D&D 5E Adventuring Days, XP & Leveling

[redrick]

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).

I think running from 1-20 is just a lot to ask, regardless of the amount of time invested. For a campaign that was meant to take characters to level 20, I think it should just start at level 10 (or higher.) On the other hand, I can't see Wizards releasing their "main" Adventure Path at that level, because it would make a whole season of organized play less accessible to newcomers. A "Tales from the Yawning Portal" style book for strictly high level play could be cool.

 

[robus]

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.)

I think you must be right. The wording is quite confusing and they keep switching from group to character to monster to whatever, so I think they tangled themselves up!

OK - so then it seems like it's probably much more in line with what I was originally expecting...