Hecate Thinks about 6e D&D

I’m not, in this instance, talking about doing away with levels. I’m not really talking about changing the pattern of XP for each level either. I’ve discussed removing levels before , and while I stand by that discussion, I don’t think it’s going to happen. There are ways to make levels more evenly spaced, in terms of xp and while that’s an interesting meta-discussion about game design in and of itself, it’s not really vital to designing 6e. What I’m talking about here, instead, is properly discussing how 6e awards xp. In 5e, you either award xp for combat encounters. The DMG advises, for non-combat encounters, that you compare the event to the combat encounter table and award experience on that basis. That isn’t quite verbatim, but that is the total guidance you get. The alternative approach is just to set chapters, in effect, milestones in the official parlance, and at each point award the characters a level. Each of these approaches has issues. Milestones are good if your party f...