It occurred to me earlier today that there is a way to improve milestone XP, and in some ways, fuse it with a more traditional leveling system, via a simple achievement system. Basically, designating things that aren’t directly quest related as milestones, and counting them towards the group’s progress. This could be things like collecting up a certain threshold in loot, killing a certain number of enemies, or a variety of other background tasks. The initial inspiration was that one of the concerns with milestone XP is that it renders many combats meaningless, since they aren’t part of the longer term goals. But, giving the players a milestone for killing their 100th goblin, or another significant event, you can give the players more agency in how they gain that XP, which might be enough to combat the issue that players have with milestone XP overall. Also, creating milestones for specific side quests would allow players level up a bit if they felt the main quest was above their current competence.
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