How fast do you level in 3.x? (read before you vote)

[Hussar]

Another thread has me curious whether my group levels very slowly or not. So, answer the poll. I assume for the poll that sessions are between 3 and 4 hours. If yours are longer or shorter, please adjust. I'm also making the poll have multiple choices, so, chose all that apply to you. If you ding in 4-6 sessions, then choose all three.

 

[Baron Opal]

To give some perspective, we game for ~5 hours every two weeks, about 20 sessions per year, 8 players.

 

[maggot]

At lower levels, we level every 2-4 weeks. At higher levels, it can take much longer.

 

[jdrakeh]

Every 3-4 levels. When I game, the once per week sessions tend to last about 3-5 hours.

 

[Rathan]

I play a DnD game on IRC..... and people complained about just the opposite.. people leveling too fast so the game owner set a rule when questing.... a character can only gain between 1/3 and 1/2 thier xp needed to make it to the next level in one adventure..... table top was diffrent..... when I used to play in our little gaming circle in Maine it would vary.. we never really stuck with one looong campign.. our dm was slightly.... ADHD... heh... so we'd level every session or two to keep things moving rather quickly..... I like alot of action in my tabletops and rp is at a minimum... though in PbP and irc gaming I like it SLIGHTLY slower.... so more rp insues....

 

[MerricB]

It very much depends on the campaign. In general 3-4 sessions/level. My sessions are generally 3-4 hours each

Notes:

Age of Worms - 37 sessions, 20 levels gained. (2 sessions/month)
Ulek - 30-35 sessions, 10 levels gained. (2 sessions/month)

Cheers!

 

[EyeontheMountain]

You know just simply saying "How many hours of play tme does it take you to level" would have been much simpler.

For me it is about ten hours of play time,

 

[S'mon]

ADHD... heh... so we'd level every session or two to keep things moving rather quickly.....

You should have voted "1" and "2" then - I notice no one has voted "1", which seems odd and not reflective of comments like the above & others I've seen.

In my full XP 3e campaign we levelled every 2-3 sessions, though at higher levels frequent death also caused de-levelling! My layer 1/2 XP game of course halved the rate.

 

[paradox42]

My sessions run 6 hours each, and typically it takes 3 or 4 for PCs to level up- so I picked 4, 5, and 6 in the poll since that's about how many 4-hour sessions those would convert to.

However, I should note that I require characters to rest 8 hours in order to gain levels, and under truly stressful circumstances it has been known to happen that a PC gets enough XP to level up more than once. I long ago discarded the "stuck at 1 XP below amount needed to gain 2 levels" rule, since that always felt like cheating to me. Players seem to like it better this way too, even in the crazy situations that have given them enough XP to need to work out two or three levels at once.

So as far as "time to gain 1 level," well- that's probably more variable than I gave credit for.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I voted 4-6 sessions. It depends on how fast the players move the plot along. If they didn't really achieve much in a session due to various reasons I tend to award them less XP than if they achieved a lot. Plus I give out story awards. If they complete a significant part of the story they can get a fair whack of XP in one hit.

Olaf the Stout