And then you have a nice winter, whilst the wizard slaves in the lab...

[MerricB]

Interesting. My World of Greyhawk campaign is currently going through a shift of emphasis - the PCs have worn out their welcome in the Great Kingdom, so are travelling to Greyhawk to continue their heroics. In any case, the wizard of the group decided he wants to craft a few more magic items, so everyone stopped off in Irongate for a few days.

40 days, to be precise!

Think about that - that's 1,600 XP and 20,000 gold he's just spent crafting items. Some for himself, and others for the rest of the group.

The PCs are all about 10th or 11th level (the crafter is a Ranger 2/Wizard 5/Eldritch Knight 3/Spellsword 1), and after a couple of big fights had the money to spare.

The thing is, I really like that. I like it that the PCs are creating their own tools rather than just going and buying them. It's more efficient, for one thing.

As I play more and more 3.5e D&D, I see many different facets of the game. This one has the wizard who is a crafter. Another group had the blaster mage. I'm sure I'll see more use of metamagic feats in the future.

There is variety. This is good.

Cheers!

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Something I haven't seen much in the campaigns I play in is just that: downtime. One adventure follows the next, non-stop. No wonder the characters reach ungodly levels after very little time as passed!

It is more logical that the group takes a breather once in a while, and such events, IMO, make for a more "realistic" campaign.

Cheers indeed!

AR

 

[MerricB]

Something I haven't seen much in the campaigns I play in is just that: downtime. One adventure follows the next, non-stop. No wonder the characters reach ungodly levels after very little time as passed!

Absolutely.

In my campaign, it is currently the beginning of the year 590 CY.

IIRC, I started this particular arc of the campaign in the year 585 CY. That was just over two years ago. We play once every two weeks.

Wilderness travel and downtime help progress the date.

(The 3e campaign I began in 2000 was about 578 C.Y. The timeline has been continuous since then, so we've now gone through 12 years of Greyhawk's history in about 4.5 years of playing, although I don't really pay too much attention to the political changes outside of the PCs involvement.)

Cheers!

 

[kenobi65]

Something I haven't seen much in the campaigns I play in is just that: downtime. One adventure follows the next, non-stop. No wonder the characters reach ungodly levels after very little time as passed!

Yeah; in the first 3E campaign I ran, there was very little down time between adventures (often a week or less, in some cases none at all). There were story-based reasons for that (the PCs were participants in a war), but it wound up that the party made it from 3rd level to 13th or so in about 8 months of "game time" (spanning about 35 game sessions).

This time around, I'm building in some more delays...usually a couple of weeks in-game between each adventure. It feels a little more natural to me; once the party gets a bit higher-level (and starts to want to do serious item creation, spell research, etc.), the "breaks" will probably get a little longer. In this campaign, they started at 2nd level, and are now 7th, and that took the better part of a year in-game.

 

[Li Shenron]

The thing is, I really like that. I like it that the PCs are creating their own tools rather than just going and buying them.

I have always suggested the players to let their PC do this. Some groups don't like the idea of crafting magic items (maybe because it wasn't allowed in earlier editions?), while some others like me don't like the idea of buying magic items. As a DM I can exercise some control on this, for example I usually roll up pseudo-random shops instead of letting the PCs buy anything they're looking for, but only as long as the players are fine with it and don't feel cheated. In general I prefer that characters do things with their own resources rather than just buying off everything with treasure...

 

[Li Shenron]

Something I haven't seen much in the campaigns I play in is just that: downtime. One adventure follows the next, non-stop. No wonder the characters reach ungodly levels after very little time as passed!

It is more logical that the group takes a breather once in a while, and such events, IMO, make for a more "realistic" campaign.

This is also one dear topic to me... although in some periods I am more in the mood for cinematic adventures (focusing on the action only), other times I like the idea of slow character development and more life management

Personally I find it quite boring nowadays that all published adventures are supposing that the characters level up during the adv itself, which otherwise doesn't give them a breath. Ten days of combats and maybe the PCs rise 2-3 levels, and at the end there's a hook to the next adventure to pick up immediately. "At this point of the adventure the characters should be able to handle this encounter" is a sentence that implies the different parts of the adv are scaled for different levels.

For a change, it'd be nice to try and play a campaign where the times are stretched enough, and players have opportunities to let their PC do a lot between adventures. This doesn't mean that the group has to roleplay entire evenings of PC downtime, because to make a magic item can take the player 30 seconds (the time to check the costs).

An idea I've toyed with for long is to forget the "Xp by combat" altogether, and who cares! I'd just start a campaign at some level decided together with the players. Then during one adventure no one would level up or gain Xp. Instead of getting Xp from each kill, characters would level up based on time, like level advancement was a slow background progress in PC time. Obviously, the "speed" should depend on what a PC does in that time: a character going to adventures every now and then would level up faster than a commoner just managing family business, but OTOH also a scholar studying, a warrior practicing, a knight jousting or a noble working on the diplomatic field would gather Xp as well, without killing any orc. On the DM's side, if the next adventure is 3 levels higher, you could make it happen 10 years later in character time, and just discuss with the players what their PCs do in this period, and how they learnd their new abilities.

 

[MerricB]

Let's face it: rapid levelling up of characters has always been a feature of D&D. Even with the original XP charts, somehow, lots of treasure would fall into the hands of the PCs...

...and there really isn't much of a place to train in the Descent into the Depths...

One of the interesting things I've noticed about the Living Greyhawk campaign is how the restrictions on item access make special item powers more meaningful. IIRC, you can craft many items for yourself, but otherwise anything past a brief list of items (+1 weapons, armour, +2 stat items, +1 ring of protection, +1 cloak, and minor scrolls and potions) isn't available unless encountered in an adventure.

Or if the PCs join a organisation of some sort (which gives access to more PrC, items and feats than the core).

Cheers!

 

[Vlos]

Yes, in many campaigns I rarely see the GM give down time of any length. Recently though our Gm has given periods of several months (but mainly after the requests of the players). I mean if the world is in that bad of shape, why bother. One slip up and its gone....

 

[Li Shenron]

Let's face it: rapid levelling up of characters has always been a feature of D&D.

In the short gaming experience of mine I have noticed that this D&D feature tends to "distract" player from the story itself, not a few times... And for many characters it happens that they get new abilities before they even had time to try the ones they got one level before.

...and there really isn't much of a place to train in the Descent into the Depths...

I never require characters to "train" in order to gain their ability, exactly because if I did that would screw them... You can't follow the standard Xp charts AND at the same time require characters to train at level up.

 

[Driddle]

re personal XP spent on items for others:

"It's the master vampire lord ... with a half-dragon template! Everyone atta--"
"Hold on a sec. We owe the wizard a chance to make up the experience. So back off. This one's all his."