D&D 5E Does progression rate slow down?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Sure, adventuring is dangerous, but if you could go from zero to almost godlike hero in 32 days, then I think more people would do it. Think how many people take up risky careers anyway (for far longer than a few weeks) without this promise at the end ("Shall I join the army? On the one hand, I'll be put in a dangerous posting, far from home. On the other hand, it's only for a handful of weeks, then I'll get to retire if I want, and be able to cast Wish spells. I'll have so much power I'll be as close to immortal as anyone can get, and I'll easily be able to influence world events. Hmmm, I wonder if I should do it."). I think you'd get more than a few takers.

Only if you have a godlike DM pulling strings for you to make sure that every day you encounter exactly the right number of monsters to fill up your "quote" from the XP chart in the DMG. (And they have to be solo monsters too, because large groups will fill up your quota at 4x the rate without granting 4x the XP.) This can fail in two ways. Either:

1.) you don't meet enough victims (er, "foes") and so spend a year hunting orcs on the frontier, averaging 1 orc per day with only 36,500 XP at the end of the year, or

2.) you accidentally meet the beholders and vampires on day 5 of your adventure when you are still level 4, instead of on day 18 when you've already killed dozens of trolls and bulettes and giants and are now level 13, and the beholders and vampires unceremoniously kill you.

#1 seems far more likely to me, especially if other soldiers before you have already depleted monster stocks. Liches may be a renewable resource due to phylacteries, but giants and beholders are basically nonrenewable.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

They can level up too, but it would be crazy to apply the 5e XP table to all NPCs. Look at the 5e Monster Manual - NPCs have hit dice, not levels.

According to the DMG, NPCs with class levels get built using PHB rules. Why would you expect to find them in the Monster Manual? It would be a terrible waste of space compared to original content. Ergo, you cannot use the MM to infer the non-existence of NPCs with class levels.

 

[S'mon]

According to the DMG, NPCs with class levels get built using PHB rules. Why would you expect to find them in the Monster Manual? It would be a terrible waste of space compared to original content. Ergo, you cannot use the MM to infer the non-existence of NPCs with class levels.

5e DMG says they can exist. They certainly don't represent the broad spread of NPCs the way Grainger suggests. 1e DMG suggested that 1% of NPCs were capable of level progression, I would use a lower proportion for 5e.

 

[S'mon]

Well, that works to a point, but after 10th level, Gary thought each level should take much longer like 1 or 2 levels per year, if I recall correctly.

That's right - so treat AD&D name level as equivalent to 5e 20th, with slow incremental advancement thereafter - in 5e through Epic Boons.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

5e DMG says they can exist. They certainly don't represent the broad spread of NPCs the way Grainger suggests. 1e DMG suggested that 1% of NPCs were capable of level progression, I would use a lower proportion for 5e.

Yeah, but I would also make MM-statted NPCs a similarly low proportion of the population, so it's a wash.

 

[werecorpse]

Only if you have a godlike DM pulling strings for you to make sure that every day you encounter exactly the right number of monsters to fill up your "quote" from the XP chart in the DMG. (And they have to be solo monsters too, because large groups will fill up your quota at 4x the rate without granting 4x the XP.) This can fail in two ways. Either:

1.) you don't meet enough victims (er, "foes") and so spend a year hunting orcs on the frontier, averaging 1 orc per day with only 36,500 XP at the end of the year, or

2.) you accidentally meet the beholders and vampires on day 5 of your adventure when you are still level 4, instead of on day 18 when you've already killed dozens of trolls and bulettes and giants and are now level 13, and the beholders and vampires unceremoniously kill you.

#1 seems far more likely to me, especially if other soldiers before you have already depleted monster stocks. Liches may be a renewable resource due to phylacteries, but giants and beholders are basically nonrenewable.

Most game worlds I am aware of have areas that are known to be fairly safe, a bit dangerous, dangerous, very dangerous. The fact that a Wyvern lives in certain hills and an Orc tribe in a certain forest isn't super secret. Yes there is risk that when hunting Orc you meet a Wyvern but no-one said it was risk free. I would think after meeting an Orc a day for a month ( and becoming 4th level) you might find people stepping into the more dangerous areas - battling the odd bugbear or ghoul etc.

So maybe it takes a couple of years to get to 20th level being super conservative. That's still worth the time and effort. I recall some study that said a significant number of Olympic sportsmen/women would take a drug that had a high risk that it would kill or severely impair them within a year if they guaranteed a gold medal.

In my world I want more justification for the characters being heroes than it's too risky- when for the PC's it plainly isn't.

 

[werecorpse]

5e DMG says they can exist. They certainly don't represent the broad spread of NPCs the way Grainger suggests. 1e DMG suggested that 1% of NPCs were capable of level progression, I would use a lower proportion for 5e.

I have seen this before and it may work for you, but I don't want the pc's to be special because they were born with the mutant gene to level up. The whole 'you are all destined to be heroes' thing isn't my bag. I want them to feel they earned it through actions, not birthright.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Most game worlds I am aware of have areas that are known to be fairly safe, a bit dangerous, dangerous, very dangerous. The fact that a Wyvern lives in certain hills and an Orc tribe in a certain forest isn't super secret. Yes there is risk that when hunting Orc you meet a Wyvern but no-one said it was risk free. I would think after meeting an Orc a day for a month ( and becoming 4th level) you might find people stepping into the more dangerous areas - battling the odd bugbear or ghoul etc.

So maybe it takes a couple of years to get to 20th level being super conservative. That's still worth the time and effort. I recall some study that said a significant number of Olympic sportsmen/women would take a drug that had a high risk that it would kill or severely impair them within a year if they guaranteed a gold medal.

In my world I want more justification for the characters being heroes than it's too risky- when for the PC's it plainly isn't.

I agree--32 days to reach 20th level may not be realistic, but two or three years of self-paced monster killing probably is, if you pick fairly unintelligent and passive monsters. You do still have to deal with the limited-resource aspect (once somebody kills all the ghouls in the area, they're gone) but it's possible to get around this by e.g. farming oozes, or vampire spawns, or other things that reproduce quickly like giant ants. However, RE: "when for the PC's it plainly isn't", I don't think that's plain at all. My players have avoided TPK only by spending karma points (a metagame thing somewhat analogous to reloading video game saves, with the consequence that the bad guys also get to reload their saves later on). If the PCs were NPCs they'd be dead twice over by now, and I feel really really good about that. Until about 7th level we'd never had a death in the party and I was worried that something was wrong.

In short, "32 days" exaggerates the issue, but given the shape of the 5E XP table the issue is very real and requires deliberate effort to avoid. One way to avoid it is to say that the positive feedback loop mostly never gets started: orc invasions and such are dealt with by quantity of troops, not quality, so the XP gains (if any) are split between thousands of troops, not 4 PCs. But it would still be nice from a world-building perspective if the XP table weren't so generous.

 

[werecorpse]

To get to 7th level and have 2 near TPK's. I still think this is a scenario where it's not actually as deadly as presented in the "NPC's don't adventure cos it's too dangerous" scenario. The suggestion in those arguments tends to be along the lines that 100 first levels becomes 50 second becomes 25 3rd becomes 12 4th becomes 6 5th etc. So that to get a 7th level character 99 have died along the way. But experience tells the players that to get a party of 4 7th levels maybe 2-8 have died along the way.

I do realise that I am splitting hairs and that we basically agree about the important stuff. Mea culpa

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, but I would also make MM-statted NPCs a similarly low proportion of the population, so it's a wash.

Presumably you're not referring to the 1 hd & 2 hd baseline ones like Commoners, Tribal Warriors, Guards, Bandits?