By the book campaign, 2 levels in one session!

[Bryan898]

I started a new campaign last night, decided to make it completely by the book, and mostly pre-made missions. By the time our eight hour game was through and I added up the experience, my three players had gained enough experience to gain two levels.

I ran them through a converted version of "Trouble at Grog's" which is role playing heavy. It took them the better part of 4 hours, and was a complete blast (wonderful adventure). They leveled up at this point and trained. The night was still young, and I had four adventures prepared to run (they had actually started another one but stopped). So next they made a foray through "Queen with Burning Eyes" by James Wyatt. Another great mission, really combat intensive though, and we breezed through combat (big difference when they don't have to look through spells or roll six attacks). Within the two hours they had completed this mission.

We've been playing high levels for at least the last year, so they tended to fly through combats, but I was still a little taken aback. I've never had a session where they went through two levels at the same time.

 

[D+1]

The first few Levels in the RAW are specifically geared to be fast in order to get the characters to a more "survivable" state that also conveniently provides them with options for tactics. 1st & 2nd are levels where it's so much easier for a character to die simply due to a few bad dice rolls, and PC's have few tactical options due to a limited number of feats, spells, and low chance of success at a decent variety of skills. It was a design intent to get them out of those initial levels quickly.

Combat intensive adventures at these lowest levels are going to be particularly fast and the limited tactical options is a factor in that. If the PC's are not overwhelmed by sheer numbers and/or presented with lots of genuinely sticky tactical problems (and most DM's are going to be very reticent to do that, thinking, "They're only 1st level - they'll lynch me if I throw tough combats at them right out of the gate") they'll simply bull through it all in no time. Obviously I think that would be a mistake. Its those first couple of levels, those initial adventures, that end up setting the tone for the entire campaign. To just blow through this phase (intentionally or not) is to lose a golden opportunity.

Too many DM's focus on those PC restrictions of survivability and tactical limits and want to get past them FAST just as the system is designed to do. They don't realize (maybe just forget) that it's when the PC's are fighting on the edge of doom that the game is most exciting. The inherent tactical limitation of characters abilities should be an INDUCEMENT to creative playing BEYOND the easy reliance on feats, or reliably high skill ranks.

I still think that low levels are the best range for D&D play, even in 3rd Edition. The game really hits its stride starting at 5th and all the best character development (IME) always seems to occur from there to around 10th, after which it starts to taper off some.

 

[Enkhidu]

Out of curiousity, how many combats/challenges did your party go through?

 

[BlackMoria]

Since 3E came out, our group routinely will go from 1st to 3rd level in one session (6 hr sessions for us). We are on our 11th campaign now and it happened about 50% of the time, if I recall.

 

[Bryan898]

For some reason I don't remember our other campaigns moving this fast. I haven't played at this level for almost two years though, so I could be remembering wrong.

Out of curiousity, how many combats/challenges did your party go through?

IIRC 11 combats and 4 traps that were successfully disarmed or bypassed.

So, do most people advance quickly through these levels, or do they reduce XP to slow down the advancement rate of the game?

 

[Oryan77]

That seems about right. That's why I only give half xp for everything. My group is only at lvl 6, and even now I still find that they level faster than I want even when I give half xp for encounters. This is probably because I also give bonus RP xp and adventure completion xp. It's just hard to work bonus xp in when encounter xp levels you so fast already.

Sometimes, if I think they are getting more xp than I want them to have, I'll figure it up as if there was an extra PC in the group and then divide xp by that #. Or I'll figure xp up as if the party is 1 level higher than they are.

 

[Enkhidu]

...IIRC 11 combats and 4 traps that were successfully disarmed or bypassed.

So a total of 15 experience granting challenges (and possibly awards for mission completes and roleplaying which brings it up to 19 or so?). This is well into level and a half by the 13.5 encounters per level guideline the experience system is based on.

I know that you said you've just got done with a higher level game: did it also have as many encounters per session? I ask because I'm interested to see if the encounter frequency differs for you too (I know it has for us - the higher level we get the less frequent and more dealy the combats become), which would go a long way toward explaining burning through low levels.

 

[Bryan898]

I know that you said you've just got done with a higher level game: did it also have as many encounters per session?

No, we'd generally get 4-5 encounters per session, but encounters were more often lethal and deadly (3-5 EL's above the party level). It's worth noting that the encounters were almost all EL 2's, with maybe two or three EL 3's. They didn't "breeze" through all of them either, some almost ended in a TPK, though nobody died.

 

[Enkhidu]

No, we'd generally get 4-5 encounters per session, but encounters were more often lethal and deadly (3-5 EL's above the party level). It's worth noting that the encounters were almost all EL 2's, with maybe two or three EL 3's. They didn't "breeze" through all of them either, some almost ended in a TPK, though nobody died.

OK - then it was, more than anything, an encounter frequency thing (combined with elevated ELs) that made the lower levels fly by. Good to know that my experience isn't unique!

 

[MonsterMash]

In the campaign I'm playing in it only took two 4-5 hour sessions to move from 1st to 2nd and it looks like the PCs will level up again next session which will be the fifth gaming session, which has all been using standard XP with a largish party (six PCs).

It is by design in 3e that characters will level quickly, particularly at low levels which makes sense as a single crit from something like a Kobold could drop a lot of classes into negative HP and a crit from something that deals normal levels of damage like an Orc or Hobgoblin would again drop a 1st level fighter or barbarian a lot of the time, which is not a lot of fun.

If encounters are largely of an EL just above the party level then they will level very fast as the XP will normally be something like 600 XP per encounter which with 3 PCs would equal 200 per PC per encounter, so five encounters = next level for first levels and 10 encounters for 2nd to go to 3rd.

Edit: of course the most important thing - did you have fun like this?