D&D 5E 5e XP Chart Progression Question

[KarinsDad]

Misread.

 

[Morrus]

Mike Mearls commented on this a while back: "Level 10 - 11 XP: It's by design. Data shows campaigns stop at 10, we're trying to speed up 10+ a bit so groups can reach 20 in a campaign"

 

[Desalus]

One thing: the XP earned isn't the same as the "ranking XP"...

the XP earned will usually be half the "ranking" XP... Because the XP earned are just the critters, while that for ranking them is multiplied by 2 for 3-8 of them... so you're off by (typically) a factor of two.

That's exactly right. Darrius_Adler, your chart assumes that in every encounter the party will be fighting against a single monster. If you increase the amount of monsters in the encounters, the encounter difficulty scales up by the 'Encounter XP Modifiers', but the XP earned does not get multiplied.

The first four levels would be close to the chart below for a medium encounter difficulty. Of course in a normal game the number of encounters is probably going to fall within the range of 'Single' and 'Horde' for each level.

Level	XP to Level	Single	Pair	Group	Gang	Mob	Horde
1	300	6	9	12	15	18	24
2	600	6	9	12	15	18	24
3	1800	12	18	24	30	36	48
4	3800	15.2	22.8	30.4	38	45.6	60.8

 

[Sadrik]

Hmm, I think something more hyperbolic would have been better though I think this is fine too. If the idea is to get through the high levels quickly because they are inherently unbalanced but everyone still wants to play through them that is what they have. what I generated below is basically something where you basically hit a wall around level 7. After that you have to play a lot of encounters to really make a difference.

I would be ok making the encounter XP more hyperbolic too. Basically the assumption that 10 encounters is enough to level up, shave off one zero from below and divide by 4 (the assumed number in the party). So a level 1 medium encounter would be worth 25xp and a level 20 encounter would be worth 6.5 million. Hmm, actually the math on it could increase to make more encounters between each level up. So levels 1-5 you divide by 40 (as above) and then it increases by 10 at each phase of play so at levels 5-10 you now have divide by 50 then at 11-16 divide by 60 and finally divide by 70 at level 17+. I can see increasing this divisor to make far more encounters as you go up in level.

The below chart shows a hyperbolic advancement with a progressively more encounters to level up. After having done the math below I see my analysis is flawed because it does not take into account the XP values of the monsters. I will have to think about that a little more. Mostly though This gets at the idea that higher level will generate way more XP. This is good in a sandbox game where you may want to have varying levels of PCs. One encounter may pop the new PC up multiple levels. And any new PCs will only ever be 1 level behind because you are doubling the XP needed for each additional level.

Level	XP needed to advance to the next level	XP per medium encounter	Number of encounters at Medium difficulty to advance
1st	1,000	25	10
2nd	2,000	50	10
3rd	4,000	100	10
4th	8,000	200	10
5th	16,000	320	12.5
6th	32,000	640	12.5
7th	64,000	1,280	12.5
8th	128,000	2,560	12.5
9th	256,000	5,120	12.5
10th	512,000	10,240	12.5
11th	1,024,000	17,067	15
12th	2,048,000	34,133	15
13th	4,096,000	68,267	15
14th	8,192,000	136,533	15
15th	16,384,000	237,067	15
16th	32,768,000	546,133	15
17th	65,536,000	936,229	17.5
18th	131,072,000	1,872,457	17.5
19th	262,144,000	3,744,914	17.5
20th	N/A	N/A

 

[Darrius_Adler]

One thing: the XP earned isn't the same as the "ranking XP"...

the XP earned will usually be half the "ranking" XP... Because the XP earned are just the critters, while that for ranking them is multiplied by 2 for 3-8 of them... so you're off by (typically) a factor of two.

Ooook, had not considered that angle, I will have to take a look at that.

 

[Gobelure]

The trouble while trying to "fix" the XP rating is that there is no universal way of doing this. In 5E, there is no generic rule for XP progression, the encounter XP represent more or less the strength of the PC at a given level, but from this you can't infer how long they should spend in one level before going to the next. This can only be a design decision.

From what we have now, I think there are only 3 ways to award XP everyone may agree to :
- the "by the book" formula
- the "milestone" way: In this manner, don't compute XP, just award levels when it makes sense with you campaign. For myself, I adopted this long ago and it saves me a lot of unnecessary computations
- the "constant leveling", where there are always the same number of encounters between levels

All other level-up methods will lack general consensus. Some will want to have progressively more encounters to level up, but there are plenty of way of doing this, so I doubt people will reach an agreement.

Anyway, I computed for myself 2 XP charts. The first one is the constant leveling rate, set to 10 medium encounter per level. And the second is more subtle : it is a steady power increase chart, where the PC spend time to gain a level in proportion of the increase of their power.

Level	Total XP to reach level (official rules)	Total XP to reach level (steady leveling)	Total XP to reach level (steady power increase)	Number of encounters corresponding to a steady power increase
2nd	300	500	270	5.4
3rd	900	1,500	1,100	8.3
4th	2,700	3,500	1,800	3.5
5th	6,500	6,000	6,400	18.4
6th	14,000	11,500	10,700	7.8
7th	23,000	18,000	15,800	7.3
8th	34,000	27,000	15,800	9.1
9th	48,000	37,500	30,300	6.5
10th	64,000	49,500	40,000	8.1
11th	85,000	63,500	61,400	15.3
12th	100,000	81,500	81,500	15.9
13th	120,000	104,000	112,000	9.8
14th	140,000	129,500	137,000	9.8
15th	165,000	158,000	167,000	10.5
16th	195,000	190,000	205,000	11.9
17th	225,000	226,000	286,000	22.5
18th	265,000	270,000	327,000	9.3
19th	305,000	317,500	413,000	18.1
20th	355,000	372,000	535,000	22.4

 

[SigmaOne]

Yeah, I am not particularly happy with the XP chart. Hopefully we will see variants in the DMG.

I'm fairly sure Mearls has stated that the DMG would have variants for faster and slower progression, and for "milestone" leveling. He discusses milestone leveling in this Legends & Lore article. I know the philosophy behind the PHB leveling system, as clearly stated by previous posters, has also been discussed (though I don't know if in L&L or not).

 

[Darrius_Adler]

Ok, so this is the xp calculations I am thinking of going with and the final XP progression chart. As I mentioned this is for a chat game and as such the XP rewards work very differently than in table top. For any given short adventure (figure a several hours of real world time) the maximum xp a PC can receive is equal to the Medium XP award for their level as listed in the Basic DMG. An adventure that is run over several days allows the xp to be earned once for each day. The chart below assumes that you typically get half the Medium XP award for your typical encounter. So if your managing to earn the maximum xp in each adventure you go on then you will halve the number of encounters needed to level listed on the chart.

I am sure this probably looks like pretty slow progression but in a chat where there are multiple DMs it is possible that one person may manage to go on several adventures in a single day. It is slower than table top but it is a necessary change for a chat setting.

Level	XP needed to advance to the next level	Number of encounters at Medium difficulty to advance
1st	300	12
2nd	600	12
3rd	900	12
4th	1500	12
5th	3,500	14
6th	4,200	14
7th	5,250	14
8th	14,000	15
9th	7,700	14
10th	9,600	16
11th	12,800	16
12th	16,000	16
13th	17,600	16
14th	20,000	16
15th	22,400	16
16th	28,800	18
17th	39,000	20
18th	46,200	22
19th	58,800	24
20th	N/A	N/A

Experience Points	Level
0	1st
300	2nd
900	3rd
1,800	4th
3,300	5th
6,800	6th
11,000	7th
16,250	8th
22,550	9th
30,250	10th
39,850	11th
52,650	12th
68,650	13th
86,250	14th
106,250	15th
128,650	16th
157,450	17th
196,450	18th
242,650	19th
301,450	20th

 

[W_K]

That is the intended curve. Basically, they want the majority of playing time in the sweet spot of 3rd to 10th levels. They've found that this is where the majority of people play. If Levels 11-20 take as long as 1-10, or even longer, people burn out and campaigns falter. The idea is a quick ramp to 3rd level, a long time spent from 3rd to 10th as the meat of the game, and then relatively rapid advancement through levels 11-20 so people can play and enjoy those levels without burning out.

Now I'm wondering if the DMG might have alternate xp progression charts. It seems like you could really effect the tone of a game in a meaningful way just by specifically altering the leveling curve. This is probably not in the cards, but it does make for an interesting thought experiment.

 

[TerraDave]

That is the intended curve. Basically, they want the majority of playing time in the sweet spot of 3rd to 10th levels. They've found that this is where the majority of people play. If Levels 11-20 take as long as 1-10, or even longer, people burn out and campaigns falter. The idea is a quick ramp to 3rd level, a long time spent from 3rd to 10th as the meat of the game, and then relatively rapid advancement through levels 11-20 so people can play and enjoy those levels without burning out.

Time per encounter, both in the actual encounter, but sometimes also with the stuff around it, also tends to be higher at high levels. So this sort of makes up for it.

And means you will be at level 10. For a while.