WotC Milestone leveling in WotC editions?

[Autumnal]

It just occurred to me that I don’t remember seeing much/any discussion of leveling with milestones in B/X or AD&D, or in OSE and such. This is absolutely not an assertion that nobody’s done it, just me noting that I personally either missed it or forgot it.

How many people have done this in their play, and how did it go? I’m keen on it with more recent editions since I never really liked tracking xp and often want to focus on neither slaughter nor pillage. When it comes to earlier editions, I very much dislike weirdly uneven xp requirements and feel like it’d open up fun-for-me possibilities. But I also know how bad I can be at anticipating consequences, especially mechanical ones where tab A is now going to throw up into slot B.

So please enlighten me! Speculation is okay, but experience is what I most hope to hear.

 

[Riley]

I remember a lot of arbitrary and informal leveling-up in my early Basic and AD&D games. Some of the earliest I remember was essentially: “Well, you’ve cleared level 1 and are going down, so it’s time to level up to 2nd!”

Advice in modules also vaguely suggested how/when leveling fit into the adventures.

From U1 (1981):

“This module is designed for 5-10 characters of experience levels
1-3. Particularly if the series is to be played in its entirety, it will be
important for characters to gain higher experience levels before
they tackle the dangers of U3 (otherwise it will be too tough for
them!). The Dungeon Master should take careful note of the
section in the Dungeon Masters Guide (page 86) regarding
‘Gaining Experience Levels,’ particularly the time to be spent in
training. The Dungeon Master should feel free to waive or modify
some of these training requirements to avoid unrealistically long
inter-adventure training periods.”

Vs. N1 (1982):

“The adventures in Orlane are designed to be played over
several gaming sessions. Generally the player characters will
not be able to advance in level without training, and the nearest
training facilities are in Hochoch, several days journey away. If
the characters make the journey, the activities of the cult of the
reptile god will continue in their absence.”

In actual play, when we kids were bored and wanted to level up, we could also either 1) get our friend to run us through a solo battle vs. an unprepared or even sleeping dragon, or 2) just pretend we did that and raise our level however/whenever we chose.

 

[aco175]

I did not use it until 4e if I recall. The main reason i see that it is not mentioned/used in early editions is the uneven rates of advancement. A thief could need 1250xp and a fighter 2000xp and the poor magic user needed 2500xp to advance to 2nd level. A party would have different levels after a few adventures so by the time the magic user reached 5th level, the thief was like, 8th and the fighter was 6th or something. There was a power leveling system built in. Check the threads on power for the linear fighter and quadratic mage.

 

[Voadam]

It just occurred to me that I don’t remember seeing much/any discussion of leveling with milestones in B/X or AD&D, or in OSE and such. This is absolutely not an assertion that nobody’s done it, just me noting that I personally either missed it or forgot it.

How many people have done this in their play, and how did it go? I’m keen on it with more recent editions since I never really liked tracking xp and often want to focus on neither slaughter nor pillage. When it comes to earlier editions, I very much dislike weirdly uneven xp requirements and feel like it’d open up fun-for-me possibilities. But I also know how bad I can be at anticipating consequences, especially mechanical ones where tab A is now going to throw up into slot B.

So please enlighten me! Speculation is okay, but experience is what I most hope to hear.

The uneven xp charts (further complicated by multiclassing) were a big part of not doing so. Elves in B/X require twice the xp to get to second level as a fighter does IIRC. For thieves one of their few benefits was getting to be a higher level a little before other characters (that and 1e demihuman unlimited levels).

Even in 3e and 3.5 there was the monkeywrench of xp for item creation that threw off just levelling up the party. Pathfinder 1e took out that last hiccup.

I believe I started using milestones in 3.0 and just did not sweat xp at all. I believe I houseruled item creation to not cost xp at one point.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I don't recall ever seeing formal rules or published guidelines which suggested anything like milestone leveling. Not until 2E do I recall seeing any kind of significant proposals in the rules of changing default XP awards or procedures AT ALL. During the 2E era I may have seen less than a handful of people suggesting the idea of that kind of free-form leveling but would have immediately dismissed it out of hand and given it zero consideration. Post TSR (3E era) I may have seen more suggestion of it, would have superficially considered it, and then still entirely dismissed it. I'd only have considered it because of what 3E had done to class xp tables - that is, doing away with them and instituting a universal table along with (effectively) completely equal xp awards to all PC's, and therefore making any xp calculations all but entirely pointless ANYWAY.

Not until just a few years ago, when I finally wound up as a player in a couple limited 5E campaigns did I actually experience that kind of PC advancement. Given the limited nature of those games I didn't object, but I've never liked the idea. However, I've also preferred to play in open-ended campaigns which at least embraced the potential for truly independent individual PC actions and advancement, as opposed to PC's that are inextricably linked as part of an adventuring party, and where xp calculation is so pointless as to just be dropped in favor of across-the-board advancement on DM whim.

 

[Alzrius]

When the adventure has undead creatures that can drain your levels, I would imagine that milestone advancement becomes somewhat awkward to implement.

 

[Autumnal]

Thanks for responses, all. I got pondering what a customized an/x or 2e they I’d enjoy playing might look like, and this I would be a piece of it. I’m going to keep hoping had a citation for someone writing it all up in 1983 or something.

 

[Riley]

If I were playing BX or AD&D with milestones now, I’d probably just pick arbitrary chunks of 1,000 xp or whatever, given the complexities of class xp tables, muliticlassing, dual classing, etc.

 

[Autumnal]

I can see the sense of that, yeah.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have played/owned every edition but 4E (I owned the 4E PHB long enough to confirm that WotC and I had different interests at that point in time, then sold it) but never encountered any formal discussion of milestone leveling until 5E. If it was in previous editions, it was only lightly touched on.

I've since come around to preferring it for ongoing campaigns, myself. I'm running two play by post campaigns that way and will be starting up a live (via Discord) campaign that will use it in 2024.

The only time I don't use it now is in episodic games where people come and go and where there's no compelling reason to keep everyone in a tight level range. Given bounded accuracy, it would take a long time for it to be a really significant issue in 5E, IMO. (In an episodic game I'm running for coworkers, a third level druid is a lot more impressive than her first level buddies, but still pretty squishy and she's had no objection to "everyone below level 3 gains a level at the end of the adventure," which I'm using to catch everyone up.)

In not-5E Shadowdark, though, where the acquisition and spending of treasure is what drives XP gain and leveling, I'm absolutely not using milestone leveling, since that would radically alter the incentive structure and play loop of the game.