XP progression vs. level clarification

[younes]

Hello,

My question is related to the rules regulating XP reward from fights. Once again, I'm not a D&D guru so I would appreciate clarifications on this.
Intuitively, I would guess that the 2 main rules that regulate XP rewards are:
1/ how many time did a fight with the creture type occured in the PC's life: first time gives max XP, then progressively decreasing with # of encounters
2/ disparity in creature vs. PC levels: high level creature vs low level PC gives max XP, high level PC vs. low level creature gives little to no XP.

My inquiery comes from the observation that my party (~ level 11) is currently getting pretty much no XP from battles in the first and 2nd level of the Temple, as I previously accidentally entered the temple side door (broken tower) and found myself battling pretty tough creatures in the 3rd level while my party was ~ level 4 (hence a very steep level progression from lots of combat XP).
So, in preparation for my next run of the game, I was wondering if tackling the levels in the right order would awards me "globally" more XP, since i'll be dwelling in the level 1 & 2 with a relatively novice party (and get XP from the fights), then confront level 3 & 4 (and get XP from the fight but maybe a little less compared to my current game since my party would be now more advanced)..

A little confusing...I hope I conveyed my idea clearly enough.
Thanks
-Younes

[Aeroldoth]

#1 does not apply, only #2. How many times you fight something makes no difference. All that matters is how "tough" you are versus how "tough" your opponents were. How tough a monster is is called its Challenge Rating (CR). If you look in your logbook at the monsters you've killed, you will see its CR listed.

Parties are expected to fight monsters with equivalent CRs. When you fight ones that are significantly higher or lower than your party, the amount of xp will be altered commensurately. A 1st level party that kills a troll will get far more xp than a 20th level party that does so. The idea being that to defeat something much stronger than you deserves a bigger reward, while killing something with a flick of the wrist shouldn't merit any xp. You can find more info here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnD_DMG_XPFinal.asp

(half-way down is a CR-XP table)

[younes]

ok got it!
Thanks much for the clarification!

[Fernando]

There's a very handy online tool for calculating XP; maybe it could help you understand better wath Aeroldoth said: http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20encountercalculator.htm

Just try calculating a lvl 2 party of 4 PCs killing a single CR 3 monster, and then a lvl8 party doing the same, or even a party of 8 players. I hope it helps.

[younes]

There's a very handy online tool for calculating XP; maybe it could help you understand better wath Aeroldoth said: http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20encountercalculator.htm

Just try calculating a lvl 2 party of 4 PCs killing a single CR 3 monster, and then a lvl8 party doing the same, or even a party of 8 players. I hope it helps.

Thanks Fernando. This was very helpful too!

[maggit]

Oh, just be sure to multiply the score you get in the calculator by 0.7. The
game has reduced XP awards.

[krunch]

Yes, experience is automatically reduced by 30 percent by the game where a party is only awarded 70 percent of experience.

This means if a party should be awarded a total of 100 experience points for killing something, the game will only award 70 experience points to the party. Likewise, if a party should be awarded a total of 1,000 experience points for killing something, the game will only award 700 experience points to the party.

[Gaear]

Furthermore, continuing to apply the 70% formula, it would mean that if the party were supposed to get 10 XP for killing something, they would actually only get 7. And 7,000 instead of 10,000. This would also be the case for integers not involving 10. For example, if the party were to defeat enough monsters to get 500 XP, they would actually be awarded only 350 XP.

So you can apply this (x .7) multiplier to any number. It's crazy. :blank:

[krunch]

*laff* I thought of using numbers like 500 and 1,200 for examples, but went with the path of least resistance for the least amount of effort.