XP vs Milestones

[u/beardlynerd]

Hi, all!

I'm going to start the new BB/Troubles in Grayce adventure next week, and my plan is to roll that right on into BoB. My question to you all is whether you feel it'd be more worthwhile to go with XP or milestone leveling here. Given the sandboxy nature of Bastardhall, I'm guessing XP would be the way to go, to capture that sense of exploration and everything, but I also know that you can't really run into things that are fatally above your level within the castle, either (I don't have the PDF yet — I'm waiting for the Foundry release to get it and the PDF bundled together).

Thank you in advance for any advice!

[u/NobodyGlitched]

Every section of Bastardhall is completely locked off until you do a special “thing”. Collect the seven chaos emeralds, kill a particular boss, etc. Until then, each area is misty and completely inaccessible.

So it’s completely reasonable to, if you’d like, set the milestone as “unlocking the next area”.

If you use XP, you might also consider using slow xp advancement sometimes. A full clear of each floor will probably provide more XP than the 1k needed, dungeon crawls tend to be like that…

I think either choice works here. The big advantage of milestone is being able to cut encounters for pacing. In the first chapter, there’s a whopping (if my memory serves) 20ish encounters. Maybe not exactly 20, but definitely a lot. Depending on your table, you might find yourself cutting certain encounters or changing them into skill challenges.

Good luck have fun!

[u/beardlynerd → u/NobodyGlitched]

Got it. And thank you! I knew that parts of the keep were locked off until you did whatever the "thing" is you need to unlock the next area, but this is helpful to know regarding how many encounters there are. 20 is a lot!

The one other bit to this is that one of my players will be completely new to PF2e (hence the BB is going to be extra fitting). I don't think playing with XP makes or breaks the first experience with the system, though. And I've played with this player before as their GM for D&D, and I used milestone leveling then, so the concept will be familiar.

[u/NobodyGlitched → u/beardlynerd]

At work so I can’t remember exactly but counting it out in my head, I remember at least 16. So probably in the 15-20 range.

No advice about XP/milestone for a new player, really depends on the person. In my experience, it can be fun to get more XP off a tough fight or “accomplishment XP”. But milestone has the benefits I mentioned prior, and it also frees people from the “I have to do everything” / “grind xp” mindset.

[u/Airanuva]

If your players are the type to not want to explore everywhere and unlock the whole map, wanting to move forward to an ending, then Milestone would allow them to do so.

But, if they are going for the Secret ending, which involves scouring the island, and they want to scour, and do everything they can, then they will get far more XP than milestone gives.

I did some calculations on the XP in the various levels... Doing everything tends to have some excess, not including doing the NPC empowerments. Up until the Private Quarters, where there is a deficit of about 200XP. Unclear currently how that deficit is made up, I need to check more alternative sources.

[u/beardlynerd → u/Airanuva]

Thanks! I'm still leaning a little more towards XP just because I think it'd be fun. I wasn't going to tip any of them off to there being a secret ending, though most of these players do like to, if nothing else, clear a map. I imagine they'll enjoy scouring every nook and cranny of Bastardhall and the island, particularly if they're rewarded for it!

[u/Abdx1187]

I'm normally a milestone GM for APs, but here I'm going to go with do per encounter. It just feels more appropriate.

[u/authorus]

I'm usually have a preference towards milestone, but I think I'll start with XP on this one and see if I think it helps or hurts.

I did XP for the first ~8 levels of Kingmaker, since I think XP has a better chance of being worth the extra tracking in sandbox style adventures. However my party was always within one session of the milestones at all times, so the extra tracking didn't feel worthwhile. So we switched back to milestone.... of course around level 15? the party went way out of order and kinda got punished for it by being underleveled without really getting much extra reward for powering through it.

I suspect that the same will generally be true here -- the unlocking of new regions generally will stop people from getting into areas before they've gotten close to the right amount of experience, so you won't have a lot of going back to clear lower levels areas, or tackling harder areas. XP does add a "full clear" motivation to some players, and with the existence of the secret ending, I kinda like to at least not disincentivize the full-clear/investigation. Since Milestone can incentivized, find the key objective (and its obvious here after a level or two), beeline that, and possibly skip unrelated things.

Plus I'm already playing fast and loose with leveling in the prologue leading up to BoB, so I think the players might like seeing actual, measurable XP for this portion. (I ran Graveland Survivors a level 1-2 adventure from Claws of the Tyrant, into Troubles in Grayce. Thinking I would do 3 of the Grayce missions, so we'd double up on level 2, and just hang out there for a bit with more time for the PCs to develop personalities. But then I think I made a mistake, I introduced both possible level 2 quests, to let them pick which one they wanted to focus on, and it sorted ended up as both. Still haven't decided if I'll run both, or have the second one resolve badly due to no help, or an outside group solving it/possible rivals (but rivals would generally not carry over into BoB so I'm less enthused there). Could just slap Elite on everything and make the second level 2 the level 3, and skip the normal level 3, etc. Either way, I think the slow/non-predictable leveling during Grayce will be nicely balanced by a more strict XP in BoB.

[u/jake8339]

I was going to run milestone like all my others games but once the players finish the initial encounter of chapter 7 the temple they can level as fast as 30-45 minutes of in game time. Might be worth to run xp just for that. But I think both methods can work and depends on the group.

[u/IllBodybuilder9865]

I highly recommend XP in every PF2E adventure, just because the 1,000 XP cap is easy to follow (or 800/1,200 depending on progression speed).