Party is fighting a major demon

>Party is fighting a major demon.
>Due to a extremely long string of bad luck on both sides the encounter lasts a whole thirty-four rounds and 2.5 hours irl.
>All spells are used up on both sides except for limitless casting stuff.
>Party is in worse shape than the demon.
>Fighter pulls out a Teleport scroll and whooshes the party to a safe place.
>GM doesn't give experience for the fight because we didn't win or defeat the demon.

Should my GM have given us a exp reward regardless because of the extended effort of the fight or is he right?

your GM is a shit head and is probably a "B-BUT THE BOOK DIDN'T SAY IT THAT WAY" type of gigantic faggot. He should have dolled out at least half the XP or something. You still were engaged in an encounter and ended it in a way that didn't end in a party wipe. Not that there's much to do about it now, but call him a faggot anyway

You didn't overcome the challenge, you just ran away.

Definitely it was wrong of him to not reward at least some exp to reward the party for having lasted so long and having survived

However, I think its more imperative to tell him that such fights are too taxing and that he needs to tone them down to something that can be resolved more quickly

>Party deals 999 damage over three hours to the demon with 1000 health.
>Party has to flee
>No exp
>Party deals 1000 damage in ten minutes due to dice God shenanigans and minimum effort
>All the exp
This is just a crumb of why I stopped playing D&D.

that's not how the DMG says it though

He should give the party a bonus to fighting demons from the battle experience

Today I spent 5 hours building a RG Gunpla model.

It's my fourth one. I didn't finish it, but I learned a lot from doing this one and that skill will transfer to my fifth build.

Ergo, if you do something, even if you don't finish it, you learn from it. Gaining experience in the thing you have attempted.

Thus OP should have received some experience for his efforts in fighting a demon.

They overcame the challenge of surviving a fight with a powerful demon and for the large part doing a pretty good effort of it. If you think they don't deserve experience for this you're either baiting or an awful GM/player.

That's not a system problem, it's a GM problem.

The problem being the GM chose a bad system.

No, the problem is that the GM is misunderstanding what experience is supposed to represent and how it's supposed to be distributed.

It's like saying Poker is a bad game because your dealer never shuffles.

You didn't beat the milestone, so no, no level for you. That being said, your DM is shit because he didn't end the fight on turn 12.

I'd have given a smaller chunk of exp, probably about half the true fight's worth depending on how much was originally intended if they succeeded. At some point you have to recognize and respect the effort the party went through to get as far as they did.

that's why i use a hand-waved training system.
put your stats and skills to use and we have a little talk after the session regarding any level-ups.

it also prevents murderhoboism because i give some extra stuff for roleplaying (such as ending fights without killing)

No.

Learning to pick your battles and retreat when overmatched IS a major milestone for most parties

Fuck, if my players ever recognized when they were in over their heads and retreated, I'd give them two levels right then and there.

Wait, what does the DMG say about encounters where the party flees? I forget.

The moment the party realizes they're in over their head I always end up dicked as the damage sponge
Pic related I have simply given up on running once combat starts and try to stick it out instead unless we actually have a method of escape against the recognizably unkillable

he should have given you some, yes

my reasoning? you had one hell of an experience, and you now have experience fighting (and surviving) a major demon

>That's not a system problem
gm litterally played it by the rules, you can say it's an easily fixed nonproblem, but the system still says that.