Does it really matter how fast your characters level up?

[Shade]

I prefer high-level play, for many reasons.

First, I think the game doesn't work very well at extremely low levels, where your barbarian can be dropped by a cat with a lucky roll.

Second, as a DM, I enjoy having nearly everything in the toolbox at my disposal. At lower levels, there are a lot of monsters I can't use. At high levels, I can simply advance lower level critters I still want to use. As a player, I enjoy the greater variety of things the DM can throw at me.

Third, as a character. I like having a multitude of different options to play around with. Its much more fun for me to have to decide whether to use a feat, a skill, a special ability, a spell, or a great item. At high levels, there are many to choose from. At low levels, I essentially have one or two class abilities, a couple of feats, a few low skill ranks, and a few items to use. It gets stale quickly for me.

Finally, I enjoy the grandness of the scale of adventures at high levels. I'd rather chase a balor across several planes to retrieve an artifact than go into the goblin cave to recover the farmer's stolen sheep.

I don't begrudge others their style of play, and I'd hope they wouldn't begrudge me mine.

 

[3catcircus]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. It seems like so many DMs get caught up with the idea that their campaign world affects anyone other than their players, like some sort of review council is going to turn their nose up at them for not running the "right kind of game". As long as everyone is having fun, that's the important part. Unfortunately, many DMs equate fun to what they consider fun, because they are doing all the work. If they keep that up long enough, they'll find themselves as simply writers, because no one will play in their game.

I personally wish the current leveling system went faster. I know many DMs just had a heart attack, so I apologize for that. As both a player and a DM who only gets to play each campaign one night every other week, I'd like to see my characters make it to 30th level before I'm too old to roll dice anymore. We've been playing from 1st level since before 3E came out, and one campaign is just now hitting epic levels, while the other is around 23rd level. We're having more fun now than ever before. Sure, its more work for me as a DM to prepare epic adventures, but it takes alot longer to go through them so I don't feel any more taxed during prep time than I did at low-levels.

The problem with this approach, for me, is that all it seems to do is reinforce the idea that 3.x instilled that the PCs are the most important entities in a huge dynamic campaign world where there are tons of other things going on - some of which may or may not affect the PCs - either on purpose or at random. My answer to that idea is "Wrong! It is my campaign world, I'll run it how I see fit." If I want to speed up or slow down the progress of level advancement, that is my prerogative as a DM.

I guess a good rule of thumb would be to take the same amount of game time as could be gleaned from a standard 1st/2nd edition (or 3.x for that matter) adventure and determine if the PC advancement is too fast. Typically these modules recommend a level or a range of levels (Forge of Fury is for 4 3rd-level PCs who could possibly advance up to 5th level by the completion and RtToEE is for 4-14th level). If, for example, you are playing Forge of Fury, and you manage to get up to 6th level by the completion of the adventure, you are getting xp too fast.

 

[3catcircus]

Now that I am in my 30s and unable to game every night or every other night (ah, what fond memories) I agree with this. We have a group that contains at least 4 of us who enjoy DMing. In order to keep long term campaigns going, we have had to share worlds, with two DMs frequently switching off DMing the same group of player characters. Even this way, if it took us 7 or 8 sessions to level up, it would take approximately 5 years of gaming the same characters in the same campaign for us to reach 20th level. We have gotten better about being able to continue ongoing campaigns, but we've never managed to stick to just one group for 5 years.

if you game 2 or 3 or more times a week, then this isn't an issue for you, but for those of us who only have about 5 hours a week to devote to gaming, and at least one week a month the game is cancelled because our real life interferes, we need some more accelerated leveling.

On average our group usually levels once every 2-3 gaming sessions, and even at that it often means that we only get one level a month. It's really sad that as gamers get older, our passion for the game increases but the time we have to play decreases. Ah, cruel fate.

Why do you need faster levelling? How often you play (real-time) should have little to no effect on how quickly you advance - what I mean by this is - if you play 4 hours each week for one month, you should be at the *same* point, in-game, as if you played 4 hours once a month for four months. Whether you are 1st level or 20th level, when you *do* get to play, the fun should be the same - otherwise, why play at all?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I find that the problems with fast levelling are two-fold.

1. If there are events brewing in your campaign world, the fact that PCs can go from 1st - 12th within a game year quite easily can make it difficult to manage slow building affairs.

2. 13.3 encounters per level isn't an awful lot of encounters. I had hoped that in my campaign the PCs would be able to get involved with half a dozen growing story arcs - from overcoming a rogue priest who was subverting churches, to breaking up a cabal of alienists, to thwarting plots against royalty, to freeing a nation which has gradually descended into oppression, to locating the mysterious enemy and ultimately taking the conflict to their home plane.

Trouble is, 13.3 encounters per level doesn't amount to a whole bunch of adventuring.

I'm tempted to take the Conan route in my next campaign, with plenty of 'hand-waving' of downtime.

 

[toberane]

Why do you need faster levelling? How often you play (real-time) should have little to no effect on how quickly you advance - what I mean by this is - if you play 4 hours each week for one month, you should be at the *same* point, in-game, as if you played 4 hours once a month for four months. Whether you are 1st level or 20th level, when you *do* get to play, the fun should be the same - otherwise, why play at all?

But for those of us who both enjoy playing higher level campaigns AND who like having the rounded character that you get from playing from low levels on up, you have 2 choices:

1: Allow faster level progression so that the players can grow their characters but still be able to reach the higher levels before their hair turns gray and falls out, or (more likely) before the next DM who has a great idea for a campaign convinces everyone to let him run his campaign and the PCs stagnate eternally at 6th level, or

2: Pick one or the other and have disgruntled players who are never really happy with their characters.

The problem with this approach, for me, is that all it seems to do is reinforce the idea that 3.x instilled that the PCs are the most important entities in a huge dynamic campaign world where there are tons of other things going on - some of which may or may not affect the PCs - either on purpose or at random. My answer to that idea is "Wrong! It is my campaign world, I'll run it how I see fit." If I want to speed up or slow down the progress of level advancement, that is my prerogative as a DM.

This illustrates another problem I have with lower level, slow advancing games, and that is that this approach (the PCs are nothing special, etc.) leads to one of the big problems of campaign settings like the Forgotten Realms, where there are a ton of insanely high level NPCs who are constantly using your characters as pawns in their schemes. Don't get me wrong, I love the FRCS, but if your PCs are leveling slowly in a world like this, you end up spending the whole time feeling like nothing but a lackey to ultra-powerful NPCs.

I know this is only my opinion, but, while there is a larger world outside your PCs current quest, they should feel like the heroes of their story. And being heroic requires that they grow into something that they were not when they started.

Now, as to your "I'll run it as I see fit" statement, you are completely right. As long as your players enjoy it, then there is no problem. And if they aren't enjoying it, I assume that they would leave and find another group that fit more into their tastes. So it's all good.

 

[toberane]

I had hoped that in my campaign the PCs would be able to get involved with half a dozen growing story arcs - from overcoming a rogue priest who was subverting churches, to breaking up a cabal of alienists, to thwarting plots against royalty, to freeing a nation which has gradually descended into oppression, to locating the mysterious enemy and ultimately taking the conflict to their home plane.

Is there a reason why the PCs can't do all of these things regardless of what level they are? To me, they seem like they could all be geared towards adventurers of any level, whether 5th, 15th, or 50th.

 

[the Jester]

One way to handle that could be to consider each session or mini-arc as an episode in their lives, and remember to allow them some time between each - anything from weeks to years - to have somewhat normal lives and process what they've been through... But, yeah, I agree its a problem, especially if you don't want to have to break it up like that - like if your campaign idea doesn't allow for it...

Exactly- especially in my high level game, the party rarely has a month or two years to just 'burn', they always have irons in the fire. "Oh, we need to talk to person X before event Y takes place... if we're quick, we can prevent a war by getting Z to do action A for person T..." etc.

I do enjoy big downtime arcs- 'five years later' and stuff- but usually reserve those for the end of a major campaign arc. It's just hard to fit them in there otherwise! But meantime the party is always like, go go go... hard to get them to settle down at all!

 

[FireLance]

I already have a place where I can get little recognition for my accomplishments, advance at a very slow pace, and have to work hard to eek out minimum rewards for my efforts. It's called work.

Congratulations, toberane. You've got sigged!

 

[toberane]

Congratulations, toberane. You've got sigged!

I must say, I'm honored.

 

[Ace]

I think I am in the minority but I prerfer very fast leveling as a DM and a player

I don't have the time or patience for camapigns as aplayer or DM that last longer than a few months -- I figure 2 six hour sessions a month for say 4 months is enough to go Epic --

I don't get to do this as much as I like (my player base is terrifified of by the book high level D&D and its implications ) but given a choice I would do 1 session per level -- say to lvl25 ala Arcana Unearthed

You see doing that enables me to actually USE a lot of the rules in the book and gives me a chance to see more cool stuff in play