D&D 5E Adventuring Days, XP & Leveling

[iserith]

I’m coming to a similar conclusion, i think i’ll stick with milestone leveling for the rest of this campign. I’ll experiment with alternative approaches at the beginning of the next campaign.

I really don’t like the DM fiat approach of “you level when *I* say you level!” though.

Milestone XP is still XP though - you're just tying the XP rewards to certain events or challenges. As long as they know what events and challenges get them the XP, then they can pursue those things. This is how you keep the players on track with a pre-determined storyline such as an adventure path because wandering off and doing anything else is worth 0 XP.

Session-based advancement is basically "show up to level." You're rewarding attendance. So that's not really "DM fiat" as you describe either. Story-based advancement can be a little more like you describe unless you specifically tie the levels to the accomplishment of particular goals of which the players are aware. It only gets to be "you level when I say you level" if they aren't aware of the specific goals that will net them the level-ups.

I change how I handle XP with each and every campaign so as to reward the behaviors that speak to the campaign's premise. I definitely recommend giving that a hard look before you start your next one.

 

[CapnZapp]

That's all well and good, but you're forgetting a key aspect of this whole thing. The players. They know the XP required to level. I want to run the game at a particular pace. So I need to devise a functioning system that gives me the numbers I need for the players to level when I generally expect them to.

Coming up with silly numbers just to make some abstract point is no help at all.

I guess pacing the game is not a thing?

Can't you just keep the XP levels as is, and just hand out half as much xp?

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[CapnZapp]

.

My opinion is that you need to get player buy-in with any changes that effect their characters. I loathe DMs who saddle up a bunch of restrictions without player consensus.

Sounds like an entitled player. Best not invite those.

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[CapnZapp]

In my current game, I have little to no control over the pacing since it's a city-based sandbox and XP is gated behind overcoming combat and social interaction challenges. It's up to the players to get after it.

If you are the DM, you always have full control over xp pacing, since you are the one that decides how much to hand out.


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[robus]

Can't you just keep the XP levels as is, and just hand out half as much xp?

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I could do something like that (though probably more like a third), but in the end I think I’ll just stick with milestone leveling for the rest of this campaign.

 

[redrick]

Caveat that I've never played over 10th level. 6 months is generally enough to get us just towards level 10, and that's using "by the book XP" (often with comparable XP given out for non-combat encounters.)

One thing, though, the "Adventuring Day XP" chart is based on adjusted XP. Which, unless your players are just knocking off a series of solos, generally clocks in much higher than the actual awarded XP. I mean, not that I ever actually do the math on that stuff, but a group of 3-6 monsters doubles the XP value of an encounter for the means of evaluating difficulty. So I think it's reasonable to assume, on average, that the adjusted XP for a challenging adventuring day is about twice the awarded XP. Or, if you are awarding XP for each encounter, take the estimated difficulty (in your mind), and then divide the corresponding number by 2. That should be a reasonable approximation of what you'd actually get if you were actually adding up the XP values for all the monsters faced.

That said, nothing wrong with slowing that down more. I agree with your premise that getting through an entire character level in one adventuring day is too fast.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I didn't examine your math for accuracy (and will assume it is), but maybe the thing to examine is why you have any preference at all for how quickly the characters level up. What is the basis for this concern? If you can answer that, then it might be easier to get at a means of resolving the issue.

I think most people who dislike the pace of leveling have an opinion similar to my own. Fred and his buddies set out to adventure the day Fred turned 18, all his buddies are about the same age. Assuming no one dies and no extensive "sailing to the lost continent" time sinks that same party will return to Fred's home town a year later to celebrate his 19th birthday as 16th level or higher characters.

 

[iserith]

I think most people who dislike the pace of leveling have an opinion similar to my own. Fred and his buddies set out to adventure the day Fred turned 18, all his buddies are about the same age. Assuming no one dies and no extensive "sailing to the lost continent" time sinks that same party will return to Fred's home town a year later to celebrate his 19th birthday as 16th level or higher characters.

That seems to me to be a lack of downtime which is easy enough to build into one's campaign.

More than that though is the underlying objection: Why does it seem weird that it takes only a year of game-time (using your example) to go from 1st to 16th level? What should it be instead? And on what basis is anyone making that determination? It seems arbitrary to me. If it takes 1 year or 10 years of game-time to level up, it doesn't matter to me because I have no basis on which to judge which is the "correct" pacing.

 

[redrick]

That seems to me to be a lack of downtime which is easy enough to build into one's campaign.

More than that though is the underlying objection: Why does it seem weird that it takes only a year of game-time (using your example) to go from 1st to 16th level? What should it be instead? And on what basis is anyone making that determination? It seems arbitrary to me. If it takes 1 year or 10 years of game-time to level up, it doesn't matter to me because I have no basis on which to judge which is the "correct" pacing.

Downtime rules exist, but they don't feel foregrounded in the system of the game. They feel more like, an "if you want to do something between adventures, here is how you handle it," as opposed to an assumption and an expectation that characters will spend a significant amount of off-screen time. In my own experience, it is really easy to slip into a rhythm of picking up where you left off and only advancing the clock when characters sleep or travel. I wish the game did more to encourage downtime and a slower pace right up-front in the PHB. (Even by something as simple as a directive up front to "Whenever possible, assume that a comparable amount of time elapses in-game as the amount of time spent out-of-game between sessions." But written better.)

For me, there are two concerns with fast leveling. One is the narrative concern, which, ultimately, can only be addressed by downtime. To wit, it's too much, for me, that the average D&D character goes from fist-fighting with kobolds to standing toe-to-toe with demigods in less time than it would take to finish a year of high school. I know that these kind of rapid zero-to-hero narratives exist in fiction, but I dunno, as a default, it feels rushed.

The second is strictly game-ist. I don't want to level every session. I certainly don't want to level twice in one session. I want enough time at level n to appreciate the benefits of the new features I've earned, and also to appreciate their limitations. One session might not even bring up the opportunity to use my new class feature.

 

[robus]

My WTF? moment was when I was planning out travel for my OotA high-level reboot. As I've mentioned elsewhere I don't like the drip drip of random encounters during travel where the players know that it's 1 or none so they can just nova it and carry on. I prefer to build in 1 or more "adventuring days" so there's X number of encounters (before a long rest) because they've hit a particularly dangerous region (treacherous terrain, or whatever). Anyway - I put that in my plan as part of their journey to a key location and when I went to check on the XP to award I saw that they would be more than halfway to leveling just from a bit of travel!

That's when I thought am I doing this wrong? How can the published advancement rate actually work satisfactorily? I know I'll ask the experts...