D&D 5E (2024) GMs: How long should it usually take to go from level 1 to 4?

[EzekielRaiden]

I use XP as well, I guess it's just odd that choosing rough session numbers means you don't use XP? Or choosing XP means that ... you don't have a rough estimate for how many sessions it takes to get to 4.

My notion, at least when I formulated the answer, was that the number of sessions is 100% completely irrelevant for someone who gives that answer. The one, and only, consideration--for someone who gives that answer--is the XP total, and nothing else about how the XP was acquired matters. If it took 1000 sessions to reach 2700 XP, then it took 1000 sessions. If it takes 1 session to reach 2700 XP, then it takes 1 session. An estimate of "number of sessions" would be unimportant at best and outright unhelpful at worst, because sessions do not give any form of consistent XP; one session might give none at all, and the next might give more than a thousand, and then the next might give only 100, and then the next might give 600, etc.

It's not that you don't know the number of sessions. It's that the number of sessions is irrelevant.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I may take about 6 sessions.

1st Level= 0 session
2nd Level = 1 session
3rd Level = 2-3 sessions
4th Level = 2-3 sessions