Playtest 7: Barbarians

 We got our new UA! In it, we have revisions of the classes found in Playtest 5. Again, there have been some reversions, like subclass feature levels (other than those at 1 and 2) and now the restoration of old class spell lists. I'm going to go down the list of classes in alphabetical order, but given that we've already gotten revisions of these classes, we're going to look at what has changed. Naturally, one of the big things is that we're getting the four subclasses for each of these five classes to be found in the PHB, including brand-new subclasses for the Barbarian and the Fighter.

The Barbarian got some nice quality of life improvements in playtest 5, and these are still in place, along with some other things.

Level 2: Danger Sense is back to this level, but it's been buffed to still be active even if you're blinded or deafened. I think those cases were rare, but it's nice.

Reckless Attack has also been buffed slightly - the advantage you gain from it now lasts until the start of your next turn. Essentially, on each turn, you decide whether you're being reckless or not for the full round. This will only really help if you have ways to make attacks with a reaction, such as opportunity attacks or the Berserker's Retaliation feature, but the logic here is that, as long as you're taking the downside (advantage against you) you might as well continue to get the benefits.

Level 3: Primal Knowledge is up to level 3, but works the same way, I think, as it did in the previous playtest, letting you, while raging, use Strength in place of other abilities for certain skills. (Again, I like this, but I also think a DM should feel free to use off-label abilities with certain skills).

Level 7: Instinctive Pounce, from Tasha's, has been added here. While maintaining one's Rage is easier now, this lets the melee-focused Barbarian get into the fight sooner, and that's good.

Level 9: Brutal Critical is closer to its original design, but is now weapon-agnostic: your bonus dice are now always d12s. This is definitely a buff to anyone who wasn't already using a Greataxe, but thanks to Weapon Mastery, you still might want to use that weapon. But if you're dual-wielding handaxes, this is now pretty great. I might have personally liked the previous playtest version, but this works fine.

Level 15: Persistent Rage now requires you to be fully unconscious, not just incapacitated, to end your rage early. So, that's nice. This also incorporates Rage Resurgence, which gives you a Rage at the start of combat if you're out. While there are other features for classes that work like this (requiring the tank to be empty to give you resources back) I think, given that most Barbarians only have to use one Rage per combat, this feels fair.

Level 18: Indomitable Might now applies to Strength saves as well as checks.

Level 20: Primal Champion, returned to level 20, once again increases Strength and Constitution by 4, instead of 2. (And the maximums as well). However, I think it's also worth pointing out that the Ability Score Improvement Feat also increases your maximum to 22 at level 19, which means that if you brought your Strength to 22 the previous level, you'll only get half a benefit (or perhaps three-quarters benefit) from this feature. I wonder if it would be so game-breaking to simply say "your maximum increases by 4" rather than "it increases to 24."

    So, nothing earth-shaking here. But I think the QOL improvements in the last playtest were really great.

Moving on, let's look at subclasses.

Berserker:

We saw the much-improved Berserker last time, and this one only has a slight tweak: Intimidating Presence now requires a bonus action instead of an action, which is frankly great - it's hard to tell a Barbarian to stop attacking, even if the forced saving throw keeps the Rage going.

Wild Heart (Renamed Totem Warrior):

So, the Totem Warrior is now called the Wild Heart (as seen in BG3).

One of the changes is that the animal options at each level have different animals - the logic here is that some players thought that if they picked, say, Eagle at 3rd level, they'd be locked into only Eagle options. Here, it's clear that each feature level you get to make a choice. You can also swap them out on level-up if you prefer another.

Level 3:

There are actually fewer animal options here - Tiger and Elk are gone. (Were those Tasha's options?)

So, the first thing we need to talk about is the Bear Totem. This has been... nerfed, but I'm going to argue that the nerf is actually not that bad. You no longer automatically get resistance to everything other than Psychic when you Rage. Instead, when you Rage, you choose two damage types that are not Force or Psychic and gain resistance to those.

    It is a nerf, but if you're facing, say, Fire Elementals, you have a pretty obvious resistance to choose. In fights where it's not obvious or where there are a lot of damage types, yeah, it's a nerf. But the Bear Totem was so powerful that I don't think I ever saw anyone pick other options.

The Eagle has gotten buffed, letting you both dash and disengage as a bonus action while raging, or as part of the bonus action to rage.

Wolf has the range of its advantage-granting increased to 10 feet.

    So, I think this creates a bit more parity between the options. Bear's still good, but not as super-powered.

Level 6:

The three options here each give proficiency, or expertise if you already have proficiency, in certain skills. This is a little deceptive, as each totem has, within it, a choice of two skills. So really, this is a list of six skills to get proficiency or expertise in.

Elephant can give you Athletics or Insight, Owl can give you Investigation or Perception, and Spider can give you Stealth or Survival.

    Purely on thematic grounds, I feel like these should give you both of your animal choice, because mechanically, again, this is really just a list of six skills.

Level 10:

Nature Speaker is the new name for Spirit Walker, and other than clarifying that Wisdom is the spellcasting ability, it's unchanged.

Level 14:

The Lion option (formerly Bear) now works even if a foe can't be frightened. The Falcon (formerly Eagle) option no longer forces you to land at the end of your movement, so you can simply just keep flying. Ram (formerly Wolf) lets you knock foes prone as part of an attack, rather than a bonus action, but now allows a Strength save to resist it.

    So, most of these are just nice little fixes. I do think that the Ram option will feel weirdly redundant or possibly annoying if you're using a weapon with the Topple property - if you hit twice, that's potentially four saving throws. (Also, as worded, you can't choose not to use this).

    As for the subclass, I'm sure that the discussion will mostly be around the nerf to the Bear totem feature. Again, I think it was warranted. Not everything can be a buff, and this was a little too overwhelming.

Path of the World Tree:

This is the brand-new Barbarian subclass, and one that I'm sure Norse myth nerds will be very excited about.

Level 3:

Vitality of the Tree:

This lets you regain hit points equal to your Barbarian level when you Rage. Then, at the start of each of your turns while Raging, you can choose another creature within 10 feet of you to gain Temp HP, which you determine by rolling a number of d6s equal to your Rage bonus. So, 2d6 to start, going up to 3d6 and then 4d6. The temp HP vanishes when your rage ends.

    Ok, this could potentially be really good: because Rage now lasts for 10 minutes and can be maintained with a bonus action, consider the following: you're getting ready to charge into a group of enemies. You know a fight is coming, so you Rage say, 18 seconds before you charge in. And then you give Temp HP to your allies before charging in there. I don't think this is the intended use, but would be a cool tactic.

Level 6:

Branches of the Tree:

When Raging, if a creature you can see ends its turn within 20 feet of you, you can use a reaction to conjure spectral branches of the World Tree, and the creature makes a Strength save (DC based on your Strength) or be teleported to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you, as long as that space has a solid surface or liquid that can support the creature. And, there's a grey box here that specifies that a creature can always choose to fail a save.

    Naturally, the obvious use here is a kind of "get over here" pull on a fleeing or otherwise engaged enemy. But this can also be an amazing way to save a vulnerable ally - you can even put the ally behind you.

Level 10:

Battering Roots:

This one's kind of nuts. Tendrils of the World Tree extend from your melee weapons. While you weild any melee weapon (any) your reach with that weapon extend by 10 feet, and when you hit with it, you can activate the push or topple property even if you're using a different mastery with that weapon.

    This makes me want to reconsider by Path of the Giant Bugbear Polearm build. (What is that, a 25-foot reach?) Also, while weapon mastery versatility is mainly a Fighter thing (and should be) I think this makes thematic sense. There's a lot of battlefield control in this subclass, which is cool.

Level 14:

Travel Along the Tree:

As an action, you can touch a Huge or larger tree or a teleportation circle to create a link through the World Tree to a teleportation circle somewhere else on the same world or on another plane of existence. You can specify the target destination in general terms, and show up at the nearest teleportation circle. You can bring up to 5 willing creatures with you when you do this. Once used, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest unless you expend 5 uses of your Rage.

    So, I love this thematically. I think the one question is whether a capstone feature for the subclass that has no benefit in combat is right for a Barbarian. For sure, I think this subclass could be very good - it doesn't get any bonus damage, but Vitality of the Tree will provide a lot of damage absorption for your allies.

    Generally, I really like this subclass and its themes, really tying into the mystical side of the Barbarian, and I also dig any kind of planar stuff. I think it's good.

Path of the Zealot:

I'd guessed this could have been included, as one of the popular subclasses from Xanathar's. But let's see how it looks in its revised version:

Level 3: Divine Fury now lets you choose which damage type it does, Radiant or Necrotic, when you Rage, rather than when you gain the feature. This is nice, given that it could be thematically appropriate to use Necrotic sometimes even though Radiant damage sometimes has beneficial effects that Necrotic tends not to.

Warrior of the Gods, which was kind of a ribbon feature before (especially odd to get material-component-free resurrection at a level where your Cleric probably can't even do that yet) but now, you gain an additional 1d12 healing when someone restores HP to you with a spell or magic item (and potions are magic items!). You only gain this benefit a number of times equal to you Con modifier per long rest, but that's still pretty good (now, is Spare the Dying in the new version restores 1 HP, that means you'll be getting 1d12+1. Not bad for a cantrip!)

Level 6:

Fanatical Focus is unchanged.

Level 10:

You can now use Zealous Presence additional times per long rest by spending Rages.

Level 14:

Rage Beyond Death has been redesigned. Now, if you successfully restore hit points with Relentless Rage (and remember that this now heals you for Rd6 (a number of d6s equal to your rage damage bonus) instead of putting you at 1 HP,) you become a Spectral Warrior for 1 minute, or until you regain any more HP or drop to 0 Hp. While transformed, you get a Fly speed and can hover, and you can move through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain (taking a d10 of force damage if you end your turn inside a creature or object) and then, if you're hit with an attack roll, you can use a reaction to turn that hit into a miss.

Once used, you can't use this again until you finish a long rest.

    Ok, so, this makes me a little sad: I liked the old version of Rage Beyond Death where you could just endure anything as long as you stayed Raging (I also liked the idea of making an Aasimar who would use their healing ability right as the Rage was about to end) but I also recognize that, well, it's kind of redundant with Relentless Rage. This is super cool, and probably more balanced. Still, I don't love that it actually kind of punishes you for healing up after being knocked down. 

And that's the Barbarians! We'll look at the Fighter next, then make our way through the Mages (and then touch on changes to Weapon Masteries).

Loss of Control in Monster Design

 Tonight, for the first time in over a month, we were able to play the D&D campaign in which I am a player, rather than DM. We fought a plant creature from The Creature Codex, one of Kobold Press' 5E monster books, called a Jinmenju. My best friend, who is the DM in that campaign, has talked about running that monster for a long time, and so while I didn't want to meta-game, as soon as I heard some of its description (specifically, a tree with fruits that look like heads and that charms creatures into sitting beneath it until they waste away) I knew what we were looking at. But I made a point not to look at the stat block.

Finding the tree surrounded by dozens of starving villagers from the severely depopulated town we had stopped in, we made an attempt to talk the tree into letting people go, but it wasn't going to happen, so we fought it.

We did win. But it occurred to me that the design of this monster is something I'd try to avoid.

Now - to be fair - we rolled like dogshit on a bunch of saves. The Jinmenju has two lair actions, which each replicate different spells - Charm Person and Confusion - against basically everyone nearby. It also has a legendary action (that takes two actions) that can inflict the incapacitated condition on creatures that are near its roots (it's immobile, but can manifest roots around it to attack people in melee).

Had it not been for a lucky roll when I got Confused and the tree (and the DM) forgetting that I had failed against the Charm Person effect, I would have not been able to do anything during that fight. One of our paladins literally got to do nothing the entire fight.

It...

Story-wise, it was a cool and creepy monster.

As a combat encounter, it was frustrating.

The dice tell a story, of course. And sometimes, things go wrong. But I think this fight - and again, largely due to bad luck on dice rolls (though as I only have  +2 to Wisdom saving throws and the DCs here were 16, I was kind of bound to fail most of them) - demonstrated to me how some monsters, or rather, some mechanics, can be un-fun.

In MCDM's Designing the Game series, there's a video about The Null Result, and another about how they're thinking about the Attack action in their in-development monster-hunting fantasy TTRPG. Talking about this, Matt Colville identifies a problem in D&D, which is that it really sucks when you wait for your turn, roll an attack, and with too low a number, nothing happens.

The solution he presents, which may or may not make it into their system, is one in which a failed attack causes the creature who has been attacked to counter-attack (or, in strict game language, simply "counter"). Even though it's bad, it means that something, at least, happened on your turn.

If missing with an attack feels bad, stun, incapacitated, and even charm effects can be even worse, because you didn't even get the chance to make an attack roll. The only option is failure.

(In another video they also talk about using 2d6 as their default "decision-making dice" as opposed to a d20, which cuts down on swinginess, but that's another topic.)

And in this fight tonight, it didn't feel great. Again, I might not have felt this way if we had rolled better on our saves. The damage the monster did to us was strong, but not overwhelmingly so.

But so much of the combat was spent being unable to do things.

Not to be a total cultist for MCDM, but I think one of the principles in their monster design in Flee, Mortals was to generally avoid things like Stunning or Incapacitating player characters. The book uses the Dazed condition, which it looks like official D&D content will also bring in with the 2024 Core Rulebooks. Dazed means you have to choose between action, bonus action, and movement, which is a big limitation, but you still get to make a decision and do something on your turn.

Even a creature like a Night Hag (MCDM's version being an actual Fey with sleep-themed powers) has charming and mind-affecting effects, but these don't prevent the characters from doing something: Vicious Visions (a 1/day bespoke spell) is a cone-charm spell, but it also causes affected creatures to see allies as enemies, and then the effect ends if they damage another creature. So, the player is charmed and can't attack the hag (or her allies) but the player gets to do something, and doing that something is going to, on one hand, hurt an ally, but on the other hand, get them back in the fight. Likewise, the Night Hag's "Aren't You Tired?" reaction lets them impose some big restrictions, removing reactions and giving disadvantage on attacks, but the character still gets to at least try to do stuff.

And I think this is a smart way to make monsters fun to fight. "Crowd control" is a longstanding tradition in RPGs, but especially in the slow-paced world of tactical combat games like D&D, removing a character's ability to do anything cuts into that fantasy of being a hero.

It's not about not wanting to fail - a game (and a story) needs the stakes of failure to make the successes feel good.

But if you're in a state where, after fifteen minutes you finally come back around to your turn and... you can't do anything, we just skip it, that doesn't feel like you're participating in the story. It's a cutscene.

I don't think this is an obvious problem. But I do appreciate that the folks at MCDM seem to have noticed it, and I think it'll be a big part of the way that I homebrew monsters in the future. The game's fun when you get to do things. Not doing things... generally not fun.

Getting Deeper into Armored Core VI

 I just killed the "Ice Worm," which is an odd mission in Armored Core VI that sees you using a prototype weapon to clear the gigantic mechanical monster (or, likely, biomechanical) of its powerful energy shield, which then sets it up to be taken down by a rail gun, and then you unload on it like it's no one's business.

The challenge of the mission is not really your typical one - yes, you have the usual challenges of dodging enemy attacks and pumping out damage when you can, but you spend most of the mission waiting for the opportunity to attack the Worm's face - you have to hit it straight on, which is very tough given that it only briefly shows its face and usually only when it's attempting to grind you into scrap metal.

While the game is still not quite what I'd call Dark Souls-level difficult, I have noticed an uptick in the difficulty of some missions - there's one that involves re-taking "The Wall," which you had previously done when fighting against the (probably good guys) Rubicon Liberation Front. Now, however, the PCA - the Planetary Closure Administration, which seems to have the weight of an actual major government behind it and thus actually manages to make the corporations look like scrappy underdogs - has taken it over. The mission has you facing off against a few not-terribly-scary MTs (minor mechs) and then a pair of tougher, faster, but not overwhelmingly so, ACs. Making your way into The Wall, you then have to fight a few minor enemies with some powerful attacks, and then face off against an elite PCA AC. The catch, though, is that there is not a single checkpoint in the level. Usually when you get to a boss, you can start over right before you fight them, probably with your AC redesigned to be a menace in single-target fights (one of the nastiest combinations is two miniguns and two Songbirds, the latter of which are basically artillery guns, which you deploy after you've overloaded the enemy with Strain using the miniguns and get bonus damage with, well, all your weapons once they're off-balance.)

This boss, on its own, would probably not rank terribly high, but it means that every flaw in executing the mission makes it that much harder for you to get past him and actually beat the mission. So, this guy is up there with Balteus and other major bosses for me in terms of difficulty.

I think one thing that gets the game to sort of click is when you get enough parts that you can make meaningful choices with the way you construct your AC. Early on, you only have a few options, so I highly recommend replaying some of those early missions to give you kind of, light weapons, medium weapons, heavy weapons, as well as shoulder weapons that are good for multi-lock and those that are good for single targets (and having some vertical-launch options is also good). There are some energy weapons (the ones that look like satellite dishes) that are good for cutting through shields (like the one on Balteus) but also, sometimes, massive damage is enough.

Hilariously, I did pick the absolute worst mission to try out the new light-weight tank "legs" I got, which involved a whole lot of jumping and fast-moving enemies, and where you basically spend most of the mission jumping down through ruined industrial infrastructure to kill a traitor to one of the questionable organizations you've fought/befriended.

The scale of the game is pretty massive, even if it's not some open world. Indeed, I saw a video from Zullie the Witch that showed that, because it uses the same game engine as FromSoft's Soulsborne games, you can actually put an Armored Core into Elden Ring, and yeah - they're really big.

Waiting for Playtest 7

 So, we've had a bit of a dry spell with the "One D&D" playtest. The last that came out was playtest 6 on June 29th, meaning we're now over two months without any new material to test. Now, to be fair, we're only just over that. I have a strong suspicion that the next playtest will come either this week or the next.

Last time, we saw the latest versions of Rogues, Bards, Rangers, Druids, Paladins, Clerics, and Monks. In the latter case, it was our first glimpse of the revised Monk and... well, it was a bit underwhelming, arguably nerfing a class that many feel was already among the most underpowered. Of course, I hope that we'll see a more ambitiously revised version in the future.

But what 6 gave us was revisions of the other six classes, along with four subclasses for each of them. (In the case of subclasses published in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, they simply referred players to the existing version, though whether that means they don't intend to change them or if they're simply holding off on revising them until later, I don't know.)

I think it's likely we'll see the five (non-Artificer) classes that were not included in that packet given a similar treatment, giving us revisions and subclasses for the Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard.

We know that Warlocks will be getting Pact Magic back, but it remains to be seen what form, exactly, that Pact Magic will take.

Naturally, I'm most excited to see what subclasses are included as PHB options. But I'm also curious to see what deeper, fundamental changes they make to the classes.

I will say, given how conservative their approach to the Monk was, I find myself wondering why they didn't come out with the Fighter and Barbarian in the first place. The delay, putting the Monk basically one playtest behind the other classes, might have been justified if they had made really big changes to the class, but they did shockingly little.

It would be nice to see Monks looked at again in playtest 7, but I have to imagine that even if the survey for playtest 6 closed a while ago, it was probably still too late to have a big impact on the Monk such that they'd be willing to throw them back up onto the chalkboard for us to scrutinize.

2023 is now 2/3 over, meaning that there's only so much time before the 2024 launch of these new core rulebooks.

Granted, I think that the main focus of the testing will probably be these subclasses. I doubt we're going to see much in the way of monster design, and I'll be pleasantly surprised if there's UAs for the DMG's "Running the Game" chapter. 

So, we'll see.

Armored Core VI Difficulty Assessment

 So, as a fan of FromSoft, I'm familiar with difficulty. I do think at some point I should return to the original Dark Souls, which I stalled out on after getting totally stuck on Ornstein & Smough. I'm still not sure I can ever handle the difficulty of the Ringed City DLC in DSIII (while I managed to get up to Midir and I think could have gone to Gael if I wanted to, I got burned out before I could) but I feel pretty comfortable with my skill level having beaten Elden Ring and Bloodborne, including the latter's DLC. (Elden Ring is probably the easiest of these, due in part to the fact that you can level up significantly by just doing mini-dungeons, and I think it's also balanced to give less diminishing returns on leveling up your HP stats).

Anyway, Armored Core is not a Souls-like game. It's not built like them at all. But I was still expecting some very difficult gameplay.

And... it's got some. But basically, it's only the bosses. The levels themselves are less about how hard they are to beat as much as they are about how efficiently you can charge through them. I think I've only died two or three times to non-boss enemies, and in one case I didn't die so much as get spotted in a mission where I was supposed to get to an enemy AC without being detected (or killing any enemies that saw me before they could report my presence).

Now, the bosses are tough. I'd say they're on-par with a lot of Soulsborne bosses, in that it's very unlikely you'll take them down on the first attempt (I did manage to take out the Juggernaut on try one, but it helped that I also had seen a video and knew that vertical-firing missiles were very useful against it).

But the enemies you face between bosses are generally not going to be a major threat - indeed, I really think the key to acing the game is not just being able to beat all the enemies you come across, but knowing that, for example, a single blast from your shotgun will take out that MT, or that a spread of missiles will take down that group of drones.

The bosses, then, are largely about figuring out what strategy to use. For example, in one mission you'll face off against Balteus, an autonomous drone with an array of missile launchers around it that can be configured in different ways, and I found that the key to the fight was getting up close and personal with it, closing distance so that its missiles would have a hard time locking onto me (in retrospect, using energy weapons to burn through its shields would have made it easier) while the next level has a boss called The Cleaner, who has extremely powerful melee attacks and thus encourages you to fight it from far away.

Now, a good build won't trivialize these fights (and many parts are gated behind progress in the story, so you'll only be able to use the arsenal the game allows you to amass up to that point) and execution is important, but because the game always puts a checkpoint right before boss fights, you'll be able to totally overhaul your AC with different parts if you die (though if you need to buy new parts, you'll have to quit out of the mission).

The game strongly incentivizes replaying missions, which I believe pay out just as much on a replay as they do your first go around. Generally, I don't sell parts and instead just amass more Credits to buy the parts I want (I did sell a few earlier today to make some big purchases). But I also think you can sell your parts back for precisely what you bought them for, so there's little regret you'll have in purchasing a new part.

I do think that some of the more esoteric parts - your Generator, your FCS, for example - aren't quite as "sexy" as new weapons, whose effects you feel very clearly as soon as you start playing.

I haven't beaten the game. But so far at least, I'd consider it challenging but not truly controller-smashingly hard. I haven't had any fights I've felt the need to quit out of the game and cool off from. There's no Nameless King so far. Though, there is a fight that is actually not unlike Ornstein & Smough - in one mission, you have to fight two powerful ACs from the PCA (basically the "government" faction on Rubicon, in contrast to the various corporations, criminal factions, and revolutionaries). One blasts you from afar while the other gets up close and tries to slash you with energy weapons. As is always the case with these fights, you need to keep them separated and wear one down before going to the next.

Aesthetically, the game is, of course, a kind of grimy used future with basically zero human element. The characters we interact with are just voices over comms, and the scale of the world is such that if there were people running around, you might not notice them (periodically you'll see stairways and realize that your mech is like four stories tall).

So, you know, I'm enjoying the game, but I'm not falling in love with it the way I have other FromSoft games. It is definitely letting me scratch that sci-fi action itch (given how excited I was to play an Armorer Artificer in a D&D campaign that ultimately wound up falling apart after three or four sessions, this kind of lets me play that subclass to its logical endpoint).

It is doing its job, though, of keeping me occupied while I wait for Larian Studios to release the Mac version of BG3.

Insight Points - a Possible Alternative to XP

 In Bloodborne, the Souls-like Gothic/Cosmic Horror game from FromSoft, there are two main currencies you can accrue. Blood Echoes are similar to the Souls and Runes found in other games of theirs - each enemy that dies adds to your total, and you spend these on nearly anything, but must make sure to spend them before you die so that you don't run the risk of losing them.

However, there's another currency you get called Insight. Given the Cosmic Horror (which often comes with Body Horror) genre they're working in, Insight marks your greater awareness and understanding of the Eldritch Truth - with enough of it, you start to see things you wouldn't normally. The most obvious one is that when you start the game with zero Insight, the "Plain Doll" who acts as your leveling-up NPC is inanimate, but getting your first Insight causes her to become a character with whom you can interact. (The body horror element here is that there's a possibility that the currency literally represents eyes growing on the inside of your brain).

Now, Insight is used in Bloodborne for a couple things: mostly, you can use it to summon other players or NPCs to help on boss fights. There's also a "shop" where you can exchange it for items, including the super-valuable Bloodstones that you use to upgrade weapons.

Now, this prelude aside, I'm not really intending to use this in quite the same way. Instead, I was thinking about my previous post, and how the allotment of XP as a reward for besting monsters of a certain CR creates a kind of strange pressure - you get more for fighting large hordes of less powerful monsters than you do for fighting one or two tougher monsters.

But when building a day's worth of encounters, at least using the system in Flee, Mortals!, you aren't necessarily going to be giving players the same amount of XP per day.

Now, it is worth noting here that the DMG encounters-per-day guidance is built more along the lines of the total XP one should earn per day, which means that under its system, you'd probably be throwing more encounters with tough enemies at them than the FM system, and it should create a more consistent leveling expectation.

But my experience using the DMG's encounter-building system made me flock very quickly to the Xanathar's one as soon as it came out (which is, itself, flawed, but far better).

So, it occurred to me: if we've created an Encounter-Per-Day system with points awarded for easy, standard, hard, and extreme encounters... why don't we just use those daily points in place of XP?

Notably, this also means that we can have a linear progression. Because what counts as a "Standard" encounter is going to change as we level up, but it's still meant to be "a challenge that drains some resources but shouldn't be dangerous enough that we're expecting any player characters to die" regardless of their level, we can consider that an even share of a total level's worth of experience.

Now, an adventuring day is not necessarily "a session," as in my experience, you can rarely get through more than two combat encounters in a 4-hour play session, unless you have very quick and easy encounters. (Obviously, different player groups will have different rhythms.)

Also, as I noted in the previous post, I don't think that anyone, even brand-new players, should have to spend more than one session at level 1. That can sometimes vary - if you're running a horror-themed game like a Ravenloft one, it might help the atmosphere of the game to leave players at low power levels for longer. But in a typical campaign, I think getting players at least to level 2, and preferably level 3, should be a quick process.

So, Experience is a pretty good term for "getting better by doing stuff," but we're trying to distinguish it. For now, I'll use "Insight Points" (which admittedly has an issue given that Insight is a skill) for this alternative.

Here's how it works: When you survive in an Easy encounter, you gain 1 Insight Point. When you overcome a Standard encounter, you get 2. And you get 4 when you defeat a Hard encounter, and 8 with an extreme encounter.

You can then spend Insight Points to level up.

Now, while it's tempting to make this a flat rate - simply getting, say, 24 Insight Points is always enough to level you up, I think I'd want to change it up a little to adjust the flow of levels. For example, it should be faster for you to go from level 1 to level 2 than it is for you to go from level 3 to level 4.

Here's what I'd propose: Levling from 1 to 2, and from 2 to 3, is cheaper than most levels. If we say you only need one adventuring day, that means that each would cost 8 Insight Points (we could even make level 1 to 2 cost only 4 to let people get past that level 1 awkwardness that much faster).

Furthermore, I think hitting a new tier of play should feel like a big deal - thus, it might take more Insight Points to go from level 4 to level 5 than it took to go from 3 to 4.

How much more? That might need testing. But let's say twice as many.

Ok, so here's what it looks like now:

Level 2: 4 IP

Level 3: 8 IP

Level 4: 16 IP

Level 5: 32 IP

Level 6: 16 IP

Level 7: 16 IP

Level 8: 16 IP

Level 9: 16 IP

Level 10: 16 IP

Level 11: 32 IP

etc., you get the idea: level 17, and possibly level 20, would each take 32.

    Now, furthermore, we can pretty easily add Quest XP this way. A Side Quest might be worth 2 IP. A Major Quest could be worth 4 IP, and a Significant Milestone could be worth 8 IP. So, you know, you divert to go help save the blacksmith's son from a pack of gnolls, and you get maybe 3 IP from the two combat encounters that were involved, but then you also get an additional 2 for completing the quest. You discover the prophecy in the underwater temple to Dagon that will help you find the Artificer's missing niece, and you get 4 IP in addition to the 8 total that you earned from fighting all the Merrow and demons in the temple.

But here's where I get a little nuts:

What if we can spend IP on things that aren't levels?

Obviously, magic items are fun to find in a hoard from some monster you defeated. But what if some powerful items can be attained by delaying your next level-up? Maybe you can spend 2 IP to get your Halberd upgraded into a +1 Halberd? Sure, that might mean you need to wait a little to level up, but having that magic weapon is pretty useful.

And perhaps we could put powerful spell reagents - like diamonds required to Revivify your party members - behind IP. That actually makes it a real penalty if you die - you slow (but don't prevent) your level progression.

There are probably a lot of kinks to work out of this system, and ultimately I think the level of control you get as a DM with Milestone leveling is hard to give up. But I do feel like it's nice to give players a clearer sense of what they need to do to grow more powerful.

XP Leveling and Encouter-Building Math

 My original campaign, I used XP for leveling. As a new DM, I really only rewarded it when the players took down monsters, which meant that those sessions that were heavy on RP, without any big monster fights, left my players feeling like they were stalling out.

Furthermore, I didn't really do a lot of thinking about "encounters per day," and so I think the players weren't really facing as many things as they should have been (also, my early encounters had too few, higher-CR monsters, when I should have been throwing lots more smaller creatures - not sure how that would have worked out, XP-wise).

My next big campaign, which is now over three years running, used Milestone leveling. Initially, I had players leveling up every session, taking inspiration from that Adventurer's League season. But upon hitting tier 3 (which they're just nearing the end of,) I swapped to more traditional milestone leveling - as in, they needed to get through a major plot point to advance.

But that's also hit some snags: See, my campaign is probably too big and complex, with ten major villains I wanted the party to take down before hitting tier 4. Initially, I had them level up after each one, but I decided later on that I wanted to carve out some levels in the true endgame for other plot points. As such, they've been sitting now at level 16 for a good long while.

Furthermore, as they've taken down big legendary boss monsters over and over, I've handed them a lot of gold and magic items, to the extent that they're now practically drowning in them - the poor artificer can barely offer anyone infusions because everyone's full up on their attunement slots.

And it got me thinking: XP isn't just a way to handle progression. It's also a way to have something to reward to your players.

Now, my early experiences with XP were that it caused leveling to happen too slowly. Milestone is useful in that you can tune it precisely for climactic moments.

But I have a better sense of how to build adventures and indeed how to build encounters these days (ok, to be fair, I still like to have some guidelines on CR, and I'm OCD enough to try to keep it in-line with such guidance) and I was thinking about how much XP you would award per day using a consistent encouters-per-day system.

So, I'm looking again to Flee, Mortals!, which has both encounter-building and encounter-per-day guidance.

First off, let's look at encounters per day:

FM's system uses points for Trivial, Easy, Standard, Hard, and Extreme encounters. The idea is that you give your players generally 6-8 points per day. Trivial encounters count for nothing, then Easy ones are 1 point, Standard are 2, Hard are 4, and Extreme are 8 (in other words, don't throw your party up against an Extreme encounter if they're expecting to do anything else dangerous that day).

Of these difficulties, only Easy, Standard, and Hard have building guidance, so we'll assume here that you are avoiding Extreme encounters, and we'll ignore Trivial ones as we can assume these will contribute only occasional bonuses to XP.

What I am curious is: how long does it take to level up using this kind of encounter-per-day math.

I suspect it's not consistent - while an Easy encounter is worth half the encounter points as a Standard one, it's not only half the amount of XP (I think). So the math might get funny here.

Given that XP is divided between party members, we can look simply at the CR contribution per character to get a sense of how much XP they, individually, are earning in a fight. (Solo encounters do also mess this up, but we'll ignore them for simplicity's sake - basically, you'll probably be fighting less total CR, so less XP, against a solo monster, which means you should probably supplement the players - more on that later).

So, we have a few variations to contend with that I think will make this math difficult: How difficult are the encounters we're using, whether the math is all linear (do two creatures with half the CR give half the XP?) and how much XP is required for each level up.

To retain some sanity, I'm going to limit this to a few levels - and specifically the first few, when I think players are most impatient to level up.

At 1st level, FM gives a CR of 1/8 per player character in both easy and standard encounters and 1/4 in hard ones (personally I'd just say that "there is no such thing as an easy encounter at 1st level" because a single crit can knock you unconscious pretty easily). So, if Standard encounters are having one 1/8 monster per player character, and we're getting 3-4 Standard encounters, that's 75-100 XP per adventuring day. If we instead have at most two Hard encounters, that's 50 XP per CR 1/4 monster,  giving us 100 XP per day.

And that means that a 1st level character can, by this system expect to hit level 2 after three days of adventuring, as they need 300 xp to hit level 2. Frankly, this is where I think the biggest antipathy toward XP leveling comes from: I basically never want to force any player to sit at level 1 for more than one session, because so many classes feel hollow before you hit level 2.

Getting to level 3 requires 900 xp, or 600 beyond what they needed for level 2.

At 2, Easy Encounters are 1/8 CR per player, Standard are 1/4, and Hard are 1/2. So, we can have 6-8 Easy Encounters, giving us a total of 150-200 xp per day, we have have 3-4 Standard encounters, also giving us 150-200 per day, or 2 Hard encounters, giving us 200 per day.

So, again, we're looking at 3 adventuring days to level up if we're doing some hard adventuring. Granted, I'm more ok with this at level 2, because at least we've started getting some crucial class features.

To go from 3 to 4, we need 2700 XP, which is 1800 more than we already have.

For easy encounters at level 3, it's 1/4 CR per player at easy, 1/2 per player at Standard, and, interestingly, 3/4 per player at hard. And here, the linearity of CR-to-XP ratios becomes important. So, that's 50 xp per easy encounter, 100 per standard encounter, and will be 150 per hard encounter (whether that's a 1/2 CR and a 1/4 CR monster, three 1/4 monsters, or even six 1/8 monsters).

Now, with 8-point days, that's then 400 per day with all easy encounters, 400 per day with all standard encounters, but only 300 per day with all hard encounters... interesting. So, hard encounters will slow down level progression. If we have more, easier encounters, we're looking at 4 and a half days to go from level 3 to level 4. If we are getting harder encounters, we're looking at 6 days. (At this point simply assuming we're doing full 8-point days).

Ok, now what about hitting tier 2? This will be the last level-up we do here, just so I can eventually go to bed.

To get from 4 to 5, we need 6500 XP, meaning we need 3800 more than we previously had.

Level 4 characters contribute 1/2 CR to easy encounters, 3/4 CR to Standard, and 1 CR to Hard.

So, 1/2 gives us 100xp, meaning 8 easy encounters per day gives us 800 xp. 3/4 (no matter how you slice it) gives us 150 xp per encounter, and with 4 standard encounters per day, we're looking at 600 xp. CR 1 gives us 200 xp, so with two hard encounters in a day, we're looking at 400 xp.

In other words, we could be looking at 4 3/4 days, 6 1/3 or 9 1/2 days, depending on whether we're having lots of easy fights or fewer, hard fights.

    So, there are a couple problems that arise with this system:

First off: I don't think that the FM encounter-building system is designed with XP leveling in mind, nor is the encounters-per-day system. Instead, these are meant to make for challenging fights that drain resources, and days where players should feel they need that long rest at the end of it.

But if we assume that XP, and leveling, is a reward that shapes player behavior, it means that this makes players generally prefer to have days with lots of minor fights against easily-overcome enemies.

Ironically, the climactic, epic boss fights become the least rewarding, at least in terms of leveling you up.

So, how would we then approach dealing with this system?

Quest XP is a good thing to add to your game if you're using XP, because it will encourage players to pursue story, and make it feel as if a session in which they don't spend the entire time hacking away at monsters is not "wasted." But it's not always obvious how to reward said XP - how much do you give?

And I think we can take this math and come up with a formula:

If your party goes and faces some big boss, meaning that they're probably doing like, one or two standard encounters and then a hard one, you should figure out how much XP they would have gotten if they were fighting 8 easy encounters that day, and give the deficit in quest XP.

Alternatively, you can be even more generous: When the party finishes a major story beat, give them XP equivalent to a full adventuring day. Sure, they might have spent the entire day performing diplomacy with the King's royal conjurer (an Archmage) that involved no physical danger, but plenty of careful maneuvering. Perhaps the XP for the Archmage is a bit much to hand to them, but it was still a major bit of story and involved a lot of clever play and successful ability checks. So, you look at what they would have gotten if they had been fighting a level-appropriate monster type all day, and you toss them that.