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Hello everyone,
I’ve got a quick question about the fellowship phase.

How much XP do you grant your player characters?
We just finished The Mash Bell in one big and epic session (about 5 hours), but I could’nt find anything about the granted experience after a finished adventure phase.

How do you handle it with your groups?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Oli

There are references in the rules but they didn't work for me as they often relate to sessions and session length varies per gaming group (see page 212 of the revised rules).

I usually award around 4 xp per adventure per character with occassional 1 or 2 point bonuses to one or two of the characters for exceptional RPing etc.

EDIT: And lets just put that to the test now that I'm back at home and can see what each character's XP spend is across 12 adventures (I've also listed AP accrual as well for interest)...

Brand - 58xp, so 4.8xp per adventure (AP accrued in same period: 74, so 6.2 per adventure)
Iwgar - 54xp, so 4.5xp per adventure (AP accrued in same period: 59, so 4.9 per adventure)
Thogrim - 56xp, so 4.7xp per adventure (AP accrued in same period: 63, so 5.25 per adventure)

This feels like a comfortable rate for me as it will keep PCs in the game, before being retired, so they can be part of developing the story (ie, the tale of years) more and have adventures where they aren't 'leaping forward' too quickly in their capabilities. At their current levels the characters already feel pretty damn capable - they either have very strong focus on key skills or a competent range across many and each have a weapon skill of 4 and Valour and Wisdom each of 3 or higher.

YMMV.

This is a topic that is cropping up more as we get deeper into Darkening of Mirkwood. Tales of Wilderland generally awards 12 or so per adventure. Which seems fine on the face of it based on the number of sessions to complete each one. The problem however comes when you start to do the Tale of Years.

I tend to find that when characters reach 120+ xp they start to feel unbalanced, do not play as well in the system as say a 80xp character. A fellowship consisting of 3 or more of these characters each with a famous weapon and/or armour are tripping over revelations the moment they leave the beaten track and most encounters need to be tweaked to prove a challenge.

But then if a character retires and you are using the courage rules newbs are getting 20-25xp year.

To return to my point, the LM needs to give xp awards some thought, more so than is suggested in the RAW. If too liberal your woodman character is facing retirement at the age of 25 having only played 6-7 years of Darkening of Mirkwood! Best remind your players that TOR is not an MMO where capping out is the goal and getting there is the grind. In TOR the journey is the game.

When doing the campaign, we usually played around 3 hours each session. Some adventures were short and we finished them in a single session (like The Marsh Bell). Others took us 3 sessions (like Crossing of the Celduin).

Thinking that not every adventure implied the same difficulty or lenght, I'd say my average was to grant 2/3 XPs per session.

Hi Zodiion,

The rules for awarding XP are on pg 212 (of the Revised rulebook). As you can see there the rules suggest 1 XP per session, with 1 additional XP if the group has made substantial progress toward their goal, and a number of XP after finishing an adventure. The rules also suggest adjusting the ratio for longer sessions, so your pic 5 hour session should probably earn the heroes a bit more. A result of 1 (attending session) + 1 (substantial goal) + 1 (long session) and + 1 (finishing adventure) shouldn't be too far off.

That said, I must agree with Mica. You don't want to hand out too much XP if you're aiming for a longer campaign. For a shorter campaign, Like Tales of WIlderland, I would stick to the rate in the book, but with for example Darkenings 30+ adventures I've found a rate of just 1 xp per session with a bonus of 2-3 for a finished adventure (most adventures taking about 3 sessions to finish) works a lot better. I still have the problem of the heroes being too powerful after finishing Tales of WIlderland and 7-8 years of Darkening (around 80xp each).

This my be somewhat a sidetrack, but since several of you guys seem to think the players become to powerful during a full, epic campaign, would you go so far as to say that the best way to approach it would be to play through wilderlands, and then start darkening with newly made characters?

Platon wrote:This my be somewhat a sidetrack, but since several of you guys seem to think the players become to powerful during a full, epic campaign, would you go so far as to say that the best way to approach it would be to play through wilderlands, and then start darkening with newly made characters?

You can but there are far more positives to get from combining them so I wouldn't recommend it; consider the following:

1) If you control the XP progress, like I do, it isn't an issue. Sure, some characters will retire after a while but they'll have seen much of the story and will hand over the reigns to their replacements in a much more natural way - it will happen less so will feel more organic.

2) Darkening of Mirkwood really interweaves nicely with Tales from Wilderland so they work together really well, especially in the early years, making for a great start to the campaign. Also, the balance between the (usually) longer TfW adventures to the shorter DoM ones make for great changes in pace.

I'm sure there are other points to make but those above are the two main ones for me.

usually, for 5 hours of play, I grant about 2 or 3 XP + 1 for the RPing (if really good).

I've tended to skew a little higher, but then we play longer sessions generally (5-6 hours). Some adventures take longer to play than others (multiple sessions), and I usually award 2 for the shorter (Darkening-type) sessions and 6 for the longer ones.

One of my characters, a High Elf, also often gets an extra Experience Point with one of his abilities (having to do with Blighted lands), so he often gets 7 when others get 6.

Here are my five main PCs:

Me'lereal: 172 XP, 32 adventures; 5.38 average
Falandor: 154 XP, 28 adventures; 5.5 average
Ardorwyn: 115 XP total (Heroic Heritage 6), 22 adventures; 5.22 average
Idril: 82 XP (Heroic Heritage 8), 15 adventures; 4.93 average
Togo Proudfoot: 66 XP, 11 adventures; 6 average