How Long to Reach 10th Level

[Ahnehnois]

It should take forever to get to 10th level at 2 hours a week. So I guess that's.. More than 24 months.

Should? Really?

Not that 20-year campaigns are a bad thing, but they are completely unrealistic and/or innappropriate for most people. How many people live in one place for that long, know each other and get along with each other for that long, or have so much free time that they can maitain regular sessions for that long? I would also think that most groups would want to try different DMs and styles and roll up new characters on a regular basis, which means either running multiple games (very time consuming) or starting new ones. Don't get me wrong, I think that playing a long-term game like that would be great, but it's not something I would consider strongly when designing a game. People who are expert enough to do that can handle the rules implications themselves. Conversely, people who play campaigns that never last more than a year and can't run a session every week really need to experience the breadth of the game.

Then again, I'll also say what I said the first time around, that pace is for the individual groups to determine, and wide variation should be expected. For instance, the 3e assumption that 13.3 encounters are needed to gain a level is completely ridiculous. I really don't want to see any one number for something like that. If you know you're playing long-term, it might be 50. If you know you're crushed for time, it might be 2 or 3 (which it usually is for me).

 

[jodyjohnson]

In my experience, we levelled fastest in 1e (with XP for gold & magic and super fast combat but minus frequent deaths - and the normal TPK between 7-10th level), then 3e with the group easily handling CR+4 or higher combats, with 4e and 2e bringing up the rear - one for long fight times and the other for very small xp rewards combined with high deaths rates.

As a fan of 4e I would still like to go back to a 1e/2e level range (1st to 10th or so) but with balanced higher levels if we want to keep going.

I have thousands of miniatures and hundreds of adventures. Grinding through a single adventure (HPE) every 4 months will only let us use a small fraction of those resources.

At my current stage of life I'd like to complete a 1st to teens Adventure Path in about the time it takes to publish it. 6-8 months (16-18 sessions).

I'd like to do a Pathfinder Society or Living Forgotten Realms scenario in a 3 hour session.

45 minute to an hour encounters are too long for us (that's with char-op builds and roughly 1/2 hit points for monsters).

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

My problem with leveling every session is that the players rarely gain system mastery o er their character sheet. Right noe I am running a game at 4 hour sessions once a month and we level up every 3 to 5 sessions. Even at that pace my players forget what their PCs can do.

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[The Red King]

Thats about right for my campaign. We did 8 levels in about 10 months of playing. Longer sessions, and sometimes we dont get to play, or someone else runs something.

 

[Dragoslav]

My problem with leveling every session is that the players rarely gain system mastery o er their character sheet. Right noe I am running a game at 4 hour sessions once a month and we level up every 3 to 5 sessions. Even at that pace my players forget what their PCs can do.

As someone in favor of being able to go from 1st level to max level in a 1-year long campaign, this is my biggest concern about being able to level up fast enough to make that possible.

The solutions, I can figure, would be one of these two:
1) Fewer powers (or no powers, as will apparently be core in 5e). I don't like this because the breadth of powers and its use in customizing your character is one of my favorite things about 4e.
2) Fewer levels. I don't really like this one, either, but I can't explain why. Maybe it's the lack of granularity. If you halved the number of levels (to 15), then you'd be getting twice as many new things to wrap your head around at each level, which seems just as conducive to a lack of system mastery as getting more features one at a time more frequently.

I'd prefer the second option, though, if it could be done properly.

 

[DEFCON 1]

10 levels over 1 year sounds like a pretty solid "average" game to me. Three years to complete a 1-30 game... yeah, I could see it. It would not be outrageous to use those as a starting point to determine the XP worth of monsters and the amount of XP to level up.

Obviously, some groups will give out less XP for slower leveling, others will give out more for faster... some of course will do away with XP altogether... but a Year Tier feels like a good middle ground from which groups can expand or condense in either direction.

 

[seregil]

Some of you seem to have missed a basic condition of the poll: "strictly by-the-book D&D campaign".

According to 4e, 10 encounters per level are necessary.

That's the "by the book" part. Change it if you want, but that is not what the poll is asking.

To be honest, I think they are trying, in a way, to nail down how much of your game is spent outside combat.

If your XP table is known, if the number of encounters to level is known and if you have a good handle on how long your average battle lasts, then the only variable you lack to know how much real time is needed to level is how much time is spent OUTSIDE combat.

Ask the question over ten levels and everything averages out.

Looking at my Obsidian Portal site, I can see that we started my current campaign in March 2010 and we have played 25 sessions. My group is now level 7 but we alternate campaigns with another game we play, so assume we play once month for about 4 hours.

That would mean we level every 3.5 sessions, or about every 15 hours. By their yardstick (104 hours a year), it would take us 17 months to reach level 10.

However, my gut tells me we are going slower than we used to. 4E combat is slower than 3.5, so I answered 1 year to the poll because that is what seems about right based on my experience from 1e, 2e, 3.x and 4e.

 

[Hussar]

Seregil - I would point out though that "encounter" doesn't necessarily mean combat. 3e and 4e (systems I know best) both have provisions for non-combat xp. While the 10 encounters per level (or 13 1/3 in 3e) is the baseline, there's nothing in there to really differentiate combat from non-combat encounters. Even in a by the book campaign.

 

[seregil]

Seregil - I would point out though that "encounter" doesn't necessarily mean combat. 3e and 4e (systems I know best) both have provisions for non-combat xp. While the 10 encounters per level (or 13 1/3 in 3e) is the baseline, there's nothing in there to really differentiate combat from non-combat encounters. Even in a by the book campaign.

Agreed. I also did not consider "story awards" which I do use but I still think they are trying to get a handle on what happens outside of the 'encounters' in terms of its impact on game time.

Mind you, levelling is the easiest thing to adjust in the game. As a DM, you can just give more or less XP, ignore it altogether or whatever fits your mood.

 

[Jacob Marley]

What struck me as interesting with this particular poll -- and it is something I hadn't noticed with their other polls -- was the existence of a double hump. Over a quarter of the respondents voted 4-6 months while another quarter voted 10-12 months with a fairly significant drop in preference in the 7-9 month category. I'm not sure what to make of this?

(For the record, I voted 13-18 months.)