Encounters per Level

[jschuhr]

It depends

In my game, I'll be giving out XP for skill challenges, roleplay, and combat. I tend to mix all three fairly evenly which means over the course of a six-hour session, the party could easily complete 10-12 encounters with varying degrees of success which will dictate how much of the potential XP they get.

I'm waiting to see how the level progression works out, but my goal is to pursue character advancement fairly aggressively ( two sessions = one level ). Some people may think this is way too fast, but playing every week would mean a full 30-level campaign would last just over a year which is about the attention span that our local gaming community has for any one campaign. At that point, several people are bursting with new ideas for something completely different and we're ready to start over with new characters.

Also, I think it's worth noting that I game with a group of people with a fairly similar age range (22-32) who all have become accustomed to America The Instant Gratification, so we all like to see our characters constantly growing and changing. And I mean constantly

 

[Hellzon]

IMHO, the best part about the XP system is that it can be thrown out the window. No XP drain from monsters or magic item creation means the is no necessary XP difference between characters, which means you can go the True20 route and just level "when the DM says so". You miss out on handing out personal "quests", but that seems to be it.

I might try to actually DM 4e...

 

[Knight Otu]

(1) Actually, the standard assumption is 5 PCs vs 4 NPCs, at least according to the preview books, IIRC. This might indicate more then 10 encounters per level, or would allow us to stray in a few more difficult encounters.

From the encounters we have seen and other hints (such as the XP value of the black dragon), the preview books are (most likely) mistaken, either due to a change in the rules that wasn't updated correctly, or a simple typo. The default does appear to be 5 vs 5.

 

[Engilbrand]

I've always been a fan of giving levels when I want to. I like the new XP system, though. It should be able to advance faster than 3.5, which is a good thing. I like the idea of leveling every other game session. I'll probably use XP as a guide for what to throw at the characters. When it comes to side quests, I was always more interested in those for the rewards and prestige than I was for the XP. Unless it was in a video game.