Dragonlance "You walk down the road, party is now level 2."

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I keep pointing out to my players that the game says veteran players should start at 3rd. But they feel like by not starting at 1st they will be missing out on possible play.

Like picking between two books on a store shelf, the thicker book hints at more time in the book’s world. Skipping levels is skipping time with a beloved hand-made character.
(They also don’t want milestone XP)

 

[Velderan]

I'm not saying absolutely 100% of people who have lots of character ideas will become as deeply invested as I am as quickly as I am. But it's something that has to be accounted for. Some players really will be sufficiently invested such that a death at level 2 would sour their experience. Others don't get that invested ever, even with a character they've carefully shepherded through 15+ levels of a brutal meatgrinder OSR game.

My favorite is the players who have multiple fully fleshed out ideas they can't wait to play. We just started a new campaign last week and 2 of the players were going back and forth up until the end of our session 0 discussion on what they wanted to play because they were so eager to try a bunch of different concepts. One of them joked "well if he kills my character, the bright side is I get to try this other character sooner than next year when we start something else".

 

[Stalker0]

This thread does a great job of showing why d&d needs to dial back on the advancement acceleration. I'd say that it's long past time for an option like "slow advancement" experience per level chart, but this thread nicely shows how it needs a "slow" and "normal" pace to accompany the "extremely fast" one it has standard.

Honestly I’ve used milestone leveling for so long I could never go back to xp…PCs level up when it’s time for them to level up….often in the Down times between big arcs

 

[Distracted DM]

I don't know about y'all, but using XP usually means that it's at least a session at level 1, a couple at level 2, and a few at level 3. They're not leveling in the middle of a session.

Personally I went from XP, to trying milestone leveling for a campaign, and then went back to my own XP calc with some milestone/quest XP tossed in.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I keep pointing out to my players that the game says veteran players should start at 3rd. But they feel like by not starting at 1st they will be missing out on possible play.

Like picking between two books on a store shelf, the thicker book hints at more time in the book’s world. Skipping levels is skipping time with a beloved hand-made character.
(They also don’t want milestone XP)

That's when you need to tell them "Look guys... this campaign would probably normally end at like Level 12. But if we start at Level 3, then I guarantee you it'll last at least to Level 14 so you'll get the same amount of playtime with it."

 

[Umbran]

Ok. But this has been true for 10 years now. So very old news.

Yes. But also, wait a minute...

I was playing in a campaign recently where it took something like 12 sessions to reach level 3. We started last January, and reached 3rd level in November.

The rate of levelling is a choice. One can note the rate assumed by an adventure, and criticize that. And you can look at play with DMG-advice adventures, with the recommended number of encounters and difficulty, and see what that implies.

But in the end, it is really a choice for the table.

 

[Xamnam]

When I ran my homebrew campaign, the first session involved descending a tower, with three fights spread across it, which was exactly enough to get the 5 person party to level 2 per the RAW XP rules, and we handled that easily in the time frame with all the introduction and other play around it. I'm very happy with that being the amount of time spent at that level, and that being the baseline for adventures.

 

[LordEntrails]

Wow, a poorly written DragonLance module. I'm shocked I tell you, just shocked.

 

[Lazybones]

As others have said above, it depends on the campaign and the DM/players. Personally I enjoy the lower levels and the sense of fragility present there. Many characters can have life-defining moments in those initial clashes with giant rats or skeletons or what have you. I am running an online game that plays for 2 hours/week; the next session is the 15th and the player characters have just hit third level. In my in-person game that plays for 3 hours at a time, the group is fourth level and they have had 13 sessions (including 6 in the Forge of Fury, where they came close to a TPK twice). I do encounter XP combined with quest/plot awards for achieving certain milestones, so I can easily adjust the pace of leveling.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Wow, a poorly written DragonLance module. I'm shocked I tell you, just shocked.

From what I understand, most of the current crop of adventure books are poorly written.