How fast do your PCs level up?

[Crazy Jerome]

Given the variety of replies here...

Do any of the posters so far consider themselves to be using RAW to give their advancement rate? Or are the rule XP awards just more honuored in the breach than the observance.

The only effective difference for me is at the margins. That is, if we tracked XP precisely according to RAW--at the end of an 18-24 month campaign, the characters would all be within half a level of whatever they ended up with our looser version. Part of this is the way 3E and 4E are structured, but mainly it is because our play is fairly consistent over time.

Now, in the story line, it can be a fairly big deal at moments. Getting to round up from about 10.75 level to 11th level in a 3E or 4E campaign, before you start the next adventure, can be a huge boost.

So I'm with Hussar on this. Mainly, we went this way not because of any particular dislike of the XP pace itself, but because the XP calculations were taking too much time for what they gave us. (This was especially true using 3.5 calculations, first introduced in 3E Forgotten Realms, with a large group of mixed level characters. Pain in the behind.) If you want to precisely track different experience levels, negative level drains, magic item and other such XP expenditure, etc.--then keeping the running total is not only helpful, but vital. But if all you want is to pace a party of adventures gaining power over a series of adventures, it is overkill.

So I guess it was more that we abandoned RAW on other uses of XP, and the way we calculated it just followed naturally from there. Since 4E also abandoned those other 3.* uses of XP, there was really nothing left to the mechanic but teaching pacing to novice DMs. Once you've got the pacing, you no longer need the mechanic.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Given the variety of replies here...

Do any of the posters so far consider themselves to be using RAW to give their advancement rate? Or are the rule XP awards just more honuored in the breach than the observance.

In the campaign that I am currently running, I am not using the RAW XP rules, which for my group tend towards a much faster rate of advancement.

The game that I'm playing in, for instance, uses the RAW XP rules, or something very close to it. Our group tends toward high optimization, so I'm sure that plays into it.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I've read about some of the guys doing 20 year campaigns on the forums and I couldn't imagine only playing one campaign that long.

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.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I'm actually curious if anyone else does or has ever given experience for great role playing by the players. Perhaps all your characters did was role play the entire 3-4 hour session without a single combat, but the story was really driven, the plot advanced, and they talked there way into our out of situations where you may have actually planned a combat encounter?

I had one of these a while back in my 4E campaign I DM'd, usually I had 3 combat encounters prepped out, but the one session had only one quick combat encounter at the beginning of the session and then they role played for about 3 hours with various NPCs in the city without the need for more combat. I was impressed with their thinking and was really able to get into it. One of the most fun sessions of all time for me, especially considering that group loved to hack n slash things instead of role play.

 

[steeldragons]

I'm actually curious if anyone else does or has ever given experience for great role playing by the players.

Oh! Absolutely! It's not a hard and fast "rule" as to how much they would get. Nor do the "great at roleplaying" players get a bonus/the same bonus all of the time.

But they definitely get some recurring incentive. Depends on the "scene"/situation.

For those players that aren't "great at roleplaying", there are similar incentives.

Creative solutions (even if it doesn't have the desired outcome, a player "thinking outside the proverbial box" gets rewarded for the attempt), a particularly innovative tactic, putting themselves in some cinematic climactic moment, something!

Everyone has something they can contribute even if they're not a table-top "actor."

Creative thinking, in general, is going to get you a lil' sumpthin' (extra XP) in games I run...and if it gets you and/or your companions out of a bad/tight spot or brings the scene to a dramatic conclusion, a lil' sumpthin' more...every so often.

--SD

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Oh! Absolutely! It's not a hard and fast "rule" as to how much they would get. Nor do the "great at roleplaying" players get a bonus/the same bonus all of the time.

But they definitely get some recurring incentive. Depends on the "scene"/situation.

For those players that aren't "great at roleplaying", there are similar incentives.

Creative solutions (even if it doesn't have the desired outcome, a player "thinking outside the proverbial box" gets rewarded for the attempt), a particularly innovative tactic, putting themselves in some cinematic climactic moment, something!

Everyone has something they can contribute even if they're not a table-top "actor."

Creative thinking, in general, is going to get you a lil' sumpthin' (extra XP) in games I run...and if it gets you and/or your companions out of a bad/tight spot or brings the scene to a dramatic conclusion, a lil' sumpthin' more...every so often.

--SD

I agree, some people are better than others at getting into character and really role playing well. I also give added incentives to thinking outside the box when players do something unexpected and imaginative.

 

[S'mon]

I'm actually curious if anyone else does or has ever given experience for great role playing by the players. Perhaps all your characters did was role play the entire 3-4 hour session without a single combat, but the story was really driven, the plot advanced, and they talked there way into our out of situations where you may have actually planned a combat encounter?
.

Yes, of course. In 4e the DMG2 recommendation is that this should generate XP at about the same rate as combat - 1 on-level encounter's worth per hour of play.

 

[Spinachcat]

I judge leveling for a particular campaign by my expectation for how long are we actually going to be playing. Most of my campaigns have been a short arc because I know that meeting once or twice a month for 6-8 hours means that over a year, I realistically have 20 game sessions. Often, I know that the group will only last for 10 sessions and I plan accordingly.

Also, I take into consideration the group. Do they like to level fast? Do these guys feel they need to "earn" every XP? Do they prefer playing at a certain set of levels?

In my OD&D events, I usually grant 1 level at the end of each game session. I thought it was fast until I found out Dave Arneson had done the same thing. It really works fine in high-mortality campaigns.

I personally can't stand tracking XP. I never enjoyed it, but I get that lots of players do. Some players really balk at slow leveling and others balk at fast leveling, not feeling they got to play at level X long enough.

Thus, years ago I learned that your rate of leveling must come from conversations with the players, not the rulebook.

 

[Rechan]

Honestly, I've never encountered a D&D player who would be happy being told when they level up.

When I play, I prefer to just be told. If I really want to know when we'll level up, I'll ask.

But then, I hate tracking GP, rations, ammunition, or any other minutia.

 

[Holy Bovine]

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?

I have seen games where people level very fast, imo. Level 14-15 (in 2E) after 6-9 months was pretty typical for some groups in my University days. Usually such groups played 2-3 times a week for 4+ hours each time. We'd usually accomplish it just by doing a lot of stuff really fast - combats rarely took more than 20 minutes it seemed regardless of level.

In more modern games and adventure paths levelling is slower but not all that much slower. From 2000 to 2008 I ran or played in 5 D&D games none for more than 3 years and all of which hit 16th level or higher (2 went to 20th). It seemed natural for us but everyone likes a certain pace of leveling I have found.

I have always used XP for leveling as per RAW but in my newest campaign I was quite shocked to have the players vote to forgo standard XP awards and just level when I, the DM, decided it was appropriate. Most of my players are old school 1E and 2E players (although all of them have tried every edition of D&D and we are now onto Pathfinder) so this was quite a change for them! I personally welcomed it.