Three Pillars XP, revisited

The Three Pillars UA had some problems. It wasn’t great that defeating 50 kobolds gained you a level no matter how good you were, but the biggest problem for me was this: when you have a party of mixed levels, the normal XP system from the PHB allows the lower leveled PCs to almost catch up. That went away with the Three Pillar “100 xp” model.

So here’s my attempt at a revised version, partly inspired by this post on The Walking Mind.

I don't use this rule anymore, so this page has been obsoleted by XP for gold, which uses the "discovering items" rules from here but ditches the locations, convincing people, or trouble xp.

Pillar triggers

Discovering items

Tier 1: A single item worth 100 gp or more, or a nonconsumable rare magic item
Tier 2: A single item worth 1,000 gp or more, or a nonconsumable very rare magic item
Tier 3: A single item worth 5,000 gp or more, or a nonconsumable legendary magic item
Tier 4: A single item worth 50,000 gp or more, or an artifact

Discovering locations

Tier 1: A location important to a small town or village
Tier 2: A location vital to a kingdom
Tier 3: A location important across a world
Tier 4: A location of cosmic importance

Convincing people

Tier 1: An NPC with influence over a small town or village, or the equivalent
Tier 2: An NPC with influence over a city or the equivalent
Tier 3: An NPC with influence over a kingdom, a continent, or the equivalent
Tier 4: An NPC (including a deity) with cosmic significance or influence across multiple worlds

PC tiers

Tier 1: levels 1 to 4
Tier 2: levels 5 to 10
Tier 3: levels 11 to 16
Tier 4: levels 17 to 20

The table, then

There are some different ways to determine “party level”, you could do “average PC level”, or you could take the highest level, or the lowest, or the highest-that-at-least-two-people-have, or the medium, or w/e. Up to you but be consistent.

Our group's rule is: the second-highest level of a player character.

Then whenever the group does a pillar trigger, look up the xp reward for their level, relevant to the tier of the trigger compared to their own tier. Discovery triggers below their own current tier don’t give any xp, but convincing people of (any) lower gives half the xp that matching their current tier would.

Party level	Matching tier	One tier higher	Two tiers higher	Three tiers higher
1	30	60	90	120
2	60	120	180	240
3	180	360	540	720
4	380	760	1140	1520
5	750	1500	2250	3000
6	900	1800	2700	3600
7	1100	2200	3300	4400
8	1400	2800	4200	5600
9	1600	3200	4800	6400
10	2100	4200	6300	8400
11	1500	3000	4500	6000
12	2000	4000	6000	8000
13	2000	4000	6000	8000
14	2500	5000	7500	10000
15	3000	6000	9000	12000
16	3000	6000	9000	12000
17	4000	8000	12000	16000
18	4000	8000	12000	16000
19	5000	10000	15000	20000

For these rewards, give out the full reward to each party member.
The third pillar, fighting and killing, just use the normal xp for monsters, dividing it among the party as usual.

Trouble – a fourth pillar

I also like to give rewards for players getting out of deathly trouble especially when they didn’t fight their way out of it.

Party level	Sorta dangerous… I guess	Really dangerous!
1	50	100
2	100	200
3	150	400
4	250	500
5	500	1100
6	600	1400
7	750	1700
8	900	2100
9	1100	2400
10	1200	2800
11	1600	3600
12	2000	4500
13	2200	5100
14	2500	5700
15	2800	6400
16	3200	7200
17	3900	8800
18	4200	9500
19	4900	10900
20	5700	12700

Like the discovery and the social pillar, and unlike fighting, these rewards are per person, not split between the group.

Bonus: two player campaigns

If you’re using the XP curve for two player campaigns you can use the same Trouble table, and you can also use the same pillar xp table if you shift the tiers, making the lower tiered discoveries and interactions relevant for longer.

2P level tiers

(for this purpose)

Tier 1: levels 1 to 9
Tier 2: levels 10 to 16
Tier 3: levels 17 to 20