D&D 5E Adventuring Days, XP & Leveling

[robus]

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.

I was just trying to use the numbers as published. But the key one was in the DMG guiding on how much XP players should receive per adventuring day. So not really based on monsters, just on what the DMG was thinking would be "normal" for a DM to dish out. That's really it. Why on earth does the DMG suggest that DMs dish out XP at such a rapid rate (especially at high levels, which apparently few tables reach!)

I really don't understand why the recommended distribution rate doesn't slow down as you get higher. IMHO leveling up *should* get more challenging (meaning needing more effort) as you progress.

 

[iserith]

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.

I'm being no more unintentionally obtuse than normal.

I just wonder where these preferences come from and why I personally don't have any particular preference either way except that I prefer how I get my XP as a player to be transparent so I can pursue the appropriate goals. I don't know what is meant by "negligible" in this context either in any practical sense. Do these preferences come from another game perhaps?

My experience with D&D 5e is that advancement isn't all that fast with standard XP once you're past 4th level. At least in terms of sessions played. There's only so much content you can get through in, say, 4 hours, and I would say that my groups play a lot faster than most I've seen. In terms of game-time that passes, it's probably days or weeks at a given level once you factor in travel time or downtime. Certainly not months.

As for the downtime, what would it look like to build it in? It seems built-in already to me. You have the rules, so you just add in downtime whenever you see fit. If for some reason you don't like the idea of the PCs going through apprentice tier in a single dungeon, you just stick a few months of downtime on the back end and call it good. "Six months later, you're all 5th level..." or whatever.

 

[redrick]

I was just trying to use the numbers as published. But the key one was in the DMG guiding on how much XP players should receive per adventuring day. So not really based on monsters, just on what the DMG was thinking would be "normal" for a DM to dish out. That's really it. Why on earth does the DMG suggest that DMs dish out XP at such a rapid rate (especially at high levels, which apparently few tables reach!)

Well, I ask because the table on page 84 of the DMG, which gives a number of XP per adventuring day, is actually based on the adjusted XP, which are a result of the Encounter Design calculations, and include a number of multipliers. It's meant to be a measure of how much your PCs can safely handle in a day, not the amount of XP they can earn in a day. For instance, a combat against 4 goblins would net the party 200 XP, but, assuming a party of 4-6 players who are between 1st and 5th level, the "adjusted xp" value for the encounter would actually be 400 xp, because a group of 3-6 monsters multiplies the XP value by 2 when determining difficulty. So a party of 4 could, by the rules, "handle" 3 of those combats in a day (400*3/4=300), but each player would only get 150 xp.

So, if you were to award XP to characters simply based on "a day's XP for a day's adventuring," you should probably half the values in the table. Not sure that that solves your problem, but it does slow things down by a factor of 2.

I'll add that looking at all these tables reminds me that the sections in the DMG on monster CR and encounter difficulty are, in my opinion, the least 5e part of 5e.

I really don't understand why the recommended distribution rate doesn't slow down as you get higher. IMHO leveling up *should* get more challenging (meaning needing more effort) as you progress.

 

[robus]

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.

Well perhaps it's my reading comprehension that's the problem, but this is what I read on page 84:

For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day.

Earn doesn't mean that this is what the characters are supposed to receive?

 

[CapnZapp]

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.

My remark was made strictly in the context of "if you don't like the rate of advancement, change it. It's a trivial change and no other components of the game are affected in the slightest".

"You" in this context means the group. The DM, obviously with at least silent consensus from her group.

If in reality you're talking about a group happy with the existing rate of advancement, there's no problem, right?

If on the other hand you're talking about when a player and the DM doesn't see face to face, disagreeing on some issue such as the xp rate... that's a completely different discussion and I loathe you bringing that in just to be confrontational.

In any event, the solution remains: change the xp rate if you don't like it. Unlike complaints about classes or spells etc it is a trivial change with zero repercussions elsewhere in the rules.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I really don't understand why the recommended distribution rate doesn't slow down as you get higher. IMHO leveling up *should* get more challenging (meaning needing more effort) as you progress.

That's how it worked in every edition before 4E, and the end result was that players just didn't reach those levels. Most campaigns were over by level 13.

One of the goals for 5E is that the game would remain playable for the entire stretch from 1-20, and that meant you had to actually reach level 20 within a reasonable amount of time.

 

[CapnZapp]

I really don't understand why the recommended distribution rate doesn't slow down as you get higher. IMHO leveling up *should* get more challenging (meaning needing more effort) as you progress.

As I said earlier, there is no deeper meaning behind xp.

It's all a pseudo-scientific front to cover the illusion that advancement will happen at the rate the DM is happy with.

So there's nothing to understand. WotC simply decided the default xp rates should lead to quick levelling, and very quick levelling at levels 1-3 and 11+

If this is not to your liking, just hand out less xp. Yes really. That's all there's to it.

 

[Jer]

One of the goals for 5E is that the game would remain playable for the entire stretch from 1-20, and that meant you had to actually reach level 20 within a reasonable amount of time.

This is what I recall from the design goals for 4e and for 5e as well. That most tables were ready to move on to something different well before the group had hit level 20, so they wanted to make reaching level 20 easier so more tables would reach for that capstone level.

However I would add that the lack of adventure support for high level campaigns suggests that even Wizards has given up on the idea of campaigns running through to level 20. Their last few published storylines have only gone through level 11 (though to be fair there are higher level Adventurer's League adventures at DM's Guild, so they haven't written it off completely).

 

[5ekyu]

My remark was made strictly in the context of "if you don't like the rate of advancement, change it. It's a trivial change and no other components of the game are affected in the slightest".

"You" in this context means the group. The DM, obviously with at least silent consensus from her group.

If in reality you're talking about a group happy with the existing rate of advancement, there's no problem, right?

If on the other hand you're talking about when a player and the DM doesn't see face to face, disagreeing on some issue such as the xp rate... that's a completely different discussion and I loathe you bringing that in just to be confrontational.

In any event, the solution remains: change the xp rate if you don't like it. Unlike complaints about classes or spells etc it is a trivial change with zero repercussions elsewhere in the rules.

What an odd response...

"Sounds like an entitled player. Best not invite those."

if by that you were not referencing a player's reaction to unsolicited and uncosensus changes when you quoted the comment that you did, then i suggest that you may have failed that performance check.

But thats fine. it has been known to happen.

As for actual expression of your loathing of me... thats fine too as far as I am concerned. Its good to see what various folk's thrsholds for such intense degree of responses are. Whatever keeps you warm at night. though making such comments about other posters may sometimes be viewed as inappropriate comments for this forum.

 

[redrick]

Well perhaps it's my reading comprehension that's the problem, but this is what I read on page 84:



Earn doesn't mean that this is what the characters are supposed to receive?

Well, either we both failed our reading comprehension or this whole section is half-gibberish. I'm going with the latter!

From DMG page 82, under "Evaluating Encounter Difficulty."

This adjusted value is not what the monsters are worth in terms of XP; the adjusted value's only purpose is to help you accurately assess the encounter's difficulty.

And then, from page 84, under "The Adventuring Day" (including what you quoted above):

For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party's adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.

And then the table has "Adjusted XP per Day per Character."

So, basically, contradicting statements on the part of the DMG, but I believe that the intention of this table is not to give the amount of XP a character should earn. Furthermore, it is my experience of actually adding up XP for encounters, even including XP for non-combat encounters, that we never once hit these numbers in an adventuring day, no matter how challenging the day. You'd have to fight only solo monsters. (Which are, admittedly, xp handouts.)

The most continuous game-time I've had in a 5e campaign was probably a campaign that lasted about 9-10 months and met weekly (obviously with some weeks off). When we finished, I think characters were 8th or 9th level. That was encounter-based xp awarded, basically, "raw".