experience benefit for a domain action.

Hope this helps.