Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback XP should be earned regardless of combat

+1 to OP.

+1

Agree but level cap has to rise.

Agreed. Being punished for finding other ways to solve a problem isn't great.

Yeah, thought the same thing several times during my playthrough. Not sure how much one would get behind in xp if one went the diplomatic route as often as possible, but it simply feels wrong.

AMEN!!! I hate having to be forced to kill everything to get stronger. It's silly. If we can't then give us alternate means to earn exp like crafting or a small area where wildlife or monsters re-spawn so we can grind if we need.

Agreed, as a DM, it is very important to reward the players for their performance in game, whether its combat or well executed ability checks. If you only give out XP as the result of combat, you run a high risk of turning your campaign into a murder hobo setting were players will go out of their way to kill every enemy and NPC simply for the sake of more XP.

A milestone system is probably the easiest way to deal with this without having to worry about how to balance XP from successful checks vs combat. Otherwise, simply awarding some amount of XP from non-combat resolutions, even if its less XP than what you would have gotten from combat, is still preferable to getting no XP at all for resolving things in a peaceful way.

+1

I was wondering about milestone xp too. The problem I came up with though with that format is the 'open play' style of the map and exploration. As a DM, in PnP I have control as to where the players go and what they encounter. So I am able to make sure there are no TPKs. In a sandbox style of free exploration we are able to go anywhere and encounter things that are too difficult for us to deal with at our current level.

So I feel that we are kinda stuck with the XP earned system.

Larian already adressed it and said it will happen. It's not such a big deal right now, since it is extremely easy to reach level 4 in EA

Well, I wonder WHAT will happen, exactly. Because an important part of making this "fix" work is being sure that the total amount of exp obtainable is (more or less) unchanged.
If it's "Don't worry, we are giving you social exp in dialogues" and then still allowing the player to be a murderhobo and double the reward, they aren't really fixing that much.

As I said the key here (and in any other RPG, really) should be having a goal-based reward system. Give exp for kills only if the combat is the only possible interaction with the encounter.
Otherwise choose a fixed amount of exp to tie to that encounter, and once you reward it (for killing, for solving it pacifically, for fooling your opponents, whatever) any other additional interaction on top is not supposed to give any extra reward.

+1 makes total sense, i would only not out exp on crafting, unless it is based on the difficulty to make the item (yeah in case there is real crafting in final game lol)

So my first playthrough I did talk my way out of the fight. Now in my second playthrough I decided to kill all for XP. There is actually a 3rd scenario that can occur:

Yes

When did they say that? Good to know