Leveling speed

[Darklone]

I prefer status quo settings where powerful players (level 10+) have a huge impact.

And campaigns are for me a story to run through, not a range of levels to get within a certain time. One of the best campaigns I played as a player included only two level ups within 9 months, but the story was enormous.

The DMG pace of advancement does not fit to my taste, but as Crothian mentioned, that's not a problem at all.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

Blarg...

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

Meh.. no thank you.

I'm talking about real world reality here, not game time reality. Advancing 1 level each year is two decades of play to go from level 1 to 20. My oldest son is 5 - If I started a new campaign tomorrow, that would mean he'd have likely graduated from college by the time my character hit 20th level.

If you were talking 1 level per year as a measure of campaign time, then that's still a shaky descriptor. Given that 1 session can cover a year of game time (and has several times, in several of my campaigns), that could still mean 1st - 20th level over a few months of real time play.


And epic level commoners at age 20? No such thing. All my NPCs are 16 year old, 15th level fighters/15th level Wizards/10th level oozemasters who've retired to open roadside inns.

Patrick Y.

 

[diaglo]

I'm talking about real world reality here, not game time reality. Advancing 1 level each year is two decades of play to go from level 1 to 20.

yup. that's right. 19 years to go from lvl 1 to lvl 20.

we played 10+ years... 1 month shy of 11 years really.

 

[Psion]

I see here most people as saying "as is" or slower.

Not a lot of people who actually want it FASTER than the book, it seems.

 

[maddman75]

Man, I can't believe so many people do all that math - figuring out EL and CR and looking up XP on the table, then multiplying it by 3/4 or 1/2...too much for me.

I use arbitrary DM fiat method of XP calculation. IOW, when its time to level I say 'okay guys, you gain <amount to give them the next level>. I usually tie to to campaign events as well. The default method is made for new DMs and groups that go on dungeon crawls and have so many encounters per sessions. I tend not to even think in terms of encounters and enemies anymore, but scenes, situations, and characters. And I doubt I'll ever again use a "dungeon" that consists of more than ten rooms or so. The CR/EL system just wouldn't work for me.

Not that I'm knocking it, heck I'd have loved to have had something like that when I was cutting my teeth in AD&D, eyeballing stats and trying to figure out if four owlbears would be a good fun fight or a party kill. But if you don't like the level or advancement, why not chuck the whole thing and just level them when they should level?

 

[Umbran]

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

Not a fiar comparison, diaglo. ARP was talking about what happens to a player character. Commoners are generally NPCs. While they work by the same rules, they have vastly different experiences than the PCs, and so will advance at a slower rate.

 

[MonsterMash]

It feels too fast to me even though my group has been playing very occasionally. In my campaign I use a revised XP chart rather than reduce the standard awards so the XP required goes: 2000, 6000, 12000, etc.

Got to admit I thinking about moving away from using the CR/EL based system to a per session one with adjustments for how well the group has role played, solved problems, won in combats.

For this I'd probably say that a group should level up every 5th session so the amount of XP per session will be a base figure of 1/2 x 1/5 x amount to reach next level plus possible bonuses, so using the normal values if a group is going from 2nd to 3rd so 2000 xp required then they will get 1/2 x 1/5 x 2000 = 200xp per session base + say 1% award for RP = 20xp + 10% award for winning a melee/dealing with a monster = 200xp so for one session I could award 420xp and for another I could adjust those percentages, but I would not want to just give a flat figure for each session.

 

[KB9JMQ]

I think the current rate of advancement is just fine.
I am just tired of keeping track of everything to do with XP
I think I will just level up my players every dozen encounters adn go from there.
Anyone else do this ? How has it worked ?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

It's OK the way it is. Lower levels go quite fast, which is OK, since the options are limited, and the danger of being killed by a single bad roll is higher, and later it will slow down, just on time when the "interesting part" of the campaign starts (major events happen, you start to see behind the scenes and perceive the big picture, and so on).

I like to reach level 20, maybe beyond, in a campaign, and since it's never sure wether the group will remain vor several decades, it's nice you get a story and character done in a couple of years, before some of the less dedicated players lose interest, others get called away by life (moving away, starting time-demanding studies or jobs and so on). You can always make another campaign afterwards. In fact the group I started playing 3e with is - after a short trip to StarGate - back in the realms, and the old campaign, which was in the very same realms, has its effects on the new (for example, a new player who joined for this campaign, plays a bladesinger, and his teacher was a pupil of my old bladesinger, and he is a follower of my old bladesinger, who ascended to demi-godhood at the end of the old campaign).

 

[Ourph]

IMO the argument that a DM controls the rate of progression is only valid if you assume the DM is willing to change the theme of his campaign to match the desired XP progression.

I like a combat/strategy oriented game with numerous encounters per session. The XP awards for combat are too high to allow slow leveling in such a campaign. I also prefer leveling to slow down as the characters gain levels.

I don't run D20 D&D games anymore, but when I did, combat XP was always given out according to the equation:

Monster CR/avg. party level x 200XP

So for a party of 4 characters, each encounter with a creature of CR equal to the party's average level yields 50XP per character. In my games, this meant the party advanced from 1st to 2nd level in 3-4 game sessions (~25 encounters), from 2nd to 3rd in about 7-9 game sessions (~50 encounters) and so on. This made for a campaign where the party spent a lot of time at mid-levels where lots of cool abilities, spells, etc. started to kick in and everyone could really get to know their abilities before moving on.

Two players in the group had a real problem with this slow progression, but the other 3 thought it was great.