Leveling up with Milestones--how do you handle it?

[Voadam]

For a long while I've been doing adventure paths which have suggested level up points that coincide with story beats so I go with those and do not have significant guidelines for number of encounters, though 3 encounters seems really low. In AD&D when I tracked xp my campaigns would go months with nobody levelling. I have not been tracking how long between levels, but it is usually a number of weekly sessions.

It can work at any speed though Shadow of the Demon Lord has a default rate of advance a level after every game session.

Instead of xp for rewarding desired actions 5e has inspiration, as a DM I have said "Very cool, take an inspiration." as a positive reinforcement mechanism.

 

[Lanefan]

Whenever the players say "Hey! Shouldn't we level up?"

That'd be about every 30 seconds at some tables...

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Whenever the players say "Hey! Shouldn't we level up?"

I have had occasion to do the opposite. That is, I had the players level when a session went by that no one asked about leveling up. It was 13 sessions (56 'encounters').

 

[Blue]

The answer, like so many others, is "it depends".

Because while many see leveling as a reward mechanism, it's also a pacing mechanism. It measures not just the deadliness of threat one can take on, but also less directly the scope of threats the party is facing. The descriptions of the different Tiers of Play in the beginning of the PHB gives a

So when the scale of what the party is dealing with increases, that's when I want to be increasing Tier, with progression of levels within it at an appropriate spacing that also feels like each is earned by accomplishing something big.

Let's take a look at two campaigns I'm currently running. In one, the PCs are all trusted agents of the Imperium, each with an artifact mask of the Imperium that is both their badge of authority and will level up with them. This group has a few players that work know their character better if they start at 1st, but as agents of the child-empress they would be thrown into larger scale issues quickly. So I told the group that we were starting at 1st, but advancement to 3rd would be very rapid, and to 5th would be somewhat rapid. This works - this table has for the most part been playing 5e for years and would like to get to some of the "meatier" levels quickly.

In another, I'm teaching my kids and niece & nephew to play. We started at first, and advancement has been slow. Part of that is with COVID we haven't played as much as we want, but they have been staying involved in local threats. From their own intention - the quickly got involved with multiple problems with the initial settlement they met it and like dealing with the NPCs. But also I haven't been escalating the scale of problems too quickly as I want to give them time to experience each level - this is the only time they will be that level for the first time, and experiencing many of the iconic D&D foes for the first time - I don't want to rush it. It also gives them time to grok their character before adding in more complexity.

 

[Blue]

Whenever the players say "Hey! Shouldn't we level up?"

I play with one DM who said his level-granting strategy is "I aim for some player grousing we haven't leveled recently, but not a lot of it".