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

[EzekielRaiden]

Wait… you guys are letting PCs live long enough to reach level 4?!

I did restrain myself from including an option to the tune of "Characters do not reach level 4 because they usually die first." Because, other than with Hussar's group, that has in fact been my experience with nearly every 5e game I've played. Reaching level 4 was very rare outside of the group I currently play with.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wait… you guys are letting PCs live long enough to reach level 4?!

Modern D&D. Its hard to kill them outside crits at level 1. Back in my day.....

 

[Lanefan]

I beg to differ. I have been running Traveller sand boxes for a couple decades and the system has no XP at all. The trick to worrying about only the mission being interesting is actually being interested in the adventure in the first place. I fully understand for some players they just want an avatar to move around and do things, but others expect a bit more out of their game. A good meta-goal goes a long way towards keeping a sandbox productive as most things, even those not mission related, can be used to move the game along.

While I sort of agree with this in principle, the moment you have more than one player I find it often becomes an exercise in cat-herding: what's a great and highly-interesting adventure for one player holds no attraction whatsoever for another.*

And so I just run what I run, with the players in full knowledge they can jump the tracks at any time and go do something else within the campaign and I'll DM that instead.

* - Take the game I play in. The current adventure holds great interest for two of the six players (and their characters, in-game) while one is neutral and the other three (including me) would rather do almost anything else, both in and out of character. I have a stable of characters in that game, in-character none of my A-graders wanted anything to do with this trip so I pulled a B-grader out of retirement and sent her in (the other option was my sitting the adventure out, which I got talked out of). This'll jinx it, of course, but so far she's doing surprisingly well in what's turning out to be every bit as dangerous an adventure as we feared.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait… you guys are letting PCs live long enough to reach level 4?!

Well, those who survive the funnel, I suppose......

 

[payn]

While I sort of agree with this in principle, the moment you have more than one player I find it often becomes an exercise in cat-herding: what's a great and highly-interesting adventure for one player holds no attraction whatsoever for another.*

And so I just run what I run, with the players in full knowledge they can jump the tracks at any time and go do something else within the campaign and I'll DM that instead.

* - Take the game I play in. The current adventure holds great interest for two of the six players (and their characters, in-game) while one is neutral and the other three (including me) would rather do almost anything else, both in and out of character. I have a stable of characters in that game, in-character none of my A-graders wanted anything to do with this trip so I pulled a B-grader out of retirement and sent her in (the other option was my sitting the adventure out, which I got talked out of). This'll jinx it, of course, but so far she's doing surprisingly well in what's turning out to be every bit as dangerous an adventure as we feared.

This is precisely why I don’t do aimless west march sandbox anymore. I don’t have time for that.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's been a few adventure modules I've read (and at least one that I've converted and run) that expressly tell the DM to level up the characters when they reach a certain point. If one goes strictly by the book, that means if for some reason the PCs never reach that point - even if they do loads of other stuff - they don't bump. That's why they call it "milestone" levelling.

So yes, on that basis I think that's how it works...and one of numerous reasons why I think milestone or story-based is a terrible way to advance characters.

Do you only ever do exactly what the book or module says? Or do you use your own creativity and resourcefullness to add, subtract, or change things to make the product fit what you have going on in your game? I would not take you as someone beholden to only running RAW, so why you would think a DM would not just shift where the milestone point was to a point along the path that the players were trailblazing is beyond me.

If you just personally don't like milestone leveling, that fine... everyone has their own particular likes and dislikes. But you don't need to try and invent this supposedly impenetrable roadblock to it possibly working.