How long can you stay level XXX and still have fun

[pawsplay]

It depends. In a campaign where I hang out in taverns looking for rewards, I am more interested in survival and cool items.

But if I regularly meet NPCs who are obviously in the mid teen levels, I want to level at least once a month so I can make level 20/30/36/whatever by the time the campaign ends, so I can be awesome, too.

 

[Jhaelen]

I have a tendency to get bored quickly with a character, so I prefer leveling up regularly to keep things interesting for me. About once in three sessions seems fine to me.

And I'm definitely not a fan of systems in which advancement slows down to a crawl in the mid/upper levels (like in AD&D 1e or Earthdawn). I prefer linear advancement.

Note that I'm also fine with systems that don't use levels, e.g. I'm a fan of Runequest and Ars Magica. In both systems, you're getting better all the time, but it's a subtle thing until you compare your power level after a couple of in-game years have passed.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

(3.x PF player here)

It depends. As an average, I'd say we play at a rate of 8 levels year (faster at low, slower at high as always).

Levelling matters, but not so much. At worst, if we want to play high level, we start high level (12-14).

 

[Raven Crowking]

I prefer to have PCs attain level 3 relatively quickly, and then have levelling slow down significantly thereafter.....so much so that I hard-coded it into my ruleset. At level 1, PCs are novices, and level 3, they are established. Think of it as Apprentice....Journeyman.....Craftsman. At Level 6 they are Heroic, at level 10 they are Names, and at level 15 Epic.....and done. There is no level 16.



RC

 

[Sunseeker]

This is a pet peeve of mine.

My campaign is going on about 14th sessions. So far its involved among many other things giant city wrecking tsunami, an invasion of deep ones, possessed farm animals, giant spiders, swarms of flesh eating beetles, zombies, witch doctors, a giant crayfish, nasty little fairies, a fungus monster, a bone golem, a murderous cult of god-killers, and a dracolich. We just had a few players reach 3rd level.

I'm going to stop you right here and use Lanefan's reply as my jumping point.

If you've got 2nd-level characters going up against deep ones then either your deep ones aren't nearly as nasty as mine or your PCs did really really well...or ran away really really fast!

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with what you said.

Lanefan

That's the clincher isn't it. Any mob can work at any level, sure, that's true. But IMO, when you start having stuff like Dracoliches and deep ones being defeated by IMO, low-level adventurers, they lose their epic charm. A 3rd level adventurer in my worlds is a fairly common sight. By 5th level they are only barely starting to thin out. A generic pirate could be a challenger anywhere from 1st to 10th level with me. However, Darkbeard the Black, Lord of the Shadowsail Pirates, is going to be fairly higher. The demon-lord who empowers him, higher than that. His minions? Not so much.

I hate when fantasy monsters become mundane, and generally, I regard everything below 5th level as fairly mundane.

Granted, my homebrew makes this abit easier than it could be, but basically it's all just numbers. There is no particular reason why you can't make the game work at 1st level as 15th level. One of my shticks as a DM is having the players encounter a diety early in the game. If anything, I find the low levels a bit more epic because its not as easy for the PC's to hand wave problems away. The game suffers a bit IMO when use rope is no longer a useful skill because the characters have so many more powerful abilities, and even at 1st level there is alot of opportunity of unabashed crowning moment's of awesome based not merely on what the character does or can do but what the player does.

IMO, when "use rope" no longer becomes useful because a player can teleport, and the GM wants to make things a little tougher, I like to throw in a little something that inhibits teleporting. Maybe it's half the distance, maybe if you teleport only half of you will make it through. Challenge is what you make of it, and if you want to stop players for facerolling through a challenge, dream something up that will make it more challenging.

For myself, as a player, it's the perfect time to level up when I've had a chance to use all my abilities creatively. If I know the spell, I want to find a situation where it proves handy. If I learn a feat, I want to use it and it be relevant. If I advance in my skills, I want to use them to solve problems. I find that with decent pacing that takes 4-5 4-6 hour sessions. Leveling up every session or two means that I'm gaining new powers even before I've used the old ones. It's a glut, and its not as enjoyable. I dislike changing numbers for its own sake and I particularly dislike having a character who has alot of game abilities but hasn't become well defined and lacks a game story other than a kill list. Even in cRPG's I'm not that big about leveling up. Leveling up is the boring way out. Figuring out how to overcome a problem using only the resources you have is more satisfying, especially after failing a couple times.

Once again, every player is different, what I've found is that 2-3 or 3-4(at a weekly pace, once a monthish), is a great way to balance out players like yourself, who want to squeeze every last drop of fun out of their current powers, and players who don't give a hoot about that and just want to hit Epic Tier.

Eventually there comes a point where leveling stops being very important for me. If the game is good, eventually all I care about is advancing story goals and the occasional level up is welcome but unnecessary every 10 or so sessions. I have rarely played and rarely run games of D&D above about 13th level or so. At this point, we are talking about games that have gone on years, epic story arcs that have come to conclusions, characters that have become well-defined, and I'm looking to retire a character and start a new one.

I've never actually run a campaign that high to be honest. I like shorter arcs and most of my players enjoy playing through quicker(6-monthish @ a weekly session pace, so about 24 sessions) stories. If we blow levels 1-3 in the first 4 sessions, then that leaves us with about 20 sessions to cover the other 7, about 3 weeks per level. Which at some 6-8 hours a session, i've found most players have thuroughly explored their current powers and are ready to move on to bigger challenges.

 

[delericho]

Simple question really, how often do you need to level?

How long can you last at one level before you get bored/irritated/whatever and you need that cookie of accomplishment of leveling?

Indefinately, but only if the DM says upfront that that's how he's running the campaign.

If I sit down at a table to play D&D and the DM doesn't say something about slow levelling, then I expect to gain levels reasonably quickly - how quickly will depend on the frequency and duration of sessions. (My current group meets every second week, for 3-4 hours. I would expect to level every couple of months.)

 

[Corathon]

Almost indefinitely.

In a 1E game I was an elven fighter/magic user. I reached my level max in both classes eventually, but still had a lot of fun with the character. There are other ways to improve besides going up in level.

 

[Celebrim]

If you've got 2nd-level characters going up against deep ones then either your deep ones aren't nearly as nasty as mine or your PCs did really really well...or ran away really really fast!

True. I won't go into all the nuances of my house rules that make this easier for me than if I was playing RAW, but I will give the general idea.

I used the Sahuagin stats for my 'Deep Ones'. So, how do you keep low level characters alive against CR 2 brutes? Well, you set up a variaty of scenarios in their favor.

1) Give the characters the tactical advantage. For example, put the characters on a wall or barricade and make the initial few rounds missile exchanges.
2) You let the PC's outnumber the Sahuagin.
3) You give the PC's the aid of a number of 'red shirt' men-at-arms.
4) You have the PC's fight Sahuagin that are already injured.

Gradually, as the PC's level up, you give the players the opportunity to put themselves at less of an advantage - fighting the same monsters but this time on the monster's terms. In this way, the same villain can be pervasive opposition over a fairly length section of the campaign. I fully expect to be using foes with essentially the same stats until the PC's reach 8th level or so. What will change is the tactical scenario and numbers of foes involved relative to the number of PC's. The epicness of the monster is not reduced by using it in this way in my opinion.

Likewise, if you want low level PC's to thwart a draco-lich, you don't send them up against a draco-lich in all of it's glory. Instead, you send them up against a draco-liche which has been reduced to its phylactory, and set them to destroy the phylactory before the draco-lich recovers. This is plenty epic, at least compared to killing rats and kobolds, but is well within the capabilities of low level characters.

 

[Celebrim]

That's the clincher isn't it. Any mob can work at any level, sure, that's true. But IMO, when you start having stuff like Dracoliches and deep ones being defeated by IMO, low-level adventurers, they lose their epic charm.

I don't see why. My protagonists - the PC's - do epic awesome things right from the start. It's easy, really easy, to make whatever else they do bigger, grander, and more epic than what they did before. I don't see how I gain anything by making the early levels less heroic than the latter ones.

My 'epic tier' is intended to be from 1st level on.

A 3rd level adventurer in my worlds is a fairly common sight. By 5th level they are only barely starting to thin out.

Stop right there. If in fact 3rd level adventurers are fairly common, why in the world don't they handle whatever problems arise instead of the poor 1st level mooks that are your PC's? I very much dislike the whole 'I'm too busy'/'I can't be bothered'/'I want you younguns to prove your worth' excuses for why the level 65 town fathers and gaurds don't go and clean out those troublesome level 1 kobolds next door. Likewise, I hate the general, "Over the hill, everyone is 50th level, but we can't find any one from there to take care of this goblin infestation!" that infests some settings.

In my campaign world, a 3rd level character is fairly ordinary. But such a character is usually a 3rd level commoner or expert with 15 pt buy and skills, equipment and feats geared toward overcoming problems of farming or commerce. Even if the 3rd level character is from a combative class, such as the veteren fighters in the king's standing army, he'll still be built with about 15 pt buy and he'll simply lack the knowledge, experience, and equipment you'd expect of a 3rd level PC fighter. He's quite capable as a soldier, but much less capable as an adventurer. The same is true of the out of shape hedge wizard who makes the town potions. Yes, in my world, you need to start being 5th or 6th level to really start standing out on the basis of level alone, but 5th or 6th level is about as high as you expect to find NPC's in my game and again most of this will be NPC classed with relatively low point buy equivalents and with a design that is not optimized for combat.

In my game, generic anythings are never 10th level. Tenth level characters are among the most powerful individuals in entire nations. They are never 'mooks'. You don't ever find rooms containing generic 10th level fighters simply because the party is 12th level and 1st level fighters would no longer be a challenge. The most infamous pirate in the whole world is probably a 15th level character.

Compared to most of the rest of the world, even from 1st level, the characters are extraordinary both individually and most especially as a team. The PC's are never mooks, and its not unusual at low levels for many of their foes to be higher level than they are and yet not necessarily as capable. While a starting group of heroes is not as powerful as some of their mentors, foils, and potential villains initially, they will be immediately recognized as having extraordinary potential. In my game, a 1st level PC is made from a 32 pt buy and is an advantaged character possessing a destiny. In my world '10' really is average, unlike some worlds where you'd be hard pressed to find an NPC with less than a 12 in anything. For there to be 4-6 such extraordinary characters working together is considered amazing by any NPC that observes it, and by 2nd or 3rd level they are a force and by 6th level they are generally well on their way to being legends.

Another thing to consider is that with NPCs level is usually tied directly to character age. A 4th level character is usually middle aged. A 6th level character is often a senior citizen. So to find such relative youths possessing such extraordinary skills is very rare.

I hate when fantasy monsters become mundane, and generally, I regard everything below 5th level as fairly mundane.

A self-fulfilling prophesy.

IMO, when "use rope" no longer becomes useful because a player can teleport, and the GM wants to make things a little tougher, I like to throw in a little something that inhibits teleporting.

While there is a place for that sort of thing, giving a player abilities only to take them away when they would be actually useful is antagonistic DMing and tends not to be very fun in the long run. It's much better IMO to up the ante so that the problems that they face require their greater power and ability to overcome, and so 'use rope' remains relevant to the extent that it lets you conserve your stronger abilities for when you truly need them.

 

[karlindel]

It depends on the level, the game, and the campaign.

For games where the focus is tactical combat, I would prefer to level more quickly, as I would get bored if I did not get new abilities to try out. In 3e or 4e D&D, I find that levelling every 12-20 hours of gameplay (or roughly 6-8 combats) is about right, as that gives enough time to try out new abilities and get used to being at a given level, while not long enough for things to become routine. Of course, if the 3e or 4e game has fewer tactical combats involved, then I can wait longer before I level.

If I am enjoying roleplaying the character, whether the character levels up or not isn't particularly important. The important thing is that the world changes based on my character's actions. If I stay the same level for a long time as we go through a lot of random combat encounters, I will get bored. If we don't level as we spend lots of time in court doing favors for nobles, trying to go unnoticed and getting the lay of the land as we stop a plot to assassinate the king, save his highness's life, receive medals and land, then I am not particularly concerned with how long it takes to level.