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What is the quickest way in your games for characters to earn XP and level up?

So far my characters seemed to get the most from combat. Maybe that is just my GMing style where they get the most points for that.

Also do you give XP based on how it is in the books or do you have your own XP charts that you like to use?

For me, doling out experience points depends on the players more than anything I have set up or tweaked.

If the players are the combat oriented type, then they are going to get more experience points from combat. The enemies will be tougher, they'll have to think on their feet during combat to come up with good combos, and they'll need to be able to survive or put themselves in harm's way to protect others.

If the players aren't so focused on combat, then they'll end up getting more experience points from doing the stuff outside of combat, like research, schmoozing officials, etc.

I don't have any custom charts that I use or anything like that. I don't necessarily go by the book, either. I give out an amount of experience points based on how useful a skill check or an action in combat is. If you are involved in combat and you just hit the guy til he's dead, you get the XP for defeating a bad guy. If you use skills in combat to help you subdue the bad guy, or you get creative about defeating him, you'll pick up extra XP for creative thinking.

And then there's the issue of spot xp. I like to hand out spot xp to players who do something extraordinary that fits with the overall theme when it just comes up. Although I didn't do this, a good example would be Iczer's game thread here on the HU forums. The players were fighting a guy who liked to use jokes while fighting, and he was throwing jokes around like "My full house beats your 3 of a kind" and "Watch out boys - these jokers are wild!" (he was using playing cards, charging them with energy, and then throwing them at the players). One of the players went along with it and said "Well, I guess it's time for you to fold!". Spot XP.

My always climb when they are trying to decipher my plot twists.

I give 100 xp each time they come up with a possible theory that makes sense whether its right or wrong - It's for "deductive reasoning".

I usually just hand out levels instead of tracking XP. If a group likes XP, then I usually give out plot based XP more than anything. I give out equal XP for cleverly avoiding a combat as I would for fighting it.

i try to make it equal for combat and non-combat situations. my last group was happy to spend a whole session role-playing with no fighting so i gave it for negotiations, bartering, logistics etc...

Clever Ideas.

Juce734 wrote:What is the quickest way in your games for characters to earn XP and level up?

So far my characters seemed to get the most from combat. Maybe that is just my GMing style where they get the most points for that.

Also do you give XP based on how it is in the books or do you have your own XP charts that you like to use?

The quickest way is to play well.

I don't expect a non-clever character to be clever in order to gain experience points, for example.