YEAH! leave those NPCs out of it, all they do is take away a share of your valuable EXP before dying!

Whether or not a murderhobo, aka PC, uses hordes of disposable minions has a lot to do with whether or not the DM splits xp by those that entered the fight or walked away from it.

I'm still always a bit baffled by pen and paper systems that distribute exp based on things killed...most games I play have much smaller number gains and it's usually just 'one per session, plus additional for impressive feats'.

Remember that for games like D&D, Pathfinder, etc., the suggested exp/leveling isn't always used. When the concept was first created, it was (iirc) meant to allow players to bring characters around to different games being played, and just looking at a characters level would tell you approx. how many monsters/bad-guys the character has had a hand in killing.

When playing with a single group (which has become the norm, afaik) the exp is usually set by the DM (usually along the lines of 'alright, everyone level up before arriving next week')

The games you're thinking of (Shadowrun?) were most likely designed either with shorter average life spans (where player characters die often, and being able to put points into a character after generation is often an achievement in-and-of itself) or with significantly longer life-spans in mind (where a single player character can easily be played twice a month for 5+ years, and leveling too quickly can remove part of the appeal)

Looting, not killing.

In the hoary old days of the birth of the hobby, the amount you got for killing things was more like an add-on to the amount you got from the treasure you retrieved (1gp = 1xp) - with an emphasis on retrieved. It didn't count unless you got it back to civilization.
This made sense, as a major motivator to adventure was to get rich, not bathe in blood. Avoiding combat was generally a good thing, as it was a high-risk endeavor (your AC doesn't get all that high, you could expect to survive a number of blows equal to your level, 0 = dead, etc.). Somewhat ironic, as this was an outgrowth of wargaming, where fighting was the point. They only way to win is not to play?
The murder-minded leveling is a result of pulling out the loot XP, but not baking in a replacement system (and I don't mean "suggest that you earn XP for achieving goals, but not give an acutal system," but actually giving a system!). 3.5 does actually get back into this with xp for skills, and XP for beating traps (if it has a CR, you can get XP from it) - if you extended this away from the damage, and focused on the DCs within a CR, you could hammer out CR ratings for exploration and social interaction.

I've played as far back as AD&D and only the "Theif" class got XP that way. The fighter always got XP for... well, fighting.

Keirgo, it helps to understand the history of tabletop RPGs. The short version is that wargames (something I of which I was largely unaware until learning said history) have been around for around 200 years. Improvised acting and group storytelling is also an established practice. Eventually someone started adding fantasy elements to their wargames, and then they started wanted to give them some story and substance and we got the earliest RPG systems, including of course Dungeons & Dragons.

I don't know for sure, but it seems most likely that wargames would measure success in terms of several things that included loot and kills. I believe this translated to the Experience Points seen in games like D&D, and perhaps even predates them (not a wargame player so I don't know).

Some games just refuse to move on... and when that is what the players are looking for, they are right in doing so! XD Some people prefer more "wargame" and less "roleplay". I also began with a system that prioritized the latter more than the former, even though combat was detailed and often an important part of each session. That was probably because dying was easy. ;) Anyway, you'll find a lot of typical RPG mechanics have similar origins, like alignments. I've never much liked them, preferring I take more specific, less subjective traits to describe my character.

what I would do is tell them that they get EXP for fighting but they also get bonus EXP for special circumstances or defeating an enemy in a special way. If someone managed to talk down the Big bad I would probably give them as much as they would get from normally killing him plus extra for the creative solution. Kinda like in hitman or Assassins creed where you get bonus points for special kills or doing things in special ways. If someone managed to assassinate the Big bad without A fight I would most certainly give them a bonus. Most of that probably stems from how I just homebrew a system to hell and back though. I'm not sure how one would actually incorporate it into D&D

what I would do is tell them that they get EXP for fighting but they also get bonus EXP for special circumstances or defeating an enemy in a special way. If someone managed to talk down the Big bad I would probably give them as much as they would get from normally killing him plus extra for the creative solution. Kinda like in hitman or Assassins creed where you get bonus points for special kills or doing things in special ways. If someone managed to assassinate the Big bad without A fight I would most certainly give them a bonus. Most of that probably stems from how I just homebrew a system to hell and back though. I'm not sure how one would actually incorporate it into D&D

And candy. Don't forget the candy.

Story time! Tell us when you or your fellow players prevented those non-important NPCs become cheap cannonfodder...

Um... most of them?

For some of us, game settings or systems or characters who could afford to let NPCs get slaughtered were rare. ;) Even if you personally didn't care for them, if your character sheet said your character did and the GM thought you weren't doing what you ought to protect them, it meant getting docked points at the end of the session... or getting a Flaw/Disadvantage/etc. that reflected how you behaved, also lowering the value of your character. >.>

Still a fun one was in a GURPS (Third Edition; Revised) game from way back in the mid 90s. One of my first games as well. It was a Supers game and we were a government backed team sent into a military conflict because the other side had already escalated to supers.

So while it was the entire point, we rescued a bunch of front line soldiers. Since this is kind of boring already, I'll add that instead of being worshiped like gods for the rescue, since my character was designed as a religious sort without traditional super powers (a "super normal"), he ended up converting several soldiers to his faith and leading them in worshiping God.

If you want to sacrifice hordes of NPC's for your fleeting tactical advantage there's no better place to look than the Thrallherd. :D

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/psionic-prestige-classes/thrallherd

What's really ridiculous about the Thrallherd is that I don't believe there's any rule saying a thrall can't be a Thrallherd. A 20th-level Thrallherd can have hundreds of thralls, all with private armies and psionic powers, at least in theory. Which means that any DM that gets saddled with an optimized Thrallherd will almost assuredly just give up and let you use as many believers as you want for anything, because you're never going to blow through all those thousands of believers in the 24 hours it takes for you to get more automatically, and the vain hope isn't worth writer's cramp from keeping track of how many have been lost.

Disclaimer: the Chessmaster is not responsible for you being forbidden from designing your cohorts ever again and/or having your character sheet set on fire on account of using the information in this comment.

Hey I forget, is rival a perk or a flaw?

In Luffy's case? Both.

And it is on the SAME GUY.
welcome to min-maxers.

So pathfinder released rules for massive army warfare. Which my grouped jump on as a reason to have a large scale war game. We quickly realized that to take down a larger army, it made more sense to make a lot of little armies and get far more attacks to eat away at them. Many died because our tiny armies could not take a hit, but the enemy only decimated one army per turn.

They reduced the army they attacked by one out of ten?