4e - what kind of rate of advancement is typical?

[Hjorimir]

This is genius. It's old school! It's treasure that determines XP!

It is funny that you say that, because DMing 4e reminds me of DMing 1e and 2e. I find myself asking the question, "what would be fun" when prepping a 4e adventure; with 3e I always felt I had to go with "what will the rules allow for" (admittedly, this is probably more of my hang-up than 3e's).

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[Somebloke]

To be honest, I typically just write a self-contained 'episode' of the campaign (my campaign is a long road trip, so each 'location' is one adventure) that lasts for 4-5 sessions of around 3 hours (so 12-15 hours total). At the end I advance the players a level. I find this a LOT easier and simpler than the old XP advancement method (which of course I still use for encounter design).

 

[karlindel]

I am in three campaigns, so I'll compare them separately.

For one campaign, we game twice a month for 6 hour sessions, and it usually takes us about three sessions to level.

For the other campaign, we just finished Keep on the Shadowfell, weekly for 4-5 hour sessions, and we levelled three times in 13 sessions, so about four sessions per level.

I run a campaign 1-3 times a month for 4-8 hours. The players tend to level every 2 long sessions or 3 shorter sessions.

 

[Akaiku]

My group's apparently atypical level rate is once every 3.5 months IRL.

It is 4-6 hours sessions weekly that get 1-2 exp-granting encounters.

Thusly, just recently, one gm has doubled the exp given by the charts and another has gone with the whole once per 'adventure' approach. Still have a holdout.

 

[willf]

Like many others on this thread, my players level every 3+ sessions of 2-3 encounters per session, or about once per month.

I tend to give moderately high XP quests, to speed it up a little.

We use XP, and they really like the reward value, the precise record of progress to date, and the variable reward depending on the difficulty of the encounter.

 

[alleynbard]

What I do as a DM is get together the level's treasure parcels and make sure to hand them out appropriately. After I've handed out all of the treasure, I know I'm free to level them. So I basically level the characters at speed of plot making sure that I don't mess up game balance along the way.

That's clever. I like that method.

 

[alleynbard]

My group reaches a level every 2 or 3 sessions.

I have been calculating XP as normal, but like others I am starting to wonder why. Since XP isn't a resource to be managed like it was in 3e I feel comfortable eliminating it entirely. I didn't use XP with my 1e/2e games and only went back to the system because of its importance in 3e.

 

[Hjorimir]

That's clever. I like that method.

Thank you, alleynbard.

 

[Lancelot]

I'm somewhat startled to hear some of the numbers here, but I guess it just shows the diversity of gaming experiences.

From a player's perspective, we cleared Keep on the Shadowfell in three 7-hour sessions, and gained approximately 1 level in each session. Our 5 PCs completed 7-8 combats each session, with an extended rest between each session.

From a DM's perspective, my players tend to level every 1-2 sessions (Heroic level)... and then it slows down to every 2-3 sessions (Paragon level). We do 5-6 hour sessions with 3-5 combat encounters.

Knowing the tricks to keep combats short (from both a player's and DM's perspective) helps a lot. It's very rare that a combat goes more than 1 hour in any of our games, unless it's a climactic battle. Most are done in 30 minutes.

 

[jbear]

I have a large group (7-8 players). I find I have to throw higher level encounters at them to challenge them. This means they level a bit faster than 1 level per 10 encounters. Around 1 per 6 o 7 encounters including challenges would be more accurate in my case.

We only meet once or twice a month so I don't mind the fast levelling.