4th edition's default rate of advancement
- Thread starter Asmor
- Start date
Nebulous said:
1st Edition characters were expected to spend many years to gain 10th level. Since the 1st Edition DMG suggested advancing the in-game timeline by at least as many days as its been since the last gaming session, a player could be easily using the same character for 2 or 3 in-game and real-world years before the PC was considered high (or "name") level. There was no player expectation of fast leveling. Remember, of course, that 10th Level 1st Edition characters were considered legendary heroes, and were expected to found strongholds and get involved in politics. 20th level characters were possible under the system, but it seemed to be generally assumed you'd retire PCs after about 13th level.
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Mercule
Adventurer
Nebulous said:
I think there are two factors at work, here. The biggest is that most GMs just don't track time -- at least IME. The second is that many groups don't make use of much downtime.
If the group would just winter every year, and count travel times, etc. it could take them five years or more to hit the point where they could teleport with any frequency. I made a half-assed stab at it in my current game and it took them a year without them doing much at all for downtime and my hand-waving of some travel times, etc.
I'd very much like to see someone, whether it's an experienced DM or a blurb in the DMG, discuss how to make downtime and the like feel natural. Most of the time, my players act like they need to direct every waking moment of their character's life or they're doing something wrong. I'm not even prone to doing things like "You're all captured and bound in a dungeon during your downtime," so they haven't learned the behavior as a response to me.
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
There were two problems with that in 3e. The first was that XP was used to power certain spells and to create magical items. The second is that you had to be careful with the amount of treasure that characters are supposed to have at a certain level.shilsen said:
The first problem should be gone in 4e. I still don't know about the second one, but I'm somewhat hopeful...
shilsen
Adventurer
Mercule said:
Why don't you should start a thread on the general boards and see what suggestions you get?
Personally, I've never had problems with it. I usually handle downtime via email and through a free online forum I use for stuff between sessions. I find that throwing players a couple of general suggestions and asking for any ideas they might have, as well as making it clear that relaxing and letting time pass is a good thing and isn't going to lead to horrifying consequences, seems to do the trick. Of course, every group is different, so what works with mine could be completely useless with yours.
Incidentally, have you actually spoken to your players about how they respond to downtime and clarified how you'd like it handled?
Nikosandros said:
Personally, I never had any problems with the two, but you do make a good point. I also happen to have thrown out awarding issue for combat or for anything in-game, for that matter. I simply award a fixed amount of XP per session (irrespective of what actually happens in the session) to keep PCs levelling up at a speed I'm comfortable with. When it comes to PCs casting XP-burning spells and creating magical items, if it's really low then I just have the PC level up at the same time as the others, and if it's happening more often, then I simply make it a couple of sessions later, and after one level, go back to levelling at the same time (unless more XP was expended, of course). I'm also very comfortable with PCs having much more treasure than is expected at their level. Neither approach has caused a balance problem or made it at all difficult to challenge PCs.
I'm hopeful, but I'll reserve judgement till the books come out. Either way, as noted above, it's not like there'll be a problem for me, whatever approach the books do take.
Mercule said:
I differ a good bit from this...my campaigns suffer from not having much in the way of downtime. In my current campagin the players have moved from 1st to 6th level and two months have yet to pass in the game world. They are travelling a bit, but doing it by ship and doing fairly short trips (a day to three usually). I have a time line of what has happened day by day so they can see their history, plus I'm tracking this game against a previous one (while we played one campaign then the other, I'm running this one as if it is happening concurrently) so I need to know when certain dates have passed.
It also helped in a previous game that I wrote up newspapers, which required me to keep track of time to make certain world events make sense.
IceFractal
First Post
Advancing even every two sessions isn't as fast as you might think. Let's consider a group that plays once every two weeks (or once every week but with two alternating campaigns).
For them to go from 1st to 30th level would be 60 sessions, aka 120 weeks, aka more than two years. How many campaigns even run that long? Is it really reasonable to have the default advancement be such that most campaigns never go past 10th level?
Personally, I've been in only one campaign that actually went from low-level to high level (and 5th to 15th isn't the full span, either). Most times I've played high-level campaigns, it's because that's where the campaign started.
Combine that with the fact that most DMs seem to want to start at 1st level, and you end up playing low-mid level all the time. There are levels above 7, you know!
I think that the super-long-running campaign is a great thing to aspire to, but not a practical expectation for the majority of groups out there, and not a good thing to base the default rules on.
For them to go from 1st to 30th level would be 60 sessions, aka 120 weeks, aka more than two years. How many campaigns even run that long? Is it really reasonable to have the default advancement be such that most campaigns never go past 10th level?
Personally, I've been in only one campaign that actually went from low-level to high level (and 5th to 15th isn't the full span, either). Most times I've played high-level campaigns, it's because that's where the campaign started.
Combine that with the fact that most DMs seem to want to start at 1st level, and you end up playing low-mid level all the time. There are levels above 7, you know!
I think that the super-long-running campaign is a great thing to aspire to, but not a practical expectation for the majority of groups out there, and not a good thing to base the default rules on.
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