Advancing characters while advancing a timeline

[eris404]

Did I mention I am really bored today?

Anyway, I ran a D&D campaign about a year ago that I plan on going back to some point in the future. When I return to it, the timeline will advance 20 years and players will have the option to continue playing their previous characters or to create new ones. Knowing the people in my group, the majority will probably opt to continue with their old characters, which were around 10-11th level.

[As an aside here, aging won't be much of a factor because some events at the end of the last session will cause the characters to age at a slower rate than normal.]

Having said that, the characters will have had 20 years in "retirement" during which they could have pursued outside interests (anything other than adventuring). I want to give them something to start with, basically an xp bonus, that would represent their experiences during all those years. This bonus could be used the same way any other experience points could be used: making items, getting permanent spells, awakening creatures, prestige races, or simply saving it towards the next level.

My question is: what do you think would be an appropriate amount for this length of time, given the average character level of 10-11?

 

[Piratecat]

If it's 20 years, I'd put them at about 15th-16th when I picked back up; enough to allow them to do some creative character design, but not at the 9th lvl spell stage.

 

[Crothian]

Talk to the players and ask them what they have been doing for the past 20 years. I personally would only do a level or two; but it really depends on what the group wants and feels comfortible with.

 

[BlackMoria]

One novel way to 'avoid the issue' is to run the intial adventure with the characters 'as is'. This adventure takes place on one of the planes (see MoTP) in which time is considerable faster than the prime plane they left.

At the end of the adventure, they return to their world, to discover that 20 years has elapsed (while for them perhaps 20 days has elapsed, for example) and they find themselves in a world which as changed (by 20 years of time) but they themselves have not.

Now run the rest of the campaign as you envision it.

 

[The Spectrum Rider]

IMC levels don't usually advance linearly with time. A PC who is steadily adventuring could pick up 4 levels in a year, then take a break for several years and not go up in levels at all. (The retired human bard who runs the tavern isn't necessarily 20th level just because he's in his fifties, after all.)

So the DM has a lot of choices in this regard:

- leave the characters at the same level.

- tell the players to add X levels to each character, where X is whatever number you feel comfortable with.

- have the players add one level (or maybe more levels) of Expert to their characters to represent their non-adventuring years.

- as an earlier poster suggested, use supernatural means to have the characters "skip over" the intervening years without changing.

- make 'em all 20th level!

Another possibility: think compound interest. The characters may not have gone up in levels, but instead increased their material holdings. One owns a castle; another, a popular tavern; the wizard has an extensive library that other arcanists seek out. This can introduce a whole new set of hooks into the game.

The Spectrum Rider

 

[Darkness]

My question is: what do you think would be an appropriate amount for this length of time, given the average character level of 10-11?

Perhaps give 'em enough xp to advance roughly 2 levels. So something around 20,000 xp might be a useful amount.
Maybe half that if you feel that's too much.

 

[S'mon]

Darkness' suggestion feels about right to me. I certainly don't advance 10th level NPCs to 15th over 20 years - if they're lucky they might get a level or two, but 'daily life' encounters & experiences are IMO in the CR1-2 range, and won't normally give XP to characters over 9th level. Piratecat's suggestion would be ok for a very high-powered campaign world like Mystara or maybe Toril.

 

[JoeGKushner]

This is one of the few areas where I haven't seen dozens of methods of generating experience points.

Back in the day, Runequest had a little city book with a list of 'catch-up' tables that you could role on and kinda figure things out. Wasn't D&D but it was neat.

In Experts, there are rules for gaining experience points based on month and year depending on your skill ranks.

 

[Ssyleia]

I'd say you take the option of DM's flexibility and suit your needs.

Maybe the characters stopped going on "high adventure" in the mean time giving them maybe 1 level and an additional 10 skill points plus perhaps 10,000 gp to buy or make magic items?

Maybe the characters had many more adventures and are by now legends of their own? Make them level 25 and give them several million gold pieces, land property, a small army and a couple of artifact level items?

There is no "realistic" rate of advancement. I have had characters advance form level 1 to 25 in just two and a half years of game time and I have had characters advance to level 8 in the same time.

Personally, I'd go for the 1 Level and some bonus skill point plot... This way your players will still be familiar with their characters' abilities. A player who plays out all 20 levels of an epic character will usually have a weaker character than a scratch-built level 20, but he will know a lot more about using the character's abilites effectively.

 

[T-Bone]

IMO, characters who are around 10th level or higher are somewhat hard to challenge without purposly going on a full-fledged adventure. As someone pointed out, the few random events and fights that may have popped up since retirement were probably of low enough CR to not yield many X.P.s.

A few 1-3rd levelers might advance a level or two just fighting off the periodical orc raid and rescuing a few lost villagers. But at 10th level, the characters need to be facing serious danger to gain Xp.s

I'd say 1, maybe 2 levels tops. Better yet, give them 1-2 lvls worth of Xp.s that they can spend on either levles or magic items, etc.