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

[Tormyr]

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?

Regardless of how deadly the encounter is, the multiplier is keyed off of the number of monsters and PCs. To borrow 4 members of your 13th level party:

If the 4 players fight 1 CR 13 monster at 10,000 xp, then the encounter budget multiplier is 1. The 10,000 adjusted encounter xp is a medium encounter for the party. The 10,000 XP is divided among the party, and each PC receives 2,500xp

If the 4 players fight 3 CR 5 monsters at 1,800 xp each, then the encounter budget multiplier is 2. The 5,400 xp for the 3 monsters is adjusted to 10,800 xp for the purposes of determining encounter difficulty only. The original 5,400 xp for the 3 monsters is divided among the party, and each PC receives 1,350 xp.

 

[Pickles JG]

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.

You are reading your own chart wrong - it takes 6 to get to 12th when you are 11th. 11th itself is like a midseason finale special hump level I doubt it is such a massive power bump as 5th though.

I have no opinion about this yet I am just rehashing what I understand WotC have said. I don't really use XP anymore.
Par per WotC is 1 session for the first couple of levels then 2-3 until 11th then 2 from then on. I think this is spelled out somewhere - Adventurers league maybe, but your data supports that.

 

[DaveDash]

Regardless of how deadly the encounter is, the multiplier is keyed off of the number of monsters and PCs. To borrow 4 members of your 13th level party:

If the 4 players fight 1 CR 13 monster at 10,000 xp, then the encounter budget multiplier is 1. The 10,000 adjusted encounter xp is a medium encounter for the party. The 10,000 XP is divided among the party, and each PC receives 2,500xp

If the 4 players fight 3 CR 5 monsters at 1,800 xp each, then the encounter budget multiplier is 2. The 5,400 xp for the 3 monsters is adjusted to 10,800 xp for the purposes of determining encounter difficulty only. The original 5,400 xp for the 3 monsters is divided among the party, and each PC receives 1,350 xp.

Right, I understand what you're talking about now.

So yes, DM's using larger numbers of lower CR creatures will be awarding less XP. This is actually what I have been doing to "slow down" the pace of my group levelling. So instead of using 2x CR13 monsters to create a "Deadly" encounter, I'll use 1xCR13 and x number of lower CR creatures.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I have worked it out based on medium encounters, and the recommended xp budget for an adventuring day
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Data:
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Thanks! That helps. Also thanks to the rest of the posts!

Par per WotC is 1 session for the first couple of levels then 2-3 until 11th then 2 from then on. I think this is spelled out somewhere - Adventurers league maybe, but your data supports that.

This is extremely useful. Would you have any sort of source document? I'd be interested in seeing exactly how they describe it.