D&D 5E How fast is the default advancement?

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm making adjustments to the XP tables, and I realized that I need a better handle on how fast advancement is set up to go. If anyone has examined it and can offer some thoughts (or better yet--a table showing numbers) I would appreciate it.

Here are the main questions.

1) Assuming we are past low-level (where advancement is intentionally accelerated), on average how many <designate chosen variable a> here will it take for a party of <designate chosen size b> to reach the next level? (a might be encounters, sessions, adventures--whichever you prefer; b should probably be 4-5, but if you want to go with a 6 or so; the important thing is just to indicate the value of the variable you are using)
2) Assuming we are past low-level, does variable a change as you progress through the levels (and in what manner), or is it designed to be fixed?

FYI, for those interested I've discovered that you can fix the wonky leveling at levels 11-14 (if you want to fix it) by simply changing the xp needed for 11th level to 82,000 and leaving everything else as is.

 

[DaveDash]

I have worked it out based on medium encounters, and the recommended xp budget for an adventuring day.

It comes to about 33 constant days of adventuring to get to level 1-20, 145 encounters. At the early levels I think it's quick, but slows down to about 10 encounters per level.

My gut feeling is that mid level leveling is definitely too fast.

Data:


Onedrive Link: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?page=view&resid=3187F8C3C74196F!48998&authkey=!APEVk4brcULv0rI

 

[ExploderWizard]

One of my campaigns has been running for 17 sessions. (Our sessions are short-2.5 hours each) and the most XP earned so far has been 3805 counting quest XP. Most of the group is 4th level and we play sandbox style and don't worry about XP per adventuring day or anything like that.

 

[Tormyr]

My gut feeling is that mid level leveling is definitely too fast.

There were some Legend & Lore articles early last year that specifically mentioned accelerating parties through the middle levels (10-11ish) to keep people engaged and help them get to the later levels where things get more interesting.

 

[DaveDash]

There were some Legend & Lore articles early last year that specifically mentioned accelerating parties through the middle levels (10-11ish) to keep people engaged and help them get to the later levels where things get more interesting.

That appears to match my data (see above).

I'm not going to argue that is a good or bad thing, but it just feels off to me, since historically level progression has gotten a lot slower in D&D as you get higher up. It also explains why it feels like my now 13th level party has been "flying" through the levels.

 

[Tormyr]

That appears to match my data (see above).

I'm not going to argue that is a good or bad thing, but it just feels off to me, since historically level progression has gotten a lot slower in D&D as you get higher up. It also explains why it feels like my now 13th level party has been "flying" through the levels.

I think this is one place where the disconnect between adjusted encounter xp for the purpose of encounter building and the xp being award only for the monster's actuall xp value becomes useful. If each of those medium encounters was composed of 3 monsters, the adjusted XP value would be double what is awarded to the PCs. So the encounters total per level would double. At higher levels, there is an increased possibility of even more creatures being used per encounter, so the disparity between the adjusted encounter xp and the awarded xp would increase, requiring even more encounters per level.

Your table shows probably the clearest reason of why the default is for the adjusted encounter xp and xp awarded are decoupled.

 

[Paraxis]

Hasn't the standard been 10-13 encounters per level since 3.0? Looks about the same, my groups usually do 3-4 encounters per session so often I don't use XP and just have them level up about every 3 game sessions or so. I don't think 5e changed any of that.

 

[DaveDash]

I think this is one place where the disconnect between adjusted encounter xp for the purpose of encounter building and the xp being award only for the monster's actuall xp value becomes useful. If each of those medium encounters was composed of 3 monsters, the adjusted XP value would be double what is awarded to the PCs. So the encounters total per level would double. At higher levels, there is an increased possibility of even more creatures being used per encounter, so the disparity between the adjusted encounter xp and the awarded xp would increase, requiring even more encounters per level.

Your table shows probably the clearest reason of why the default is for the adjusted encounter xp and xp awarded are decoupled.

It's 1:1 though, because the medium encounter budget is for one player. So presumably if you have three monsters, you would have four PC's, thus the advancement rate would actually be slightly lower. Unless you're talking about 3 monsters per player?

I worked out somewhere else on another post that basically for a party of four:

• An easy encounter is one monster that is 0.5 * the average CR of the party;
• Medium is one monster that is 1 * the average CR of the party;
• Hard is 1.5;
• Deadly is 2;

For example, a deadly encounter for a 10th level party is 2*CR10 monsters. It's not *exactly* integers like that, but it's close enough to be linear.

This would mean that if you throw nothing but deadly encounters at your party (or 2 monsters of their average level, every encounter) then they would level twice as fast. Hard they would level 1.5 times as fast. Easy they would level half as slow.

So when you consider that most parties are probably facing more hard & deadly encounters than easy, AND also potentially gaining quest completion XP, they'll probably level even faster. Is that what you are basically saying?

 

[Pickles JG]

That appears to match my data (see above).

I'm not going to argue that is a good or bad thing, but it just feels off to me, since historically level progression has gotten a lot slower in D&D as you get higher up. It also explains why it feels like my now 13th level party has been "flying" through the levels.

You have it back to front. 10 & 11 are particularly slow and the higher levels, which are not "more interesting" but "rarely obtained in practice" are sped through. It is back to front cf traditional D&D but that's deliberate as it was felt traditional was not working - noone ever played high level.

 

[DaveDash]

You have it back to front. 10 & 11 are particularly slow and the higher levels, which are not "more interesting" but "rarely obtained in practice" are sped through. It is back to front cf traditional D&D but that's deliberate as it was felt traditional was not working - noone ever played high level.

To get to level 10 it requires 11 encounters, to get to level 11 it requires 6 encounters. Then it's about 6 encounters per level after that. That's a massive increase in speed.

There may be valid design decisions for it, which is why I didn't want to comment on whether or not it's good or bad at this time. But my initial reaction so far has been "Wow my players are levelling super quick" past level 11. I'm not sure if right now if I like it, but ultimately you are right that most people never got to higher levels in traditional D&D.

Also if you look at 145 or so encounters to get to level 1-20, and assume 2-3 encounters per session, that's still probably a years worth of D&D to get to level 1-20, which seems about right.