Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Musing on Levels and Campaign Pacing.
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="knasser" data-source="post: 6943008" data-attributes="member: 65151"><p>So I'm shortly starting my frist ever 5e campaign and I wanted to get a feel for how progression would go. Should I plan a war against the kobolds or would the PCs quickly level out of battling kobolds by the third adventure? Should I plan my epic protagonist to be a CR 29 arch-fiend? Or would it take five years of real-world playing to get the characters ready. And did I need to mess with the XP levels in the book because that's something best done at the outset not mid-campaign when the players are busy working out what spells they want for when they reach level 9 next session, etc.</p><p></p><p>What I did was to take the XP requirements for each level, the XP budget for an encounter at that level (allowing for that rather hinkey adjustment mechanism depending on the number of monsters), and the do some basic arithmetic to see how many encounters are needed to reach the next level. I also set an average number of encounters per adventure to see how many adventures it would take to reach the next level as well. I did this for Medium and Hard budget adventures per the DMG guide. I didn't do "Deadly" because I don't imagine a campaign normally being made up of Deadly encounters on average. I also didn't do Easy encounters because I think most players find "challenge us by attrition and not allowing rests" to be dull play.</p><p></p><p>Now I've heard the DMG encounter guidelines are a bit shaky. I also know that there are several assumptions in the below that wont always hold. It's at best and average outcome per the DMG guidelines. What I'm curious about is to see how this matches up with people's experiences. And also any advice from people simply what they personally find good in terms of progression or pitfalls they run into. You don't have to caveat everything with "in my opinion" and "but play how you want" - I'm <strong>interested</strong> in people's personal takes.</p><p></p><p>I have a few more numbers on related items I could share as well if this is interesting to people. I can also attach the spreadsheet if people want to poke it do their own calculations for those who don't want to do things from scratch. Anyway, all thoughts welcome - I'm new at this and just trying to plan out a satisfying campaign. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p> <em>EDIT: To be clear, I'm not at all offended by telling me these numbers are way off if that's the case. They're based on calculations in the DMG. I think my reasoning is sound (probably) but my assumptions I got direct from WotC. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></em></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: 'century gothic'"><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong>How many encounters / adventures required to reach the next level.</strong></span></span></p><p>[TABLE="width: 860, align: left"]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]<strong>Level</strong></p><p><strong></strong>[/TD]</p><p>[TD]<strong>#Medium Encounters</strong></p><p><strong></strong>[/TD]</p><p>[TD]<strong>#Hard Encounters</strong></p><p><strong></strong>[/TD]</p><p>[TD]<strong>#Adventures (Medium)</strong></p><p><strong></strong>[/TD]</p><p>[TD]<strong>#Adventures (Hard)</strong></p><p><strong></strong>[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]1[/TD]</p><p>[TD]3[/TD]</p><p>[TD]2[/TD]</p><p>[TD]1[/TD]</p><p>[TD]1[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]2[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[TD]3[/TD]</p><p>[TD]1[/TD]</p><p>[TD]1[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]3[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[TD]2[/TD]</p><p>[TD]2[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]4[/TD]</p><p>[TD]13[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]3[/TD]</p><p>[TD]2[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[TD]14[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]4[/TD]</p><p>[TD]2[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[TD]19[/TD]</p><p>[TD]13[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[TD]3[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]7[/TD]</p><p>[TD]23[/TD]</p><p>[TD]15[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[TD]4[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]8[/TD]</p><p>[TD]27[/TD]</p><p>[TD]17[/TD]</p><p>[TD]7[/TD]</p><p>[TD]4[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]29[/TD]</p><p>[TD]20[/TD]</p><p>[TD]7[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]10[/TD]</p><p>[TD]35[/TD]</p><p>[TD]22[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]11[/TD]</p><p>[TD]31[/TD]</p><p>[TD]21[/TD]</p><p>[TD]8[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]12[/TD]</p><p>[TD]30[/TD]</p><p>[TD]20[/TD]</p><p>[TD]8[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]13[/TD]</p><p>[TD]32[/TD]</p><p>[TD]21[/TD]</p><p>[TD]8[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]14[/TD]</p><p>[TD]33[/TD]</p><p>[TD]22[/TD]</p><p>[TD]8[/TD]</p><p>[TD]5[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]15[/TD]</p><p>[TD]35[/TD]</p><p>[TD]23[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]16[/TD]</p><p>[TD]35[/TD]</p><p>[TD]23[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]17[/TD]</p><p>[TD]34[/TD]</p><p>[TD]22[/TD]</p><p>[TD]8[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]18[/TD]</p><p>[TD]36[/TD]</p><p>[TD]24[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD]19[/TD]</p><p>[TD]36[/TD]</p><p>[TD]24[/TD]</p><p>[TD]9[/TD]</p><p>[TD]6[/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[TR]</p><p>[TD][/TD]</p><p>[TD]<em>(479)</em></p><p><em></em>[/TD]</p><p>[TD]<em>(317)</em></p><p><em></em>[/TD]</p><p>[TD][/TD]</p><p>[TD][/TD]</p><p>[/TR]</p><p>[/TABLE]</p><p></p><p></p><p>(For those interested, assumptions are a party size of 4, an average of 4 monsters in an encounter and an average of 5 encounters per adventure. This works out at 96 adventures to reach 20th level with Medium difficulty encounters and 63 adventures at Hard difficulty. )</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="knasser, post: 6943008, member: 65151"] So I'm shortly starting my frist ever 5e campaign and I wanted to get a feel for how progression would go. Should I plan a war against the kobolds or would the PCs quickly level out of battling kobolds by the third adventure? Should I plan my epic protagonist to be a CR 29 arch-fiend? Or would it take five years of real-world playing to get the characters ready. And did I need to mess with the XP levels in the book because that's something best done at the outset not mid-campaign when the players are busy working out what spells they want for when they reach level 9 next session, etc. What I did was to take the XP requirements for each level, the XP budget for an encounter at that level (allowing for that rather hinkey adjustment mechanism depending on the number of monsters), and the do some basic arithmetic to see how many encounters are needed to reach the next level. I also set an average number of encounters per adventure to see how many adventures it would take to reach the next level as well. I did this for Medium and Hard budget adventures per the DMG guide. I didn't do "Deadly" because I don't imagine a campaign normally being made up of Deadly encounters on average. I also didn't do Easy encounters because I think most players find "challenge us by attrition and not allowing rests" to be dull play. Now I've heard the DMG encounter guidelines are a bit shaky. I also know that there are several assumptions in the below that wont always hold. It's at best and average outcome per the DMG guidelines. What I'm curious about is to see how this matches up with people's experiences. And also any advice from people simply what they personally find good in terms of progression or pitfalls they run into. You don't have to caveat everything with "in my opinion" and "but play how you want" - I'm [B]interested[/B] in people's personal takes. I have a few more numbers on related items I could share as well if this is interesting to people. I can also attach the spreadsheet if people want to poke it do their own calculations for those who don't want to do things from scratch. Anyway, all thoughts welcome - I'm new at this and just trying to plan out a satisfying campaign. :) [COLOR=#ff0000] [/COLOR][I]EDIT: To be clear, I'm not at all offended by telling me these numbers are way off if that's the case. They're based on calculations in the DMG. I think my reasoning is sound (probably) but my assumptions I got direct from WotC. ;)[/I][COLOR=#ff0000][/COLOR] [FONT=century gothic][SIZE=3][B]How many encounters / adventures required to reach the next level.[/B][/SIZE][/FONT] [TABLE="width: 860, align: left"] [TR] [TD][B]Level [/B][/TD] [TD][B]#Medium Encounters [/B][/TD] [TD][B]#Hard Encounters [/B][/TD] [TD][B]#Adventures (Medium) [/B][/TD] [TD][B]#Adventures (Hard) [/B][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]2[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]13[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]14[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]2[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]19[/TD] [TD]13[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]8[/TD] [TD]27[/TD] [TD]17[/TD] [TD]7[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]29[/TD] [TD]20[/TD] [TD]7[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]10[/TD] [TD]35[/TD] [TD]22[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]11[/TD] [TD]31[/TD] [TD]21[/TD] [TD]8[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]12[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]20[/TD] [TD]8[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]13[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]21[/TD] [TD]8[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]14[/TD] [TD]33[/TD] [TD]22[/TD] [TD]8[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]35[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]16[/TD] [TD]35[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]17[/TD] [TD]34[/TD] [TD]22[/TD] [TD]8[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]18[/TD] [TD]36[/TD] [TD]24[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]19[/TD] [TD]36[/TD] [TD]24[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][I](479) [/I][/TD] [TD][I](317) [/I][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] (For those interested, assumptions are a party size of 4, an average of 4 monsters in an encounter and an average of 5 encounters per adventure. This works out at 96 adventures to reach 20th level with Medium difficulty encounters and 63 adventures at Hard difficulty. ) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Musing on Levels and Campaign Pacing.
Top
