Topic: Shared XP for killing blow

[Spectre771]

Hello all,

I have an interesting topic/question.  How do you as GMs split XP for killing blows in RM?  The situation was interesting from Monday night:

Group of 5 PCs fighting a Mountain Troll.
PC 1: Delivers high crit, open ends on the crit for a total roll of 181 on the Large Creature Slash Crit Table.

Roughly states "...creature dies after 12 rounds..."

That is the killing blow, in my mind.

PC 2: delivers his attack and maxes out on attack with wrap around damage.  The troll drops from HP loss and falls into the water to drown anyway.


I have a pretty good idea of how I am going to share the XP, but I am interested in hearing other ways GMs have handled ambiguous circumstances like this one.  Even though the Troll wasn't physically dead yet, the killing blow had been struck and it was going to die.

[Peter R]

In my interpretation the troll would have a set number of kill points and that would be shared between all the people landing a killing blow. So the emphasis is on 'a' not 'the' killing blow.

I have seen many situation where several characters all kill the same creature in the same  combat.

I did play with the idea that the player who believes they delivered the killing blow got the experience. If you don't know you did something how can you learn from it but that massively penalised any bow users as puncture criticals are terrible for letting the foe fight on for many rounds after the fatal wound was delivered.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

I stopped giving out XPs for kills decades ago but, back then, I added the kills XPs of a fight and shared amidst everyone who participated in the fight, in broad proportions equal to how much each character helped in the fight. Otherwise, you soon see "helpers" (healers, characters "buffering" the main fighters, characters weakening the enemies, etc.) stop helping since they don't get their share of the XPs loot, so to speak.

[intothatdarkness]

I tend to split the creature bonus points between characters when a situation like the OP describes takes place. And instead of dropping or pooling combat XPs, I expanded the variety of XPs given for casting spells and using other skills. That way the non-combat types tended to advance almost as rapidly as the fighting types (faster in some cases).

[Peter R]

Yes, I agree, the fighters tend to get most of their experience from kills but the other classes I give experience points for other contributions to the whole.

[Ecthelion]

In our early Rolemaster times we would have assigned all the Kill XP to the character that had delivered the killing critical roll of a 181. But this led to characters not necessarily acting for the group but rather players let their characters maximise their XP. So we later always divided the Kill XP among all group members. This worked quite well for quite some time, but we found goal-oriented XP, like they were introduced with HARP, even better, so that we not use goal-oriented XP also for our RM groups.

[Spectre771]

I tend to split the creature bonus points between characters when a situation like the OP describes takes place. And instead of dropping or pooling combat XPs, I expanded the variety of XPs given for casting spells and using other skills. That way the non-combat types tended to advance almost as rapidly as the fighting types (faster in some cases).

This is what I do as well.  I try to follow the XP table from ChL&CaL (I believe) that awards XP for number and severity of crits delivered and received, how well they stayed true to the character without meta-gaming, spells cast successfully, # of levels +/- between NPC/PC, great ideas even if they didn't have great execution, the "base XP amount" for being part of the session tonight, stumping the GM, etc.  Every once in a while, the PC gets me good and throws a monkey wrench into my plans.  I give them XP for that.  But I do add a small amount of XP to delivering the killing blow as well.  Just by being present for the session that night, everyone gets a base amount of XP even if they are knocked unconscious for 12 rounds and do nothing.  That's to add some balancing to the rewards and it won't rely solely on killing blows. 

Everyone will get a base amount of XP for the night, they will all share some of the XP for the attack on the Troll.  They will all get some XP for ideas and role-playing.  This way, it's not all the fighters getting the lion's share of the XP for the night.  I like to reward the individual role play.  The Crits, ideas, killing blow, etc. are like "bonus" XP tacked on to the total amount they will get for the session.  It's never any amount that blows away another player's amount.  They are all within the same range of XP totals, just some may be a little higher than another but usually within 100-200 XP of everyone else.

[markc]

 I do goal oriented Exp with bonuses and penalties for other actions and non-actions in specific situations.
MDC

[Lorgalis]

I calculate all actions and experiences I think deserve XP.
Travel
Combat
Spells
Maneuvers
Very good ideas
Excellent role playing that leads to something
Accomplished goals
Special experiences (like being in prison, witnessing a major magic ritual, having a threesome, meeting the king, surviving in the wilderness for a month etc.)
I use the multipliers: first time, second time, routine.
I do this for each pc and write it down.
Then I add it all together and divide it by 2. The result is then divided equally on the pc's. That's the party Xperia. Each character gets the xp I calculated for him + the party xp.
If one character has done something completely on his own out of sight of the rest of the party, then I should give the experience to that pc, but I don't bother.
I have been a rolemaster GM with the same players since 1989, and the highest lvl any pc has reached is lvl 9!

[Zat]

Our group uses a slightly unorthodox method (it appears, from previous posts); ALL XP is shared.
Flat XP is awarded for manoeuvres, ranging from 5 for routine up to 500 for absurd.
Criticals delivered are based on crit level (e.g., 5 for A and 25 for E) multiplied by level of target, with no cap for total kill XP.
RAW XP for kills, spells, etc.
We do RR a little differently than the RAW, so XP is gained for a successful RR based on the target required.

Each player calculates XP gained in each session and then the mean is taken (and awarded) for each player present. Absent players gain half that XP. A final change is made if any characters have the memory XP award bonus (CoIII) for high memory stats.

This does mean an accelerated XP and level gain when compared to the RAW, but our group enjoys the more rapid evolution and power gain of their characters. Our current campaign has been played for around 200 hours and we have 2 characters at level 6.

We are mature players (aren’t all RM player nowadays?), so this sharing XP idea works really well. It avoids players feeling left out if they play the lesser XP battery characters or if whatever reason the character is left out of the XP action.

One thing that did evolve from our group, using this method, was something we know as the “Smung”. You see, our players always look to the player who has earned the least XP in a given session and regard him or her as a disappointment. One time a certain player calculated his XP at the end of a session and, as the pattern went, announced a low XP score, he appeared self-satisfied that others were gaining high levels of XP in which he would take his share. Another player, with a slight stutter, exclaimed that this self-satisfied player was indeed a ‘smug bastard’, but the word(s) that came out of his exasperated mouth was “SMUNG!”. Since that day we have, quiet seriously, when calculating group XP, asked ‘who was smung this week?’, even going so far as to create a smung list, so that we could easily see who has been smung the most over a period of time (I am toying with the idea of creating a smung t-shirt, to be worn by the ‘offending player’ during our annual Christmas outing).
It works. No bad feelings, no choosing XP battery characters, no feeling left out, no ‘getting the last kick in the head’, and of course the humiliation factor of the smung.

[Cory Magel]

Like others we stopped giving exp for killing blows pretty quickly.  Although we no longer have such players in our groups there were too many instances of players changing targets to weakened foes in order to try and 'steal' the killing blow from someone who had done all the damage up to that point.

Eventually we moved to group exp per situation, then group exp at the end of a session.  Next campaign I run I won't even bother giving any out and just tell the players when to level.

[Peter R]

For any group having questions about awarding experience it is probably worth play testing the experience rules from RMU. If you do decide to switch from your current rule set to the new rules then that is one change you are already familiar with.

Even if you don’t want to change you may still find that the new rules work well enough that what ever your original questions were have now just gone away.

[Spectre771]

While I haven't had players deliberately change targets to a weaker foe to get a killing blow, I've had plenty of instances where Target A is killed and Player A switches to help Player B kill Target B.  What we've done is to award XP for amount of damage done to a target even if it wasn't the killing blow that dropped the foe.

While Player B is landing tons of HP damage and stuns, Player A can get the kill, but won't get as much XP as Player B who did all the hard work.

For the initial post with the group playing against the mountain troll, the first player got the XP for the killing blow on the troll (as the crit indicated).  The next player who did insane damage to the troll causing it to fall into the water to drown also received high XP as the damage was high, the crit was high, and the end result was also a dead troll. 

That situation may be unique but both players, in my mind, landed killing blows on a pretty healthy mountain troll; 1 via excellent crit and 1 via crazy damage with a nice crit.

In general, I've placed less emphasis on the killing blow and more emphasis on the "work" put into getting that killing blow.

[vector]

Like others we stopped giving exp for killing blows pretty quickly.  Although we no longer have such players in our groups there were too many instances of players changing targets to weakened foes in order to try and 'steal' the killing blow from someone who had done all the damage up to that point.

We used to have a guy notorious for that too! One of the many reasons we abandoned the RM xp system entirely.

[Peter R]

Funnily enough our party used to have a ranger with a haste magic item. We used to get him to put one arrow into every target, hit and move on, hit and move on. The idea was that the puncture crits give lots of penalties and sometimes stun. The melee guys could then close with the advantage. I don't think the archery ever killed anything outright on his own.