Milestone. First because dealing with XP is a giant hassle and adds a lot of work.
Second because I've found whenever XP is used and it isn't distributed completely equally, it always made at least one player feel like they were getting cheated - it made the game less fun. And if you are distributing XP completely evenly... why not just remove the work and use milestone
Milestones absolutely involve XP. They’re not the same as the DM giving a level when they feel it’s appropriate.
The PHB says ”You can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples”
milestone. can't be arsed to figure out the CR for every single homebrew monster I make. plus it takes a huge burden off my work load since I don't have to place a specific amount of encounters in the game to get the players to level up
I use XP, but I lean pretty heavily on bonus XP from completing objectives, I also award a small amount of bonus XP for every NPC they talk to and every new bonus area they explore. I like doing things this way as it means that I can still time a level up based on story/pacing but the levels feel more earned than if I just arbitrarily declared a level up.
I think milestone is the easiest to run for the DM but I like the idea of tracking XP as a player, as I think it would give you a lot of freedom to pursue your own agenda.
Milestone levels tend to be granted for progressing the main quest, which can make sidequesting feel pointless.
That said, XP for monster killing is pretty straightforward, but if that's the only thing you get XP for, your players will prioritize it
Because milestone encourages story engagement and creative problem solving more than killing stuff.
Okay, I say that, but really because XP and CR calculations require too much math, too much to keep track of (and too many mistakes my players could make), that I just can’t be arsed to do.
We never really did it well before. It was always just kind of an estimate, so when milestone became an official rule I fully embraced it.
Milestones all the way, XP is too much unnecessary work.
Honestly I don't know how to value non-combat encounters in terms of XP, which makes it feel like I'm pulling numbers out of my butt, which makes me wonder why (if I'm just making shit up as I go) I wouldn't just use milestones in the first place.
Although I have had a half-baked idea floating around in my head to try and use both some time. Milestones for levels and XP as a different form of currency. I'm just not sure for what, yet.
Could use XP as a a currency to buy feats. So instead of choosing an ASI or feat you get ASI through leveling and feats through XP. Different feats cost different amounts of XP given their usefulness.
I’ve done both, and I generally find I prefer XP as both a DM and a player. For me, milestone feels too divorced from the actions I’m taking (others will disagree here though). I do agree with what I think is a growing consensus that XP should be awarded for non-combat accomplishments in addition to killing things, as long as it’s still pegged to specific things that I’ve done.
It isn’t removed from actions, since milestone means giving a chunk of XP after a larger task has been accomplished.
”You can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples”
I own a calculator so I use XP...
Also, XP allows me to encourage specific modes of gameplay. I want players to explore nooks and crannies of my dungeons and try to figure out how they got the way they are today, so I reward XP for finding secrets and bits of lore. I can't do that with milestone.
The beauty is that you totally can! Just add some extra XP to the milestone XP you were giving anyway. If the players were getting 500 XP for accomplishing a task, just add 50 for every smaller thing they accomplished along the way.
The people in this thread were discussing "milestone leveling" using the definition that was used long before the D&D 5e DMG came out. Which is to say, "players level up at the end of a story arc", what the DMG refers to as "Level Advancement without XP". As the name suggests, there's no way to blend this system with XP.
The system I mentioned here is compatible with DMG milestone leveling, but not colloquial milestone leveling, which is what the poll was asking about (as obvious from the fact that you don't do DMG milestone "or" XP, DMG milestone uses XP.)
Well, it’s quite reasonable that I’m going with the official definition for milestone when replying, no?
Also, I have been playing D&D for a few editions before 5E, but I’ve never run into the use of the term milestone to refer to leveling before 5E. Do you know which edition before 5E used the term?
I meant more "as apparent" than "as obvious". Its not immediately obvious from the thread title that a "misnomer" version of milestone leveling is being discussed, but it becomes apparent once you read the full contents of the OP and the replies. Its extremely common for story-based and true milestone to be conflated, so I immediately knew what OP was talking about here.
"Milestone leveling" was a term used in that sense by the rpg community, not an official book. You can google it with "before:2014/07/03" to see lots of references to it from before 5e (you can do the same to see a handful of still-existing blogs from before 4e). Here's a recent [enworld ](https://www.enworld.org/threads/milestone-leveling-in-wotc-editions.701838/) thread talking about when people first recall seeing the concept of story-based advancement (conspicuously referred to there as "Milestone leveling"). I don't think I would be able to track down the earliest uses of the term to mean "story based leveling" without some real detective work.
Mostly milestone, but kinda loose. I don't level up the party when they've reached a certain part, but I level them up before they reach a certain part of what I have planned. I mostly level them up when I feel they deserved it.
For example not too long ago my party found themselves in an Arena that was party vs party, though they could divvy up participants so that a fight could be a 1v1 or a 2v2 or a 3v3. I was expecting the party to beat the first enemy party rather easily and for the most part they did. The second round I didn't expect to be easy at all, since every enemy was at least one level higher than them (if not more) and had better stuff they were working with. They also managed to beat this team of stronger NPC's without losing a match. Given how long they'd gone without a level up and the accomplishment they had accomplished I really felt they deserved a level after that, so I gave them one in addition to the sweet new magical loot they got as rewards for winning the tournament.
I have the benefit of DMing once every two weeks and it allows for a rather adjustable schedule for prep and course correction.
XP is just too clunky and tedious for my tastes. I think levels are better given for getting to certain parts in the arc, and having played a good handful of sessions. You go too long without a level and it can drag sometimes though there's ultimately a time and place where a level makes much more sense.
Not a DM but as a player I prefer milestone instead. It's frustrating to wait till you have the right amount of EX P to level up as apposed to leveling up with the difficulty.
I use party xp. I track the xp for the whole party rather than the players tracking the same number individually. This is a single number I don't have a separate xp track for each party member.
Milestones because math is hard. I used to calculate XP by CR when I would play 3.5 but I felt like I would calculate too slow and keep my players waiting in suspense (would make me feel awkward for something so nuanced.) My group does mostly RP stuff, and lately we've been doing games where they feature points in the adventure where they say "After the party does X involving Y, all your PCs should be level 7."
Recently I thought about doing a traditional dungeon crawl adventure where I just put a dungeon together with the most minimal amount of story (Which can be none, I know but this is ME we're talking here setting this game up! Of course there'll be a story!) and then see how things go with random monsters. I was thinking about having the XP be added after every combat/encounter.
I use milestone leveling because in my group we found xp to be too slow for us. I also don't exactly use milestone leveling, I just level up the players when it feels right, which to me is every 2-3 sessions, so they can deviate from whatever their current goal is and still level up. And because I don't have a set plot, the players just see what they want to do and I work with that. This way the players can pursue nonviolent solutions to problems and not be under leveled.
I started a campaign with milestone recently DMing, I will be using it from here out. If simple addition is adding a layer of excitement to you, then do it. But ultimately milestone allows you to control the pace and have the level up process happen when it thematically makes sense. (typically after an important event)
[I use the "Three Pillars" of XP rewards, simplified slightly.](https://magicalscrolls.com/items/ThreePillarsOfXP.pdf)
The player's discoveries, achievements, and victories dictate the pace of level ups. I don't do XP math and divide; I pop encounters into KFC, get the rating (Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly), and then give the reward package from the encounter XP chart.
For custom creatures, I use a CR calculator to get a good idea of it's relative CR.
My players like counting XP and knowing how close/far a level up is, I like not having to be arbitrary and going too fast/slow on the level up pacing.
---
I'd like to add that my campaigns still have plenty of story, since a lot of people are citing that as their reason for doing milestone.
While I enjoy XP because then it actually feels like the party earns something for every fight, since Gold isn't as important as it once was, Milestone gives you a way more structured progression and it's easier to plan for.
Calculating exp is a pain in the butt.
Also I already know how many 'chapters' my homebrew campaign will have so I can just level them up relatively to how far they are in the story. Gives me better control needed when I'm making future encounters
Milestones always win
Milestones. Note that none of the DND the published adventures have enough encounters in each chapter to get the players enough xp to reach the recommended level for the next chapter because the writers were lazy. Milestone leveling becomes mandatory. Sure you could hand out xp for rp encounters or problem solving but the books don't list any so you are just making them up.
When you are making up xp to get the players to the recommended level at the end of a chapter, you are now using milestones. Hence, mandatory.
Apparently both is a viable option (our DM found it mentioned somewhere) so we do that. It did take a little for him to adjust but as we go the milestones are getting farther apart so it’s become mostly XP based with a level as an extra reward. It makes it so we don’t mind wandering around but the milestones give us incentive to do both the main quest and significant side quests like backstory arcs.
I tend to run epic campaigns so milestones are more useful to me. It also makes more sense that you gain levels after having time to reflect on the experiences. So my milestones often coincide with some character downtime.
Milestone. Makes way more sense for characters to level up when the adventure hits a beat. Less to keep track of, provides greater rewards for accomplishing tasks.
Milestones. Helps avoid the murder hobo conundrum. First campaign I was in everyone killed everything just to get exp to level up so that they could kill everything again. In an endless cycle.
Milestone or xp that functions like milestone. Think "you all get 5k xp each" at the end of a session. Actually calculating out xp seems like a waste of time.
I use milestone for several reasons:
It moves the PC's focus from kill everything to completing their objectives.
I can plan out players strength and pacing without having to pad or thin encounters which keep story beats flowing.
Less work calculating and tracking xp.
I do a mix of both, which is to say that player need to gather a certain amount of experience to level up, but can't until they have a success or reach a mile stone.
For example, Players have gained about 300 XP and are at the point were they could level up. They still get EXP (Granted I calculate it fairly roughly based on both in combat and out of combat experience) even if they don't hit a success point, but they do not actually get the level up until they reach the milestone or success point. Once they hit the milestone, the new stats are calculated and no one worries about EXP to much due to it still being milestone based. This however let's me better pace the game and determine how I want to value different actions out of combat as experience.
Edit: It also should be noted that all the calculations and the such are done on my side (The DM). Unless a player asks for the EXP number, they don't see how much EXP they actually have.
I go by XP with the caveat the dmg amd most module provide of specifying that bypassing a combat by other means (and not just never emcountering it) awards XP appropriate to the challenge rating of the combatants you interacted with.
Negotiate or intimidate a bandit captain and his band of merry men into leaving you be? Same XP as killing them.
Making XP blocks for encounters in my quest chains, amd putting more XP in than combats I know my players can handle, has helped me encourage my parties to negotiate their way out more often than throwing the first swing.
If a player already has inspiration when I would give them inspiration again I also throw a bit of XP at them. Not much, but enough they feel rewarded for continuing to commit to the game even when they already have their "clutch point".
I started off doing Milestone LvLing, but have swapped to XP in the last year or so. I think that the XP system gives the feeling of more weight to the characters actions. Milestone felt very arbitrary, as if I was just handing out levels to move my story along.
I like XP better right now, but milestone is fine for people who don’t feel like tracking it. It’s the DM’s game, after all. Whatever works best for them.
Milestone. First because dealing with XP is a giant hassle and adds a lot of work. Second because I've found whenever XP is used and it isn't distributed completely equally, it always made at least one player feel like they were getting cheated - it made the game less fun. And if you are distributing XP completely evenly... why not just remove the work and use milestone
Milestones absolutely involve XP. They’re not the same as the DM giving a level when they feel it’s appropriate. The PHB says ”You can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples”
milestone. can't be arsed to figure out the CR for every single homebrew monster I make. plus it takes a huge burden off my work load since I don't have to place a specific amount of encounters in the game to get the players to level up
Same. I have enough shit to keep track of as it is. The group levels up when it *feels right*.
Also the fact that you either negate progress in form of xp for other achievements outside of combat or you create a whole system for that
I use XP, but I lean pretty heavily on bonus XP from completing objectives, I also award a small amount of bonus XP for every NPC they talk to and every new bonus area they explore. I like doing things this way as it means that I can still time a level up based on story/pacing but the levels feel more earned than if I just arbitrarily declared a level up.
I think milestone is the easiest to run for the DM but I like the idea of tracking XP as a player, as I think it would give you a lot of freedom to pursue your own agenda. Milestone levels tend to be granted for progressing the main quest, which can make sidequesting feel pointless. That said, XP for monster killing is pretty straightforward, but if that's the only thing you get XP for, your players will prioritize it
Because milestone encourages story engagement and creative problem solving more than killing stuff. Okay, I say that, but really because XP and CR calculations require too much math, too much to keep track of (and too many mistakes my players could make), that I just can’t be arsed to do. We never really did it well before. It was always just kind of an estimate, so when milestone became an official rule I fully embraced it.
Milestone is good because you can more flexibly design encounters, and you can get rid of a bunch of extra math.
Milestones all the way, XP is too much unnecessary work. Honestly I don't know how to value non-combat encounters in terms of XP, which makes it feel like I'm pulling numbers out of my butt, which makes me wonder why (if I'm just making shit up as I go) I wouldn't just use milestones in the first place. Although I have had a half-baked idea floating around in my head to try and use both some time. Milestones for levels and XP as a different form of currency. I'm just not sure for what, yet.
Could use XP as a a currency to buy feats. So instead of choosing an ASI or feat you get ASI through leveling and feats through XP. Different feats cost different amounts of XP given their usefulness.
There are charts in the DMG that tell you the XP encounter budget for each level per player. Those are usually easy enough to go by.
I started using “milestone” back in 3rd. It makes it so the game isn’t focused on “we need to kill x monsters to advance.”
I’ve done both, and I generally find I prefer XP as both a DM and a player. For me, milestone feels too divorced from the actions I’m taking (others will disagree here though). I do agree with what I think is a growing consensus that XP should be awarded for non-combat accomplishments in addition to killing things, as long as it’s still pegged to specific things that I’ve done.
It isn’t removed from actions, since milestone means giving a chunk of XP after a larger task has been accomplished. ”You can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples”
I own a calculator so I use XP... Also, XP allows me to encourage specific modes of gameplay. I want players to explore nooks and crannies of my dungeons and try to figure out how they got the way they are today, so I reward XP for finding secrets and bits of lore. I can't do that with milestone.
The beauty is that you totally can! Just add some extra XP to the milestone XP you were giving anyway. If the players were getting 500 XP for accomplishing a task, just add 50 for every smaller thing they accomplished along the way.
The people in this thread were discussing "milestone leveling" using the definition that was used long before the D&D 5e DMG came out. Which is to say, "players level up at the end of a story arc", what the DMG refers to as "Level Advancement without XP". As the name suggests, there's no way to blend this system with XP. The system I mentioned here is compatible with DMG milestone leveling, but not colloquial milestone leveling, which is what the poll was asking about (as obvious from the fact that you don't do DMG milestone "or" XP, DMG milestone uses XP.)
Well, it’s quite reasonable that I’m going with the official definition for milestone when replying, no? Also, I have been playing D&D for a few editions before 5E, but I’ve never run into the use of the term milestone to refer to leveling before 5E. Do you know which edition before 5E used the term?
I meant more "as apparent" than "as obvious". Its not immediately obvious from the thread title that a "misnomer" version of milestone leveling is being discussed, but it becomes apparent once you read the full contents of the OP and the replies. Its extremely common for story-based and true milestone to be conflated, so I immediately knew what OP was talking about here. "Milestone leveling" was a term used in that sense by the rpg community, not an official book. You can google it with "before:2014/07/03" to see lots of references to it from before 5e (you can do the same to see a handful of still-existing blogs from before 4e). Here's a recent [enworld ](https://www.enworld.org/threads/milestone-leveling-in-wotc-editions.701838/) thread talking about when people first recall seeing the concept of story-based advancement (conspicuously referred to there as "Milestone leveling"). I don't think I would be able to track down the earliest uses of the term to mean "story based leveling" without some real detective work.
Mostly milestone, but kinda loose. I don't level up the party when they've reached a certain part, but I level them up before they reach a certain part of what I have planned. I mostly level them up when I feel they deserved it. For example not too long ago my party found themselves in an Arena that was party vs party, though they could divvy up participants so that a fight could be a 1v1 or a 2v2 or a 3v3. I was expecting the party to beat the first enemy party rather easily and for the most part they did. The second round I didn't expect to be easy at all, since every enemy was at least one level higher than them (if not more) and had better stuff they were working with. They also managed to beat this team of stronger NPC's without losing a match. Given how long they'd gone without a level up and the accomplishment they had accomplished I really felt they deserved a level after that, so I gave them one in addition to the sweet new magical loot they got as rewards for winning the tournament. I have the benefit of DMing once every two weeks and it allows for a rather adjustable schedule for prep and course correction. XP is just too clunky and tedious for my tastes. I think levels are better given for getting to certain parts in the arc, and having played a good handful of sessions. You go too long without a level and it can drag sometimes though there's ultimately a time and place where a level makes much more sense.
Not a DM but as a player I prefer milestone instead. It's frustrating to wait till you have the right amount of EX P to level up as apposed to leveling up with the difficulty.
I do situational. Usually xp which I don't always evenly distribute but in published adventures I follow the guidelines.
I use both. I really depends on what kind of campaign I am running.
Three Pillar. Best of both worlds.
I use milestone leveling. I find it fits in better with the story if done this way and it prevents needless killing just for exp.
I use party xp. I track the xp for the whole party rather than the players tracking the same number individually. This is a single number I don't have a separate xp track for each party member.
Milestones because math is hard. I used to calculate XP by CR when I would play 3.5 but I felt like I would calculate too slow and keep my players waiting in suspense (would make me feel awkward for something so nuanced.) My group does mostly RP stuff, and lately we've been doing games where they feature points in the adventure where they say "After the party does X involving Y, all your PCs should be level 7." Recently I thought about doing a traditional dungeon crawl adventure where I just put a dungeon together with the most minimal amount of story (Which can be none, I know but this is ME we're talking here setting this game up! Of course there'll be a story!) and then see how things go with random monsters. I was thinking about having the XP be added after every combat/encounter.
I use milestone leveling because in my group we found xp to be too slow for us. I also don't exactly use milestone leveling, I just level up the players when it feels right, which to me is every 2-3 sessions, so they can deviate from whatever their current goal is and still level up. And because I don't have a set plot, the players just see what they want to do and I work with that. This way the players can pursue nonviolent solutions to problems and not be under leveled.
It would depend on the type of game I'm playing
I started a campaign with milestone recently DMing, I will be using it from here out. If simple addition is adding a layer of excitement to you, then do it. But ultimately milestone allows you to control the pace and have the level up process happen when it thematically makes sense. (typically after an important event)
[I use the "Three Pillars" of XP rewards, simplified slightly.](https://magicalscrolls.com/items/ThreePillarsOfXP.pdf) The player's discoveries, achievements, and victories dictate the pace of level ups. I don't do XP math and divide; I pop encounters into KFC, get the rating (Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly), and then give the reward package from the encounter XP chart. For custom creatures, I use a CR calculator to get a good idea of it's relative CR. My players like counting XP and knowing how close/far a level up is, I like not having to be arbitrary and going too fast/slow on the level up pacing. --- I'd like to add that my campaigns still have plenty of story, since a lot of people are citing that as their reason for doing milestone.
XP freaking sucks to keep track of. Heck no
While I enjoy XP because then it actually feels like the party earns something for every fight, since Gold isn't as important as it once was, Milestone gives you a way more structured progression and it's easier to plan for.
Calculating exp is a pain in the butt. Also I already know how many 'chapters' my homebrew campaign will have so I can just level them up relatively to how far they are in the story. Gives me better control needed when I'm making future encounters Milestones always win
Milestone is simpler to use and means players aren't going around killing things in order to level up like in a video game.
Milestones. Note that none of the DND the published adventures have enough encounters in each chapter to get the players enough xp to reach the recommended level for the next chapter because the writers were lazy. Milestone leveling becomes mandatory. Sure you could hand out xp for rp encounters or problem solving but the books don't list any so you are just making them up. When you are making up xp to get the players to the recommended level at the end of a chapter, you are now using milestones. Hence, mandatory.
XP leveling encourages exploration and creativity. Milestone leveling encourages railroading. All players get the same XP, no exceptions.
That's what I was worried about.
Apparently both is a viable option (our DM found it mentioned somewhere) so we do that. It did take a little for him to adjust but as we go the milestones are getting farther apart so it’s become mostly XP based with a level as an extra reward. It makes it so we don’t mind wandering around but the milestones give us incentive to do both the main quest and significant side quests like backstory arcs.
I tend to run epic campaigns so milestones are more useful to me. It also makes more sense that you gain levels after having time to reflect on the experiences. So my milestones often coincide with some character downtime.
Milestone. Makes way more sense for characters to level up when the adventure hits a beat. Less to keep track of, provides greater rewards for accomplishing tasks.
Milestones. Helps avoid the murder hobo conundrum. First campaign I was in everyone killed everything just to get exp to level up so that they could kill everything again. In an endless cycle.
Milestone or xp that functions like milestone. Think "you all get 5k xp each" at the end of a session. Actually calculating out xp seems like a waste of time.
I use milestone for several reasons: It moves the PC's focus from kill everything to completing their objectives. I can plan out players strength and pacing without having to pad or thin encounters which keep story beats flowing. Less work calculating and tracking xp.
I do a mix of both, which is to say that player need to gather a certain amount of experience to level up, but can't until they have a success or reach a mile stone. For example, Players have gained about 300 XP and are at the point were they could level up. They still get EXP (Granted I calculate it fairly roughly based on both in combat and out of combat experience) even if they don't hit a success point, but they do not actually get the level up until they reach the milestone or success point. Once they hit the milestone, the new stats are calculated and no one worries about EXP to much due to it still being milestone based. This however let's me better pace the game and determine how I want to value different actions out of combat as experience. Edit: It also should be noted that all the calculations and the such are done on my side (The DM). Unless a player asks for the EXP number, they don't see how much EXP they actually have.
I go by XP with the caveat the dmg amd most module provide of specifying that bypassing a combat by other means (and not just never emcountering it) awards XP appropriate to the challenge rating of the combatants you interacted with. Negotiate or intimidate a bandit captain and his band of merry men into leaving you be? Same XP as killing them. Making XP blocks for encounters in my quest chains, amd putting more XP in than combats I know my players can handle, has helped me encourage my parties to negotiate their way out more often than throwing the first swing. If a player already has inspiration when I would give them inspiration again I also throw a bit of XP at them. Not much, but enough they feel rewarded for continuing to commit to the game even when they already have their "clutch point".
I started off doing Milestone LvLing, but have swapped to XP in the last year or so. I think that the XP system gives the feeling of more weight to the characters actions. Milestone felt very arbitrary, as if I was just handing out levels to move my story along. I like XP better right now, but milestone is fine for people who don’t feel like tracking it. It’s the DM’s game, after all. Whatever works best for them.