D&D General Is it right for The Pcs to choose to not go up to 6th level straight away simply because they'll be too strong for several very good adventures?

[JMISBEST]

A Friend I know is part of a group and she has asked me to ask a question on behalf of her and her 4 follow players. What do you think?

The question is is it right for The Pcs to choose to not go up to 6th level straight away simply because if they do then they will be too strong for several very good adventures?

Basically their GM has convinced them to delay advancing to 6th level because the rules don't say that you don't have to go up a level straight away, which means you can delay it if you want, and if they do advance to 6th level straight away then they'll be too powerful for several very good adventures

My thinking is that theirs 3 reason why their isn't, or should be, a problem. The 1st reason is that the rules don't say that you have to go up a level straight away, which means you can delay it if you want, the 2nd reason is that I don't know if the players know but I do know that their GM's right and if their characters do advance to 6th level straight away then their characters will be too powerful for several very good adventures and the 3rd reason is because even though The GM asked the players to do this they didn't have to agree but they did. What do you think?

 

[DrunkonDuty]

If everyone is on board with it, then sure, hold off on levelling and play some more cool adventures. There's no need to level at a particular pace.

 

[DeviousQuail]

Totally fine to hold off. No one is going to steal their character sheets and level them up in the middle of the night against their will.

Another option is for the GM to augment those really cool adventures to be challenging to higher level players. The jump from 5th to 6th isn't crazy so it shouldn't take too much to make it work.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I mean, just treat it as milestone leveling. There's no set pace when you do that.

 

[JMISBEST]

Totally fine to hold off. No one is going to steal their character sheets and level them up in the middle of the night against their will.

Another option is for the GM to augment those really cool adventures to be challenging to higher level players. The jump from 5th to 6th isn't crazy so it shouldn't take too much to make it work.

The 4 main reasons converting the adventures to be a challenge will be harder then normal are as follows and I admit that most of these issue's are caused by the fact that even though The GM's A Veteran that's got 27 years and 12 campaigns, this 1's the 13th, this is his 1st campaign that isn't A Traveller Campaign, which means that these were caused by him simply not asking for advise

Reason 1 is that all when creating their characters all 5 players managed to fairly create characters that had very high stats. 3 examples of that are that not 1 of The Characters had a stat that are less then 8, and only 1 of them had A Stat with A Initial Value of 8, every character other then The Cavalier had A 18 in their primary stat and of the 5 other stats every character had 1 that was A 15

Reason 2 is that 1 of The Characters is A Druid and The GM was foolish enough to let The Female Druid, that has A Male Player, go for size and power over variety and numbers, even worse is that its 1e ADAD, this means The Female Druid has 10HD of Animal Friend and as far as I know this is the only edition were A 5th level Druid has 10HD rather then 5HD worth and The GM was even more foolish when he decide to let his Male Players Female Druid get 1 5HD Owlbear and 1 5HD Giant Crocodile

Reason 3 is that 1 of The Characters is A Cavalier, which in 1e ADAD was A Class rather then A Subclass, the minimum stat requirements are/were Str 15, Con 15, Dex 15, Int 10, Wis 10 but no minimum Ch, this 1 started with Str 16, Con 15, Dex 15, Int 11, Wis 10 and Ch 8, as he's 5th level, he's accompanied by 2D4 or 7 1st level Men At Arms and as he's A 5th level Cavalier he must have A Armiger and A Scutifer, The Armigers A 3rd level Fighter and The Scutifers A 3rd level Ranger

Reason 4 is that The GM has been foolish enough that when going up A Level he's let The Player that controls The Magic User choose his characters new spells, so far The Players been reasonable when choosing his characters new spell but theirs always the risk that The Player will decide to stop reasonable when choosing his characters new spell

 

[Flamestrike]

A Friend I know is part of a group and she has asked me to ask a question on behalf of her and her 4 follow players. What do you think?

The question is is it right for The Pcs to choose to not go up to 6th level straight away simply because if they do then they will be too strong for several very good adventures?

Basically their GM has convinced them to delay advancing to 6th level because the rules don't say that you don't have to go up a level straight away, which means you can delay it if you want, and if they do advance to 6th level straight away then they'll be too powerful for several very good adventures

My thinking is that theirs 3 reason why their isn't, or should be, a problem. The 1st reason is that the rules don't say that you have to go up a level straight away, which means you can delay it if you want, the 2nd reason is that I don't know if the players know but I do know that their GM's right and if their characters do advance to 6th level straight away then their characters will be too powerful for several very good adventures and the 3rd reason is because even though The GM asked the players to do this they didn't have to agree but they did. What do you think?

Weird.

Why wouldnt the DM simply upscale the encounter difficulty. Adding a few extra monsters here or there, or simply buffing HP by 50 percent for the Solos and adding +2 to all D20 rolls and increasing damage dice by 1 or 2 steps each works wonders and is dead easy to do on the fly.

 

[TheSword]

Or a bigger question, why on earth is a DM with 27 years of gaming experience selected 1e as his first foray into D&D in 2022?

I’m conflicted on the original question. On one hand it sounds like a power issue, where level isn’t the biggest problem. If players agree, anything is possible. I seem to recall not leveling up in Baldurs Gate and just collecting XP so that when I found the companions they were low level and I could advance them how I wanted to!

On the other hand those good adventures aren’t going anywhere. Surely they can be used in their next campaign. Artificially postponing level up is just going to make the problem worse when you do level up.

 

[JMISBEST]

Or a bigger question, why on earth is a DM with 27 years of gaming experience selected 1e as his first foray into D&D in 2022?

I’m conflicted on the original question. On one hand it sounds like a power issue, where level isn’t the biggest problem. If players agree, anything is possible. I seem to recall not leveling up in Baldurs Gate and just collecting XP so that when I found the companions they were low level and I could advance them how I wanted to!

On the other hand those good adventures aren’t going anywhere. Surely they can be used in their next campaign. Artificially postponing level up is just going to make the problem worse when you do level up.

On the subject of why on earth is a DM with 27 years of gaming experience selected 1e as his first foray into D&D in 2022?, I will admit that I don't know for sure but I know enough about The GM in question to know that the most likely reason that he's doing it is because someone dared him too and The GM in question never refuse's or turns down a reasonable dare

 

[Shiroiken]

If this is 1E, then Reason #1 is wrong. Leveling requires downtime and training (gp), so the players have to take these actions to level. If the game doesn't provide the downtime to do so, then they'll continue to adventure without accumulating xp until they can spend the time and gp to do so. Given that the gp cost is higher than the xp requirement for most low levels, this was very common in games that didn't hand wave it.

Weird.

Why wouldnt the DM simply upscale the encounter difficulty. Adding a few extra monsters here or there, or simply buffing HP by 50 percent for the Solos and adding +2 to all D20 rolls and increasing damage dice by 1 or 2 steps each works wonders and is dead easy to do on the fly.

Because some spells and class abilities have the ability to trivialize aspects of the adventure. For example, Create Food & Water can destroy an adventure based on wilderness survival.

 

[JMISBEST]

If this is 1E, then Reason #1 is wrong. Leveling requires downtime and training (gp), so the players have to take these actions to level. If the game doesn't provide the downtime to do so, then they'll continue to adventure without accumulating xp until they can spend the time and gp to do so. Given that the gp cost is higher than the xp requirement for most low levels, this was very common in games that didn't hand wave it.


Because some spells and class abilities have the ability to trivialize aspects of the adventure. For example, Create Food & Water can destroy an adventure based on wilderness survival.

Sorry I'd forgotten that in DAD 1e leveling requires downtime and training (gp), so the players have to take these actions to level and as it was the player that's my friend that asked me to ask she must have also forgot