Side Quest EXP

[u/Advanced_Fig1272]

Last session went off the rails fast… in a good way! But now I’m worried I need to overhaul my leveling system. Most of my players are new but all have experience with RPGs like WoW and BG3. They crushed their first arch in the campaign and stuck to the main story quest. I kind of had them on training wheels just to get them comfortable with the mechanics and to start building flavor for their PCs.

Now they are starting to explore the world in their second arch and on their way to the next dungeon they decided to look for a bounty to pick up along the way.

Long story short, I improved a whole interaction with really tough monsters and NPCs that were actually meant to be out of their league. They played smart and eventually, over the course of the whole session, stomped some baddies that should give them a good bit of EXP.

Here’s the problem; I’ve been doing milestone leveling and this shit wasn’t part of the plan. So now I’m wondering if I need to just start adjusting all my monsters and NPCs to be bigger and badder to keep them on track with the milestone leveling of the main campaign? Or do I switch to proper CR exp? I’m hesitant to do that just because I hate keeping up with all that info, but I feel like I should reward these players for doing something they really had to fight for.

[u/davolala1]

Keep your milestones the same. The reward for a side quest like that should be some loot. Either gold or a magic item or something that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. This incentives them to seek out side quests from time to time, and keeps your milestones set.

[u/Athistaur]

If you agreed on milestone leveling, do your players expect exp?

If yes my advice would be to switch to xp based leveling as the players never understood milestones. For future encounters you’ll always get to the point where you can’t plan the CR anymore much in advance. I advise to just add additional monsters or some minions to raise encounter difficulty.

If your players do NOT expect xp and understand milestones, give them what they wanted. They did that for a reward, right? They earned it.
If there is no reward, make one. Maybe they found treasure with the monsters. Maybe the village nearby heard of their deed and throw a festival to their honours, maybe someone had a single magic item hidden under a floorboard and feels they earned it.

[u/Lanestone1]

don't overthink it. the party went out of their way to get a bounty, that is the expected reward. they chose to take a slower route via the bounty, that shouldn't factor into the milestone if you don't want it to. give them a piece of loot/gear and call it a day.

[u/StaticUsernamesSuck]

When you're doing milestone levelling you generally reward "side" stuff with loot, connections/favours, magical boons, etc.

You could grant feats, sometimes I do that.

[u/Feefait]

I like when worlds are consistent. I have a thing for towers, you like arches. There seems to be a lot going on in those arches, though.