Is advancement in 3.X D&D too SLOW?

[Geoffrey]

I used to really rue that in 1e/2e, spells above 5th or 6th level, high level druid abilities, etc., were pretty much just for show.

I agree. Those ninth-level spells are fun to use, so it should be realistically doable to have your magic-user reach 18th level. Why have all the high-level spells and such if no one can realistically ever use them?

There's a EGG article in The Strategic Review (go hunt it down in the Dragon Mag Archive) where he talks about how slow XP gain should be. His preference was that it be very slow indeed, much like Diaglo's example.

The article is also reprinted in Best of the Dragon (volume 1). Gary said that, assuming 50 to 75 sessions per year, it should take about one year to reach 9th-11th level, and an additional year for each 2 or 3 levels after that. However, both Gary and Dave (Arneson) refereed campaigns with an even slower progression than that. In the article Gary noted that his Greyhawk campaign was 4 years old and Dave's Blackmoor campaign was 5 years old, and in neither campaign had anyone yet exceeded 14th level.

While I'd love to be able to game every week, I simply do not have the opportunity. All my old gaming buddies have lost interest in RPGs, and I haven't been able to find any gamers congenial to my tastes. I'd feel lucky to be able to game once a month even. Given my situation, rapid level gain would be a plus. Going up a level at each session sounds appealing to me. If I could game all the time, I'd like the old Gygaxian progression.

 

[jokamachi]

My players don't level up that often. Sometimes it's 3-4 sessions between leveling up, but more likely 4-5 sessions.

 

[KB9JMQ]

After having played several campaigns in 3.0, I can tell that IMXP characters usually level up every 2-3 sessions, assuming each session has about 2-4 encounters. That's due to the fact that the vast majority of the encounters are of higher EL (or combined CR) than the party. The DMG says that you'll level up every 4 sessions if you run 3-4 encounters with a monster of CR equal to the party level; but such an encounter does not happen often at all in our case, because it's too easy and we always want a challenging encounter.

I my experience (3.0 & 3.5) I find this idea to be very accurate.
My group seems to level every 2-3 sessions which is ok with me but I do seem to have to have combat encounters much tougher than recommended to make it feel like a challenge.

 

[TheGM]

Easy come, easy go.

I've been DMing since 1978. Just like anything else gained too quickly or easily, a character that takes years to build is the character most deeply loved and wanted.
I believe there are more casual gamers now than ever before and their gaming habits are probably based much more on quick gratification than long term building of characters or even creating family lines within a campaign.
My experience is that a really good DM can properly set up a world and tell stories well enough so that by the time a character reaches 15th level or so, the player really feels he has worked, struggled, and suffered to gain everything that character has and becomes much more possesive of said character knowing that he actually earned every gold piece and experience point.
In the "Old Days" when there was mostly hardcore gamers playing we only had a couple books to use for rules and as a DM had to rely heavily on what I could make up and what novels I had read to create the world around the players. Perhaps there are too many supplements and books today and people aren't being challenged to be a great DM so the games they oversee are perhaps lacking in quality and creativity because they rely too heavily on the written words and fail when it comes to substance.

It takes even longer to get to high levels in my campaigns because I give only half of the experience points the books recommend while giving monsters the max in hit points. It's tough but I run a fair campaign and nobody's too worried about what level they are. We just game. And to this day I seem to have people I don't even know, who have only heard about some of the adventures, asking me to DM for thier group because the players back then and now feel real pride and attachment to their characters, they still brag about their accomplishments and not at all about what level they were or are..

If anyone is really too worried about their characters level and not the gameplay itself then go ahead and start them at tenth level or higher. It all comes back to how engaged the players are and them not wanting the session to ever stop. That's my experience.

Zogmo

You said it, what more can I add?

If your game degenerates to "what level am I and am I min/maxed enough?", then opportunities to enjoy the game are being lost.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

My players don't level up that often. Sometimes it's 3-4 sessions between leveling up, but more likely 4-5 sessions.

Yeah, that is the rate I like too.

 

[Darkness]

For some others, below 5th is anethema.

Guilty as charged. Well, sometimes I have my players start at 4th level, but usually it's 6th. Then again, I'm not the biggest fan of the higher levels (13+, say - and the higher, the less I generally like it) either.

 

[S'mon]

I my experience (3.0 & 3.5) I find this idea to be very accurate.
My group seems to level every 2-3 sessions which is ok with me but I do seem to have to have combat encounters much tougher than recommended to make it feel like a challenge.

Which I think everyone does - because a EL= party level encounter rarely makes players think "we might lose/die", most GMs and most scenarios' typical ELs are around +1 to +2 over party level, with +3 not uncommon. Which means more XP & faster advancement. Giving half XP seems to mean levelling about every 5 4-hour sessions, which to me is a much better rate.