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

[Sulicius]

I would much rather just change how fast they grow in power.

What's stopping you? Just level them slower and instead hand out other rewards.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The problem isn’t that you can’t adjust the leveling speed, the problem is the WotC adventure paths try to cover too big a level range for the page count. “A level 1-10 adventure!” I did something of similar length from scratch, and it was level 3-8.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What's stopping you? Just level them slower and instead hand out other rewards.

Nothing stops me. That's what I do.

 

[Yaarel]

The problem isn’t that you can’t adjust the leveling speed, the problem is the WotC adventure paths try to cover too big a level range for the page count. “A level 1-10 adventure!” I did something of similar length from scratch, and it was level 3-8.

The most successful adventures focus on a specific tier:

Levels 0, teens
Levels 1−4, apprentice
Levels 5−8, professional
Levels 9−12, master
Levels 13−16, grandmaster
Levels 17−20, legend
Levels 21−24, epic

 

[Mort]

In my attempt to try 5.5 I was trying to decide between running the Dragonlance Adventure or the Planescape one.

I was heavily considering the Planescape one when I noticed that it starts at level 3. I was wanting to give my group the full 5.5 experience by starting at level 1 and heading up from there.

Well the Dragonlance one starts at level 1. Well okay that works. Not my first choice but I do like Krynn.

"Level 1" is literally walk down a road. Maybe fight 2-4 guys. DING Level 2. Even if I wasn't running Milestone there is no way to get XP for that aside from just handing them story xp for reasons.

Next chapter is basically wandering around a town and talking to NPCs. Maybe go fishing. A battle erupts and they actually have an encounter or 2. One a boss monster (more or less). At the end of the day DING Level 3.

This is basically level 1-5. Also, keeping in mind these 1-2 battles vs full up Heroes who can just "go nova".

1-2 walking, light battle
3-4 Fishing and light battle
3-4 is maybe 2-4 encounters after some talking
4-5 is mostly talking with about 3 encounters near the end
5+ seems to be when the actual adventuring starts.

WTH?

Also it would seem to slow the game down to after an hour "Okay your level 2, change your sheets." 45 later "Okay your level 3 change your sheets." 30 minutes later "Your level 4 change your sheets." etc.

Just start the game at 5.

Just wild IMO.

Is this normal now? I get 5E is meant more for telling stories then roaming dungeons but man the first 5 levels are just handed out for more or less free.

I much preferred the Planescape adventure to the Dragonlance one, with the caveat that IMO (except for 2 areas) the encounters were WAY too easy considering the concept.

But also, while Planescape levels the PCs up as fast or faster than the other adventures, there is an actual perfectly good reason they are leveling so fast.

 

[Lanefan]

Pacing is often an excellent reason to use story-based levelling. Relying on XP often means a lot of bloated encounter sections with encounter after meaningless encounter, just because you need to hit the XP budget. (You may be familiar with a few Paizo APs that fit that description).

When pacing falls down in a story-based levelling adventure, it's normally down to the overall adventure structure.

The trouble with using story-based levelling is that it doesn't reward side content very well. Wizards of the Coast (especially) have trouble with giving rewards. No magic items, no boons. Occasionally gold - but gold is mostly worthless in their campaigns.

It also doesn't properly reward individual in-character actions or accomplishments, nor allow for (or handle if-when it happens) characters of differing levels in the party due to various in-game events or circumstances.

I know my players are a lot more appreciative of doing side content and getting XP for it. It's tricky in the more linear adventure paths, because they can over-level.

The issue there is that the design of the linear AP is too rigid, demanding certain PC levels at certain points with little margin for error. This rigidity of design is in turn caused by the game's overall power curve still being too steep.

If the campaign consists of just that one AP and nothing else, this is fine; but if you-as-DM want the AP to be just a part of something bigger and broader it'll run you aground as you've noted.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, maybe that's a happy medium for you. I can't really do the brainstorming without the investment. That would be like asking me to write a sonnet praising a significant other's beauty, but to only think about it just enough to write it, not to actually care about it. I can't do that. I can't write poetry and not care about the subject or the expression; if I were to metaphorically "pull back" enough to ensure I didn't care, I would be mentally removing the resources necessary to write it in the first place.

Yet again showing you and I are near-polar opposites.

I write loads of lyrics and poetry, some of it very much reflecting points of view not my own just for the fun of it. As an example, I'm not Christian but if someone asked me to write some gospel lyrics I'd bang 'em out in an hour and you'd never know they were written by a non-believer. I think about it enough to get the words on paper and make them work, and that's it.

And the next day I'd have likely forgotten nearly all of what I wrote, because I'd be on to something else.

I play characters the same way: often they hold views and-or commit actions I'd never have or do in reality, just for the fun of it. Sometimes I'll even take it a step further into full-ride parody or joke territory if it proves entertaining for the table.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

This points to one factor that legitimately does make the low levels go by faster: a [5 PCs vs 6 monsters] combat takes way less time to play through at 1st level than at 12th, in any edition.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've had players do this as I have handed put xp for exploring hexes. Find a river or other landmark ding xp.

I use milestone for 5E, xp for OSR. I let the players know what I'm handing out xp for.

 

[Blue]

I'm a bit different than the prevailing idea. I think an important part of level 1 is to understand what the party as a whole is doing, so you can make informed choices when leveling up. So rather than a single session or even less a partial session, I'd rather two sessions and include a variety of challenges. This way players understand their character, and how they fit into the group synergy. The same length before level 3, and then slightly (so say 5 sessions total) to get from 3rd through 4th to 5th. Once there, slow down, we're in the sweet spot.