One of the issues that has recently come up in my gaming group is the size
of XP awards in the 3e core rules. The consensus (a rare thing in my
group) being that 3e awards too much XP, making the leveling up process
much more rapid than 2e. Now, I do like the CR award system in general and
I think it works pretty in relation to EL, etc. but lower numbers in Table
7-1 are making more and more sense to me. I thought the players in my
group would howl when I proposed halving them but was surprised when they
came back and suggested quartering them instead.

I think this is particularly an issue in a BR campaign which is supposedly
a "low level" setting with extraordinarily long-lived NPCs running
around. Thirteen and a third "average" encounters for a character level
means many characters and NPCs would soon reach levels far higher than
those suggested in the published materials, especially if one wants to do
things like give story awards or grant experience for having "defeated" (in
a non-combat way) many opponents in the political encounters. Aside from
that... lower XP awards just allows players to invest more into their
characters, developing their personalities and role-playing aspects at a
pace that isn`t outstripped by the characters` power. It`s not at all
unusual for 3e characters to go from 1st to 5th level in less than a month
or two of game time. That`s not a lot in comparison to previous editions
of the game and I`d suggest not really enough time to meaningfully play a
character`s development.

For those reasons (and a few others particular to the nature of the
campaigns I run) I think I`m going to go with much lower XP awards than
those suggested in the DMG.

Anyone have comments or suggestions on what XP awards should be in a BR
campaign or in D&D in general?

Gary

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