11
XP rewards tell the players "This is important"
If XP are given for a certain activity, then the players will naturally gravitate towards that activity. In your case, this is towards combat, because combat is where the XP come from. In the original DnD, this was acquisition of gold, because that gave more XP than fighting by a factor of almost 100.
By ...
9
There are numerous ways of achieving this.
However, before posting my answer I would like to emphasize the following personal opinion:
It's OK if your players miss your hints
Some comments mention that dropping hints is difficult in role-playing because most of the time the players won't get them unless you become too obvious. I totally agree with this ...
8
Monster Vault and Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale.
That's the quick answer.
The slightly longer answer is that the Monster Manual 3 was published in late June of 2010 and those are the only monster books published later than it.
The much longer answer is that there's a common formula used from Monster Manual 3 onward (with some slight ...
5
There really aren't any specific things
Unfortunately, providing clues is one of the hardest single things that a DM has to do. And I've found there are no ways, besides being so obvious that you lose the impact of what you're trying to do, that will work for any given group of individuals.
The problem is that if you're being subtle, there's a very good ...
4
Clue the players in more quickly than the characters
In my experience, if you're too subtle with clues about this sort of thing, your players may miss them entirely. They probably have some other objective in mind and may only be half paying attention to your narration of what they assume is a quick resupply opportunity. This is especially true if you play ...
2
I don't think this is a great solution
It seems like the player is trying to turn a non-attack power into an attack power. But attacks are blatantly different from hazards on a meta level, and embracing that kind of meta distinction is one of 4e's core design conceits.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that that, regardless of the quality of your ...
1
It might pressure you into Leveling them up faster then what the normal progression would be.
Experience Points are rewards, like Gold is. It is also a rather granular reward. You can get some after every session, without it meaning you level up after every one. You got a persistent feeling of progress, even of most of the time that progress is just ...
1
It depends on your players
Some players will consider this to be an improvement of the normal functionality. In fact, many of the campaigns made for 5e actually do this now, they suggest certain points in the story where the characters should get a level, so at the very least, Wizards of the Coast seems to think this isn't a game breaking idea in 5e, so it ...
1
I've seen level pacing become an issue, particularly if the characters like to stop and chase every butterfly on the way to major quest points or skip everything and rush to the closest solution.
I recently switched from XP to Milestone at our table (every event ended with a 'how much should I have now' mathlete debate), but keep it paced by maintaining a ...
1
I don't know if there are any specific rules in DnD, but I had that problem quite often in my Pen&Paper party aswell. I like playing quite fleshed-out NPCs and my players became attached to a few, so simply killing them off won't do it, but although I haven't found a perfect solution here are some suggestions:
Split the Party
while players should never ...
1
Let them play the NPC's, for the most parts.
In a recent Warhammer Fantasy game, we played on a ship. So the GM had us make a bunch of NPC crewmembers. Officer Ranks mostly - Captain, Doctor, Master Gunner, Ship Carpenter, Cook, etc. - the idea was to always have someone for people to play, if their characters are off-screen at any time. We never really ...
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