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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5504757" data-attributes="member: 1210">A couple of related issues to the 15-minute adventuring day (which I will henceforth call the 15MAD) are the one-day level (1DL) and the one-month career (1MC).If you have approx. 8 encounters/level and you have 8 encounters in a day, you have a level per day. If your party never slows down, they could finish an adventuring career within 30 days. Now, most of the time it won't happen like that; but let's assume that on average an adventuring day has 4 encounters and you have one adventuring day per week. That means you gain a level every two weeks and you finish out your career in a little over a year. Change the assumptions and you slow it down a little or speed it up a little. Adjust your slider to taste.Many groups simply don't care; it doesn't matter to them. To others, the idea of the world's most powerful wizard having just turned 19 is hard to stomach. 4e has, more than any other edition, really pushed pacing issues towards a focus on the party's combat abilities (since earlier editions didn't silo spells like 4e does into combat and utility slots).  I have always been concerned with overall campaign pacing- I run a sweeping campaign that includes multiple groups of pcs over multiple eras- and to me, letting time pass is key to a good campaign; I need years for politics and wars to play out, enough time for the pcs to develop relationships and families, etc. I really like spacing things out with downtime and the like. We recently had a session that played out the winter (there was a chance of some nasty weather-based stuff happening, but no such luck). A while back some pcs played out a siege that lasted for five years. And so forth.Anyway, I don't mind my party having a 15MAD sometimes, as long as they recognize that they can't always do that. I'm currently running a module, and the party is trying to fight off a multi-pronged monstrous attack on a town. They kept reminding each other not to blow all their dailies, since they have about four more groups of monsters to deal with before the assault is over. Another example would be the party recognizing that sometimes they get attacked when they aren't expecting it.In the 'old math' days, I had a party fight something like 13 equal level encounters in one day once. I cannot imagine that happening now... but then again, in the 'old math' days the party wasn't too threatened by the monsters. Now it's a lot more fun watching the party work for their xp, and I think it's more fun for them too.Going back to my point connecting the 15MAD with the 1DL and 1MC, if you try to cram 13 encounters in every adventuring day, you're totally encouraging the party to level fast fast fast. This isn't a bad thing, but be aware of how it affects other aspects of the campaign's scope in time and adjust accordingly, whether by adjusting the xp you award outright, by using lower-level (or higher-level) encounters, or what have you.</blockquote>

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