One of the interestingly entangled aspects of 5th edition are the guidelines on Campaign Pacing. It's elements are short rests and long rests (PHB 186), adventuring days (DMG 84), encounter XP thresholds (DMG 82), creature CR (MM 9), sessions (DMG 261), XP and levels (PHB 15). Character resources are tied to it. So I became curious about the implications of how it all joined up, for example how much XP worth of encounters are expected per session, and what might that mean for rests?
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Behold, the Pacing Table!
A few interesting metrics (which can all be derived in multiple ways, so go with)
- XP cost to level / adventuring day XP = days to level
- XP cost to level / sessions to level = XP per session
- adventuring day XP / XP per session = days per session
- adventuring day XP / average encounter XP = encounters per day
- encounters per day * days per session = encounters per session
- XP per session / encounters per session * characters = XP per encounter
And a few interesting findings (per RAW, YMMV)
- it takes 33 adventuring days to level from 1 to 20
- it takes 51 sessions to level from 1 to 20
- it takes about 144 encounters to level from 1 to 20
- encounters must usually be hard, to make the guideline levelling pace
- there must be 2-5 encounters per 4-hour game session
Once we expect 144 encounters, we can make a statement like if a PC has a 1:100 chance of dying per encounter, then they're ~76% likely to die before 20th level. A 1:1000 chance produces ~13% chance to die before 20th level, which sounds fine until you recall that a party has four characters. In fact, I believe this gives us a big hint that allowing revival spells to play a role is a pretty good idea. But that's really a derail (into ToA!)
Hope this lends vim to your campaign.
