D&D 2E Leveling Up in 2E

[GenghisDon]

I grew up on 2E and DM'ed one campaign to the point where most of the characters were levels 7 and 8. I felt like once they reached that point however the XP required to get to level 9 was just a massive amount and prohibitive. If I remember correctly a PC had to collect something like all the XP he had gained to that point just to get to level 9 or 8. Getting up even higher in levels beyond 9 was seemingly impossible. I always liked to play by the letter and spirit of the rules. I handed out XP for combat (even going so far as to figure out how much XP each HP a monster had was worth), 1 XP per gold piece or treasure value collected, XP for magic items and weapons, XP for adventure or mission completion, good roleplaying, great ideas, etc. I always liked how hard it was to get up to those higher levels since there really shouldn't be so many super heroes running around in a world. 5E is not nearly as hard which is cool because it's fun to get to play those powered up characters but I miss that old school approach of making you earn it. If you got a character to level 15 or so you would have had to have played dozens and dozens of adventures in your campaign. And lived!

I was just curious how other DMs handled/handle XP and leveling up in 2E when it takes such enormous amounts of XP to level up. Aside from doing automatic level ups after adventures or just giving the PCs tons and tons of treasure or giving them huge mission complete XP rewards how did other DMs handle this?

I see this sort of complaint often, but never understand it fully.

OK, in ALL the AD&D & classic D&D games, pretty much every class/level progression is a doubling of XP per level, up until "name level", THEN it becomes a static (large) number thereafter. For most classes, the difference between 10 & 11 or 17 & 18 are the same. Thus, VHL play is NOT slower, it picks up in pace, actually (face greater challenges, requirements the same).

However, it IS fairly slow in general at the "top" levels. The "top levels" are more or less 10+. Now, you seem to have used most, or all, of the optional 2e XP methods, and having played that game a great deal, I simply cannot understand how advancement would be slow that way. It should be fast enough for anyone. If somehow it is not, you could double amounts perhaps. I think you ought try what you say u did before though.

L15 characters probably HAVE died a few times. 24+ adventures for L15? probably/possibly.


When I play 2e I use the options, individual class options, and NOT GP=XP (classic & 1e are GP & monster only, I use that there). Seems fast enough for me/my players. A major factor, for any of those older games, is that we play a pretty rapid paced, conflict heavy game. They lend themselves to such. Way less options for combat, forget moving figurines about, smaller numbers to work with, it all leads to much more getting done. I cannot speak to 5e at all, but for, say, 3.5e, yes it advanced quickly too, as each encounter gave a much bigger % of the way to the next level, but we'd only get a tiny fraction as many encounters done in the same time period. It was different, and just as good, in a different way. Actually, it advanced a bit too fast, as players never got anywhere near as good at playing their character as they do in slower advancing games, because one is always adding new abilities/changing considerably.

Players are terrible at knowing what will make a good, satisfying game; rules & ideas on that they might have are almost always wrong headed. People think they want X/getting X will make them happy, but it's not that simple. Most modern players would be better served being slowed down some regarding level advancement. They are always hungry for more levels, XP, etc, but that doesn't mean you try to fill the glutton's gut as fast as u can.


EDIT: and yes, xp per hp is definitely a 1e thing. Not that it's all THAT different overall, but 1e had fine advancement rates too IMHO.

On the retiring at L10 or so...yes, that's what Gary & company did back in the early days (mostly). We NEVER did that, EVER. I never had a player that scratched & clawed their way to power & then didn't want to flex/use it. Frankly, anyone playing AD&D would never guess to stop at L10 (or so); yeah, OD&D & early classic D&D games pretty much had nothing for higher level play, but AD&D sure as heck did. My players wanted to try those L6, 7, 8 & maybe even L9 spells! They wanted to face demon lords, liches & so forth.

 

[Igwilly]

On the retiring at L10 or so...yes, that's what Gary & company did back in the early days (mostly). We NEVER did that, EVER. I never had a player that scratched & clawed their way to power & then didn't want to flex/use it. Frankly, anyone playing AD&D would never guess to stop at L10 (or so); yeah, OD&D & early classic D&D games pretty much had nothing for higher level play, but AD&D sure as heck did. My players wanted to try those L6, 7, 8 & maybe even L9 spells! They wanted to face demon lords, liches & so forth.

Someone understands me!
I mean, I don’t dislike low-level play, but my dream-goal is to run a high-level campaign. I don’t want to face (both as a player and a DM), goblins, kobolds, orcs or even drow. I want to face powerful fiends, dragons, archfey, and as the climax, gods themselves – or something just as powerful.
I never did because:

1. Didn’t reach those levels. In fact, sometimes it’s difficult to run such a constant campaign.
2. Players in general don’t go well when you put 20 levels at once on their backs. At least in the games I currently know it’s a lot of stuff; especially for beginners: most of my players are just learning how to play tabletop RPGs, so let’s not throw at them tons of abilities and bonuses.

 

[Igwilly]

Once we’re talking about XP, I want to share my experiment:
Basically, for the next game I DM – and possibly for every other one – I’ll award XP by completing missions. And that’s it. I will calculate how much XP they need to level up and how many missions I want them to complete. After that, I distribute that XP among missions and, as they fulfill their objectives, they earn up XP.
I want to do that because that’s how I want the game to be: fulfilling objectives is more important than slaying many monsters for no reason or finding treasure. Sure, I like combats, and money will always be powerful, but XP? Missions will do that.
I will report here the results. Wish me luck!

 

[GenghisDon]

Someone understands me!
I mean, I don’t dislike low-level play, but my dream-goal is to run a high-level campaign. I don’t want to face (both as a player and a DM), goblins, kobolds, orcs or even drow. I want to face powerful fiends, dragons, archfey, and as the climax, gods themselves – or something just as powerful.
I never did because:

1. Didn’t reach those levels. In fact, sometimes it’s difficult to run such a constant campaign.
2. Players in general don’t go well when you put 20 levels at once on their backs. At least in the games I currently know it’s a lot of stuff; especially for beginners: most of my players are just learning how to play tabletop RPGs, so let’s not throw at them tons of abilities and bonuses.

There are ways to do it; experienced players need not play up from L1. However, those just learning/starting should NEVER be treated the same way. There is major magic in learning/playing up, playing those first games, first campaigns, etc. And yes, they'd be crap at VHL play anyway. Enjoy the group you have, and give them the best experience you can in the formative period! Good luck.

 

[HexMaker]

Level up? I played years of 2nd Ed as a kid in the 80s and I never once managed to get beyond Level 1! Probably because my brother was an evil GM and my favourite part of the game back then was writing new character sheets and selecting equipment from the player's handbook. I still use alternating blocks of 3 white and 3 grey lines in my spreadsheets at work!

 

[Dorian_Grey]

We used story awards heavily. Personally I used this approach:

1. Design an overall "idea" - Players have to go to the far away mountains and restore the magical fortress of Dead Forgotten Guy
2. Target a general level range: i.e. if the average group level is 12, then this is going to be really challenging. If the average group level is 14 it will be fairly easy.
3. Write out the adventure and break it into divisible parts. Now, you can do this anyway you want, but I then determine how much each part represents from the overall adventure. What I did was estimated time to complete, which is better than word count. A puzzle chapter (i.e. "Determine the way to open the magic door on the side of the mountain") might take three or four hours of time, but only require a two paragraph write up, while battling the swamp necromancer requires five pages but only takes the characters two hours.
4. Take the average XP amount to get from target level to the next level and then distribute that XP based on percentage of the chapters. So a fighter and a cleric go out on an adventure. To get from 1 to 2 would represent 2,125 xp on average. There are four chapters in the book. The first chapter takes 10% of the total time (you can adjust at the end too), and that would be 213 xp. The next chapter takes 25%, so that would be 531 xp.

You can still apply individual awards. Chapters can also be sessions too. Surviving each session gets you X amount of XP based on the number of sessions planned for the adventure.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I grew up on 2E and DM'ed one campaign to the point where most of the characters were levels 7 and 8. I felt like once they reached that point however the XP required to get to level 9 was just a massive amount and prohibitive. If I remember correctly a PC had to collect something like all the XP he had gained to that point just to get to level 9 or 8.

If you look at the xp advancement charts for the classes EVERY level requires about double the XP as the one before it. 2000, then 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000, etc. A few bumps higher or lower here and there but that's pretty much the pattern UNTIL about 9th or 10th level. Then it actually goes FLAT - same amount of xp needed for every level after that.

If you then study the xp reward chart you'll see that the amount of xp you get for monsters pretty well keeps pace with that doubling of xp needed to level up. The xp award for monsters by HD doesn't double, but then the ability of PC's to handle monsters of much higher HD than their own increases as well so that in general the pacing remains the same no matter what level.

2E xp and treasure awards are about the same as in 1E. 2E has OPTIONS to have PC's earn individual awards, but I never used them for long as it just seemed to make tracking xp more work than it needed to be for BOTH players and the DM. It DID seem to me that those individual rewards made for slower progression though, so maybe that's what you want.

I was just curious how other DMs handled/handle XP and leveling up in 2E when it takes such enormous amounts of XP to level up. Aside from doing automatic level ups after adventures or just giving the PCs tons and tons of treasure or giving them huge mission complete XP rewards how did other DMs handle this?

It wasn't a problem because it wasn't an enormous amount of xp (which is to say that although the NUMBERS got larger the PACE remained much the same). XP for killing monsters. XP for treasure. Both adjusted according to the degree of actual challenge. If I felt like I was giving the PC's a LOT of treasure at any time then I gave them a lot less XP for it. If fights seemed like they were more difficult than usual (which may have been as simple a matter as me having hot dice and the players having cold dice) then they got more xp than was normally indicated. I added some occasionally as a "story" award, especially at times where there wasn't much treasure to speak of or monsters to fight, but the PC's were nonetheless reasonably occupied with doing stuff.

That's pretty much how I handled it in 1E as well as how I handled it in 3E and how I once again handle it now playing 1E again.