Meek to mighty... in a month

[FitzTheRuke]

I think a few of you are mistaking my interest in the topic as a discussion.

I'm not terribly concerned about it, and I can think of many many ways to get around it if I care to.

Just curious as to what you all think.

Fitz

 

[ki11erDM]

One of my first 3.0 games involved the party levelling from 1 to 20 in approximately a month of game time... nothing new here, moving right along.

/agree

This is one of the issues that has bugged me about 3.x in general especially when you run adventure path style campaigns. The ONLY time the PCs rest in 3.x is to make items...

This is one of the things i plan on working on in my new campaign post release, and I hope they have something in the DMG that can help with this... they sure should have the room with taking magic items out of it.

 

[parvatiquinta]

My PCs have always had pauses, either because I like sending them all over the world or because they stop in cities, get the hang of it, wait to talk with important people, spend some time on having fun like carousing in taverns and so on...
I also plan for story arcs in my campaigns and between a story arc and the next a few years of game time may elapse (as well as a few months or real life time, often, taking breaks and playing other games).

That said, advancement tied to adventures has always felt unrealistic to me, and more so in D&D as it's a level-based game where you start as an incompetent (remember the old saying "a cat does more damage than a first-level mage"?) and then push beyond normal human limits.

In the last few years I stopped bothering calculating XP; I keep all the PCs at the same rate and they level when it feels right in the story for them to do so. My campaigns aren't filled with combat anyway - there is action, but I tend to stage few, significant encounters.

For instance, in the WoW RPG campaign we were playing until a couple weeks ago (time for some Witchcraft goodness right now) my PCs travelled from Theramore to Bael Modan, where they discovered - or rather, were ambushed by - a fairly unknown (they're Alliance) race of pig-men, they investigated the burned inn, had some troubled daily hunting (1), met with some Horde folks and managed to talk their way into getting help with the investigation, then - thanks to the shaman's prophetic dream - saved a dwarven caravan from dragonkin magically disguised as orcs, and last but not least got to talk about these grave matters with Lady Jaina Proudmoore herself (2).
This was worth a level, the meeting with Jaina being worth as many XP as the dragonkin fight (yes, they had help, but I had factored this when planning the encounter, so they faced more than they would have on their own).
As for game time involved, the above took about 1 full month of game time, what with travelling on foot back and forth and so on; and about 5-6 evenings of real time, so that's slower than usual (but we play less than 3 hours an evening), I wasn't using the book rules anyway, and my players are fine with my story-driven pace, so we're all happy.

From what I've heard the new rules for XP are largely similar to what I'm doing now, and of course this makes me happy.

(1) the group hunter felt too merciful to kill rabbits, and tried to get a boar instead. A long and comical fight ensued (yes, can't wait to see some justice to ranged fighters) - and in the end they had rabbit soup for dinner. Yes, I'm evil.
(2) for the one reader who might not know of this, Jaina is a world leader.

 

[Doug McCrae]

For me going from 1-20/30 in a short space of time strains credulity, though it isn't a major issue. It's a problem with every rpg I've ever heard of with the single exception of Pendragon. I like 1-max in 20 years but that creates its own problems not least of which is I have to think up a bunch of political events. Also, players aren't used to that sort of pace, it would weird them out. In the end maybe the best solution is to say, 'To hell with believability'.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Of course, the one variable we don't really have here is...how much XP will it take to reach the various levels?

If it takes the same amount as in, say, 3.x, then, yeah, 3-4 encounters a day are gonna mean super-fast leveling.

 

[keterys]

I once intended to run a campaign where every level I would run an adventure of some kind... and afterwards a year would pass. The characters would start out young doing madcap adventures, grow into positions of power, face wars and political changes, potentially have kids, etc.

You know, I should still do that.

It's very much not the norm for D&D, however.

 

[Revinor]

Of course, the one variable we don't really have here is...how much XP will it take to reach the various levels?

If it takes the same amount as in, say, 3.x, then, yeah, 3-4 encounters a day are gonna mean super-fast leveling.

They said it should take around same amount of time to reach 30th lvl in 4e like it took to reach 20th lvl in 3e. We are talking about real-world time (amount of sessions), not in-game time. For in-game time, there is really not much difference between the 3e and 4e. If you don't use time sinks, be prepared to hit the ceiling in few months of game time in any edition of D&D.

As far as time sinks are covered, spells scribing is gone, item creation will be gone or reduced (as far as time sink is concerned), but we got extra in travel times as easy teleport is gone. I don't think that resource attrition was/is a timesink in any of the editions (probably without them, you could reach lvl 20 in 1 month instead of 4 months, but it is still quite fast compared to 50 years of study Mr Elf took to reach 1st level of wizard).

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

By which I mean, if the party can handle 3 or 4 encounters in a day, they are going to get quite a bit of experience in a single day quite likely raising a few levels a week.

This was exactly the case in 3rd edition: following the guidelines of 4 level-appropriate encounters per day would get the PCs two levels a week. I recall someone pointing this out not long after 3.0 was released. It never seemed to be a problem for most DMs.

Since a lot of the changes in 4th ed are due to complaints about 3e, I suspect the 4e team aren't going to do much - if anything - about this. They did say in one of the early podcasts they wanted to avoid the 8-levels-in-a-day situation, which I think may have been a hint at healing surges.

 

[dm4hire]

For the most part time is played outside of the game session through roleplaying and discussion. My groups always come up with something we did between game days unless we were in the middle of a dungeon or broke after a battle in a segment of the actual quest stuff. We figured out everything that we wanted our characters did and then determined how much time had passed and that's where we started the next adventure at. That was our group. I have played in a group where literally every time they met it was just one day after the last day they left off. So like I mentioned I think it is up to the DM and Players to determine how fast time wise they are actually advancing.

 

[NewfieDave]

I don't see why gaining power should be related to time at all. Experience points represent how experienced you are at overcoming challenges (encounters). It shouldn't matter if you fight five encounters in a year or in 24 hours - it's an equal amount of experience.

The leveling curve also looks like it will be a more gradual shift in power. Gaining a few levels doesn't make you the best swordsman in the land; you've just overcome more obstacles, gained more experience, and as a result you know a few more maneuvers and are a slightly stronger combatant.

I don't think meek to mighty will be possible in 4e without some houseruling because 1st level characters are already capable heroes (and it's my favorite change to D&D ever!).