How fast do your characters advance in level?

[DonTadow]

I started my current campaign July 1st 2004 at 7th level. A year later after 40 sessions the highest player is 11th level. The average is 10. Then again, I got players whom care little or less about leveling or xp. I'm pretty much the only person whom keeps up with it. I expect the campaign to end at 16th level.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Levels 1-2: 1-2 sessions since the PC's are fragile.
Level 3: 1-3 sessions.
Level 4+: 3 sessions is my goal. I try to plan out what the PCs will do and so on. But as we all know sometimes they do more and sometimes less. But either way, I let the XP lie.

And also, in my non-WLD campaigns the 3 sessions usually go something like this...
Session #1: Role-playing and information gathering to find the adventure.
Session #2: Getting to the adventure and starting into the meat of it.
Session #3: Adventure resolution and paperwork day (levelling, treasure splitting up, selling loot not needed, etc.).

So the XP isn't quite smoothly split up.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Wow, you people must have combat like mad. I give out XP for RP and they don't level that fast.

My game's been running since November 2000 and the party is up to 19th level, starting at 1st. We have 6-hour sessions every other week and miss a couple sessions/year so say we've had 100 game sessions and 600 hours of gaming. That is one level every 33 hours of gaming.

There is combat about 50% of the sessions and the campaign spans 5-years of game time. (game calendar: September 418-January 424) I average about a dozen encounters/level, with a lot of the combat coming in rapid succession (E.G. recently they fought a dragon, it fled, they pursued, he hid in other monsters' lairs forcing them to fight the other creatures to get to him resulting in 5-6 encounters in a row).

Trust me, leveling is all about pacing. If you have story progression and interaction with NPCs sufficient to keep the players involved, you can level slower. Most people go rather thin on story and heavy on action, which forces faster leveling. That's not a criticism; the bulk of d20 players like combat so it is the easiest thing that makes the most people happy. But it is like a diet of nothing but candy; you get fat quick. Coming up with a gaming diet that isn't dependent on fat-XP combat is not easy.

The trick is coming up with a plot where the players can be constantly doing interesting things that have a purpose but that aren't XP rich. Generally that means you have to alter the plot in mid-game to suit the players and characters. Most DMs (self included) don't like changing the tone of the game but often that is what is required to keep everyone interested. I didn't intend for my game to resemble a Tom Clancy novel (massive wad of plot followed by hectic action scenes) but that's what worked out for the best.

 

[Rel]

According to the spreadsheet I used to guesstimate how fast the PC's would level under my current XP system:

1st-2nd = 2 sessions
2nd-3rd = 3 sessions
3rd-4th = 4 sessions
4th-6th = 5 sessons (each)
6th-10th = 6 sessions (each)
10th-20th = 7 sessions (each)

In actuallity it has gone just a bit slower than that largely because of a TPK at 4th level with the party making new 4th level characters and having to earn most of the XP for 5th all over again. We're currently at about 25 sessions into the campaign and everybody just made 6th level. The campaign is slated to go another 8-10 sessions and I'm fairly certain they'll all make 7th but not 8th (one guy might make 8th but he does a lot of "extra credit").

 

[ResurectedLlama]

I played in a d20 modern game once that leveled us 12 times in two days.
Now i run a game with only about a level a session.

 

[Graybeard]

I give out XP for combat, RPing, and story advancement. My PCs are all 3rd level at the moment. On average, they leveled every 2-3 sessions. My sessions have a mix of combat, NPC interaction, investigative (follow clues), and sometimes, simply planning.

 

[ForceUser]

Remember the old days of AD&D, when it took months (of GAME time) to go up in level? (Or maybe it was just my DM ). Folks say that 3e is designed for rapid level advance, but I'm not convinced it must be so.

So, out of curiosity, how fast do your PCs advance in level? (And DMs, it would be helpful to hear from your side of the screen: how fast do you ALLOW PCs to advance in level?)

I allow the PCs in my campaigns to level rapidly, usually once per 2-3 sessions. I have two reasons for this. First, we only play once per month. Secondly, they are lower-level, and I want to get to the 11+ game within a couple of years. They are currently 7th-level, and at the present rate of advancement, I expect it will still take another year to get to 11+. Since the high-level game is where I want to go with my campaign, I don't mind being liberal with the XP.

 

[Kuld]

I give out XP for combat, RPing, and story advancement. My PCs are all 3rd level at the moment. On average, they leveled every 2-3 sessions. My sessions have a mix of combat, NPC interaction, investigative (follow clues), and sometimes, simply planning.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you determine XP for RPing and Story advancement? I have a few power gamers who'd rather hack and slash their way through an adventure, often complaining that some sessions have too much role-playing. Again, some of my players love to RP, so I tend to ignore them munchkins to a certain degree. However, if I could adequately reward the greedy little buggers for RPing, most of the complaints will disappear. As of right now, I usually reward a few hundred XP for good RPing, but I’m thinking it’s not enough…

 

[the Jester]

My low-magic game, which I'm trying to set up for relatively rapid advancement, has had 13 sessions and the party is APL 4th. So about the standard for 3e.

The rest of my games are a little slower- prolly 4-5 games/level on average. But it really depends on what the pcs are up to.

 

[ThirdWizard]

In my main game they probably level every 3-4 sessions, depending on the lethality of the particular situations. Sometimes they spend a session with no combat (and I give no RP xp awards), and sometimes they fight a monster 3 CR above them and its minions. So, it all balances out. In game time, they've gone from 2nd level to 8th level in around a year and a half's time, which is about the same as real time, actually.

In my alternate campaign, I award half XP awards, and the going is much slower. We just love this game so much we don't want it to go through quickly. It's hard to pin down a time on leveling, since we don't play regularly, but they probably level half as fast as the other, so perhaps 8 sessions to a level. In game time for this one is very long because of massive downtime between story arcs. At 8th level, it has probably comprised of four years.