How fast do your PCs level up?

[Oryan77]

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.

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

I know there are a lot of reasons that would influence the answer. This is of course "on average" and doesn't need to be an exact answer. Just a guesstimate is fine.

My last campaign went about 8 years (with long breaks here and there). I ran about 10 normal sized adventures, 1 mega adventure, and dozens of side quest adventures. The highest level PC was 12 level. In game time, this all occurred in about a 6 year time span.

After running the game like that, I feel it was a bit too slow I guess because I'm sure players would have liked to level faster. But as far as the game world goes, it seems about right to me. I imagine a 20th level (epic?) character would be much older and have accomplished much more to get to that point.

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. 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?

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

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.

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

I know there are a lot of reasons that would influence the answer. This is of course "on average" and doesn't need to be an exact answer. Just a guesstimate is fine.

My last campaign went about 8 years (with long breaks here and there). I ran about 10 normal sized adventures, 1 mega adventure, and dozens of side quest adventures. The highest level PC was 12 level. In game time, this all occurred in about a 6 year time span.

After running the game like that, I feel it was a bit too slow I guess because I'm sure players would have liked to level faster. But as far as the game world goes, it seems about right to me. I imagine a 20th level (epic?) character would be much older and have accomplished much more to get to that point.

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. 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?

Have you tried talking to your players and seeing what their appetite is for leveling? That's what I did with my previous group, I knew that after I got the group together that I'd have to move in about a year's time so I told them that I'd like to level them up quickly so that they could get a taste for each tier (we ran 4E from 1-30).

I leveled them up every 2 sessions and we played weekly for about 4 hours a week, so they got to level up every 2 weeks. Encounter wise, I got in 2-3 good encounters with plenty of role playing and skill challenges thrown in. It was the first time for a few of the players to play in this edition and everyone seemed to really like the quick leveling and feeling more powerful.

I don't think there is a right or wrong way to level up for any edition, the only caveat is that it has to be a fun game to me. I can have fun in a long-running campaign, a one-shot adventure, game-day encounters, LFR, PFS, or a "normal" experienced based game. Just talk it over with everyone involved.

 

[Treebore]

My current campaign is based on a lot of classic modules, expressly to play through them. So in this campaign they level when the modules call for them to do so. No xp awards.

 

[Sammael]

My longest campaign ran for about 5 years of real time and a total of 168 sessions, roughly separated into 10 thematic "chapters" (so about 17 sessions per chapter).

Session length was about 6 hours on average, though effective gaming time was more like 5 hours, so let's say the total was 840 hours.

The PCs started at level 1 and were level 20 in the end. 840/19 ~ 44 hours or about 8-9 sessions per level.

IIRC, they made level 2 in 2 sessions, then level 3 in 3 more sessions, and for the longest time took about 4-5 sessions to level up, but the final chapters of the campaign featured some heavy role-playing, so the last few levels took a lot longer. I think moving up to level 20 took some 20-ish sessions or so.

In game time, they covered the span of about a year and a half. Yeah, that's pretty fast, but they pretty much had non-stop action during that time, with little or no downtime. They traveled across the world, died, were reborn, traveled the planes, met several gods, helped kill a couple of them, then traveled back in time to help fix a paradox and restore the fabric of reality. I'd say level 20 was well earned.

 

[delericho]

In my current campaign, PCs level every 3 sessions (so between 9 and 11 hours of play).

I've varied the rate more in the past, but I've found that this is a decent happy medium, for me at least. (Though I generally blast through 1st level a bit quicker.)

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In my semi-weekly Saturday group, that I am running for, we have 6 hour sessions, and I am pacing them to level every 3rd or 4th session. So that's about 18 to 24 hours of gaming per level, which is slower than the average (probably 12 to 18 hours per level) for our group. We'll get about 20 sessions for the year, so that will be around 5 levels gained in a year.

In my Tuesday morning group, we have 4 hour sessions, and level every 2nd or 3rd session, so that's 8 to 12 hours per level. We'll get about 40 sessions for the year, so that'll be between 13 and 20 levels in a year.

 

[Pentius]

This varies a lot by game and by campaign. My current group just hit level 2 after about 11 hours of game time over two sessions. But I've also had a group in the same system take nearly 40 hours of game time over 4 sessions to get there.

 

[GreyLord]

In OD&D - 2ed D&D it could take a while.

In 3e we played as we did in 2e, we were levelling once per session.

Each session would be anywhere from 2 to 6 hours.

So 20 sessions for 20 levels would be 80 hours average. Combat simply gave you a LOT more XP in 3e with less XP to level up. Sort of made it so that levelling went a lot faster.

In older editions...Fight 50 Orcs at 1st level over a period of time and you still won't have enough XP as a group to level up. You won't even have enough XP to level up ONE character much less a party. You MIGHT get enough XP if you count gold for XP if you get lucky enough to find their treasure in a lair, but that's saying you even find their treasure.

In 3e, at first level, 50 orcs is worth 7,500 XP, enough to level up 7 characters up to second level. So things went a bit faster in that regards.

 

[OnlineDM]

I ditched XP long ago and I level PCs when it's appropriate for the story and for their accomplishments. This works out to about every 3 sessions - call it 12 hours of game play.

 

[The Human Target]

My current campaign playing 4e just hit 11th.

We play twice a month for 6 hours per session.

We probably leveled once per 2.5 sessions on average.

So I'd say a level every 15 hours based on that, but its probably more like every 12 or 13.