Labyrinths & Liontaurs
Contents
Notes

Rewards: Experience and Wealth

The proper balance of player advancement, wealth, and experience points can be very tricky. Give out too little wealth, and the players won't have enough cash to maintain or outfit themselves. Even worse, give out too much wealth and the players become too powerful, too fast. Similarly, the pace of awarding experience points (XP) can make a game drag on, or advance so quickly that the players' heads spin. Game masters, please read over this page carefully, for needful advice on making your campaign work right.

Awarding Experience

Player characters advance in level by defeating monsters, overcoming challenges, and completing adventures — in so doing, they earn experience points (XP for short). Award experience points at the end of a game session — that way, game masters have time between sessions to calculate after-session XP awards; and players have time to roleplay System interactions, make advancement decisions, and update their character sheets.

Note that characters are aware in-game of having levels and of leveling up, which is often a cause for celebration. Unless the game master rules otherwise, characters level up when they sleep, interacting with the Universal System and making choices for advancement in dreams; new skills and abilities are also learned in this sleep, which requires only a moment to take place, although the dream will seem to cover more time than that. Only persons, not monsters, can level up. Some prefer to keep their levels and classes secret; others are open with this information. This is generally seen as a personal choice.

Encounters

The basic unit of adventuring is the encounter. An encounter is an interaction that includes the risk of a negative outcome. There can certainly be roleplay and even combat that includes no risk to the PCs; such a situation is not an encounter and yields no XP. A risky encounter could be one that puts the PCs in physical danger, but it could also include the risk of other negative outcomes, such as being jailed, swindled, disrespected, overcharged, exiled, trapped, delayed, or denied.

The difficulty of an encounter is described by its challenge rating (CR). The average encounter has a CR equal to the average party level (APL). An easy encounter has a CR that is lower than APL; a harder one, higher than APL. Reduce or increase the XP award for easy and hard encounters by 25 percent for each point of difference under or over APL.

The game assumes that a game master will be running with 3-4 players, each with one character. For games with 1-2 PCs, reduce APL by one. For 5-6 players, increase APL by 1; 7-8, by 2. If you have nine or more players per session, god bless and good luck!

The monster entries include the CR of each monster. That's the CR for a single monster of that type. For each additional monster of the same type that you add to the encounter, increase the encounter CR by +1.

Some especially weak monsters have CRs that are fractions. To calculate the encounter CR for a mass of these weak monsters, multiply the fractional CR by the number of foes.

This page includes a handy listing of the monsters in the game sorted by CR.

Encounters that are not monster-based can have CRs too. See the rules for traps, catastrophes, and haunts, for example. Drawing on these encounters, you'll be able to create your own as a game master and confidently set appropriate CRs for dangers you create.

In general, characters should have about 12 encounters and then advance in level. The game master tracks experience points after an encounter ends. At the end of the session, the base experience point award for each player is the sum of these encounter awards. The following table shows the experience points needed to advance in level, and the average XP award per encounter needed to level up after 12 encounters.

Note that "12 encounters per level" is a suggestion, not a rule from on high. As game master, if you want more or fewer encounters per level, just change the average XP you are giving out per encounter.

Table: Character XP By Level
Tier Lvl Total XP Needed XP Needed Per Level Average XP Awarded Per Encounter Number of Encounters Per Level
Tyro 1 0 -- -- --
2 1,000 1,000 83 12
3 4,000 3,000 250 12
4 9,000 5,000 417 12
5 16,000 7,000 583 12
Adventurer 6 50,000 34,000 1,208 28
7 72,000 22,000 1,833 12
8 98,000 26,000 2,167 12
9 128,000 30,000 2,500 12
10 162,000 34,000 2,833 12
Hero 11 300,000 138,000 4,042 34
12 363,000 63,000 5,250 12
13 432,000 69,000 5,750 12
14 507,000 75,000 6,250 12
15 588,000 81,000 6,750 12
Legend 16 900,000 312,000 8,542 37
17 1,024,000 124,000 10,333 12
18 1,156,000 132,000 11,000 12
19 1,296,000 140,000 11,667 12
20 1,444,000 148,000 12,333 12

The column named "Total XP Needed" is the same one that's on the classes page, here. The next column, "XP Needed Per Level," tells you, the game master, how much XP you have to award to get them from the start of a level to the start of the next one. If you give out about the right amount of XP per encounter, after 12 encounters, you get your players up that level.

Note that players need many more encounters to advance from level 5 to 6, from 10 to 11, and from 15 to 16. That's deliberate — it takes a lot of effort to advance to a higher tier, so putting in the work means something. That said, adventuring to achieve a new tier presents a great opportunity to wrap up long-term story arcs, complete a labyrinth, defeat a recurring foe, achieve a quest, or otherwise complete something special, leading to greater story awards than usual. (see below)

Reading this table, for example, reveals that in going from level 1 to level 2, you need 1,000 XP total to reach level 2. On the way, you will have about 12 encounters, each one awarding about 83 XP. If there is a story award, maybe that will give XP worth say 2 encounters, so really, you just need 10 encounters, plus the story award, to get the players up a level.

Session XP Awards

So, having divided a session into encounters, after the session you compare APL to effective CR for each encounter. You figure out how much XP each encounter delivers. You total the numbers up to get a base value for what each player gets. But you are not done yet. So far, this discussion of XP grants the same amount to each player character. However, there are ways that individual characters are awarded more or less XP:

Class Adjustments: A PC with uneven multiclass leveling suffers a -10% penalty, applied by the game master when calculating individual XP awards after a session. And playing secondary classes exclusively grants a +10% XP bonus

Soul-Bond Adjustments: A PC with soul-bonded magic items suffers a penalty to XP that depends on how many items are currently bonded.

Story Awards: The game master should grant story awards when players conclude a major storyline or achieve an important accomplishment. When you decide a story award is appropriate, say, at the end of a narrative arc, each party member should gain two to four times the XP for an average encounter of that level. Particularly long or difficult story arcs might award even more, at your discretion as game master. You may vary story awards slightly for individuals who made a real difference to the adventure.

Individual Awards: Feel free to grant (usually small) XP awards to players for excellent roleplay, engagement, community, and making the other gamers feel welcome at the table. Cleverness, humor, heroism, generosity, and other qualities you wish to encourage, both in character and out, deserve recognition. This award varies from PC to PC depending on how the game master judges each PC to have contributed. A bonus of up to +10% is a good guideline for these individual awards.

Note that as a game master, you should track story and individual awards and how much you give to each PC — be careful not to let an unconscious bias pop up favoring one player over another. If a character consistently fails to get bonus awards, create scenarios and encounters especially tailored to their capabilities, giving them moments to shine, and to earn extra XP.

When you track individual awards, also note the reason for the award -- when characters attain higher levels and are crafting traits that reflect their game experiences, these moments are great seeds that you can use to suggest traits. "Lin, your monk got bonus XP for rescuing that dwarf prince. Maybe your trait this level could be 'Dwarf-friend,' giving you a bonus of some kind when you meet dwarves in the future."

Note that player characters can have different XP totals -- due to individual awards and various ways of losing or gaining XP. Therefore, you, the game master, must not award XP on a level basis. Never say, "OK, everybody put yourselves up to what you need for level 8," for example -- such a practice wipes out all individual variation and is deeply unfair to those who have gained individual awards or who have worked hard to get a little ahead.

Pacing: As the game master, you have the ability to set the speed of your game's advancement by increasing or decreasing the size of session XP awards. That is your perogative. However, it may help to know your players' preferences as well, perhaps asked in a "session zero."

Awarding Wealth

As PCs gain levels, the amount of treasure they carry and use increases as well. Because wealth is a decent proxy for power, the game master has to be careful to award wealth carefully. Loot can and will be used as is or exchanged for gear, magic items, and other resources. But do not worry, game masters, the rules below include strict guidelines on how much loot to give to your players.

Some player characters will hoard their treasure, whether keeping as gold for gold's sake, or using it for gear and magic items they will have forever. Other player characters will spend their money freely, buying potions and wands (and using them up), living large, gambling, buying a house or demense, hiring staff, and donating to worthy causes. Heck, any PC may need to pay through the nose for a raise dead, and the careless ones may have to pay for more than one. And, in perhaps the biggest potential gold-sink, PCs may convert their wealth to gems, then feeding those gems to their soul-linked magic items to unlock greater powers. So of two PCs, both awarded the same amount of loot, one may still be broke on one hand, and the other one may be wealthy, on the other.

The vitally important thing is that you as game master must award all PCs in your game the same amount of wealth. Check out this table.

Table: Character Wealth By Level
Tier Lvl Total Wealth Per PC Loot Per Level Per PC
Tyro 1 100
2 500 400
3 1,400 900
4 2,900 1,500
5 5,100 2,200
Adventurer 6 8,100 3,000
7 12,000 3,900
8 16,900 4,900
9 23,000 6,100
10 31,000 8,000
Hero 11 41,000 10,000
12 54,000 13,000
13 70,000 16,000
14 90,000 20,000
15 115,000 25,000
Legend 16 150,000 35,000
17 200,000 50,000
18 270,000 70,000
19 370,000 100,000
20 500,000 130,000

If a PC buys no consumables, pays for no spell-casting, hires no NPCs, donates to no charity, and lives modestly, equipping only mundane and non-soul-bonded items, then, indeed, their total wealth may equal the value, in gold, given above under "Total Wealth Per PC." This number, also known as "Wealth By Level," or WBL, is useful in other contexts, such as calculating the value of an Aristocrat's demense earnings.

It is important to track expenditures with ongoing benefits, such as the value of permanent spells, gold spent on noble titles, donations that result in long-term rights or relationships, and so forth. If you give 100 gp on a whim to a beggar, that money is gone. If you make a sizeable donation to the Church, that should be tracked, because when you return for healing, a known donor may be more welcome than a penniless heretic.

The table above reveals the total amount of wealth you should award to each PC as they advance. A PC advancing from level one to level two will have received 400 gp while they adventure. Whether they retain that gold is up to them.

How you spread that wealth out while the party is adventuring is up to you. Some encounters may have loot; others slim to none. Magical creatures may have gems embedded in their insides. Some rewards may come as quest prizes at the end of the adventure. So long as the total per level is in the right ballpark, the amount does not matter.

The table above lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to receive at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award less, while high-fantasy games might allow more. Be careful not to unbalance your game being too generous or chary.

Note that other fantasy tabletop roleplay games have an odd rule: Any loot you sell brings you only half its value. So if you give a party with four PCs an item worth 2,000 gp and they keep it, you given each PC 500 gp. But if they sell it, they gain only 1,000 gp, and you have given each only 250 gp. This plays real havoc with your calculations regarding the real value of loot. But Labyrinths & Liontaurs fixes this issue with one simple tweak: if you sell anything, you get the book value of the item in gold for the sale.

You may have mercantile player characters who enjoy haggling and take ranks in Profession (Merchant), who seek out opportunities for profit and enjoy fantasy economics. Let these players enjoy selling fire resistance potions in areas infested by salamanders, and draining the acid pit in the local labyrinth to sell in vials on the open market. Just do not allow these elements of play to dominate the game, unless all the players are loving a capitalist campaign.

You as a game master can also use WBL to budget gear for characters starting above 1st level, such as a new character created to replace a dead one. Characters should spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level should spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins. Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items.

Encounters against NPCs typically award three times the treasure a monster-based encounter awards, due to NPC gear. To compensate, make sure the PCs face off against a pair of additional encounters that award little in the way of treasure. Animals, plants, constructs, mindless undead, oozes, and traps are great “low treasure” encounters. Alternatively, if the PCs face a number of creatures with little or no treasure, they should have the opportunity to acquire a number of significantly more valuable objects sometime in the near future to make up for the imbalance.

Building a Treasure Hoard

While it's often enough to simply tell your players they've found 5,000 gp in gems and 10,000 gp in jewelry, it's generally more interesting to give details. Giving treasure a personality can not only help the verisimilitude of your game, but can sometimes trigger new adventures. The information below can help you randomly determine types of additional treasure — suggested values are given for many of the objects, but feel free to assign values to the objects as you see fit. It's easiest to place the expensive items first — if you wish, you can even randomly roll magic items, using the tables in Magic Items, to determine what sort of items are present in the hoard. Once you've consumed a sizable portion of the hoard's value, the remainder can simply be loose coins or nonmagical treasure with values arbitrarily assigned as you see fit.

Coins: Coins in a treasure hoard can consist of copper, silver, gold, and platinum pieces — silver and gold are the most common, but you can divide the coinage as you wish. Coins and their value relative to each other are described at the start of Equipment.

Gems: Although you can assign any value to a gemstone, some are inherently more valuable than others. Use the value categories below (and their associated gemstones) as guidelines when assigning values to gemstones.

Nonmagical Treasures: This expansive category includes jewelry, fine clothing, trade goods, alchemical items, masterwork objects, and more. Unlike gemstones, many of these objects have set values, but you can always increase an object's value by having it be bejeweled or of particularly fine craftsmanship. This increase in cost doesn't grant additional abilities — a gem-encrusted masterwork cold iron scimitar worth 40,000 gp functions the same as a typical masterwork cold iron scimitar worth the base price of 330 gp. Listed below are numerous examples of several types of nonmagical treasures, along with typical values.

Fine Artwork (100 gp or more): Although some artwork is composed of precious materials, the value of most paintings, sculptures, works of literature, fine clothing, and the like come from their skill and craftsmanship. Artwork is often bulky or cumbersome to move and fragile to boot, making salvage an adventure in and of itself.

Jewelry, Minor (50 gp): This category includes relatively small pieces of jewelry crafted from materials like brass, bronze, copper, ivory, or even exotic woods, sometimes set with tiny or flawed low-quality gems. Minor jewelry includes rings, bracelets, and earrings.

Jewelry, Normal (100-500 gp): Most jewelry is made of silver, gold, jade, or coral, often ornamented with semi-precious or even medium-quality gemstones. Normal jewelry includes all types of minor jewelry plus armbands, necklaces, and brooches.

Jewelry, Precious (500 gp or more): Truly precious jewelry is crafted from gold, mithral, platinum, or similar rare metals. Such objects include normal jewelry types plus crowns, scepters, pendants, and other large items.

Masterwork Tools (100-300 gp): This category includes masterwork weapons, armor, and skill kits — see Equipment for more details and costs for these items.

Mundane Gear (up to 1,000 gp): There are many valuable items of mundane or alchemical nature detailed in Equipment that can be utilized as treasure. Most of the alchemical items are portable and valuable, but other objects like locks, holy symbols, spyglasses, fine wine, or fine clothing work well as interesting bits of treasure. Trade goods can even serve as treasure — 10 pounds of saffron, for example, is worth 150 gp.

Treasure Maps and Other Intelligence (variable): Items like treasure maps, deeds to ships and homes, lists of informants or guard rosters, passwords, and the like can also make fun items of treasure — you can set the value of such items at any amount you wish, and often they can serve double-duty as adventure seeds.

Magic Items: Of course, the discovery of a magic item is the true prize for any adventurer. You should take care with the placement of magic items in a hoard — it's generally more satisfying for many players to find a magic item rather than purchase it, so there's no crime in placing items that happen to be those your players can use! An extensive list of magic items (and their costs) is given in Magic Items.

Other Awards

As a game master, you can also choose to offer other kinds of rewards to your players. Medals, lands, monopolies, castles / demenses, trophies, sentimental items, renown, respect, and so forth are all options.

Labyrinths & Liontaurs is an indie tabletop role-playing game based on the d20 System and the Open Game License. I stand on the shoulders of storm giants.

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