D&D 5E How long does it take to level?

[DemoMonkey]

You're right! The math checks out, there SHOULD be a ton of high level adventurers. But...there aren't.

Why not?

Who or what is killing all the high level adventurers??

There's your campaign right there.

 

[overgeeked]

My current 5E group went from 1st to 5th in 23 sessions that range from 4 to 5 hours. In-game time that has been about three and a half months, but soon I am going to introducing my own version of "extended rests" based on MCDM's Strongholds and Followers, since they built a lodge and are building ties to the community.

I really hope MCDM does something focused on politics and intrigue. In a recent Twitch steam he mentioned loving spy movies. I'd love to see him do a pure political campaign and spy thriller book.

 

[ccs]

So I was killing time with Excel (like you do) and decided to take the assumptions of D&D5E at face value and see about how long in game it should take for a character to level up. This is kind of a tangent off the D&D world demographics thread, but I didn't want to derail that thread, so here's a shiny new one for this.

My assumptions are:

1. The party is four adventurers.

2. One medium encounter is the party facing one solo monster of a CR equal to the party's level.

3. The adventuring day consists of the recommended 6-8 medium encounters.

According to pure math, with 6 medium encounter per day, it would take 143.28 days to go from 1st level to 20th level. At 7 medium encounters per day, 122.81 days from 1-20. At 8 medium encounters per day, 107.46 days from 1-20. As an example, the Mighty Nein, the PCs from Critical Role campaign 2, went from 1st level to 16th level in 327 days. This is the equivalent to about 1.7 encounters per day. The rest are: 1 enc/day, 859.65 days to 20; 2 enc/day, 505.68 days to 20; 2 enc/day, 429.83 days to 20; 3 enc/day, 286.55 days to 20; 4 enc/day, 214.91 days to 20; 5 enc/day, 171.93 days to 20; 6 enc/day, 143.28 days to 20; 6 enc/day, 122.81 days to 20; 8 enc/day, 107.46 days to 20.

Considering how hardy adventurers are and how the game mechanics are stacked in their favor, most people who start the life of an adventurer would survive...and in a rather short period of time, you'd have a world dirty with high level characters. The hiccup would be parties between levels 1st and 4th because they wouldn't have access to resurrection spells. Revivify comes online at 5th. If the party has a cleric, celestial sorcerer, or wildfire druid. Even if adventurers are so rare that there's only one adventuring party formed per year, you'd still get four 20th level characters every year. Unless you consider things like adventurers retiring. A few too many near death or actual death experiences and the character hangs up their bedroll. Or they set out to accomplish some specific task, did so, then retired. Or they were trying to get a certain amount of gold for some purpose, then called it quits.

ETA: Yeah, characters advance however often the DM wants. I don't bother with XP and just use story-based advancement. This is just a post about the game's math. Not how it "should" be done.

There's a flaw in your assumptions. And that's that assuming adventures adventure (I.E. having those 6-8 encounters) every day until they max out.
I don't know how your campaigns run, but in 40 years I've never yet run a game where that pace has occurred. There's down time, hand waved or played, and days where no xp is really earned but story goals are still advanced, etc.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Levels are a game conceit so the players can be awarded with something tangible for their efforts playing the game, rather than just their memories of the adventures they went on. A board game allows you to "win" the game, which is the reward players go for usually in playing board games. Without a "win" situation in RPGs (other than "not dying")... the game needed an award. So becoming more and more powerful via levels became it. But levels themselves destroy the very fabric of world-building that many DMs try to create, because it makes characters ridiculously unbalanced compared to the rest of the people of the world.

 

[Shiroiken]

There's a flaw in your assumptions. And that's that assuming adventures adventure (I.E. having those 6-8 encounters) every day until they max out.
I don't know how your campaigns run, but in 40 years I've never yet run a game where that pace has occurred. There's down time, hand waved or played, and days where no xp is really earned but story goals are still advanced, etc.

But, but, but... the MATH says otherwise!

I've always hated whiteboard discussions. Yes, it is quite possible for PCs to gain levels very quickly. It's even possible for it to happen within a game year if an epic quest is involved. However, most games that use XP don't even come close to this pace. My first campaign went to level 18 in about a year and half in-game time, and it still felt somewhat rushed.

 

[Stalker0]

Here's the other thought. If we exclude the "chosen" PCs for a moment....than the real question is.....how much XP can an adventuring group reasonably obtain?

PCs have the benefit of the DM continuously scaling up their encounters (for most campaigns). But imagine if your 10th level guys are only finding 1st level or lower encounters the vast majority of the time. How long would it take to level up under that model?

Aka the goblin model....how fast can you level just killing goblins?

 

[Dausuul]

Considering how hardy adventurers are and how the game mechanics are stacked in their favor...

Whoa, hold up there. Are you including "level-appropriate encounters" as a game mechanic here? Some force steers a low-level party away from bumbling into an adult dragon's lair?

Because if not, then the mechanics are stacked in adventurers' favor in the same way that Russian roulette is. Each time you play, there's a 5 in 6 chance of winning. Pretty good odds... but you play again, and again, and again, and no matter how many times you win, you can only lose once. Resurrection magic doesn't do any good if the entire party is dragon chow.

 

[overgeeked]

Here's the other thought. If we exclude the "chosen" PCs for a moment....than the real question is.....how much XP can an adventuring group reasonably obtain?

PCs have the benefit of the DM continuously scaling up their encounters (for most campaigns). But imagine if your 10th level guys are only finding 1st level or lower encounters the vast majority of the time. How long would it take to level up under that model?

Aka the goblin model....how fast can you level just killing goblins?

1st-20th level takes 2,148,400 XP per character. Assuming 10 XP CR0 monsters. CR0: 214,840 monsters. CR1/8: 85,936 monsters. CR1/4: 42,968 monsters. CR1/2: 21,484 monsters. CR1: 10,742 monsters. If you're in a party of four, you'd need 4x the XP, so all those would be x4 as well. The baseline goblin is CR1/4, so 42,968 goblins per character, or 171,872 goblins for a party of four. So however many days it takes you to find and kill that many monsters of that CR.

 

[loverdrive]

You're right! The math checks out, there SHOULD be a ton of high level adventurers. But...there aren't.

Why not?

Who or what is killing all the high level adventurers??

There's your campaign right there.

Fermi Paradox, D&D edition

 

[Flamestrike]

As an example, the Mighty Nein, the PCs from Critical Role campaign 2, went from 1st level to 16th level in 327 days.

327 adventuring days, or game sessions?

They're different things.