D&D XP calculator
Add what the party defeated, say how many characters are sharing it, and get the XP each one earns — plus how far that leaves them from the next level.
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What they defeated
Optional — shows how close this gets them to levelling.
Total XP
1,800
Each character gets
450
450 XP to level 3.
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Dungeons & Dragons and D&D are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Dungeon Ledger is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.
The rule
How XP is divided
Add up the XP values of every monster defeated and divide by the number of characters who took part. That is the whole rule — there is no share for the DM, no bonus for the character who landed the killing blow, and no reduction for a character who spent the fight unconscious.
Use the raw total, never the adjusted total from an encounter difficulty calculation. The encounter multiplier exists only to classify how dangerous a fight is; applying it to the XP award would inflate rewards well beyond the intended pace.
Characters who were present but did not fight still share. Whether a character who missed the session shares at all is a table decision — many groups award it anyway to keep the party level, which saves a great deal of bookkeeping later.
Reference
XP needed for each level
| Level | XP | Proficiency | Level | XP | Proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | +2 | 11 | 85,000 | +4 |
| 2 | 300 | +2 | 12 | 100,000 | +4 |
| 3 | 900 | +2 | 13 | 120,000 | +5 |
| 4 | 2,700 | +2 | 14 | 140,000 | +5 |
| 5 | 6,500 | +3 | 15 | 165,000 | +5 |
| 6 | 14,000 | +3 | 16 | 195,000 | +5 |
| 7 | 23,000 | +3 | 17 | 225,000 | +6 |
| 8 | 34,000 | +3 | 18 | 265,000 | +6 |
| 9 | 48,000 | +4 | 19 | 305,000 | +6 |
| 10 | 64,000 | +4 | 20 | 355,000 | +6 |
Beyond combat
XP for things nobody fought
Monster XP is the only award the rules give a table, which regularly leaves DMs with a party that talked its way past the guards and earned nothing for it. The usual fix is to award the XP the avoided encounter would have given — the party solved the problem, and rewarding only violence teaches them how you want it solved.
For non-combat challenges with no monster attached, pricing them against a monster of roughly equivalent difficulty works well enough: a tense negotiation that could have gone badly is worth about what the fight would have been.
Milestone levelling sidesteps all of this. The party levels when the story reaches a point you decided in advance, and nobody tracks a number. It is the more common approach at modern tables, and it is worth knowing that this calculator is solving a problem some groups simply choose not to have.
Pace
How fast a party should be levelling
The published guidance is roughly six to eight medium-or-hard encounters per adventuring day, with two short rests. At that rate the early levels go past very quickly — level 1 to 2 takes 300 XP, which a single fight can cover — and then slow down sharply.
That acceleration is intentional. Levels 1 and 2 are widely treated as a tutorial, and most tables move through them fast or start at level 3 outright. From level 5 onward the XP requirements roughly double each level and the pace settles.
If your group meets every fortnight, tracking XP strictly can mean months at one level. That is the main practical argument for milestones, and it is worth deciding which you are using before session one rather than switching halfway.
Common questions
- How do you split XP in D&D 5e?
- Total the XP of the monsters defeated and divide it evenly by the number of characters in the party. There is no share for the DM and no bonus for the killing blow.
- Do I use the adjusted XP from the encounter multiplier?
- No. The multiplier is only for judging how difficult an encounter is. XP awarded to players always uses the raw sum of monster XP.
- How much XP do I need to level up?
- 300 for level 2, 900 for level 3, 2,700 for level 4, and 6,500 for level 5 — after which the requirement roughly doubles each level, reaching 355,000 at level 20. The full table is above.
- Should players get XP for avoiding a fight?
- The rules only define XP for defeating monsters, but awarding the same XP for resolving an encounter another way is standard practice. Otherwise you are rewarding combat specifically, which shapes how the party approaches every problem.
- Is milestone levelling better than XP?
- Neither is better, they solve different problems. XP rewards engagement with encounters and gives players a visible number; milestones keep the party level and let you pace advancement to the story. Most modern tables use milestones.
More free tools
- Encounter difficulty calculatorHow hard is this fight? Easy to deadly under the 2014 DMG, or low to high under the 2024 rules.
- Session notes templatesSix Markdown templates — session log, session zero, NPC, location, quest, character. Copy or download.
- Travel time calculatorHow long a journey takes by pace, terrain and hours per day — with forced march rules.
- CR calculatorWork out a homebrew monster’s challenge rating from its defences and its damage output.
XP is the number; the campaign is the story
What the party levelled for is worth writing down. Dungeon Ledger keeps the session log attached to the session, linked to the people and places in it. Free to start.
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