Opinions - You just gained 3 levels

[Djeta Thernadier]

I think I'd want to know specifically how I gained the levels. My first inclination was to think...hehehee cooler spells at a higher level (my character is a sorcerer) but I'd feel strange not knowing why I gained 3 levels.

It almost seems to me that your DM wants to put your characters in a situation where higher levels will be required, and couldn't wait for you to earn the levels on your own...

 

[Seonaid]

Re: Re: Opinions - You just gained 3 levels

If the DM creates a similar story for a move from level 14 to 17, I might be fine with it, as long as it was plausible and I had input into it.

Yup, that's pretty much what I was trying to get at.

 

[Arc]

Big question: Is your DM going to give you items/equipment to compensate for those 3 levels? The DMG's 'average gold for level' has 14th level at 150 000gp, and 17th level 340 000gp. That's a 190 000gp difference, and if you don't get that, and your DM starts throwing CR 17 and CR 18 creatures at the party, you'll have a very hard time beating them.

 

[kreynolds]

Lets say that you are new to a world. You started at level 13. Everyone else has been there for since day 1. You've played 3 game sessions. In the third session, you get caught up in this massive war. Lets say that this war splits the group up, forcing everyone to have their own one on one game sessions until they are able to find the others.

However, the DM decides that the easiest way to get everyone back together is to pass the time. He assumes that 3 months go buy, and during these 3 months he assumes the characters gain enough experience to gain 3 levels. Suddenly your no longer level 14 (you leveled the second game session), now your level 17, and your back with the group.

How would you feel? Would this upset you? or excite you?

Shoot the hostage...er, wait...

Hmm, I really don't know what I'd think about that. I suppose if the backstory of the last three months was really good, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but if it amounted to a mere "three months go by and you've all gain three levels", I'd rather not, since it doesn't add anything.

 

[Kichwas]

I would be very opposed to it.

I would tell the Dm 'thank you, but she chooses to spend her months off on the farm, raising pigs. I pass on the XP.'

Failing that, I would politely withdraw from the game. If I've been forced to lose touch with my character, playing her won't be any fun anymore anyway.

 

[Greybar]

Lets say that this war splits the group up, forcing everyone to have their own one on one game sessions until they are able to find the others.

So other than the fact that this is a lot of work for the GM, the heroes are gaining their levels just they way they would normally.

We're doing a similar thing in a game I'm in (that is on hiatus). In our case it is years that are passing, while we do abbreviated story-stuff by email. Our characters are going to have done a lot of growing (personally and in power) when we rejoin.

I'm looking forward to it.

John

 

[drquestion]

I think that in this particular situation, I would find the rate of change annoying - 3 levels seems like a lot to go up in 3 months that isn't directly being played out. I realize that 3 levels in 3 months of game time isn't an absurd rate in 3e, but to level that fast without any actuall roleplaying wouldn't sit well with me.

If the party had been at its previous level for a reasonable amount of time, I wouldn't have a problem with the DM letting each player explain what he or she had been doing during the war, and letting everyone go up to the next level (clearing the slate, as it were), but 3 seems awfully excessive.

On the other hand, I could see where a campaign that periodically let 5 or so years pass, with players explaining what their characters were up to during that time, and then picked up again with everyone being a few levels higher to reflect the passed time, could be potentially very interesting.

 

[tburdett]

It would not matter to me. I would still be playing the same character, in the same game, with the same group of people. That is what D&D is all about to me. Having fun with my friends.

I have run games where the players have skipped a number of levels for a variety of reasons, but there was always a logical and necessary reason for it.

For example, in one campaign a few characters decided to go one way to complete a task and could not convince the other party members to go along. Off they went in one direction and the others went another way to do something else that they thought was equally important.

As a husband, and father of three children, I do not have time to run separate sessions for each player, or each pair of players, and simply move the game forward to a point in time where the players have completed the tasks necessary to get them back together as a group. The players, whether they like it or not, have to deal with it.

If a player was so obsessed with their character that they could not 'deal' with the fact that we did not play out every single bit of that characters life, I would be concerned.

 

[Iced Tea]

I have to say htat i wouldnt really mind gaining the levels that much. i would like to know what happended for me to deserve those three levels. did i disrupt the attempts at an ogre mage's plot to destroy the castle walls by flooding the land underneath them or somehting like that. besides i want bragging rights dont i? but besides that, what kind of a relationship did i create with the kingdom i saved and so on. besides the fact that it is a war, being a wizard I doubt I did a lot besides throwing endless amount of fireballs into enemy ranks or guarding the castle walls from enemy mages (which i think would turn out into a real interesting battle). what i suggest is instead of actually just saying what happened or even acting out all three levels, is to just create one important battle each character faces. i think it would be really awesome to lead a batallion of horsemen against a legion of longspear wielding orc worg riders or somethign. that way they get to experience someof it with out there being to much time and effort taken.

 

[Darkness]

Hm. Depends on the campaign.

In general, it seems a bit much. Some campaigns are like that, though. Nothing wrong with that, of course, unless it's not your cup of tea.