D&D 4E Rate of advancement per encounter in 4E

[Baka no Hentai]

Hi all, first time poster here on the EN World forums, so if my question is something that has already been addressed please forgive me. I have looked over other forum threads and the News archive as best I could, but did not find the information that I needed.

I am curious about the rate of character level advancement in the upcoming edition. I am fairly new to DMing, having only run a couple of adventures in my homebrew world/campaign... but the one thing that I absolutely loathe about 3.5 is how fast characters level up. One level per 13 encounters is entirely too fast for my campaign, which will involve a lot of traveling, intertwining plot elements, and a variety of different big bad evil guys. In fact, the way the xp scales work in the current DMG, a player could conceivably level up just off of random encounters in one adventure, should the distance they travel be great enough.

Has anything at all come out on how many encounters of an even level a party is expected to defeat before leveling in fourth edition? At the current rate, it looks like I will need to cut XP gain by 50% just to keep my party from leveling up once per adventure. If the advancement rate is going to be the same, do any of you more experienced gamers have ideas on other options I might use to slow the advancement rate down?

Thanks in advance for all your help, and forgive any breach of etiquette my forum inexperience may have caused!

 

[VBMEW-01]

I have read somewhere that it averages out to around 1 levle per 10 encounters, but that may not be true. Hard to know at this point.

 

[malraux]

As above, all the signs point to a slightly faster leveling curve than 3e. Though I expect you can cut the XP awards without too much trouble.

That said, leveling isn't a bad thing. Is there any particular problem with leveling during an adventure? Especially given that the smaller steps of 4e's levels will not affect game balance that much.

Also, I personally think random encounters serve little point. Unless you need to have a particular encounter, I'd leave it out. But if you need it, its not a random encounter.

 

[Revinor]

In general, advancement rate is very easy to control. Just apply some percentage to xp gained. Original idea was 13 encounters per level, with 3-4 encounters per session. I don't see it as very fast, this still means 70 sessions to get from 1st to 20 lvl, assuming no deaths/raise deads. If you have much more encounters per session... try to fill up the time with some non-combat related activities.

In 3e, only thing which was going crazy when you played with advancement rates was treasure. If you slowed down advancement, people started to end up with too much treasure. Other way around was easier, as you could just drop some extra items/gold once per few levels to get them up to expected wealth level.

We have no idea atm how the treasure system will look like in 4e, so it is hard to say how wealth will be affected. Generally, as rule of thumb, modify treasure worth same way as you do with xp and it should be ok.

I'm bit suprised that you are worried about too fast advancement. Have you ever got a problem in 2/3e with running out of levels in your campaigns? I have just finished DMing 3+ years (real life) campaign and I got my players from 4th to 18-19th levels and it is only time in our lives we came close to that range. We probably played around 40-50 sessions, but bit longer than usual (around 12 hours each). Previously, campaigns were always dying long before reaching 10th lvl (it was 2nd edition back then).

Most common reason (I'm not saying it is your case) from slowing down advancement is because DM has no clue how to run the campaigns on high levels. Creative players with few splat books will work around every normal scenario in no time. Game becomes majorly broken at high levels mechanically, but it is still fun.

 

[Dragonblade]

I was worried about fast levelling too, but after playing in several 4e games, I no longer am.

First, if you are slowing levelling because you don't like how high levels affect the campaign world and your adventure design, then 4e fixes this. Scry, Teleport, and Fly are no longer accessible at low level (scry may not even exist at all). Heck, PCs can't even get Fly until 16th level now! This makes your classic LotR overland trek viable even at high levels and dungeon crawls can still feature classic elements like pit traps and rope bridges at higher levels.

If you like slow levelling just because thats a pace that feels comfortable for you, then slowing levelling is now actually easier in 4e. Lower level characters are more viable against a larger range of possible opponents in 4e than in 3e without the encounters becoming too easy or too hard. This makes it easier to keep PCs at a certain level longer without sacrificing encounter variety.

 

[Baka no Hentai]

I was worried about fast levelling too, but after playing in several 4e games, I no longer am.

First, if you are slowing levelling because you don't like how high levels affect the campaign world and your adventure design, then 4e fixes this. Scry, Teleport, and Fly are no longer accessible at low level (scry may not even exist at all). Heck, PCs can't even get Fly until 16th level now! This makes your classic LotR overland trek viable even at high levels and dungeon crawls can still feature classic elements like pit traps and rope bridges at higher levels.

If you like slow levelling just because thats a pace that feels comfortable for you, then slowing levelling is now actually easier in 4e. Lower level characters are more viable against a larger range of possible opponents in 4e than in 3e without the encounters becoming too easy or too hard. This makes it easier to keep PCs at a certain level longer without sacrificing encounter variety.

Ah, this is very encouraging news. I would say that it is less that I am worried about designing adventures around powerful character abilities, and more that I have so much story planned out that I dont want my characters stuck at max level for half of a campaign.

Each "adventure" of mine I try to pack with story elements and interesting combats, and I would like for my players to spend at least some amount of time with each of their levels so that they have an opportunity to get to know their characters before leveling up again. I am glad to hear that if we do slow down the pace a bit, there will be enough variety with encounters to keep things interesting.

I'm bit suprised that you are worried about too fast advancement. Have you ever got a problem in 2/3e with running out of levels in your campaigns? I have just finished DMing 3+ years (real life) campaign and I got my players from 4th to 18-19th levels and it is only time in our lives we came close to that range. We probably played around 40-50 sessions, but bit longer than usual (around 12 hours each). Previously, campaigns were always dying long before reaching 10th lvl (it was 2nd edition back then).

Well, I will be the first to admit that it my fears may be unfounded at this point due to my lack of experience as a DM. I am simply going off having 2 adventures done in my campaign so far, and the PCs are already level 3... perhaps the curve slows down later and it becomes less of an issue.

I like that in 4E they split the level tiers up into Heroic, Paragon, and Epic... as that fits the story of my campaign quite well. I just want to make sure that I dont end up with Paragon level characters halfway through the "heroic" arc of the story, if that makes any sense at all.

Also, I personally think random encounters serve little point. Unless you need to have a particular encounter, I'd leave it out. But if you need it, its not a random encounter.

This is food for thought. I currently use random encounters to spice up travel a bit, as my campaign involves a lot of it. (5 days just to get to a specific location in the second adventure, for example.) Perhaps there are other ways that I can make travel more engaging than 'you travel for 5 days to the destination' without incorporating random encounters.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, I dont actually roll encounters at the table... I use them to design the adventure, and take what I roll to incorporate into the storyline.

 

[malraux]

A few comments. First, IME, the first few levels in 3e go faster than later levels. I think I remember the XP tables being slightly inflated for 1-3. In addition, its harder to have below party level encounters, so all fights are tough. Second, it sounds like you are just using the random encounter table as inspiration, which sounds ok. As long as it moves the story along, its fine. The thing to watch for is that just because there is x travel days between locations does not mean that you must have x encounters. And while its silly and of course completely unrealistic, I agree with the logic here. Now if the encounter results in the party finding a clue, then its good.

 

[Revinor]

Well, I will be the first to admit that it my fears may be unfounded at this point due to my lack of experience as a DM. I am simply going off having 2 adventures done in my campaign so far, and the PCs are already level 3... perhaps the curve slows down later and it becomes less of an issue.

On first levels you probably want to advance characters as fast as possible - 1-3 lvl is too deadly for a longer run.

Anyway, you have still 17 levels to cover before start of June It is really nice experience as a DM when your player's wizard get Scry, Improved Invisibility, Teleport, Dominate, Wall of Stone/Iron[1], Limited Wish. You won't get this in 4e in same mind-boggling way. If you don't have wizard in your party, don't bother, other classes are not as broken up there.

[1] - Why Walls? Our wizard had a feat which allowed him to reorganize spell slots at some cost (so he ended up with like 50 wall spells per day with pearls of power) and our paladin decided it is time to have a castle. It was hard 2 weeks for the wizard, but they have saved 200000gp and 4 years build time

 

[Stalker0]

This is food for thought. I currently use random encounters to spice up travel a bit, as my campaign involves a lot of it. (5 days just to get to a specific location in the second adventure, for example.) Perhaps there are other ways that I can make travel more engaging than 'you travel for 5 days to the destination' without incorporating random encounters.

I think you will enjoy 4e for this aspect as well.

3e is attrition based design, 4 encounters per day is a balancing factor. If you throw one random encounter at a 3e party, they will likely blow their resources and stomp it. Then again, if you throw an encounter after that one, they will find it much more challenging.

4e is encounter based. A party can tackle a fairly hard encounter and still have plenty of resources for the next one. They can conserve daily resources and still be very effective in that single encounter.

At least that's they tell us, we will have to see how it works in reality.

 

[Revinor]

This is food for thought. I currently use random encounters to spice up travel a bit, as my campaign involves a lot of it. (5 days just to get to a specific location in the second adventure, for example.)

5 days is still one encounter...

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