"Tales of Teen D&D- Co-operation Is Ever- OW! SHE HIT ME!" Topic

So we return yet again to our tale of adventure, terror and betrayal in the dark depths of the Teen Room. Yes, I said "betrayal."

Choose the Lesser of No Evils
In our last installment, the adventuring party, loyal friends all (*ahem*), had climbed down a rope to find a separate exterior entrance into a corrupted temple complex. Inside, they found stairs leading up, stairs leading down, and sets of doors leading in other directions.
The paladin senses great evil up the stairs, and lesser evil down the stairs, and no evil through the doors. They went through the doors.

Cooperation Means He Does What I Want
Exploring a dark priest's chambers, they find some clerical attire so steeped in evil that the party's good cleric is shocked at their touch. So he sets fire to them…in the dungeon. As the DM begins surreptitiously rolling for the inevitable wandering monster, the cleric then finds a cloak of the elvenkind. The rogue argues that he should have it, the monk states she wants it, and the cleric is adamant that it's finder's keepers. The cleric wins, and the rogue goes to explore a secret passage. At this point, two powerful undead guardians of the temple do indeed enter the chamber to attack the intruders.
Paladin: "I hit the monster with my sword!"
Fighter: "I hit the other monster with my sword."
Druid: "I hit the monster with thorn whip!" (He didn't. This was becoming a thing.)
Cleric: "I hit the monster with my mace!"
Monk: "I hit the cleric with my staff to knock him out and steal the cloak!"

"But He Did It To Me" Is Not In the Rule Book. Also, That Character is Dead.
Argument over above situation:
Monk (to Rogue player, who ironically was chastising her): "But *you* attacked my character in the last game!"
Rogue player: "That's because you were waving around the evil necro-stick!!!"*

*Their name for an intelligent, chaotic evil Rod of the Undead that had possessed two characters in the previous adventure, eventually killing the entire party with zombies. I rather like that name: Necro-stick. Be sure to use it in all your adventure campaigns.

Fine. I'll Help Then.
This provoked a discussion about cooperation, playing a character's alignment—and that a lawful monk will NOT attack a fellow party member, especially to steal something.
To make the point, I ruled that the monk character had lost her monk powers (not all that much at 1st level, honestly) until she could atone for her actions.
On the plus side, from there on out she did work to help her fellow party members.

Straight Up Fight, But With Some Sneaking Around
The rest of the adventure wound up coming to a close with two big battles, one versus a "deathlock," which is an undead warlock from our brand new edition of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, sort of a cross between a wight and a (very weak) lich. (I had already planned for the villain to be a wight warlock…and then opened MTF to find that very creature already stat-ed out.) This involved a Mirror Image spell, which freaked my players out. "Wait, there are *four" of him?!?"
But in a well-fought battle (with the rogue using the afore-mentioned secret passage to move behind the deathlock for a sneak attack), they managed to prevail.

Dungeons Should Put Out Don't Touch Signs, Like Museums Do
The second fight involved another bunch of skeletons, set off when one character tried to remove a sword from an inanimate skeleton. Really, this one they should have realized: DON'T TOUCH THE SKELLIES. (On the other hand, the skellies were gonna attack anyway…)
Of course, they're teens, so they would ignore the signs.

Vacation Time Means Exploring Counts As Done
And that final fight, plus some rather explicit guidance on solving the temple's puzzle curse, ended the session. Although there were some rooms to explore, combat was done, they had found and released the prisoners, and we were out of time. As two of the group were headed out of town for the rest of the month, I declared the adventure over, and handed out a few of the items they were guaranteed to find. (Yes, the monk got a nifty staff with silver fittings. Not magical, but at least she can thump undead and lycanthropes with it. And it's okay if she takes their cloaks.)

Grumpy Old DM: XP In 5e Makes No Sense
Totaling up the XP, they earned almost 1,100 XP per player. 5e has a 300 XP target for 2nd level, and only 900 for 3rd. Seriously? Slap a cat, and you level up. In *my* day, we had to EARN our levels, and we liked it. And stay off the dungeon lawn. (I will say that the 5e rulebooks are very sparse on what to do with XP and especially excess XP. It's as if they've kept experience in the game for old time's sake, but don't know why. They mention a concept of leveling up after each successful adventure, ignoring XP. Well, okay, do *that* then. What's with the mealy mish-mash?)

Next week, we'll introduce a new adventure, with maybe some new players, too. Stay tuned!

LOL. I couldn't help but think of that LOTR Moria scene.

Dan
YouTube link

Great stuff! I did away with XP in my last campaign (3 years). I just had them level up as I felt was needed. Basically at the end of a quest or 1-2 times during the quest after milestone events were completed.

Back in the day…..
Playing WRG Ancients where you kept a roster of kills and removed a figure at 20 was an awful lot like keeping track of leftover experience points from expedition to expedition.
But that required math, and math is hard work. Kids today.

I like the "Level up and key points" rather than XP. We used to do that back in 2nd Edition.

After the first campaign (1974), I ignored XP and pretty
much leveled up players when I felt they'd earned it.

Did the same thing for all the RPG's I ran. Players
seemed to like it, although there were (infrequent) 'How
can we plan our actions to ensure leveling up?'
to which the response was 'Oh, you mean just like Real
Life, huh ?'

I usually use ballpark figures for XP after each session, awarding a bit more to those who contributed to the game and less to those who didn't pull their weight though they certainly could.

In older versions XP numbers were much higher and getting 10,000 XP felt like gratification, now you're parceling out 20 here, 10 there at 1st level and maybe 100 at slightly higher levels, but you have to be level 10 to get numbers that feel like you get a substantial reward.

Excess XP?

You get XP, you level up as many levels as you can and the remaining XP counts towards your next level, right? No excess XP there…

Nope. In classic D&D, you could only ever go up one level at a time. If your XP exceeded that amount, you were restricted to rising to either halfway to the next level, with all excess lost, or 1 XP below the next level, with all excess lost. I honestly can't remember which it was; perhaps both, depending on edition. But even today, you can only go up one level at a time; the supposition is that there must be at least one "adventure," followed by a period of training, between each level. The "leveling up" element was never intended (or written) to be an instantaneous effect, like in a video game (*poof*! Now you can hit people twice! :-P). Instead, the idea was that the character had gained the experience to improve his training efforts, and even learn new skills based on his proven understanding of his craft. Time for this training was even built into the rules, and NPC mentors were assumed to exist or even suggested as actual contacts and quest generators for the PCs.
If all you are doing is adventuring one shots with no world building, the instant leveling system is fine. But if you want to build a world with a campaign experience that gives the PCs a "life" with real stakes in their society and a strong sense of realism, then the mentor/training structure can be a strong element in that.