How fast do your PCs level up?

[Holy Bovine]

As a side question - do people find the initial levels (1->2->3) go by very much faster than later ones? I am already tempted to level the PCs in my PF game next session even though it is only our second one just to get them out of the 1st level death zone. I tend to be pretty hard on 1st level PCs - in their first fight of this campaign (which was extremely minor - 4 1st level warriors against 5 PCs in ambush position) I almost killed the cleric and most of the spell casters had nothing left by the end.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

As a DM, I personally don't like the first few levels because of the limited hit points, options, wealth, etc that PCs have. A lot of times I'll start PC's out at levels 3-5 just to give them more of that stuff available off the bat. Perhaps I'm wrong to do it sometimes, but that's just how I like to do it.

 

[Spinachcat]

I don't see the need to start every campaign at 1st level. Starting a 4e campaign at 11th or even 21st would be cool.

I find that players often don't like arbitrary leveling, but it goes fine if the DM sets the parameters of how they will assign levels in a pre-campaign discussion.

I had a DM who gave us a level after every "chapter" and we knew the story would have 13 chapters. Although we didn't exactly know when a chapter would end, by the end of the first session of a new chapter we pretty much knew the stakes. AKA, if the new story is about the Evil One's chief minion harming a nearby city, we figured the chapter would end with the minion slain or the city conquered.

Then it was up to us. Sometimes we finished a chapter in 3 sessions, other times it took 8 sessions.

 

[edemaitre]

Advancement rate

Most of my adventuring parties, from OD&D and AD&D2 through D&D4e and Pathfinder, have leveled up about once every four sessions. We start at Level 1, and relatively few Player Characters make it past "name level," or tenth level. A given party might take two years of real time to get there.

Since I prefer to run lower-powered fantasy campaigns, recent parties have advanced in level only once every six to eight sessions. Note that these have been in weekly or biweekly games of about four hours each. My current Pathfinder group meets via Skype, so I focus more on narrative-style role-playing rather than on tactical combat.

In my homebrew scenarios, I award experience based on the following criteria:
-Attendance, participation, and record-keeping
-Teamwork and problem-solving
-Role-playing and character development
-Combat (note that this is only 25% rather than 50%+)

Most of the people who have participated in my games have been fine with that rate of advancement, as long as it's steady and nobody is too far ahead or behind the majority.

 

[Lanefan]

Given the variety of replies here...

Do any of the posters so far consider themselves to be using RAW to give their advancement rate?

For my part, definitely not; and intentionally so.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Me either! I think it would entirely depend on the campaign though and how invested you are in that character race/class. I like to try out different race/class combos, I even build characters for fun hoping for a day to play them. I could definitely see the appeal to playing one character you've come to love and really get into for 10+ years if the story is amazing, the DM is great, and everyone is still having fun like you've read about in Pirate Cat's adventures and Lanefan's nuggets about his 10 year campaigns.

Keep in mind that the overall campaign is 99% certainly going to outlast any of its individual characters; you might go through three or four characters early on, then play a given character for a year or two before it dies the death, then come back with another who doesn't get out of her first adventure, then another who does OK but retires after a year making room for another who you really like and manage to keep active for three years - and suddenly you're 6 or 8 years into the campaign.

Personally, I tend to get tired of most of my characters after a while; which is good for them because if I really like a character I'll play it into the ground. Six feet into the ground, in fact! So I'll cycle them in and out.

In the campaign I'm playing in I just retired my most successful character mostly because she's become somewhat boring to play (my own fault: the personality I gave her isn't the most inspiring, though mechanically she's excellent). If I come up with good ideas for her sometime down the road I'll bring her back in; if not, c'est la vie.

Contrast that with the other one I've got in that game: mechanically awful (she has the life expectancy of a gnat in that group) but man is she fun to play! I'll run her till she drops.

As a side question - do people find the initial levels (1->2->3) go by very much faster than later ones?

Yes.

Lan-"imagine Capt. Jack Sparrow as a female Elf"-efan

 

[S'mon]

I found in my 1st 4e campaign, the 1st 2 levels went slowly; ca 5 5-6 hour sessions to level. Then it speeded up a lot. I think that was the result of running a status quo sandbox* that was a bit too deadly for PCs below 3rd level.

*Converted 3e Vault of Larin Karr (written for 3e 4th-9th, and Necromancer Games module so pretty nasty). In retrospect I should have started at 3rd level, but it was my first 4e campaign and I believed the "The new 1st level is the old 4th level!" hype that was around back in 2008-9.

 

[steeldragons]

As a DM, I personally don't like the first few levels because of the limited hit points, options, wealth, etc that PCs have. A lot of times I'll start PC's out at levels 3-5 just to give them more of that stuff available off the bat. Perhaps I'm wrong to do it sometimes, but that's just how I like to do it.

Nothing wrong with that. One should always (or as much as possible without infringing on other's enjoyment) be playing "how [they] like it."

Personally, I love it! The low hit points, the limited spells/magic, all of it.

When a giant spider ("Is it poisonous?!?") or a pack of normal wolves has your players on the edge of their seats/sweating bullets with the knowledge of their character's very real and possibly imminent mortality...that's DMing gold for me!

Forget about the faces of a 2nd level party when the ogres or trolls start showing up? *blissful sigh.*

--SD

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

When a giant spider ("Is it poisonous?!?") or a pack of normal wolves has your players on the edge of their seats/sweating bullets with the knowledge of their character's very real and possibly imminent mortality...that's DMing gold for me!

Forget about the faces of a 2nd level party when the ogres or trolls start showing up? *blissful sigh.*

--SD

That's funny you say that, because in both games I play in (both at levels 2-3) my characters have encountered a giant spider which ended up taking an NPC and getting away with him to eat him. The other we faced off against a bunch of troll runts and a big troll which kept knocking around the barbarian dropping him to below hit 0 hit points multiple times with the cleric definitely having his hands full trying to heal him back up.

 

[Corathon]

I hear people talking about going from 1st to 20th level or higher within a year. That baffles me. Even if I play every other week for 6-8 hours a day, I don't see how the PCs would get 20th level in a year.

I have only a little experience with the d20 system, but based on that experience we gained 2 levels every 3 sessions. If you played every other week, and kept that speed of progression, you'd reach 20th in about 57 weeks - not much more than a year.

So I'm wondering, how many hours of gaming do you spend playing before the PC levels up?

Our sessions were 5-6 hours long, so about 8 hours of play brought a level increase.

Even an adventure path that goes from 1-20th level to become epic doesn't seem like enough "adventuring" to get godlike. But I've never ran an adventure path like that, so maybe I'd think differently if I saw it in action.

I agree. Personally, I prefer a slower rate of level increase.

As for time spent playing, with all the roleplaying, investigating, decision making, and then combat, it seems hard to level up so fast within a year. So I'm wondering how people do it. Do you just receive an enormous amount of XP per encounter? Or do you just get a lot done really fast?

I think that (relatively) rapid increase in levels is what's to be expected from the CR system.