Leveling speed

[maggot]

For me it works out to "way too fast at low levels, a bit too slow a high levels," so I would have to put it at overall a touch too fast.

Low level characters and the foes they encounter don't have a lot of options or hit points, so you can speed through encounters very quickly. I've never spent more than two game sessions at any of the lower levels (1st-3rd especially). I think this is too fast.

But at high levels, encounters often take longer and there are too many deaths to advance very fast. I've seen a character stuck at 13th-14th level for forty sessions or so because he would always die and lose a level. 3.5 made this worse by making true res cost so much. Even in 3.0, true res cost enough to make it only worth while ever now and again. I remember one fighter slowing losing the level battle in 3.0 and going down from 12th to 10th while the rest of the party went from 12th to 14th. Of course, 3.0's xp system made it impossible to catch up after level loss at higher levels. At least 3.5 fixes that. But still, the prevailenace of save or die at higher levels makes the level gain very slow.

At extremely high levels (17+) you have your own cleric use true res, and I suppose the game speeds up again. I haven't ever played at those levels, but I can see that it would happen.

 

[Ogre Mage]

We have found a good rate of progress is to gain one level about every 4 sessions. However, I find a somewhat faster progression is preferrable at the very low levels (1-3) and a somewhat slower progression is better at the high levels (12+).

Using this system, a campaign that plays once/week will rise from 1st to 12th level over the course of a year of gaming.

 

[Piratecat]

My PCs gain a level every 12-15 (3 hour, more or less) sessions. Since this campaign has run every other week for 12 years, that puts the highest lvl group members at 20th-22nd level, just starting to slip into epic levels. It's a lot slower than most games, but it really works well for us; the slow pace assures that people use and know their ability, and it gives us time for slow-developing plots.

 

[diaglo]

way too F' ing fast.

should be about 1 level per year imo

 

[Li Shenron]

I voted "too fast" but just a little too fast actually. Also I think that it is too fast at higher levels, while it is more acceptable at lower levels. of course, since the speed is basically contant, that implies that I think progression should be slower at higher levels than lower levels...

 

[Gnarlo]

If I still got to play the way I did back in the halcyon days of college, it would be too fast. However, I'm now in the seemingly common group of "job, wife, kids, mortgage; multiply times number of players" and it is a good speed; they all might one day see a level over 10 (something that never happened in our college game).

I think the 3e XP systems works fine for 2 core demographics - (1) powergaming munchkins who want the kewl powerz without having to wait a long time, and (2) older gamers who only get to play occasionally.

You've left out (3) gamers that wish to play more than one campaign / setting in their life and wish to try out various races and classes to see what they can do. This is not necessarily a subset of (2), if I had tons more time to play, I know I'd still want to give it a shot at playing various and sundry different combinations without necessarily keeping 3 or 4 campaigns straight in my head at the same time.

 

[3catcircus]

Just scale the XP awards

I simply scale the xp awards - typically 1/2 to 2/3 of the "by-the-book" xp awards. I do this based upon the results of the encounters.

For example, I had an encounter where I had the party facing diseased, raging orc barbarians that explode when killed, spraying infected goo in a 10 foot radius. Since this was an outdoor encounter, the party elected to simply remain mounted and attack from a distance, using missile weapons. Because of this, the "actual" CR became much less than the "book" CR.

Sure, you may argue that I am penalizing players for using sound tactics, but I see it differently. I see it as the party had already learned how to deal with diseased, exploding orcs previously, so this encounter was not a learning experience - hence less of a challenge. As an analogy, think about a computer game or a Rubik's Cube, or anything else - once you've figured out/overcome the thing, it is no longer as challenging, right?

As to my own Sunday afternoon games, I've been DMing it for about 6-8 months, nearly every weekend, and the party *just* made 5th level.

 

[Psion]

I said "about right", but that's really sort of a situation sensitive question. It's about right for the campaign I am running right now, which I have only modestly slower than the book's assumption. It was too fast for my extended campaign, so I slowed it down quite a bit for that game.

The playtest rules had a neat little rule that I think was useful in this vein. You define a level range you define as the range you want to spend the most time in. You increase your award below the bottom level, and you decease the award after the high end level.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

way too F' ing fast.

should be about 1 level per year imo

Erg.

20 years to hit 20th level? A year of gaming as a 1st level character? Blargh. It shouldn't take a player longer to progress through the PHB levels than it would to go from kindergarten to PhD.

I tend to use XP progression as is, with variances per individual campaign. For a longer, epic campaign, I slow it down. If I want to run a standard heroic journey, then as is works for me.

At the same time, I incorporate a lot of passage of time in most games, so that while the campaign occurs over a short time in the real world, it takes place over decades (usually) in game time.

Patrick Y.

 

[diaglo]

It shouldn't take a player longer to progress through the PHB levels than it would to go from kindergarten to PhD.

Blarg...

so you have Epic Lvl Commoners in abundance i gather. and they are only what? 20 years old.

Meh.. no thank you.