Advancement even faster?

[Ruin Explorer]

Just one more thing - Why is fast (or slow) levelling even remotely a problem?

Why is it impossible to adjust XP awards to get your desired rate of levelling? That's all that people seem to be asking for, over and over, that the XP awards be adjust by someone else. I dunno about you guys, but I've been adjusting XP awards up and down to control levelling rates since 1989, so why is this a serious issue?

I'm particularly mystified by people who get genuinely upset by the prospect of "fast levelling" - why is it you can't just award 60, 50, or 30 percent XP?

 

[Reynard]

Just one more thing - Why is fast (or slow) levelling even remotely a problem?

Why is it impossible to adjust XP awards to get your desired rate of levelling? That's all that people seem to be asking for, over and over, that the XP awards be adjust by someone else. I dunno about you guys, but I've been adjusting XP awards up and down to control levelling rates since 1989, so why is this a serious issue?

I'm particularly mystified by people who get genuinely upset by the prospect of "fast levelling" - why is it you can't just award 60, 50, or 30 percent XP?

These kinds of questions always assume that the players at the table are amenable to whatever the DM wants to do. In a perfect world where that is true -- sure, it is a solid plan. But it isn't always true. IME, there's a significant percentage of players who want to play "by the book", often regardless of what the book says. If the book said it takes about 8 sessions (or whatever) to gain a level, they'd go with it. But if the book says it takes 2 sessions, they aren't going to be really happy when it takes 8 instead. That's not all players, of course, but enough of them that the rules that are written matter in regards to how the game is played.

It is similar to the argument of "just disallow X, Y and Z in your games". With some players, it works. With other players, there's no chance of saying, "Elves can't be Paladins, Dwarves can't be Wizards and, by god, there are no gnomes!" or something similar that is a direct limitation on player choice for the purpose of creating a specific tone, playstyle or milieu.

Building the game in such a way that the default assumption is super fast levelling with every increasing powers and abilities causes the DM more harm than good, which ultimately costs the players fun. It is easy to give out more XP, gold, items and whatever. it is a lot harder to restrict any of those things.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I think we levelled faster under 1st edition.

The creature XP was weak but between Magic item XP and Gold XP we'd frequently level at least once and sometimes more per session.

It just seemed slower because we almost never got past 9th before we'd get TPK'd by some fluke of the dice and starting back at 1st after a death never helped.



I do think levelling after 10th is faster in 3.x because in 1e I think we could kill everything on the planet and not get enough creature XP to level more than once or twice and getting 100,000gp and 1,000,000gp hoards every week just seemed wrong -- even to a bunch of geeky kids.

 

[Hussar]

These kinds of questions always assume that the players at the table are amenable to whatever the DM wants to do. In a perfect world where that is true -- sure, it is a solid plan. But it isn't always true. IME, there's a significant percentage of players who want to play "by the book", often regardless of what the book says. If the book said it takes about 8 sessions (or whatever) to gain a level, they'd go with it. But if the book says it takes 2 sessions, they aren't going to be really happy when it takes 8 instead. That's not all players, of course, but enough of them that the rules that are written matter in regards to how the game is played.

It is similar to the argument of "just disallow X, Y and Z in your games". With some players, it works. With other players, there's no chance of saying, "Elves can't be Paladins, Dwarves can't be Wizards and, by god, there are no gnomes!" or something similar that is a direct limitation on player choice for the purpose of creating a specific tone, playstyle or milieu.

Building the game in such a way that the default assumption is super fast levelling with every increasing powers and abilities causes the DM more harm than good, which ultimately costs the players fun. It is easy to give out more XP, gold, items and whatever. it is a lot harder to restrict any of those things.

The problem here is that the rules never actually state the speed at which you should level up. The closest they come is the rather factual statement that 13 1/3 encounters at CR=Par gains your party a level. That's no different than saying that killing X number of 1e monsters gains you a level. There is no guarantee that you will meet X number of monsters.

Even the wealth by level guidelines are not for play and are directly stated as such. They are for creating a character beyond 1st level.

I've never found it difficult to restrict elements, within reason. The rules and the DM should not be held hostage to immature players in any edition.