A dozen levels in 6 months?

[the Jester]

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?

Oooh, I really like this idea!

In my campaign, the advancement rate in 3e really threw me off at first. I insert breaks occasionally, and I like adventures that require a few months of game time. Lemme check- my 3e game started in game year 360, now it's 368 OLG... the pcs have advanced from 1st to between 18th and 22nd level. So eight years to become an Epic-level party. That includes a 5-year gap. There was a lot of travel time at low levels but not really a whole lot of down time for the most part (other than the five-year gap).

One disadvantage to relying on travel times is that high level parties usually just teleport around.

 

[Zappo]

The advancement rate leads to weird situations. For some time, I thought that 3E had a far too fast advancement. Then I realized that my PCs take very little downtime, if at all, between adventures, and they tend to do side quests even while travelling.

In truth, characters in many fantasy books get pretty good with even less adventuring than D&D characters. There are lots of series where the hero goes from farmer to demigod in three books, or something like that. But they have months and months of downtime. LotR takes place during more than one year, but characters in a D&D campaign typically slaughter dozens of undead, demons and giant spiders per year.

A "realistic" (mind the quotes) situation is one where the PCs have lots of time between an adventure and the next, or have to do long travels during a quest. I think that Crothian has it right from this point of view. Even war has been described as long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.

 

[eris404]

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

Well, but even that makes some interesting RP oportunities. Once they have the loot, what do they do with it? Do they keep their day job and save up for the ultra-cool but costly, uber-magic whatsit? Do they build a mansion that can get attacked by ninjas? Do they give it to their dear old mum who then gets promptly robbed by thieves' guild? I don't know about anybody else's game, but I think it would be an interesting change of pace not to make these distractions from an adventure, but the adventure itself. I'm kind of tired of saving the world all the time. Even Buffy just fought vampires in her backyard every once in awhile.

 

[Ulik Mibut]

One of the great things about 3E and revised is the fact that we players get to level up a little bit faster than in the old days. Its nice for me to be able to get some tangible character advancement every few sessions (I know, I know. Roleplaying itself is a tangible reward. blah blah blah).

 

[Von Ether]

I played in a old 2nd ed. game where the PC leveled up in both real time and game time to 16th level in a year.

On the other hand, I am in a game where the campiagn is on a deadline so game time is tracked very carefully. In real life, the PC have gone up to 4th level in 4 months (playing every weekend), but in game time it has been closer to 7 months.

This is mostly because the GM said only one line, "Okay, you guys go after the artifact in the desert. Two months later you see a city on the horizon."

 

[Von Ether]

What about the old Pendragon game?

In Pendragon, your character only adventures during the summer months, winter being too harsh and cruel even when you're tending your home, never mind being suicidal enough to go adventuring in a snow storm.

In fact, with each game session representing the next year, time in Pendragon went by so fast that you had to play an entire family lienage to get any sort of campign going.

 

[adwyn]

Travel and downtime are great ways of stretching out the time between levels, but the magic item creation rules as written tend to make DM's want to restrict downtime as much as possible.
One idea I'm looking at returning to is left over from an old 1E game. PC's were allowed to accumulate downtime points, 1 per month of downtime, maximum equal to their level. The points (we had no cool name for them) could be used to make one minor item/scroll/potion per, or five could be used to make a magical item. Alternatively they could be used as "action" points" later to reroll bad rolls, influence NPC's, etc.

It gave the players an incentive to have characters take a break once in a while.

 

[Stormborn]

In my current campaign the PCs started at first level and are currently about one enecounter away from 4th after about 3 months of in game time. They are operating out of a city and have no more than a days travel when they have to leave it. There has been some noted down times for training, but in the past i have used a rule that basically said if you were gaining a level in the same class your "training" was adventuring. If you were planning on taking a different class next level you had to tell what it was and how you were going to learn to be that. Unless it was a class held by another PC, who could theoretically give you lessons as you went, you had to do it between adventures.
However, my players tend to be more roleplay oriented, and so have good story reasons for what their characters do and become. So the mechanics of it aren't really a big deal. Right now I want them to advance fairly quickly, and have been throwing things at them right and left, afte the next phase of the adventure there will be longer periods between levels (lots of travel time, although they don't know it yet.)