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At this point, I am unclear as to how to handle encounter XP. Does each surviving party member receive a proportional share, or the full amount?
That is, assume a 4-character party had completed an encounter worth 400 XP. Would each party member receive 100 XP, or 400 XP?
The "Experience Points" section of the Dungeon Master's Guide says (p. 260):
[...] When adventurers defeat one or more monsters — typically by killing, routing, or capturing them — they divide the total XP value of the monsters evenly among themselves. If the party received substantial assistance from one or more NPCs, count those NPCs as party members when dividing up the XP. [...]
This rewards players based on the relative difficulty of the combat rather than the empirical size of the opposition. 10 goblins is more of a challenge to 4 players than to 10 players, for instance; thus, each player gets a larger piece of the XP. Otherwise, an army of player characters could amass absurd XP from swarming a high-CR monster and all benefit as if they had single-handedly taken it down.
In terms of survival, the DMG never distinguishes between alive or dead combatants for XP division. Thus, XP is divided amongst the living and dead with no differentiation. By nature of being a PC, players are considered as providing "substantial assistance" regardless of their actions (so long as they participate in the combat). Survival has no effect for NPCs that provided "substantial assistance" and are still rewarded XP accordingly if killed.
Thus, in your example of four players facing an encounter worth 400 XP total, each player would receive 100 XP whether they survive to the end of combat or not.
Short answer: the total XP of all the bandits is the XP awarded to the whole group, which is then divided among them, so they should get 110 each, yes.
Longer answer: it's easy to get distracted by the fairly complex guidelines for estimating encounter difficulty that start on pg. 81 of the DMG, but your question is more oriented toward the much shorter section on pg. 260: Experience Points. There, the rules are basically:
That's it; the math for estimating difficulty is a lot more complex, with multiplying the "total" depending on how outnumbered the party is, and reducing that if they're five or more, but for awards, you just use the raw amount of the monsters, added together and divided between party members.
Things that aren't RAW that you'll sometimes find DMs doing might be:
...but those aren't RAW, in case you hear differently.
Every previous answer is correct from what I've been able to tell... still remember that if you are the DM you can make a separate call on those things.
For example, if an NPC did an extreme amount of damage and dies still that might deduct from the XP of the main players. Alternatively, if the battle takes a tough turn, but they somehow survive it with some amazing rolls you can award them bonus XP.
This is loosely discussed in the Dungeon Masters Guide and pertains mostly to making the game fun for the players... some feel rewarded by certain things more and less than others.
5e Rules discuss this on pages 4-6.
It's good to stick to the rules, but it's also exciting when the world begins to become unique and your own and crafted uniquely to the players.
