Dungeon Master's Guide Chapter 7

Okay, so now we get to look at the real reason people go on adventures: The Rewards. This chapter covers experience points, treasure, and other rewards. It's another short one, so let's jump right in.

First, XP. This is how you level up. I've already seen the basics of the XP system in the 2000 Survival Kit in the back of the Player's Handbook. The system is basically unchanged in the DMG. First of all, every encounter has a Challenge Rating. Monsters, NPCs, and traps all have CRs which indicate how tough they are to overcome, and how many XP the party receives from overcoming them. Note that XP for treasure is no longer a thing. That's a big part of the old system removed, but on the other hand, leveling up is a lot faster now, and the rules suggest that characters should be advancing roughly one level per adventure now. Which is going to shorten campaigns, since if you're reaching the highest levels of play after only twenty or so sessions, you're not going to be challenged by that campaign for very long.

Anyway, XP are calculated as follows: First, the average party level is determined. If everyone is the same level, great; that's the average level. If they aren't all the same level, then you add up the total levels and divide by the number of PCs. So, a party consisting of levels 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, and 6 would be 28 total levels, for a party average of 28/6 = 5.6, rounded down to 5.

Next, note the Challenge Rating for every monster and trap that the party overcame during the adventure. Don't add them up; the XP are added up per monster individually. So, defeating six orcs means the party earns a total of six CR1 monsters' worth of XP for the encounter. You then look up that CR on the Experience Point Awards table, reading across on the party level line (5 for the above example) to see that each CR1 monster is worth 300 XP, for a total of 1800 XP for the orc encounter. I'll simply point out that in the 1st edition, those same orcs would have been worth 10 + 1/hp XP each, which is slightly less than the 3e reward. On the other hand, the treasure XP would have helped make up for the lower monster XP. Give away, take away. It is what it is.

NPCs have Challenge Ratings too; basically, it's CR = character level, although the NPC classes start at CR 1/2 at level 1, CR 1 at level 2, and then CR +1 per level after that. Traps have a CR usually equal to CR 1 per 2d6 of damage they do, although the highest CR for a trap should be CR 10.

You can modify the XP award for more or less challenging encounters; you don't have to go strictly by the CR totals, although the XP table does account for these things; a 9th-level party isn't getting any XP from a bunch of orcs, and there's no way a 1st-level party is going to survive a CR11 monster, so there's no XP award for that level of opponent.

As the DM, you also get to assign XP for 'story goals' if you're playing that style. This is a much more free-form method, so it's not really detailed in the rules. I have always preferred to focus more on the encounter XP in my games; story awards are rare, usually happening only at the end of the adventure.

Alright, now for the real reward: Treasure! The easiest way to find treasure is to kill the monster it belongs to. Note that by 'easiest' I mean most obvious; it's not always going to be easy to actually kill the monster guarding the treasure. But treasure guarded by monsters is the most common in the game rules.

There's a handy table that gives Treasure Values per Encounter Level. Basically, the higher the EL, the more valuable the treasures to be found. Well, that's been the case since the original boxed set, although this is easily the most granular system D&D has had to this point. Treasure is divided up into three types: Coins, goods (gems and art objects), and items (mundane or magical). Don't expect to find a lot of magic at 1st level. Note that this is the standard treasure for all cases; unlike the original 1st edition game, which had a table of possible levels of treasure from A to Z, all treasure rolls in the game use the same table. This can make for a bit of sameness for the DM, and I liked the Treasure Types in the old editions. Sad face.

Items are divided up into mundane and magic. Mundane are pretty straightforward; pretty much everything considered a 'mundane' treasure is in the Player's Handbook equipment section, such as armor, masterwork weapon, or thunderstone. Magic items are covered in the next chapter.

The 'other' rewards are less tangible things such as grants of land or a noble's favor at court. These are nice for role-playing purposes, but there are unfortunately a lot of players for whom that won't be much of a reward at all. They want gold and magic, not necessarily in that order.

And that covers yet another chapter of the Dungeon Master's Guide. The next chapter is the last one, and it's huge: Magic items! See you then.