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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xethreau" data-source="post: 8711565" data-attributes="member: 57584">I miss the days in 4e where you could curate an entire dungeon with the rote mathematical guidelines that no matter the character level, X encounters yielded 1 character level. So I've very often wondered about how a similar system would work for 5e/A5e, and the fact that we now can design adventuring days based on Encounter Points goes a VERY long way. Indeed, as you will find later in this thread I did synthesize a Campaign Calendar that is A5e's equivalent of 4e encounter design! But the road was arduous, and discovering how many adventuring days there are per character level l made me reassess some of my fundamental assumptions of character math in 5e/A5e.My ApproachTo create a baseline analysis. These are the terms and assumptions I used.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Given: Encounter Points by character level per day</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Assumption: XP Per Encounter =  XP of a medium encounter for 4 characters with the XP divided equally.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There is not a clear pattern on how this number grows, so I had to input the figures by hand</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Clearly different assumptions about party and encounter composition might yield different results, but I thought this would be a good normative baseline. [Edit] A cursory glance reveals that a diet of only easy, hard, or deadly encounters all have XP per encounter point yields that vary wildly from a pure medium diet. (Higher difficulty, better XP yield ratio.) My suggestion would be to balance the ratio better by spending an equal number of encounter points on easy encounters as spent on hard and deadly. [/edit]</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">XP to Next Level = XP threshold for next level - XP threshold for the current level.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">XP per Day = Encounter Points * XP Per Encounter</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Adventuring Days to Next Level = XP to Next Level / XP per Day</li> </ul>[SPOILER="Table: Adventuring Days Per Level"]<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td>Level</td><td>Encounter Points per Day</td><td>XP Per Encounter (Medium @ 4, ÷4)</td><td>XP to Next Level</td><td>XP per Day</td><td>Adventuring Days to Next Level</td></tr><tr><td>1st</td><td>1</td><td>50</td><td>300</td><td>50</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>2nd</td><td>1</td><td>175</td><td>600</td><td>175</td><td>3.5</td></tr><tr><td>3rd</td><td>2</td><td>275</td><td>1,800</td><td>550</td><td>3.25</td></tr><tr><td>4th</td><td>2</td><td>450</td><td>3,800</td><td>900</td><td>4.25</td></tr><tr><td>5th</td><td>4</td><td>750</td><td>7,500</td><td>3000</td><td>2.5</td></tr><tr><td>6th</td><td>4</td><td>975</td><td>9,000</td><td>3900</td><td>2.3</td></tr><tr><td>7th</td><td>4</td><td>1250</td><td>11,000</td><td>5000</td><td>2.2</td></tr><tr><td>8th</td><td>4</td><td>1800</td><td>14,000</td><td>7200</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>9th</td><td>4</td><td>2100</td><td>16,000</td><td>8400</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>10th</td><td>4</td><td>2500</td><td>21,000</td><td>10000</td><td>2.1</td></tr><tr><td>11th</td><td>6</td><td>3250</td><td>15,000</td><td>19500</td><td>0.75</td></tr><tr><td>12th</td><td>6</td><td>3750</td><td>20,000</td><td>22500</td><td>0.9</td></tr><tr><td>13th</td><td>6</td><td>4500</td><td>20,000</td><td>27000</td><td>0.75</td></tr><tr><td>14th</td><td>6</td><td>5000</td><td>25,000</td><td>30000</td><td>0.8</td></tr><tr><td>15th</td><td>6</td><td>6250</td><td>30,000</td><td>37500</td><td>0.8</td></tr><tr><td>16th</td><td>6</td><td>8250</td><td>30,000</td><td>49500</td><td>0.6</td></tr><tr><td>17th</td><td>8</td><td>10250</td><td>40,000</td><td>82000</td><td>0.5</td></tr><tr><td>18th</td><td>8</td><td>15500</td><td>40,000</td><td>124000</td><td>0.33</td></tr><tr><td>19th</td><td>8</td><td>18750</td><td>50,000</td><td>150000</td><td>0.33</td></tr><tr><td>20th</td><td>8</td><td>n/a</td><td>n/a</td><td>n/a</td><td>n/a</td></tr></table>[/SPOILER]What do we see here?Looking at this chart, and assuming that my assumptions are reasonable and that the math looks similar for other party compositions, it looks like there is not a simple "one-size fits all" solution to top-down adventure design based on character level progression. The adventuring day per level of some levels is quite high, and others is quite low. In fact, adventuring days per level generally decreases at higher level, whereas I fully expected that figure to increase. If a player character finds themselves embroiled in medium challenges every day and spend all their Encounter Points, then (after rounding up adventuring days due to the long rest phenomenon)... PCs can reach 20th level after merely 44 full adventuring days.So where does this leave us? Discovering the length of an adventuring career (44 full adventuring days) leaves us with some ramifications on how to design campaignsOn the one hand, these findings validate an emergent, OSR approach to campaign design. The short adventuring career length means we don't have to worry all too much about top-down design. Adventuring days per level do not exhibit the exponential curve I expected to see, meaning that relying solely on the emergent encounter design and XP calculation will still produce organic campaigns of sensible duration. That said, whether players will even be able to achieve a full adventuring day depends on the tone and genre of the campaign. If the players can't make it to the City of Brass to <a href="https://xkcd.com/311/" target="_blank">beat up efreet after efreet,</a> they may not be able "get those gains." There are so many elder dragons on the planet, and there is (probably) only one terrasque. So an adventuring day of 1 or less looks like an easy goal to meet, but it may not be realistic or appropriate for the campaign.That said, there are those of us planners who do prefer to have some "top-down perspective" and norms. I like having these guidelines because it helps me to know how long a given story arch of the campaign should be. (I hate it when a side-quest spirals out into an entire mini-campaign… I'm looking at you, wererats!) The 44 adventuring day career means we can actually make an Encounter Point budget for how long we want a story arch to last. Sparing you a second math mini-essay, here's what that looks like:[SPOILER="Mini-Tool: Campaign Calendar"]Campaign Calendar<table style='width: 100%'><tr><td>Level</td><td>Encounter Points this level</td><td>Expected Adventuring Days</td></tr><tr><td>1st</td><td>6</td><td>6+</td></tr><tr><td>2nd</td><td>4</td><td>4+</td></tr><tr><td>3rd</td><td>7</td><td>4+</td></tr><tr><td>4th</td><td>8</td><td>5+</td></tr><tr><td>5th</td><td>10</td><td>3+</td></tr><tr><td>6th</td><td>10</td><td>3+</td></tr><tr><td>7th</td><td>9</td><td>3+</td></tr><tr><td>8th</td><td>8</td><td>2+</td></tr><tr><td>9th</td><td>8</td><td>2+</td></tr><tr><td>10th</td><td>9</td><td>3+</td></tr><tr><td>11th</td><td>5</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>12th</td><td>6</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>13th</td><td>5</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>14th</td><td>5</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>15th</td><td>5</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>16th</td><td>4</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>17th</td><td>4</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>18th</td><td>3</td><td>1+</td></tr><tr><td>19th</td><td>3</td><td>1+</td></tr></table>Note: Easy encounters yield less XP per Encounter Point. Hard and Deadly encounters yeild more XP per Encounter Point. My advice is to spend an equal number of Encounter points on Easy encounters as spent on Hard and Deadly encounters.[/SPOILER]Now, both the "emergent" and "top-down" approaches are to say nothing about downtime (edit: or travel time, thanks [USER=6796468]@Steampunkette[/USER] ). Moving 44 adventuring days to a work week (two rest days after 5 adventuring days) already puts us at 26.4 work weeks, or just under 7 months. Add extended vacations at brothels, seasons leading a faction, and years ruling a kingdom… [edit]And of course the traveling times between all this. [/edit] Now we begin to see an adventuring timeline that makes more narrative sense.—In conclusion, I hope you all found this analysis helpful! That is, I hope it is thought-provoking and provides utility and context as you design your campaigns. As always PEACH and let me know what you think! (And, especially since there is arithmetic involved here, please let me know if I glitched or otherwise missed something!) And, most especially, if you find the findings or approach here controversial, don't hesitate to say so!</blockquote>

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