Rate of Advancement and how often people play

[Cor Azer]

I find the rate of advancement to be ok. My group was playing weekly, but then real life intruded and we've dropped to every second week for the face-to-face game.

Of course, I've pretty much thrown the experience awards out the window, and award roughly 1/4 the amount needed for the next level after each session. So characters generally gain a level every 2 months (4 sessions).

My concern was that in game, the characters were levelling too fast, so I implemented training time and have put in more downtime between adventures, and things seem to be going smoothly now.

 

[swrushing]

I skip the whole xp countdown and just tell my folks to level up after a set amount of chronological time. The typical game i run levels you up after every three months of play, which is about 9-10 sessions.

I will often at low levels make this once a month for the first three months to give them a decent amount of reactivity when the campaign is still young and the characters still coming into their own.

My last game started at level 3, levelled once a month thru 6th, then settled into its "level every third month" pattern.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I like the rate of advancement. I feel you can't really let loose as a DM until the players reach 15th plus level where mundane difficulties are no longer sufficient to challenge them. High level PC's are movers and shakers in the campaign world. This really opens up roleplaying opportunities that did not exist before. I love the idea of the players working with kings and gods and going on quests that only people of their level of power can hope to complete. I like it when a high level player rides into a small town and is viewed as a legendary hero, and can actually pull off legendary feats like defeating a dragon or a demon in single combat. Makes for a very fun campaign.

High level play was rare in OD&D because advancement was so slow. This faster rate of advancement suits my style of play perfectly.

At first I felt the fast advancement might hurt the verisimilitude of the game, then I though about it. In real life, people advance in spurts. They lay the ground work through education, but actually build their skills through experience. For example, a soldier may learn alot of skills through basic training. Once he applies those skills in a real life situation, they accelerate at a quicker rate.

Adventurers would accelerate in the same fashion. A fighter has trained how to fight for alot of his life, but his skill really develops quickly once he is laying his life on the line on a daily basis. A wizard studies spells that are beyond his power to cast, but once he starts slinging spells on a daily basis his master of spell crafting and casting increases exponentially. A priest studies the power of his god, but once he puts it to use his faith becomes stronger allowing him access to more powerful prayers. The same can be said for just about every class. I think advancing in spurts during adventures is not so hard to swallow as I originally thought. Now if they can just make a more interactive combat system where fighting skill helps defense as well as offense, D&D will really have raised the verisimilitude to a new level.

 

[Jupp]

I do not think that there is a need for high levels for the PCs when it comes to them being movers and shakers in a campaign world. We were around level 7 or so when Missus Rogue got to the head of a thieves guild through pure intrigue, blackmailing and third-party assassination of the more dangerous opponents she had. And our Fighter became second in command of the household guard in Glantry (the thieves guild was in Glantry as well *g*). We ran a very successfull tavern which was in reality a bordello. You get an awfull lot of very high ranking information if you run such an establishment and after some time we literally had half of the Glantry upperclass, at least the male part, in our hands. Too bad we ended the whole campaign shortly after so we never saw how far we could go in that city *g*. And now I'll shut up and stop hijacking the thread to the wrong direction...

Greetings
Jupp

 

[Belen]

Currently, we have been playing 1/week 8 hour sessions in Freeport since January and we are 11th level. We seem to gain a new level every other session. This may be a bit fast, and I will probably change it next time I run...whenever that is.....I am probably looking at a gaming hiatus soon.

 

[JDJarvis]

My current camapign has been going since before the monstermanual was avialble for 3e prety much weekly (Probably 48 sessions a year) and the highest level guy in the party is 12th level.
I make folks work for those xp, there are no signs that say "this way to the challenging adventure you'll still probably complete".

 

[Brother Ezra]

Our group has 7 players, and meets every two weeks for about a 5-6 hour game session. We've met 12 times since the beginning of the year, and the characters have advanced two levels in that time, and may level again in the next session or two.

At first I was alarmed by how quickly the party was advancing, but I think it was just because I was used to 1st/2nd edition, which featured much slower advancement and kept characters at a level much longer than 3.x does. I'm adjusting, and getting used to the fact that the characters may may advance from 1st level to epic level in a year or so of game time.

Not bad, just different than what I was used to.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Our group has 7 players, and meets every two weeks for about a 5-6 hour game session. We've met 12 times since the beginning of the year, and the characters have advanced two levels in that time, and may level again in the next session or two.

I think I sense a general trend of 20-30 hours of play/level. (5.5hrs x 14 session)/3 levels = 26 hours.

My campaign's been running for 3.5 years now with a 6+ hour session every other week and the players are 16th level. Which averages out to around 29 hours/level, factoring in the occassional holiday/birthday/aniversary. It's a little slow since about one session in six is entirely non-confrontational social RPing with zero XP.

edit: fixed quotes

 

[CalicoDave]

When you get a group of Prestige Classed and Feat-ed characters from the Greate Schoole of Min/Maxing, then they can take on challenges slightly higher in level than those that the Iconic party can handle easily. Thus, instead of a CR 4 encounter being challenging for the 4th level party, it's a CR 5 encounter they handle with ease.

From my experience this statement is very true. One of my group's DM's has been going by the book for giving experience based upon CR and we get a whole bunch of XP. This is because we are a very min/maxed, high powered group (the DM used 5d6 drop the two lowest for stats) and can handle encounters above our level easily so he has to throw higher CR creatures at us to make for a challange.

 

[DragonLancer]

Why not just double the XP numbers on the table?

That is one of the ideas that I am considering.