A dozen levels in 6 months?

[Shallown]

My player's characters juts popped 12-13th level after a year in game time. It went a little fast at first but I figured how much someone can learn in a job in a year or a soldier in a war zone. Its a lot closer to a soldier in a war zone for adventurers. I only have training occur in when they multiclass into an unrelated class.
So, for example, the rogue gets to 11th level and goes to fighter. The reason is mechanical and not neccessarily a roleplaying reason. Ie he is trying to get feats to qualify for a PrC that does fit roleplaying wise and doesn't want to wait to 15th-16th level to get. I don't make him train. He has several other fighters who can spend time teaching him more combat skills he just focuses differently. Since the character is probably never gonna use the fighter things like armor prof and weapon prof he gained I don't worry about training.


Now Same character at 2nd level decides to take fighter. And There is a chance it will be a bigger deal then I might make him train and such. I tend to do more with training for Prc's and new Spellcasting classes.


As far as downtime. I schedule a lot more into the game now for item creation and for characters to deal with their own subplots. I think as thecharacters become more involved with the game world they need more downtime to explore. When it comes to downtime which is R&R. Then that happens after shorter quest/goal orientated adventures. They usually gain 2 levels or so then Take a break to not be adventurers.

later

 

[diaglo]

training new animal companions or hirelings or linkboys also will slow down things.

get the party to roleplay more encounters with NPCs. gives them more friendly faces to remember later. and more options for possilbe plot hooks

 

[Piratecat]

I rule that Divine Spellcasters only get their spells once per day either at dawn for good dieties or nightfall for the evil ones. It doesn't matter how much he rests and prays since the diety only grants spells to the faithful at a predesignated time.

Err - that's actually a core rule.

MarauderX, you may also want to slow down the xp awards. If you want people to go up half as quickly, just divide every amount of xp by two. I do something like this to slow down advancement and it works very well for us.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

In my current game, I'm having a significant amount of time transpire between adventures in order to have the "raw acolyte at 18, archmage at 19" effect. It also gives PC's time to craft items or commission them...

 

[CombatWombat51]

I use 1E training times and costs. That slows down things nicely. I also enforce the craft times on heavy armor, like full plate. I don't use long travel times much, though, because I don't care to map out a huge world I also like nasty winters. Ones in which smart people stay inside, and grow fat on beer and pie. Unless some irritating evil plot comes along, of course

 

[MarauderX]

I actually don't like to use training in D&D. Sure it's a way to slow things down, but sometimes it's inappropriate, i.e. the PCs are in the wilderness, not a town or city, and they have plenty of downtime if they wish... do they not level up until they make it to a training hall? I suppose they don't need the hall, but still taking out a few weeks here or there changes my game, as forces are moving in the background of my campaign whether or not the PCs do anything, which is why I keep strict track of time. Sometimes it won't matter, but other times it will be the exact wrong thing to be doing and players might feel a bit frustrated with having been in training instead of going to defeat NemesisX before he sacked the nearby village.

I don't want to mess with the XP that the players deserve for getting through an adventure. Sure it slows their progress, but other groups might fly by them if they were doing nearly the same adventures and the players may get the feeling I am reining them in with a tight leash on XP. I hate that as a player; I don't want to be that type of DM.

I do like the time taken to find a familiar or research or item creation. I have rebuilt my item creation rules to take more time as well. I have several sections in the upcoming levels where there is no sense of urgency to get with adventuring fast. I hope the players will understand a poorly prepared party adventuring becomes an easier target, and should they not... well, PCs were made to perish, right?

 

[nopantsyet]

I actually don't like to use training in D&D. Sure it's a way to slow things down, but sometimes it's inappropriate, i.e. the PCs are in the wilderness, not a town or city, and they have plenty of downtime if they wish... do they not level up until they make it to a training hall?

Reading everything I think a flexible solution that regards it as a tool for roleplaying and verisimilitude seems the best approach. I like what PCat described; by requiring it only every two levels, sometimes they will gain more XP without gaining the level immediately. Like a soldier at war, you're going to learn a lot and develop your skills, but at the same time, being in a high-stress situation for an extended period of time also limits your ability to assimilate new knowledge and skills. I think downtime and training are necessary to take maximum advantage of the actual experience.

I am really leaning towards the idea of requiring the training to be taken with someone of a higher level in the class they are advancing. I would require one week of training per two levels in a given class, two character levels without training, but it clears up the issue of which class you take the training in. Some might see potential for abuse, but if someone is taking single levels in many classes, they're going to either run into XP penalties or they're going to go a long time without training, then have to train for a number of consecutive levels.

 

[eris404]

In my current game, I'm having a significant amount of time transpire between adventures in order to have the "raw acolyte at 18, archmage at 19" effect. It also gives PC's time to craft items or commission them...

Heh, I was wondering if you were going to pop in on this one.

I play in Kid Charlemagne's game, and I like his system a lot. Right now our characters are students at a university and can only adventure during school breaks, so every 2-3 months or so and we've probably only gained 1 or 1-1/2 levels for the whole year in game time. This had come up on a different thread on a different topic, but I thought it would be neat to play characters that had real day jobs. Not that the group would necessarily role-play just being shop keepers, but they would have to adventure at night (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and/or in a limited area like a large city and balance this with their job during the day. The adventures would necessarily need to be short and would probably slow down the progession in levels as well.

 

[francisca]

This just occurred to me while reading this thread, so the idea may be a bit half-baked, but here goes:

Instead of training for levels, how about training for feats?

That way, each level a PC gains represents natural improvement due to using their skills on a regular basis and living to tell about it.

Feats on the other hand, seem to me to be something new added to the PC's portfolio. Many of these seem to be good candidates for training (improved trip, two-weapon fighting, item creation).

Now I'm a bit liberal in defining "training". I don't see why someone with a general aptitude could not develop new techniques for doing things on their own, especially when feats are spaced out a bit in the leveling process. I would be willing to let my players train for feats alone, but impose a long training time. I would then reduce the time based on favorable circumstances such as:

-- a buddy to train with. Two fighters should be able to come up with new techniques quicker than one alone.
-- access to trainer or school (obvious)
-- access to materials useful for training, such as libraries when training for item creation feats.

You know, this is starting to sound familiar. Is this how weapon mastery was handled in the OD&D Rules Cyclopedia?

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Heh, I was wondering if you were going to pop in on this one.

I play in Kid Charlemagne's game, and I like his system a lot. Right now our characters are students at a university and can only adventure during school breaks, so every 2-3 months or so and we've probably only gained 1 or 1-1/2 levels for the whole year in game time. This had come up on a different thread on a different topic, but I thought it would be neat to play characters that had real day jobs. Not that the group would necessarily role-play just being shop keepers, but they would have to adventure at night (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and/or in a limited area like a large city and balance this with their job during the day. The adventures would necessarily need to be short and would probably slow down the progession in levels as well.

Yeah, but once you start finding phat lewt, who would want to keep their day job?