Ahh, quite true.  I'll just go ahead and roll those penalties into the normal xp penalties then.  Sorry if those penalty names were offensive, but I had calculated out the xp I wanted to divide evenly, and run into some strangeness.<br/><br/>Also, as a personal matter, I'm very willing to give huge amounts of xp to a player who manages to defeat a situtaion by acting with great cunning, especially outside a character specialty.  I just feel that your character doing what your character is designed to do is its own reward.  (which isn't to say that I want everyone being wierd and not doing their specialty, only that far more roleplays ground to a halt because the wizard threw a temper tantrum when he had to try and engage in melee than when the cleric fought a room full of undead)<br/><br/>I find the (possibly MMO influenced) idea that if a character isn't good at something, a character shouldn't do it pretty darned annoying.  (and since I'm not especially worried about level appropriate encounters, characters often get an opportunity to shine outside their specialty.)  The only real exception is the complete noncombatant character engaging in combat, but since this is D&D, such things don't exist.  So, I decided to reward the party instead of the players for characters performing their specialty.  :-)  (since the characters can really only specialize as part of a party)<br/><br/><br/>Also, upon further review, I've decided to remove the offending xp penalties, since you two really do deserve more xp than the other players this week.  (although Mark is performing decently well within his niche, I'm a little concerned about Ith'ika, and of course, Garrett, because of his class, by definition doesn't have a niche, which seems to be getting phantom all tied up in knots. :-) )