PCs are losing a fight

>It's weird how many players get salty from this too
Maybe because they come from games in if you don't kill your enemies you don't get an ounce of XP, I've been in some games like that, even if you overwhelm your opponents and beat them, if they escape, boom, no XP at all. Fucking silly.

System? I assume correctly D&D? Don't worry, DC increases +1 for every 10 ft away from the source, +5 if wooden door, +10 if stone wall. Add all that is is not that easy to hear stuff if you're a corridor and a room away.

I know from a mechanics-wise perspective. But how do you justify the fact the enemies all can't hear clashing of swords 1 hallway away. The "reality" of the situation is my problem.

...

Longer hallways.
More doors / small unimportant rooms.
Something to throw off the sound (aka cloth or chains hanging from the ceiling in the halls).

Make the dungeon louder. Underground river. Party going on in the deepest chamber. Blacksmiths banging away. Dire moles loudly mating in nearby tunnels. Whatever.

Shit, I'll have bandits flee from losing a couple of guys if I think they're tenderfoots or the PCs kill the first few with no meaningful harm very quickly and violently.

In a dungeon crawling type of campaign, how do you give XP if not for # of enemies killed?

"Awarding Experience
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game characters advance in level by defeating monsters, overcoming challenges, and completing adventures—in so doing, they earn experience points (XP for short). Although you can award experience points as soon as a challenge is overcome, this can quickly disrupt the flow of game play. It's easier to simply award experience points at the end of a game session—that way, if a character earns enough XP to gain a level, he won't disrupt the game while he levels up his character. He can instead take the time between game sessions to do that."

Defeating them not killing them. XP from only murder is essentially a houserule and bad gming.

>Are you sure you want to say this? It sounds like intimidation attempt, and can piss them off even more.

They can think that succesful roll can do everything. Or they can have shitty social skills. Or not taking game serious. Or just braindead stupid.

Amount of treasure successfully hauled to the surface.

Defeat doesn't have to mean kill

Depending on the system, let them level up / give them some xp that you feel is appropriate after each session.

This makes it so you don't need to tally down every encounter / accomplishment.

Them getting away isn't defeating them. On the other hand, capturing them and bringing them to justice is. Point being, if they're capable of returning to their ways on the very next day, you've only mildly inconvenienced them.

Do you think the king would pay the bounty if you went back saying "oh I made the robber baron run away for a day, monies plox nao"?

This.
Same shit

This! But don't have bandits do the "yer money or your life" type thing right away.

Or, have shopkeepers barter with players- "I've got this fresh in from my supplier, and because of the great quality, it'll cost you a bit extra. But, if you give me [dosh amount] right now, I'll sharpen it, and all the weapons of your party for free."

Or have hostage situations. "Take another fucking step and I'll kill him. Any of you move a muscle and he's dead. I want [x, y,z]."
Be sure to minimalize rollplay in these situations, because that's just not fun.

Depends on your goals. If, for example, your mission is to recover a hostage or some filthy lucre, getting the defenders to fuck off is probably a sufficient defeat.

>I hate my group seeing me as a Machiavellian mastermind because my NPCs do things like "run away when they're losing the fight".
Its because you are taking the loot and experience away. Which is everything the party strives for.

You have to find a balance from reward and reality if you know the balance post it, I don't know it

>Add all that is is not that easy to hear stuff if you're a corridor and a room away.
Damn, D&D is retarded. That's not how sound works at all.

I remember how in a game one of the PCs listened to bandit leader that was kind of trying to expropriate money from the group. And after the speech ended he jumped on him and cut him half with one attack. He also asked master to give him a chance to describe the result.

After that all other bandits started running and didn't stop until they reached neighbouring kingdom where they returned to honest work and a couple of them even became monks at a temple of some good god.

I disagree. Unless you never mae contact with them at all, or they fled on the first round before you could take your actions, you have at least performed actions against them that made them abandon the conflict. I tend to count that as "defeating" them.

Now, this may not complete the quest (especially if the quest is "catch these assholes"), but quest XP and monster XP are different.

In D&D moving at light speed makes you an easier target to attacks.
My current char moves faster than most modern bullets and arrows still hit me.

>Topic has absolutely nothing to do with D&D
>"lol just stop playing D&D"

>My current char moves faster than most modern bullets

Explain how.

Exp should be based on the encounter. If you feel the group fought to win. You consider the encounter passed, and give them the appropriate experience for the encounter at the end of the session.

If they just keep running from fights without even trying, then you give them no exp

What if they bypassed the encounter via guile rather than force of arms?

I would give them full exp as well if it was creative. Half the exp if it was with the generic intimidation attempt

What do you think anyway? Should exp be given based on encounter as opposed to "enemies defeated/killed".

>Half the exp if it was with the generic intimidation attempt

I say award XP for victories and achievements, whether they involve killing opponents or not.

My group tries to intimidate everyone with the same trick, its boring.

Have you tried turning your computer off and on again. It usually works for most problems.

Honestly I'm closer to the "ignore XP, level everyone up when it seems appropriate" school of thought, but in principle yeah I'd have the XP be the reward for achieving your goals despite the obstacles in general rather than strictly per enemy eliminated.

What trick is that?

Stacking speed in 3.PF isn't exactly high level optimization.

xeph race +30 9 rounds/day (competence)
quick +10 (base)
animal devotion +15 1/day (sacred)
speed of thought +10 (insight)
monk 9 +30 (enhancement)
+10 dark template
+10 feral template
x1.5 shadow template

925/run action

They got a flaming skull, then attached it to a chain. Then use ventriloquism to pretend the skull is talking, they use it to pretend its the grim reaper incarnated, or to scare animals with the fire (that doesn't actually burn, its just an illusion).

It was a sacred item they were meant to recover for a local tribe, but they decided to steal it instead, and are using it to intimidate the pursuers.

It was nice at first, after like 10 repeaters I feel like I have to break that skull.

And by RAW, more movement speed doesn't give you AC bonuses. (Which I think it does, so I give a +1 AC bonus per 30ft of movement in a round. It leads to interesting , but hilarious situations where two fighters literally dance around each other before striking. Swordsmen need to practice their footwork. )

I like to set a percentage of about 25% casualties to start making break-checks at, with different values for the quality, cohesion and bravery of the men in question.

Iron Heroes had a class (The harrier) that worked around moving fast and getting bonuses to it, stuff like:
For every 5 ft you get +1 to AC (one feature), +1 to hit (another feature), +1 to damage (a third feature). He also got even better progression than monk at speed.
You eventually could flank with yourself, have 1/4 your speed as "5ft free movement" so you could move like 15ft and still full attack or not provoke.
I reached 14th level in there and I got a feature that basically was make 3 attacks at full BaB as long as I moved all my speed without crossing for squares I already been in that turn.

Prestty awesome when you realize you get another feature that allows you to spider climb so you can move everywhere and always get full bonuses and 3 attacks.

>they decided to steal it instead, and are using it to intimidate the pursuers
>they use it to pretend its the grim reaper incarnated

>Animals run when injured for more then a quarter of their health, bandits and other thugs flee when half their forces are gone, undead, constructs, cultists and people that are being forced into combat fight to the end.

I really like AD&D morale rules for on-the-spot judgements like this.

These posts trigger my PTSD by reminding how much loops you had to jump through as a martial to be even remotely relevant. Goddamnit the pain, when will it end.

>loot
The bandits you just finished pacifying probably don't keep all of their loot on their personas. Wilderness check, find their encampment, loot that instead.
>experience
Even D&D gives you XP if you just "defeat" and not outright kill an enemy.

See but in Iron Heroes (Basically a martial-only* prototype for 4e built on the 3.5 chassis) those are all base class features.

*there's one optional caster class and it's explicitly not balanced against the other classes

Oh yeah, Iron heros was was "martial focused D&D" with 9 martials and 1 caster, the caster was still way better than all the martials, and the monsters were still pretty much hard level to martials even though all martial clases were way better than 3.PF martial classes

But it was fun, another player had a dude that could make as many attacks as he wanted as long as he rolled a crit (he used a falchion with imp crit so 15+ gave him an extra attack).

>without the rest of the dungeon hearing battle noises and running over to gang up the PCs?
In D&D, I leave that up to the PCs to figure out. If they want to hide their presence they'll be making Stealth checks, casting quiet spells with Silent Spell, casting the Silence spell down hallways that enemies might be around, etc. If they don't, shit gets heard down the hallway or whatever and further enemies take the time to buff up, set an ambush, etc.

My enemies are moderate smart, the players' job is to be smarter. Failing that, be stronger.

It's weird how "cash in and sell out", the popular method of human conflict resolution since time immemorial, just isn't on people's mental radar.

>picture
>what a DICK

Would they have killed them if they failed the diplomacy check? Could've made that clearer if that was the case:

>"I'LL DRINK FROM YOUR SKULL!"
>"Oh shit, I'm so sorry." (success)
>"That may be the case, but nonetheless an apology is in order. Your worldly possessions shall suffice."
>Further diplomacying may or may not ensue, idk, what do you feel like DM?

why not just use milestone leveling, its way easier and faster and lets the DM control the game a bit better

>Them getting away isn't defeating them.
okay napoleon, lololololol

If it's DnD you get spells with XP costs that don't work if you use this rule.

I know, I know, "have you tried not playing DnD"

no good edition of DnD has XP costs though

You do know how stealth works in the game, right? Unless they can literally kill them all in one round, it's impossible to do that.

>ignore XP, level everyone up when it seems appropriate
my life became infinitely easier when I started doing this and I have not met a single person who disagrees and is worth playing with.

Is it possible to substitute XP costs with gold costs?

I can't think of a single spell with an XP cost you should actually let PCs learn/cast.

Perhaps, if there are gold costs for slaves of different levels, one could determine a fair cost by subtracting the cost of a level 1 slave from that of a slave of a level obtainable with the experience consumed by the spell (interpolation may be necessary)

How did this immediately turn to slave magic

There's nothing wrong with a bit of creative thinking.
Though I'm little disappointed by distinct lack of Sithrak references.

Because abusing masses of the weak for our own ends is what got mankind where we are today.

It can be slave magic if you really want it to be, but what im proposing is trying to pull out a gold cost for A Person Having EXP

Have the tribe send someone else after them to get the sacred skull of Sithrak back (I don't care what it's actually called, it's the skull of Sithrak now).

If you can burn other people's xp for xp costs, it's technically possible to buy up and use slaves' xp for them, resulting in a gold:xp ratio for spells that use xp.

Actually ripping out people's souls and draining them of their memories and experiences to fuel spells/make magical items is pretty damn evil though.

30 is an even number user.

IIRC AD&D gave you 1XP per 1GP of loot/treasure found and sold.

Yeah, my intention was to take the cost from that hypothetical but assume it is instead spent on mystical crystals and weird reagents and so on.

>People in my group don't know how to make efficient characters and don't know how to work as a team
>one of our players made a fighter who put all he could into casting magic because ''it's not what fighters typically do'' instead of powering his combat style
>DM only tolerates us because he has nothing better to do
>it's very rare we actually win an encounter on our own
>most of the time the DM has to have NPC's come in and save us so that the story can progress

You don't know hell.

are you legitimately retarded user?

Is the roleplay any good at least ?

It's an interesting idea. Going from the Pathfinder SRD (Which is the only one i have access to at the moment.) A Hireling, Trained (mercenary warrior) costs 3sp per day. Using the Bandit from the monster manual (?) as a base, it rewards 200exp, but is level 2. So if hiring a Bandit costs 6sp, that gives us 6sp:200exp, or 1sp:33.3exp.

I would adjust these numbers a bit, myself, but there's the base I came up with.

It's an odd number for a group of scouts

Man, I can get playing against racial stereotypes, but if you play against your class then you should've just picked a different class.

>30 scouts
>(odd number, I know)
user...
>It's an odd number for a group of scouts
user, just because scouts don't understand the concept of odds and evens doesn't mean you can't.

...

...so you're aware that the term "odd" is being used in its meaning of "unusual" and are just sticking to the joke, right? This is sometimes hard to tell over the internets.

Joke explainers should be flayed

odd numbers aren't unusual. Literally half of the numbers are odd.

Sorry for derailing the thread. I'm just tired, bored, and lonely.
>My players never understood diplomacy >sessions often devolved into infighting.
Kek

If you're playing D&D after a certain point most players are going to feel like their magical gear is basically a part of their character especially if they aren't playing a spell casting class, so if they lose most of it they might as well just let that character go and roll a new one.

The players said "give us all your stuff," not the enemies they encountered.

>I'm just tired, bored, and lonely.

Oh, I thought it meant they made a diplomacy roll and the bandits offered to let them live if they dropped their stuff, and the players thought being offered a chance to surrender was a failure of a roll.

Could very well have. The all caps implied to me that it was players, given the op's frustration with his players.

>the one in charge of the guard fucking decided to sleep even we told the player don't to be a fucking dick

One of the telltale signs that the adventure will suck. IME the earliest sign is one guy being extra enthusiastic about his character in a belligerent way, coming off cocky, or mentioning something along the lines of "if x then you can't stop me", often during character creation. A sign appearing next is what happened here, where a player showed he wasn't a team player or otherwise didn't care. Everything else escalates so far that it can't be ignored and by then the game is in the handbasket.

I've learned to watch for that first sign. I let them create their characters, then tell them we'll postpone the adventuring part. If the guy wasn't connected to anyone else in the group I tell him I don't have time to do it, but get the rest of the group in. If he's connected, I deep six the adventure entirely, but say I might run a different one. Anyone showing interest will get "can you bring 'That Guy'?", if they say "yes", they're out.

Yes.
>be running a session of pf it was my first time and I didn't know any better
>had 11 players
>on average would have about 6 show up each session, only did sessions in person
>group of friends all picked characters
>they go to a temple or something and find an evil spooky magic sacrificial dagger
>party is torn over what to do with it
>a few sessions later the ranger, played by my friend who straddles the line between "that guy" and "not that guy," steels the dagger from the bag of another party member
>splits the party
>travels far away to hide the dagger
>hasn't told the party what he's doing or why
>druid player tracks down the hiding place while ranger is on his way back to the main group
>main group is doing some kind of investigative work in some town
>pissed at ranger player for throwing away what was clearly questitem.exe
>ranger returns
>arguments ensue
>druid returns with the dagger
>ranger spazzes out and tries to kill the druid
>end session
I told them to figure out a way to resolve this without killing each other.

>Don't have the bandits do the "yer money or your life" type thing right away.

This. I had a hilarious moment where I had the party come across a naked human male just walking down the road, looking haggard as fuck. This was right after a jaunt into one of the local dungeons, and I had made sure to give them some other loot to replace their old armor, so they gave their old stuff that they were going to sell to the guy in exchange for him agreeing to basically join up with the party and be a lootwagon/meatshield. He agreed readily and took the (relative to the party) cheap armor and put it on.

They went to the town and spent a night in the inn, and woke up to find the fucker gone, along with all the gold they had on them.

They were fucking livid. It was hilarious how easily they fell for this guy's plan - I had expected them to try to detect evil or check if he was lying or do the murderhobo thing and just leave him there, but all it took was a little prodding from the NPC and he made off with basically everything.

You sound like a complete bitch.

...

Terrible analogy, in that case a bounty calls specifically for the death or capture of an individual(s), while "defeating" someone in battle just means to win said battle and claim the desired objectives. Not killing the people involved doesn't mean they weren't defeated.
Lets say theres two people in a duel to first blood, and one of them loses, that guy is defeated. He wasn't killed, or slain, or shrugged off the mortal coil, or kicked the bucket. He was still defeated tho.

Fuck yeah. The number of times the party I DMd for yelled "They're running away! WITH OUR TREASURE?!!?" (they had the habit of counting whatever the "bad guys" had as theirs even before they got it, fuming whenever an enemy drank a potion or used a charge from a wand)

Good times, good times...

Imagine being a bandit and the person you were going to rob is already fighting with their friends over who gets to keep your gold.

It'd be a bit unnerving, to tell the truth.