D&D 5E Adventuring Days, XP & Leveling

[5ekyu]

Sounds like an entitled player. Best not invite those.

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Sounds to me like a person who sees things as more than binary.

Currently there is just such a consensus required but it is in the form or "play or not play." i can reject the entire GM and his game if his changes are ones i do not like.

What is being mentioned by seeking consensus on changes to characters is simply opening a middle ground between the binary choice and a recognition of the collaborative game being played.

of course, some might find that concept unacceptable or worthy of tossing around disparaging names.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

I absolutely agree with this.

With my players a session or two wont even begin to scratch the surface of many cases of "new stuff i can do". While it may be most visible at "new spell levels" levels like 3,5 7 etc it is there for a great many levels for most classes/characters.

We have found more time where we are focusing on "whats going on" and "how do i get what i want" than "what is it i can do now" lets the game flow well.

heck, i am at least partly worried that for some of my players leveling every 8 sessions over 2 months (more or less) might be offputting for being too quick.

I had toyed with the idea of "double-levels" where you would **not* level by one level at a time but by two levels at a time. So instead of every two months you would level every 4 months but gain two levels at once. that way each "leveling learning curve" would be delayed and each would be rather noticeable. its still a possibility. Might do that for special occasions.

 

[redrick]

We have found more time where we are focusing on "whats going on" and "how do i get what i want" than "what is it i can do now" lets the game flow well.

[EDITED TO ADD]: Yep, this is exactly what I want.

heck, i am at least partly worried that for some of my players leveling every 8 sessions over 2 months (more or less) might be offputting for being too quick.

My first campaign as a player in 5e, the DM used fast milestone leveling. I felt a little robbed.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Sounds like an entitled player. Best not invite those.

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If by entitled you mean someone who has a stake in the game as a player, then yes. I think the best games are those that allows some discussion and flexibility about the ground rules of the game between DM and players. As a DM I don't venture from rules as they pertain to characters and their abilities without making sure it's okay with the players, or at least giving everyone a chance to suggest a good compromise. Unilateral DM dictates on character issues are typically a good sign that they're not much fun to play with, either.

 

[iserith]

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.)

Why though? What is necessarily better about characters advancing in power slowly in terms of game-time than quickly? It's a preference, so not taking a stance on it seems to me to be the right move for the designers. Everyone can use the downtime activities as they see fit.

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.

None of this really bothers me, but it's good in my view that you're examining why you have the preferences you do. As an aside, I've run games where the PCs leveled every session. That works well in an episodic game where each session is self-contained and the subsequent game takes the PCs' gains into account power-wise. You most definitely get to try out your new stuff. I did mine in a pulp hero serial context to great effect.

 

[redrick]

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?

Are you using the "Adjusted XP per adventuring day" to determine how much XP to award? You said you aren't just adding up the xp values for monsters in an encounter, so curious how you are arriving at your numbers.

 

[iserith]

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...

I probably wouldn't use standard XP in a published adventure. I'd use milestone XP or possibly story-based advancement because I'd want to reward sticking to the plot. I'd have to give OoTA a read to determine what's best though.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Just to get sentimental and reminisce a bit, I remember a group I played with for several years where the DM NEVER handed out xp after a game. We'd pester him and complain and cajole but to no avail. Then, every once in a while, he'd give us all handouts with a total xp award on it and we'd level up (usually, this was 1st ed after all). I think it was his way of just keeping us playing at a level he wanted us to be for where his campaign was at the time. We didn't call it milestone because frankly, there wasn't much rhyme or reason to when we got these bumps from him other than when the mood struck him.

 

[Yes]

If I'm right, the average "adventuring day" is tailored around 6-8 average encounters per day. Wich is a big amount of encounters. If you run less encounter per day, I suppose you can reduce the amount of xp in proportion. But honestly, I'd rather do away with the whole xp system. Gold, magic items and reputation are as good a built-in "progression meter" as any. For a while I considered playing with a paid training system for players to level up and give some meaning to the treasures they gain... but in the end I didn't have the time to do it, and milestone progression let's me focus on the real "meat" of the campaign instead of twiddling with xp.

 

[redrick]

Why though? What is necessarily better about characters advancing in power slowly in terms of game-time than quickly? It's a preference, so not taking a stance on it seems to me to be the right move for the designers. Everyone can use the downtime activities as they see fit.

Come on, iserith, I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse. I appreciate that there is a continuum, and everybody is going to have a different idea of where they , but I think it's easy to see why going from level 1 to 20 in a negligible amount of narrative time would be the far end of the continuum. It's fine for the game to support that pace, but it's an odd place to have your default. Furthermore, I think a system that builds in down-time is easier to tweak than a system that allows you to add down-time in. Once the stitch is there, I can adjust how quickly off-camera time passes, but when the default game blows past down-time altogether, it requires more intention to slice it in.

None of this really bothers me, but it's good in my view that you're examining why you have the preferences you do. As an aside, I've run games where the PCs leveled every session. That works well in an episodic game where each session is self-contained and the subsequent game takes the PCs' gains into account power-wise. You most definitely get to try out your new stuff. I did mine in a pulp hero serial context to great effect.

Yeah, there are contexts where it can work. I've done it, but, generally, it's not my preference.