D&D 5E How Long Does it Take to Reach 20th Level: A Brief Explanation

[Snarf Zagyg]

As part of my continuing series, No one reads the DMG, and in conjunction with another of my continuing series, Ima read the DMG 'cuz you dun wanna!, I present the following extended essay:

How long does it take to reach 20th Level in 5e?

clears throat

It takes 1.6316 Complete Official Marvel MCUs.
As of the Release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Spoiler: Source and Math

Source is DMG p. 261

Every session is assumed to be four hours.
It takes four sessions to reach fourth level.
Every level thereafter is "two to three sessions."
Assuming 2.5 sessions for every subsequent level in 5e, then:

4x(4+(2.5*16))=176

It takes 40 sessions to advance from 4th level to 20th level. That's a total of 44 sessions from first level to 20th level.
At four hours a session, it's 176 hours.

Which is 10,560 minutes.

Meanwhile, the total runtime of MCU movies and series to date from Phase 1 to Phase 4 is 6472 minutes. Source.

Note- The Netflix series is an additional 8631 minutes.
Agents of Shield is an additional 6043 minutes.
Agent Carter is an additional 794 minutes.

So, do you want to be watch superheroes, or be a superhero? The choice ... is yours.

 

[TwoSix]

10 hours per level doesn't seem like a lot to those of experienced in the AD&D tradition, but it definitely tracks with the games I've been in during the modern era.

One of my oft-thought possible house rules is moving long rest recharge from being per-rest to per-level, precisely because you don't really do a ton of combat encounters over the course of 10 hours. I've definitely had games where we've gone 10+ hours without getting to a natural long rest point. I actually have rules for what happens when the characters level during the course of the adventuring day.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

10 hours per level doesn't seem like a lot to those of experienced in the AD&D tradition, but it definitely tracks with the games I've been in during the modern era.

One of the things that I like is that they arranged is so that the 1-20 loop takes a year of play, meeting once a week, four hours a pop, with a buffer built in for not meeting for eight weeks out of the year.

You can play with the numbers (longer sessions, meeting less, etc.), but that's both an accomplishment while not being too intensive to be overly daunting ... like the AD&D level climb could be.

 

[Redneckomancer]

10,560 minutes,
10,560 moments oh dear,
10,560 minutes, How do you campaign,
Campaign for a year?
In combats, In Dex-saves, in rations, in chopped up goblins
In hexes, in point crawls, in in-jokes, in even more combat
In 10,560 minutes how do you measure a year in the life?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I confess my group is not following the DMG on this point. Session 22 occurred recently, and we should be level 6 soon, maybe around session 26. Are people progressing this quickly? It really doesn't leave time to enjoy the new shiny power each level gives (ok, there are some empty levels, but not that much...)

 

[Hex08]

Never since I relish killing my players well before then. Mwa-ha-ha

 

[Redneckomancer]

One of the things that I like is that they arranged is so that the 1-20 loop takes a year of play, meeting once a week, four hours a pop, with a buffer built in for not meeting for eight weeks out of the year.

You can play with the numbers (longer sessions, meeting less, etc.), but that's both an accomplishment while not being too intensive to be overly daunting ... like the AD&D level climb could be.

Well now I'm curious, this is still using the XP tables for level ups correct? Not milestones? How long then is an average combat supposed to last at the table?

 

[DND_Reborn]

FYI, it took about 100 "4-hour" sessions for my group to play a 1-20 level game, almost two years IRL of gaming, using XP leveling.

In other threads, most people agreed with this, with reaching level 10-12 in one year and then making it to 20th within the second year.

The idea of doing it in 44 sessions is ridiculously fast IMO. Compared to XP leveling, you would likely earn only about half the XP you need to actually reach those levels.

That is my experience, anyway. YMMV.

 

[Lanefan]

I confess my group is not following the DMG on this point. Session 22 occurred recently, and we should be level 6 soon, maybe around session 26. Are people progressing this quickly? It really doesn't leave time to enjoy the new shiny power each level gives (ok, there are some empty levels, but not that much...)

This is a key point right here, bolded. You've only just figured out what you can do at one level and got comfortable with it then bang, there's the next one.

Also, isn't 5e's "thinking" built around it taking something like 13 combats or encounters to level up each time? I know I've heard that number somewhere, but I might be thinking of the wrong edition.

Still, hear me out: Snarf is suggesting it takes about (52-8=) 44 4-hour sessions to go from 1-20. That's a level every 2-and-a-quarter-ish sessions, meaning that to keep this pace (and assuming that 13-per-level is correct) you've got to get through somewhere between 5 and 6 combats or encounters per session. That's a pretty torrid and probably unsustainable pace at anything other than very low levels.

It also means that, again if one goes by the design paradigm of 6-8 encounters per day (let's say 7, for simplicity), you're going to earn a level approximately every other in-game day - meaning that in the setting you could go from 1-20 in less than a month and a half if you don't take any downtime.

Yeah, something doesn't quite make sense with this...

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

It took us 5 years to get to lvl 15. We have been stuck there since the pandemic