D&D 5E Does progression rate slow down?

[The Crimson Binome]

Or, just give the players some experience per session (and I say "players" deliberately, as it is really the players getting it, not the PCs).

Once you start awarding EXP to the players rather than the characters, then you have well and truly forsaken any claim to Simulation in favor of pure meta-game. You can stop trying to figure out how the world is supposed work in any sort of consistent matter, because it's just a game at that point. You might as well say that levels don't correspond to anything but plot importance, so you can go ahead and tailor every encounter to the party, since you've already admitted that there's no internal causality to any of it.

 

[Grainger]

Once you start awarding EXP to the players rather than the characters, then you have well and truly forsaken any claim to Simulation in favor of pure meta-game. You can stop trying to figure out how the world is supposed work in any sort of consistent matter, because it's just a game at that point. You might as well say that levels don't correspond to anything but plot importance, so you can go ahead and tailor every encounter to the party, since you've already admitted that there's no internal causality to any of it.

I haven't "forsaken any claim to simulation" (my campaign is a darn sight more "realistic" than most, in many ways, for whatever that's worth), and there is plenty of internal causality (but not in every aspect - but then who has that?). The PCs go adventuring, and they get XP as they learn. If the players were to milk the system, as I indicated, then they wouldn't get XP, because I am control of the situation, and not at the mercy of rulebooks.

And - surprise surprise - the players actually want to do adventurous things, so they do adventurous things, and they get XP for doing adventurous things - so it's all working fine.

I might add that my method (which is, incidentally one of the official variants) can't be any less "realistic" than other by-the-books methods past and present, such as giving XP out for killing stuff (sometimes when the PC in question didn't contribute - and if you don't give XP to PC who didn't contribute to the kill, then this causes huge problems for weaker characters so both choices are problematic), carrying treasure back to town (yes, really), or using magic items (yes, really).

XP gaining is all abstracted to a degree, no matter which method you use, and I have yet to see a method that stands up to scrutiny. So, I just dole it out for adventuring, at a rate deemed by me to maximise fun. I figure that time spent adventuring by the PCs equals time spent getting better at adventuring. It may not be perfect, but it avoids rewarding less desirable things like hack-and-slash-for-XP play and discourages railroading (see upthread).

In short - it works, it makes sense, fun is had; so why not try it?

 

[Grainger]

Once you start awarding EXP to the players rather than the characters,

I was being a bit flippant, by the way. But let's be honest, it really is the players who get the XP, when all's said and done.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I was being a bit flippant, by the way. But let's be honest, it really is the players who get the XP, when all's said and done.

No, it's not. Players don't exist. Characters earn XP, by doing things that are worth XP. There is in-game causality involved, even if it's sometimes weird to look at.

At the simplest level, characters get better at killing stuff whenever they kill stuff. The difference between a level 10 fighter and a level 1 fighter is that the level 10 fighter is much better at killing stuff. How did it get that way? By killing a lot of stuff. Causality. The concept of experience has in-game meaning, which closely aligns to its real-world meaning.

It gets kind of weird when you have characters earn XP for doing other things, or when they improve at non-killing abilities as a result of killing stuff. You have to make justifying assumptions, like saying that your fighter has been using this other skill all along, and that's why it improves when your combat level goes up. You take character level as an abstraction of combat level and skill level, and lump all of your XP together so that they progress at the same rate. It still works along the same concept, though. The character still gets better at doing whatever through practice and experience.

The XP is tied to the character, though. If you hand the character to another player, or if it becomes an NPC, then it retains all of its XP. If that character dies irrecoverably, then the XP goes with it. Sometimes a DMG will give advice on how to bring a new character into an existing campaign, but even then the new character doesn't start with the exact same XP as the old one; the advice is usually along the lines of "average party level" or "average party level - 1". And the details of how the character earned that XP is left to discussion between the player and the DM.

To contrast, there are other games where XP is explicitly given to the players. In these games, a character death (or retirement) means that the new character comes in with exactly the same XP total as the old one. In the specific example I'm thinking of, the GM also earns XP as a reward for being the GM, to be put toward character advancement next time he or she gets to be a player.

That's a Storytelling game, though. It's not D&D.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, this illustrates another reason why the standard progression rate is absurd. If the logical extension of it is that the monsters of the world have been largely cleared out by rampaging mid-level adventurers, then it doesn't give rise to the type of world that most of us think of as D&D. Really, my point is that the progression doesn't make sense in the context of an ongoing world. It might make a "zero to hero" campaign possible to play through in a year or two of play, but it doesn't lead to a very sensible world if you think about (and apply) its ramifications on that world.

I don't know about you, but that's why I for one do not run the stereotypical steady-state world. Unexplored dungeons? Great, you guys must be the first ones here. There's a reason for that...

It's Fermi's Paradox in fantasy.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

The rate of advancement is going to depend on a lot of variables. If all you're doing is facing equal-level encounters, then it slows down a little from 6-10 and then speeds up from 11-15, but there's also the possibility that you'll fight things that are much weaker than you - potentially draining your resources, but without giving as much experience out of it. (Logically, as you approach higher levels, more of the world will contain things that are weaker than you.) That ties into Bounded Accuracy, which keeps low-level enemies more relevant against high-level PCs

Yeah, it really makes players SEEK OUT significant foes rather than just wander around killing orcs.

 

[Gilladian]

I'll answer this.

Often in a game with milestone leveling, the pcs are locked into following the DM's quest. To level, you have to reach a specific milestone (you level once the miller is rescued from the orcs, then again when you defeat the orcish chief). The problem with pc freedom is that the pcs may not want to rescue the miller or deal with the orcs at all. Some milestone DMs will accommodate this, but others will fold their arms and say, "You want that level? Rescue the damned miller!"

A game that uses xp allows the pcs much more freedom in choosing their own adventures. Oh, let's go kill three goblins and call it a day. In a milestone system, that's worth nothing at all. XPs reward the players for taking on minor threats, or likewise, give commensurately greater rewards for taking on severe threats. Meanwhile, the milestone xp system effectively rewards both the same- with a level at the milestone point. It doesn't explicitly force the pcs onto the rails, but often, it denies the game's main reward to those who won't jump on the train.

Obviously, YMMV, and this is not true for all milestone games, but I think that's a common concern amongst those who favor xp over milestone levels.

Hmmm.... I guess I must use some bastardized version of leveling halfway between milestones and XP. It works more or less like this in my campaign; we start an adventure - say, clearing out a haunted building of whatever is inside - that the PCs have freely chosen to do. When they finish, I look at what they did, what the game expects them to get for XP, and then I decide HOW much of a level that adventure was really worth. Was there enough drama, excitement, near death, etc... that I think they should get to go up a level? Then they earned enough XP to level. If not, then they're still 300 XP each short.... So they get the fun of tracking XP, and I get the ability to control how fast leveling occurs in my campaign.

I DO keep all PCs in the campaign at the same level - we don't do character trees, and we rarely play without everyone present. So if one player can't be there one week, I'm not going to penalize her. And nobody seems to think it's a problem.

 

[steeldragons]

While I, personally still use a homebrew of differing XP values dependent on class and accumulation significantly slower than anything 5e suggests, I have wondered about if anyone has ever played or tried this...and, if so, how it works/worked out: # of next level = # of sessions that must be played to achieve it.

Level 1 is still immediate (which I do not personally approve of,but understand the appeal). You are level2 on the second session and then need to play 3 sessions to become [on your 4th session since starting] 3rd level. You then have to play 4 more sessions to become 4th. 5 more sessions after that and you're 5th, etc...etc...

I wonder if, maybe, it might be a middle of the road for someone (like me) that does not want/enjoy fast progression...but does adhere to the more modern gaming sensibility that all PCs are created equal and should be leveling together all at the same time.

The problem with this that I see is those situations (and we've all had them) when you've gone through 3 4 hour sessions, yet somehow, your PCs has only completed a single combat and explored 2 more rooms, over about 3 hours of in-game time...but it's taken you (for myriad reasons) 3 sessions to get that far.

 

[the Jester]

Or, just give the players some experience per session (and I say "players" deliberately, as it is really the players getting it, not the PCs). This means you control how much they level up, you aren't rewarding hack-and-slash play, and you aren't railroading (they don't have to reach the DM's favoured milestone). As long as they actually go adventuring (and don't sit around town drinking pina coladas - whatever they are), then it should all work out fine. You can also adjust the amount if they start to "game" the system, or if the progression is going too slowly or too quickly for the DM and players' tastes. It's what I do, and I am excellent, so ergo it must be, um... excellent.

There are all kinds of solutions to the problem. I was just trying to explain what the problem is, or at least what it's perceived to be by some.

 

[S'mon]

I was being a bit flippant, by the way. But let's be honest, it really is the players who get the XP, when all's said and done.

Do they carry the xp tally over to new pcs? If not, then it's not them getting the xp.