D&D 5E Are DMs getting lazy?

[Zardnaar]

Level advancement used to be at a rate of about one level every 100 good fights. That was the standard in AD&D and BECMI. I don't expect many to jump for this again, but it might be worth a try for some of you if you want a longer game. The current rate is much smaller, maybe around every 20 good fights, so try giving 20% of the experience.

1E and BECMI you leveled up semi fast due to the amount of treasure in modules. 2E adventures often had large roleplaying or mission success type awards. We played 2E and we did not have official adventures so levelling up was slow as molasses.

I think we went through level 1-4 in BECMI in around 16 hours playing B5 Horror on the Hill. Similar rate of progression in Temple of Elemental Evil. Kill a ghoul gain 5xp, find 3000gp necklace gain 3000xp. Onve you hit level 8-10 or so things got slow and 2E was very slow for us we even used some optional class based xp rewards and ended up with a thief 4 levels ahead of everyone else.

I think there is around 30-40k worth of gold in B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Thats enough to get you to level 4 or 5.
\
Magic User xp
Lvl 2 2500
Level 3 5000
Level 4 10 000

Parties were bigger I suppose so more mouths to feed you would probably hit level 3 Magic user level 4 for a thief. My homebrew uses BECMI xp tables the AD&D ones were a it borked for Druids and Wizards.

 

[Manchu]

@SirAntoine

Can you give some numbers to back up this calculation? Are you taking into account earning XP for looting treasure and from other sources?

"On the average, characters should go up one experience level approximately every five adventures." - Rules Encyclopedia p. 129

Using your numbers, that's 20 "good fights" per adventure. I'm not sure what is meant by "adventure." A character is not allowed to go up more than one level during an adventure.

 

[SirAntoine]

1E and BECMI you leveled up semi fast due to the amount of treasure in modules. 2E adventures often had large roleplaying or mission success type awards. We played 2E and we did not have official adventures so levelling up was slow as molasses.

I think we went through level 1-4 in BECMI in around 16 hours playing B5 Horror on the Hill. Similar rate of progression in Temple of Elemental Evil. Kill a ghoul gain 5xp, find 3000gp necklace gain 3000xp. Onve you hit level 8-10 or so things got slow and 2E was very slow for us we even used some optional class based xp rewards and ended up with a thief 4 levels ahead of everyone else.

I think there is around 30-40k worth of gold in B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Thats enough to get you to level 4 or 5.
\
Magic User xp
Lvl 2 2500
Level 3 5000
Level 4 10 000

Parties were bigger I suppose so more mouths to feed you would probably hit level 3 Magic user level 4 for a thief. My homebrew uses BECMI xp tables the AD&D ones were a it borked for Druids and Wizards.

Advancement could be semi-fast, yes, but the parties tended to be much bigger if you include henchmen and also summoned monsters reducing the experience per character in combat. I personally didn't get to play many modules, and my DM would roll on the tables and we'd seldom get much treasure. Not only that, but it was very hard to find where treasure was hidden, and it was often badly trapped. Most of the time we were playing at high level, too, where each level took much more time. I included that in my estimate.

 

[SirAntoine]

@SirAntoine

Can you give some numbers to back up this calculation? Are you taking into account earning XP for looting treasure and from other sources?

"On the average, characters should go up one experience level approximately every five adventures." - Rules Encyclopedia p. 129

Using your numbers, that's 20 "good fights" per adventure. I'm not sure what is meant by "adventure." A character is not allowed to go up more than one level during an adventure.

Actually, that's about what I'd expect during an adventure (20 good fights), but I agree the term is too vague to serve as a unit of measurement.

In BECMI and AD&D 1st Edition, you earned about two-thirds of your total experience from treasure, so taking that into account, a single adventure would have 6-7 good fights and leave the rest of experience to treasure finding. The thing is, you rolled treasure randomly on tables, and while sometimes you could get tons and suddenly advance just from opening a single chest, there was no expectation of finding such a significant amount that you could ever predict when you'd go up in level. In 2nd Edition, they changed the standard to no more experience from treasure, and if you played by that you'd really be advancing slowly and relying mostly on combats.

At 1st level, the fighter needs 2,000 XP to advance, and a typical monster is worth 7, 15, or 35 experience points. The fighter later needs 250,000 XP to advance every level higher than 9th, and a typical monster is worth 650, 975, or 1,400 experience points. Maybe a few thousand the higher up you got. So even factoring in treasure, or story and indivdual XP awards (which were both small by the book), it's easily a reasonable estimate. And as I mentioned to Zardnaar, the party used to be quite large, including henchmen. The wizard alone could sometimes have a retinue of 8-10 bodyguards including zombies and the occasional golem. The ranger had a menagerie of wild animals, the fighter an entire force of armed men, etc.

It's also worth noting that even the largest treasure types, such as what you'd find in a big dragon's lair, would seldom give you more than 15,000 gp total. So if you go on a quest at high level to kill the dragon, its hoard is all very large in the story books but in practice it's not that big.

The treasure may also be hard to find by the way. If you go looking for treasure in a dungeon, you might get a little or a lot, but you have to search for secret doors, get by traps and other guards, and all the while run the risk of encountering wandering monsters. In the outdoors, where most combats might take place if your PC's travel in dangerous land a lot, you would have to find the monsters' lairs to even begin looking. Treasure just didn't fall out of the sky.

In my personal experience, 10 gp went very far. 40 minutes to an hour could be spent role playing in a shop as you haggled with the merchant. We didn't rely on treasure to get experience, but it was a sweet reward. There was nothing like the feeling of finding gold and gems, let alone magic items, too!

 

[Manchu]

Well -- no matter what was contemplated by the word "adventure" (there is a hint in the text that it could refer to a single session) in Rules Cyclopedia, it is certain that default 5E advancement is quicker.

For my own purposes, I think milestone leveling is probably a more rational approach. XP is one of the sacred cows of D&D, of course, but I'm not sure how much it really adds to the game.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well -- no matter what was contemplated by the word "adventure" (there is a hint in the text that it could refer to a single session) in Rules Cyclopedia, it is certain that default 5E advancement is quicker.

For my own purposes, I think milestone leveling is probably a more rational approach. XP is one of the sacred cows of D&D, of course, but I'm not sure how much it really adds to the game.

Xp makes more sense in older D&D and some of the clones. I kind of prefer the BECMI way of xp for balancing the classes. Thief could have been better and had that xptable but I prefer it over 3E and 4E. 5E has some of its own problems as well such as easy monsters and saving throws being awful and monsters being trivially easy.

 

[SirAntoine]

A suitable milestone for level advancement would be one level per two years if you don't want to use experience points, but you want to simulate a longer and more traditional game.

Rather than whether DM's are getting lazy these days, I think we should ask if players are.

 

[dmccoy1693]

When I was a teenager, I didn't need adventures because I had lots of time and no money. Heck, back then I scoffed at adventures and those that used them. I made my own campaign setting and I spent hours every week working on it.

In college, I had a little more money and less time. So I used the existing campaign setting and expanded on it in my own time. But still I made my own adventures, thinking that those that couldn't make their own adventures were "lesser" GMs.

10 years ago as a single man devoted to his career, I still expanded on the published campaign setting and still refused to use adventures, but I had to run a good number of games with not much preparation.

Today, well, if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't sleep tonight and went to the computer I would have spent a solid weekend without doing anything game related, except maybe a forum post or two. I sent the weekend in a movie marathon with the GF (both Bridget Jones' movies and several other similar movies, in case you were wondering). Last weekend was my weekend with my daughter. So I didn't do anything gaming related last weekend either. (And yes, 'gaming related' includes my company). Today I GM from a module, even if I have to publish it myself.

So 'Lazy' you ask? No. If I am even slightly representative of GMs as we age, we are freaking busier than ever.

 

[Reynard]

For my own purposes, I think milestone leveling is probably a more rational approach. XP is one of the sacred cows of D&D, of course, but I'm not sure how much it really adds to the game.

Depends on your goal. If you are running a game that is an Adventure Path or other "quest" based campaign, milestone levelling makes sense. if you expect the players to drive their own adventures and decide their own risk versus reward ratio, milestone leveling does not make any sense at all. Some groups might want to tackle a traditional adventure and go ask about for clues at the local tavern, but another group might decide the haul they got from that owlbear pelt was great and decide to spend some time hunting owlbears in the woods. How would you milestone level the owlbear hunting PCs? Since XP is a tangible reward at least it offers a fair method when the PCs aren't riding the rails to Plot town.

 

[Manchu]

How would you milestone level the owlbear hunting PCs?

I wouldn't, no more than I would milestone selling gear or carousing. A milestone is a significant plot point, not just a measurement of a regular interval. Think of it like this, many NPCs spend thousands of hours doing things the PCs might decide to spend time doing but never level because of it.

Also I'm not too thrilled with all this "adventure path" jargon. It's like calling a tissue a kleenex.