Leveling speed

[Treebore]

I find half works better. My players actually use feats and spells before they make new levels. They develop a much deeper character history. Much better all around. I also use the other rules to adjust encounter xp's based on their difficulty.

 

[Foundry of Decay]

For me and my group, its at the perfect balance right now. We play infrequently at best (due to work and family), so I'd rather not sit for an entire year levelling only once.

But that's just in my case. I'm sure groups who meet once a week or two will find that they are levelling pretty quickly.

 

[devilbat]

This has been my number one complaint about 3.X.

I much prefer the amount of xp required to level for the different classes in second edition.

The group I DM plays once a week, for four hours. If I'm running a combat intensive game such as a dungeon crawl, I find the players are levelling far too quickly, especially between first and seventh level. Of course, I admit to being fairly generous with role playing bonuses.

 

[Dark Jezter]

In my expirience, the leveling speed in 3e is just about perfect. I only game once every 1-2 weeks, because I spend other evenings doing things like watching TV, exercising, hanging out with non-gamer friends, going to movies, playing video games, reading, going on dates, et cetera. The default 3e leveling speed is slow enough to give players a sense of accomplishment when they finally do level, but fast enough that they will be able to expirience a wide range of levels over the course of a typical 12-18 month campaign.

If I gamed several nights a week, I might feel compelled to slow down the rate at which characters gain levels, but since I don't, I'm content with the default leveling speed.

 

[Orius]

I've always felt it was a little too fast. I understand that leveling has been sped up because people don't have the time to game like they did when they were kids, but leveling occurs a little too quickly at the lower levels for my taste. This my have something to do with the fact that I'd grown accustomed to the glacial pace at which PCs advanced in 2e.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I have given up on book exp, giving 1/3 the amount needed to level for each session. we play 6-8 hrs 3 out of four weeks so its about a level a month.
This was done so that we didn't waste so much time finding trainers and filling downtime for those who were'nt training. Sesssions can run 2-3 combats usually at +1-3 ECL. This seems to have slowed the pace of advancement so that more time is spent playing with the powers of each new level.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Flawed poll

As others have pointed out, the poll is flawed. The DM ultimately controls how much experience is awarded, and when the players can level up.

I use default experience awards for combat, and pull other totals out of my arse for non combat encounters. I also only allow the players to level up when it makes sense for that to happen. This usually means at the beginning of the next game in which they leveled up. And this only happens when they can get to a 'safe' area and go for a bit with no combat.

And on top of that, I pretty much keep the players at the same overall experience level. This simplifies the problem of running fights where one player would be a insta-corpse or where one player can clear the opponents out single handedly.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Azul]

Well, as I DM I tend to get some flak from my players because they feel under-reward them when I cut down the XP awards below the default ones, even though they are having a great time. I am convinced it is an imagined problem, and I even think they will have less fun when I award default XP.

As a player I must follow the rules of the DM's I play with. For example: when my character gets Baleful Polymorph I think: cool, a new tool! But usually I only succesfully Baleful Polymorph one opponent before my character gets 'better spells' such as Disintegrate and Flesh to Stone. And as time (and levels) go on the chance to make use of the spell diminish even further.

And I just feel plain weird when getting Still Spell and a few levels later choosing another feat like Extend spell without having used Still Spell once.

I've had similar issues with my group. They grumble about campaigns escalating in power too fast if I give default XP but suffer the imagined problem of feeling short-changed if they don't level fast enough.

I seem to have found a "comfort zone" at roughly 1/2 the recommend pace of XP. I have also taken to keeping player XP hidden, simply telling the players when they level and answering in rough amounts if they ask what their XP are at (e.g. about half-way to the next level).

 

[Fauxargent]

We find it's pretty quick at low levels (1-3rd) and then settles down to about right at mid levels (5th-12th). We find we are leveling up about once every 6 weeks (playing 4 hours every week).

This suits me fine since I dislike low levels anyway and would prefer to start every campaign at 3rd.

My only gripe is that the xp for CR1 creatures drops off too slowly with party level.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I remember near the launch of 3e there was a discussion by the designers that mentioned several points that had figured into their design of the xp scales.

1. Their research suggested that on average campaigns lasted for a certain period of time (I forget what period) and with x number of games a month.

2. They wanted to allow PC's to advance their characters through all 20 levels in the lifespan of a campaign (the older xp charts made it almost impossible to gain levels much after 12th/13th and it was rare to get to use the high level powers)

i.e. they wanted to design it in such a way that 'by the book' a campaign could take a party from 1st to 20th level within the average lifespan of a campaign.


As a personal view I think the standard rate seems too quick, mostly because there is nothing to stop it all happening in too short an elapsed time - one spring you're a wet-nosed apprentice who can't get a drink in a bar, before winter you're tossing delayed blast fireballs into said establishment!

Please excuse the hyperbole to make my point From the point of view of a DM the party (by straight DMG) don't spend long enough at a given level to allow political events and grand schemes to move on appropriately. Another problem is that since the next level is so frequently within reach, it can make PC's have a more "experience grabbing" mentality sometimes.

Having said that, it is nice as a player to get to the higher levels in a reasonable amount of time, especially with less playing time available nowadays, so I concede that one of the designers original goals really was a sound one!

Cheers