Updated from an original article published Nov 19, 2018.

An easy way to stress the three pillars of play (combat, exploration, interaction) in Dungeons & Dragons is to award experience points in a different manner. Older editions awarded them based on gold piece values of treasure procured (or secured in town after selling off loot), and other games have tables you can reference that provide XP values for different tasks performed, goals achieved, and so on. Unearthed Arcana addressed this with the Three-Pillar Experience system, a set of variant rules that intersects with the Challenge rating system and the different tiers of play: first tier (levels 1–4), second tier (levels 5–10), third tier (levels 11–16), and fourth tier (levels 17–20).

Here’s a simple system that uses a series of questions and answers to award experience. Based on the questions you use — the lists presented below, or something of your own devising — you can easily tweak the system to stress different types of conduct during play, and thus stress the pillars of play in different ways.

Read on!

Leveling Up

It takes 10 experience points (‘XP’ from here on out) to level up (10 XP to go from level 1 to level 2, 10 XP more to go from level 2 to level 3, and so on). Each time you level up, you reset your XP to zero. You can only ever level up once from any single session of play.

You gain XP (sometimes referred to as “mark XP”) when, at the end of the session, you can answer affirmatively the questions below (see the next section). You gain 1 XP for each question answered affirmatively, regardless of whether you can answer each one with separate instances. For example, if you can answer the question, “Have you secured treasure, or discovered something secret?” affirmatively both for securing treasure and for discovering a secret about one of the NPCs you met, you still only get 1 XP for that question, not 2.

Rewarding XP

There are two types of rewards: Party and Individual. Answer the party rewards questions for the entire party. Even if the party split up or some characters were paralyzed or whatever, answering these questions nets all players 1 XP each. For the individual rewards, ask each player the questions and award them XP for each one answered affirmatively.

Party rewards:

Did you secure treasure, or discover something secret? Did you circumvent, defeat, or neutralize a deadly threat? Did you complete a quest?

Individual rewards:

Did you roll a natural 1? Did you roll a natural 20? Did you change the nature of your relationship with another PC, NPC, creature, or faction?

The Theory

This system blatantly rips off the idea of milestones from D&D as well as “marking XP” from Powered by the Apocalypse games like Dungeon World, but has a few benefits that the core milestone system (which is really just, “hand out a level when you think it’s right”) doesn’t.

It has enough of a “system” that players who like bean-counting will have something to track.

It is very clearly what actions lead to gaining 1 XP.

It encourages players to roll dice (the questions about natural 1s and 20s).

It encourages players to secure treasure, as opposed to just collect it on their character sheet.

treasure, as opposed to just collect it on their character sheet. It encourages players to think about the campaign world (secrets, relationships).

It rewards players who deal with threats in a variety of ways beyond just slaying them.

Let’s cover each question in some more detail below.

Did you secure treasure, or discover something secret? Although pretty much every adventure contains treasure, not every session of play will see the adventurers carry it all home, so this question presents two options to better fit more circumstances: did you secure treasure, or did you discover a secret.

Securing treasure means more than just “did you equip that magic sword you found.” The players should be bringing it back to a settlement or headquarters to study it, attune to it, and train with it, or should be selling off the art objects and such. Simply put, they should be engaging with the loot they found, rather than just listing it on a sheet of paper.

Secrets can be as simple as, “did you find a secret door” or can be more about the campaign world, or a specific quest or NPC. Moreover, it’s not just, “did you learn something new,” but, “did you discover a secret?” Whether it’s a secret door, hidden treasure chest, or the truth about the doppelganger sitting on the throne in place of the real queen, it should be something that someone tried to keep hidden.

Did you circumvent, defeat, or neutralize a deadly threat? It’s not just about fighting monsters, but about those monsters posing a deadly threat (a pitched encounter counts, as does an NPC trying to mobilize an army for a war in future sessions). Furthermore, it’s not strictly about combat encounters; circumvent and neutralize could mean things like using stealth, a distraction, or magic to bypass a threat. It could mean parleying with a creature and changing its initial attitude to something other than hostile (see the Dungeon Master’s Guide regarding Social Interaction rules).

Did you complete a quest? Here’s the typical, nebulous quest piece. The fact is that D&D does often center on quests, even if they are goals of the players’ own devising. A goal can be adventure specific, or individual specific, and it about doing something significant within the context of the game session, or even over the course of several sessions, meaning you may not have a chance to get this reward every session of play. See Pacing, below, for further discussion.

Did you roll a natural 1? And, Did you roll a natural 20? These two questions encourage players to roll dice and get involved. Their characters should be learning both from their successes and their failures, so this sort of covers that aspect, too. Some folks may actually not initially like the idea of focusing on rolling dice. If you’re not sure, try using the Social Interaction rules from the Dungeon Master’s Guide a little more often (remembering that Hostile does not mean aggressive in every case!), as well as limiting how often characters are rolling Perception checks for easily discoverable things. These two things — the lack of social-based rolls, and the overabundance of unnecessary Perception checks — can really alter how often players are rolling dice. Importantly, regardless of how a DM feels about players rolling dice, the fact is that many people come to play D&D and roll dice. It’s doubly nice to reward them for doing so.

Did you change the nature of your relationship with another PC, NPC, creature, or faction? Here’s one that’s all about the campaign setting and current storylines the players are running their characters through. By making it obvious that relationships are important — whether it’s initial attitudes of monsters and NPCs, inter-party conflict, or increasing their rank with a faction like The Harpers — the players will hopefully understand that their characters are part of a world that lives and breathes, in a sense. Their characters’ actions will affect them and the world around them, and whether it’s for the better or worse, those changes should be a chance for individual characters to grow and change as well. (This is a good reward to move up under party rewards, too, if you want to de-emphasize the potential for inter-party conflict, or purposely becoming a nuisance to established NPCs and factions as routes to gaining levels.)

Pacing & Themes

Just as with the milestone rules, you control the pacing of leveling for the most part. This system does introduce a little randomization (the 1s and 20s questions), as well as providing broad enough questions that many of them will be answered affirmatively each session. This is intentional: players will find their characters leveling every 2-4 sessions of play under this system, which is about right for 4 hour, regularly scheduled sessions.

Here are several ideas for speeding up, slowing down, and even changing the entire “feel” of this XP system, to better align with different styles of gaming, adventures that focus on different things, and helping to bring the campaign world or various character traits to the forefront.

Faster Level Up. You can speed things up by allowing for multiple XP from the “Did you complete a quest?” question or the “Did you circumvent, defeat, or neutralize a deadly threat?” question. If they completed multiple important goals, or defeated a slew of nasty threats, give them a chance to earn 2-3 XP in a given session. You can also move the “Did you change the nature of your relationship with another PC, NPC, creature, or faction?” question under party rewards, so everyone gets an XP when anyone in the party can alter a relationship with another PC, or with an NPC, creature, or faction. Theoretically, you can just remove the idea of individual rewards altogether and pad out the party rewards with the same questions (or ones specific to your campaign flavor), and everyone stays on the same track. Anywhere between 8-12 questions (or an equal number of XP if you give out multiple XP for certain questions) will ensure characters are leveling up every 1-2 sessions.

Slower Level Up. If you want to slow things down, here are a couple options:

Remove Questions . You can remove some of the questions, like the natural 1s and 20s questions.

. You can remove some of the questions, like the natural 1s and 20s questions. Rethink Party vs. Individual Rewards . You can rearrange which questions exist under party and individual rewards, or eliminate one whole category so that the adventurers are only getting asked party-related questions, and there’s only 3 or 4 of them.

. You can rearrange which questions exist under party and individual rewards, or eliminate one whole category so that the adventurers are only getting asked party-related questions, and there’s only 3 or 4 of them. Scaling XP . You can change the number of XP needed for each level by making the new goal 5 + the next level, so to go from level 1 to level 2 would take 7 XP, and to go from level 2 to level 3 would take 8 more XP. The first three levels will go quickly, but by Tier 2 things slow down. Tier 3 and 4 player will see very slow progression. Make it 10 + the next level if you want to run a long adventure or campaign without blowing throw early levels, or where your plan is to stay within one or two Tiers of play for the whole time.

. You can change the number of XP needed for each level by making the new goal 5 + the next level, so to go from level 1 to level 2 would take 7 XP, and to go from level 2 to level 3 would take 8 more XP. The first three levels will go quickly, but by Tier 2 things slow down. Tier 3 and 4 player will see very slow progression. Make it 10 + the next level if you want to run a long adventure or campaign without blowing throw early levels, or where your plan is to stay within one or two Tiers of play for the whole time. End of Adventure Instead of End of Session. You can relegate the quest- and relationship-based rewards to only “dramatically appropriate” situations, such that you’re only awarding XP for these events at the end of a complete adventure, rather than the end of a session of play. This won’t work in one-shot scenarios, but it’s great for strings of adventure modules, or perfect for the end of a given chapter in a campaign book like Curse of Strahd or Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Thematic Experience. You can really focus on rewarding players for the things your group enjoys the most.

If you like killing monsters, the core experience point system is great because it’s all about defeating monsters.

If you want to reward players for finding and hauling around loot, rewarding them 1 XP per 1 gp value loot will do that.

But if you want to stress things like faction politics, overcoming non-combat challenges, peeling back the layers of a campaign setting to find the secrets buried within, and so on — and especially if you want to emphasize several of those different facets at once — this simplified system is great for that.

You can change the focus of a specific campaign or adventure by examining the questions asked to gain XP, redesigning them as desired. Maybe they are all individual rewards, or all party rewards. Maybe you replace some with more pointed questions: rather than, “did you change a relationship?” you could instead have separate questions about making allies versus enemies, more pointed questions regarding improving standing with various factions, or more specific things characters can do with their loot. That last idea is great for paladin and cleric characters: did they tithe their money to their local temple? That sort of thing can make even more varied and interesting individual rewards, because you could focus on how each class, race or background acts within your campaign setting. You could leave one question “slot” open to such pointed, specific activities that you want to encourage. You could even allow the players themselves to come up with one or two questions, perhaps highlighting activities that reinforce or even challenge their characters Bonds, Ideals, Personality Traits, or Flaws.

Just make sure the players will actually get a chance to answer such questions “yes” from time to time!

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