To keep character's advancing at a pace that is comfortable for all DMs, here is a thread dedicated to helping maintain game balance. Here are some guidelines for awarding experience: Attendance: Remember that experience is rewarded to the player as he/she experiences playing their character; not the character itself. A player must be present to earn experience points. Threshold: Do not confuse threshold value with experience value. The PCs do not get awarded the threshold value of an encounter. They receive the sum of each individual monster's experience value. Participants: Be sure to divide the total experience earned by every participant involved in the combat. This includes any NPCs that may be assisting in the combat or taking significant amounts of damage that would otherwise be dealt to the PCs. These NPCs need to be included when you divide experience among the group even though they are not actually earning experience. In some cases such as a town invasion, NPCs will be worth less than the PCs. For example, four CR 1/4 commoners are only equivalent to one 1st level PC. In cases like this, you can treat a group of NPCs as one participant. Favorable/Unfavorable Conditions: Sometimes conditions may allow for PCs to overcome a creature that would be too tough for them or make a creature that would normally be easy a lot stronger. Maybe they (or the monster) have access to a catapult, barrels filled with gun powder, a powerful artifact, etc... Maybe the environment is set up in such a way that gives favor to one side or another. In either case, the PCs should not receive more or less experience than what is reasonable. Estimate your encounter difficulty from Easy to Deadly and use the experience of monsters that would make up that encounter difficulty to find out what is a reasonable amount of experience to award. Here is a table that shows the maximum amount of experience that would be a reasonable amount to award for one encounter depending on the party level and how many PCs are involved: Estimated Experience for One Encounter Party Level 3 PCs 4 PCs 5 PCs 6 PCs 1st 100 XP each 75 XP each 60 XP each 50 XP each 2nd 183 XP each 175 XP each 140 XP each 158 XP each 3rd 233 XP each 300 XP each 240 XP each 200 XP each 4th 600 XP each 450 XP each 360 XP each 300 XP each 5th 600 XP each 725 XP each 720 XP each 675 XP each Estimating Party Level: To estimate a party level, add up the medium threshold of all of the PCs in the party. Divide the result by 4 then look for the closest medium number on the threshold table to get the estimated party level. Maintaining Well-Balance Challenges: Here is a tool that my brother and I developed to help either scale/create an encounter or even an entire adventure. Enjoy! Ultimate Encounter Calculator Link Average Starting Wealth Per Level: Character Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Equipment, Earned Gold, & Gems 75 200 270 500 760 Earned Magic Items 0 600 950 2000 3300 TOTAL NET WORTH 75 800 1220 2500 4060 Awarding Hoard Treasures: The DMG gives the standard for how many hoard treasures should be awarded to a group (last paragraph on page 133 of the DMG). Here is a calculated breakdown of that. Hoard 0-4: Average of 2,300 gp value per roll. 2 rolls awarded from 1st-2nd level + 5 rolls awarded from 3rd-4th level = 7 total Substituting Magic Items for Gold & Vice Versa: In some adventures, you may decide that there should more or less magic items based on the monsters that own the lair. For example, a wizard lab would probably have more magic items while a goblin's lair would have less. After rolling the Hoard Treasure coins, you can reduce the amount of gold as shown below to make a roll on one of the Magic Item tables. Alternatively, you can replace a roll on a Magic Item table with an additional amount of coins as shown. These are the average values of one roll on a magic item table. Magic Item Table A = 155 gp Magic Item Table B = 1,900 gp Magic Item Table C = 1,400 gp Magic Item Table F = 6,750 gp Magic Item Table G = 21,500 gp
