4E and Level Advancement

[Korgoth]

On a lark I recently picked up a Goodman module for 4E, mostly because I liked the look of it and thought I could mine it for ideas ("Sea Drake", which is an Isle of Dread - inspired adventure, though more narrow in focus than the Moldvay original).

What struck me as weird is that you're supposed to go up to Level 3 during the course of the module. Keep on the Shadowfell assumes the same thing. This is something I really don't get... 4E made a big deal of saying that 1st level characters are now "interesting" (but they always were) and "survivable" (which is new, I grant!). Except that they don't let you play 1st level characters for very long.

Why the extreme compression of level advancement? If I did try out 4E, I surely wouldn't want to race through levels at such a breakneck pace. In particular, that would mean that you only need 3 adventure modules per tier. Why would I only want to play 3 modules in the whole heroic tier?

Korgoth = totally confused.

 

[malraux]

Well, there's nothing wrong with adjusting the rate of level advancement, if you'd rather lengthen it. But for most groups, I think the goal is to get to a reasonably high level within a year of play. Doing so means you need to level every few sessions.

Realistically, too, leveling in 4e doesn't get you a whole bunch. So it doesn't feel all that odd to level reasonably often.

 

[Umbran]

Why the extreme compression of level advancement?

If I might ask a simple question - how many encounters are in the module?

How fast advancement seems is dependent not on how many modules you play, but how much real-world time you spend playing, and that's dependent on the number of encounters.

 

[thundershot]

We're running into the same problem. We want to enjoy the levels, but we also want to advance the characters. It's a catch 22... you can't do them both. We started off with the Scourge of the Rat Men adventure to kick everything off, and then went to Keep on the Shadowfell. There's only 4 PC's now, but since they're a little more powerful (having gone through an adventure), I'm not adjusting the encounters, and they're having a pretty easy time. In 3E, they never got really high, because we'd switch over to another group of characters in order to do lower level adventures, but this time we're going full steam ahead.

 

[Korgoth]

If I might ask a simple question - how many encounters are in the module?

How fast advancement seems is dependent not on how many modules you play, but how much real-world time you spend playing, and that's dependent on the number of encounters.

Around 20, but I think you probably wouldn't hit them all since it's a bit sandbox-y.

@malraux:
I can understand wanting to make progress after a year of play. In the Classic campaign that I play in, it took us around a year to hit 6th level... I understand that's a little slow for today's tastes. But my brain breaks at the notion that you could go through the entire Heroic tier in less than 1 year. I mean... what a waste of potential!

 

[Jack99]

Why the extreme compression of level advancement? If I did try out 4E, I surely wouldn't want to race through levels at such a breakneck pace. In particular, that would mean that you only need 3 adventure modules per tier. Why would I only want to play 3 modules in the whole heroic tier?
Korgoth = totally confused.

Extreme compression compared to what? If you compare to 3e, I do not think you will find it very different. For example, the adventure paths from Paizo you have 6 modules per path, each leading you to around level 16 or so. that's about 2-3 levels per module. Also remember that we now have 30 levels in D&D, so in fact, 3 levels in 4e is more like 2 levels in 3e. I do not see this as different.

Then again, if you compare with the older editions, anything after 2000 is at breathneckpace. Personally I am running xp by the book for the first campaign (84 hours played and they are level 6), just to see if it works. I would personally prefer slower advancement, so that's what I will do for the next campaign. Perhaps.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

@malraux:
I can understand wanting to make progress after a year of play. In the Classic campaign that I play in, it took us around a year to hit 6th level... I understand that's a little slow for today's tastes. But my brain breaks at the notion that you could go through the entire Heroic tier in less than 1 year. I mean... what a waste of potential!

I'm currently running the H modules for 4e, and the party have hit 3rd level after about 10 sessions of play (we play only for 3 hours every two weeks, so it's kind of slow going). They've still got a bit of a way to go in KotS, so I'm considering making some of the encounters a bit harder to compensate.

In the other campaign that I'm playing in, rather than running, we've agreed on fast advancement (ie increased xp) as this is still very much early days for 4e and us. Once we've played through a campaign at fast advancement, we should hopefully get a sense of where our favourite areas are, and then we can focus more on those areas in future games.

I see what you're saying when you're talking about a "waste of potential", but for me it's an explosion of potential. With quicker progression, I can try out a range of characters at all levels relatively easily.

 

[Stoat]

I might be something of an anomaly, but my group usually plays once a week for about 2 hours at a time. In a straight-ahead dungeon crawl, we might do 3 combat encounters. Usually, we hit one or two combats and a mix of goofing off and in-character chatter.

As a result, it takes a fair amount of real life time for us to get through 8-10 encounters. We started our 4E campaign in September, and it took us until mid-October to hit second level. In game, it took about a week, but out of game everybody was ready to move up a notch.

 

[S'mon]

NB: An adventure that takes you from level 1 to 3 has raised you 2 levels, not 3. At this rate you would reach the following levels, at 10 encounters per level, 20 encounters per adventure, 2 levels per adventure:

After:
1 adventure: 3rd
2 adventures: 5th
3 adventures: 7th
4 adventures: 9th
5 adventures: 11th

So, 5 adventures before exceeding the Heroic tier. That doesn't seem so breakneck.

Personally, I'm currently running 3.5e around twice a month, with a close-to-by-the-book advancement rate of, on average 2 levels after 7 sessions, or 3.5 sessions to level. I've found that has worked very well. Although I get a by-the-book rate through giving out less than by-the-book XP, otherwise they'd be levelling close to twice as fast.

 

[TerraDave]

Its level inflation.

In 1E (and 2E) you often "maxed out" between levels 10-15. In 3E, at level 20.

4E is really meant to go to level 30. And certain kinds of abilities (flight), have been pushed back to later levels.

Proportionally, advancement is probably not that different.