4E and Level Advancement

[Henry]

Around 20, but I think you probably wouldn't hit them all since it's a bit sandbox-y.

@malraux:
I can understand wanting to make progress after a year of play. In the Classic campaign that I play in, it took us around a year to hit 6th level... I understand that's a little slow for today's tastes. But my brain breaks at the notion that you could go through the entire Heroic tier in less than 1 year. I mean... what a waste of potential!

While it is a waste of potential if you're talking about long-running campaigns, I have a feeling, anecdotally borne out by me, that most groups over the past twenty years or so do not continue in one steady state for years at a time, and many campaigns fail or end within a years' time due to changing rosters, DMs losing interest in running the same campaign the whole time, people having children, getting married and moving out of state, etc.

In my younger days, I never had an AD&D game last more than a year; by then, someone else was itching to run their own campaign, or people were moving away, etc. Same thing in 2E, same thing in 3E and 3.5. Most recently (past five years or so), our group actually switched gears to run and finish a campaign arc over the course of a set number of levels (usually 6 to 10 levels' worth at a stretch). This gave us the advantages of not needing to swap out players who did or did not know the current story, and it gave us the sense of accomplishing something, if the game didn't just "drift off", but actually had a defined end-goal.

Now, we run a game over 10 or 20 sessions, over about ten levels, meaning we level every one to two adventures. That's still about three to five months of play, depending on if we're alternating DMs/campaigns or not, where it stretches to nine or ten months from start to finish. Lots of groups have a very fluid makeup, and it shows when WotC tries to design play with them in mind.

 

[malraux]

@malraux:
I can understand wanting to make progress after a year of play. In the Classic campaign that I play in, it took us around a year to hit 6th level... I understand that's a little slow for today's tastes. But my brain breaks at the notion that you could go through the entire Heroic tier in less than 1 year. I mean... what a waste of potential!

I dunno, I see it as much as a waste of potential to spend an entire year just playing heroic. Personally, I'd rather see a faster advancement so that I don't exhaust the possibilities of the lower levels.

 

[MrMyth]

Around 20, but I think you probably wouldn't hit them all since it's a bit sandbox-y.

@malraux:
I can understand wanting to make progress after a year of play. In the Classic campaign that I play in, it took us around a year to hit 6th level... I understand that's a little slow for today's tastes. But my brain breaks at the notion that you could go through the entire Heroic tier in less than 1 year. I mean... what a waste of potential!

The thing is, I suspect more gamers are interested in a more tangible pace of advancement than the slower old-school pace.

Now, to be fair, there is nothing 'wrong' with either preference - it is simply a matter that they set the default to the more common preference. But they discuss, in the DMG, varying the pace (as well as talking about having plot based level advancement, and other methods.) So the style you prefer is still easily supported - as long as everyone at the table is interested in a more drawn out campaign, just cut xp down in an appropriate fashion, and you have exactly what you are looking for!

 

[Larrin]

What struck me as weird is that you're supposed to go up to Level 3 during the course of the module. Keep on the Shadowfell assumes the same thing. This is something I really don't get... 4E made a big deal of saying that 1st level characters are now "interesting" (but they always were) and "survivable" (which is new, I grant!). Except that they don't let you play 1st level characters for very long.

You're not supposed to play a level 1 for very long! Why would you when there are plenty of other low levels your character could be.

level 2 and 3 aren't so different from level 1 that reaching them in one adventure really changes you that much. You get 1 feat, 1 utility, 1 encounter, and ~10 hitpoints. At level three your character is still pretty squarely in the "fun low levels". You will play in the "fun low levels" for a fair amount of time, but only a quarter or perhaps a fifth of that time will be at level 1.

Low levels are 'now fun', but they don't last any longer than they 'have to'. They've made no secret that they estimate approx 10 encounters per level. (and at ~20 encounters in the module that should level you up twice). If thats too fast, then you can tone it down or raise xp requirements, but thats the math.

 

[howandwhy99]

Korgoth,
my best understanding is players under 20 are going to be coming from a culture flush with computer games. They understand leveling as occurring quickly, sometimes within minutes, when playing a computer RPG. (which is role-playing, don't let anyone tell you otherwise).

Most of those games go at least to level 50. So 30 by comparison isn't too bad at all. And taking a session or two to level is just normal from their POV. It isn't like this is a wrong way to play or that adjusting XP rewards isn't the easiest house rule in the world. However, it is an impediment to modding new modules to older games as this extraordinary rate of advancement is the assumed default.

It might have something to do with MMO players wanting their characters to be beyond the reach of new player's characters after they've put some time in. I don't know. But it does seem more popular to reward play with abrupt increases in power vs. allowing all MMO characters the ability to adventure together (which is what D&D used to do and is probably still possible within each tier for 4E).

 

[Grimstaff]

A couple points I've observed:

The power-up curve from levelling seems to be a lot more gradual in 4E than it was in 3x - my best estimation is 2 4E lvls for every 1 3E level. This is a rough approximation, of course, but hp advancement is very low, advencement to skills/BAB/Saves occurs only once every two levels, etc.

In terms of adventuring milage, I'd be comfortable saying that the 4E "Heroic" tier accomplishes pretty much the same range of capabilities available in the 3E "E6" variant.

That's not to say levelling shouldn't be at a pace you're comfortable with. Personally, I'm still learning the new edition, so a fast pace is letting us test a lot more of the game in a shorter period of time.

If I decide down the road I'd rather have spent more time on those lower levels, its easy enough to double the xp charts or halve xp awarded - I did it with 3.5.

 

[Korgoth]

I can see everybody's points. It still seems strange to me that you level twice in one module... I would think of the 1st through 3rd levels as something that would use at least 2 adventures for advanement. *shrug*

I like long campaigns, but not high level play.

 

[Lokathor]

If 2 levels in 1 adventure seems fast for you, our group's pace would make your eyes fall out.

Since 4e came out we've run 2 major games that are still going, the slower of which is already up to 8th level, the faster paced one is up to 15th level. Other games that didn't get so far collapsed under the weight of trying to get everyone to show up at once. Since then we've learned, and now we just assign a level for the group. If you show up and your character is behind level, we wait 5 minutes as you add a level to catch up.

The slow game is almost unbearably hard more than half the time, which causes more EXP. DM runs it fairly by the book though (no freebies that is). Our group managed to talk him down on the difficulty recently though. We'd rather not be constantly teetering on the brink of a TPK.

The fast paced game is run by a Monty-haul DM who loves numbers that get big. He hands out a level every other session or so (almost regardless of encounters completed), throws big brutes and soldiers with powerful melee attacks at us, and gives out ad-hoc bonuses regularly. This game is fun too, but in a very different way. You don't feel like you've "earned" every ounce of advancement, but instead you get stories and character history that you actually do want to remember. "Rule of Cool" dominates, and there's great stuff to tell the people who missed a week each time they return.

Personally I think that something a little faster than the slow game would be optimum. A play night for us usually has 2 significant battles and possibly a more minor battle. Leveling up at the end of every other week. Once you're into Paragon tier, I'd slow down the leveling rate. In heroic however, your character doesn't have as many abilities, so you want to grow to a kind of "full potential" quickly. In paragon, you no longer get new attack power slots, you just swap powers (ignoring Paragon Path for the momnet). This assumption is backed up so far by my play experience in the fast game. Getting to 13, 14, and 15 just weren't as exciting as getting to 6th, 7th, or 8th. Getting to 11th is real cool, because all the paragon stuff happens, and 12th is still mostly cool because you get another paragon feat and your path utility, but after that the levels just aren't as important as they once were.