D&D 5E Relative Difficulties of Advancing in 5e

[CubicsRube]

I wonder what would happen if we played the game very simply by advancing 2 levels at a time, and called them half: start the game at 2nd level and call it level 1, next jump to 4th level and call it 2nd... end game at 20th but call it 10.

PCs would never start with too little HP.
Spell level would match class level.
Levelling up would not be that fast.
No level up would ever feel too little.

Less granularity for sure, but doesn't sound that bad to me.

I've....never thought of that.

That's a really interesting idea I'll have to think about. Thanks!

 

[Blue]

I would just prefer less levels with a cap at 10 maybe 15. I don't necessarily want level 9 spells to go away, or higher level powers disappear, just would like to see things condensed down so the players reach a higher power level earlier/faster.

Give out more XP. Poof, everything you want.

Because you didn't ask for that. You asked for less granularity and things bunched together. But that wouldn't mean the XP chart wouldn't be stretched and campaigns the same length, since that seems pretty intentional.

But you can reach your started goal of players reaching the higher power levels earlier/faster with a minor tweak of a single knob. Which is pretty lucky.

 

[R_J_K75]

Give out more XP. Poof, everything you want.

Because you didn't ask for that. You asked for less granularity and things bunched together. But that wouldn't mean the XP chart wouldn't be stretched and campaigns the same length, since that seems pretty intentional.

But you can reach your started goal of players reaching the higher power levels earlier/faster with a minor tweak of a single knob. Which is pretty lucky.

You might be right it might be that easy to get what I stated, I never tried.

 

[S'mon]

I wrote a bit about the difficulties of leveling at different points along a characters lifetime in 5e. Not earth shattering but I was surprised to see that 11-19 was about HALF as hard to level as 10th level and this made me reconsider pacing in experience based games, or even expectations on pacing for milestone based games.

5e Advancement Difficulties

My current 5e campaign (Faerun Adventures) uses XP. It's intended as a fairly low power setting, with no expectation of ever hitting 20th level. After thinking about it, I decided to halve XP awards after 10th level to stop the rocket-boost effect built into standard progression.

 

[Blue]

But honestly, I still think the problem is how stingy DMs are anyways. Its why I don't really like milestone leveling. The DM will hold you at level 7 until they realized that level 8 exists in the game and still waits until the next plot point.

If DMs just recorded the exp and had more full adventure days, I feel like leveling up can go much faster.

I mean, it usually doesn't take me more than 2 sessions to level up until level 5 where it takes only 3 sessions. Each session is roughly 2 hours (I do downtime stuff outside of sessions). Generally, my group gets to level 20 in a year or a year and a half.

XP/Leveling for players is a reward mechanism. Leveling for DMs is a pacing mechanism. What feels stingy from one side may not from another.

I run multi year campaigns. My players enjoy them. Leveling up every 4 to 6 hours of play time like you would feel far too fast for our table.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you feel that XP leveling is too fast and don't want to Milestone due to DM fiat, you can always change it up. Somebody mentioned on here, in the thread about Goodman announcing Temple of Elemental Evil, to swap out the current 5E XP charts with something like the 2E/Advanced Dungeons and Dragon's Thief class XP chart. It's "faster" leveling compared to the other classes XP charts but not as speedy as 5E. shrugs.

Probably me. In my Temple campaign, we use the AD&D Thief chart, and you can purchase XP with gold. This results in leveling a little faster than AD&D, but not so fast that you pirouette through the 4th floor and kill everyone by throwing feathers at them.

The other campaign I'm running is Out of the Abyss, where characters level up at the prescribed rate. It's fine. If they weren't at least 15th level by the end, that would be a problem. It's also taken about a year to play through. The idea that there is some correct power level to have after a year of gaming is silly to me. The correct power level is the one that's appropriate to where you are in the fiction a year later.

 

[Blue]

During my session 0 I ask people how quickly they want to advance, and I check in every few levels. Then we just level up accordingly. Personally? I really enjoy playing low levels, and have fun DMing at all levels.

I also have months (game time) between sessions and explain that in part people are training for the next time things go to heck in a handbasket.

Yeah. I'm hitting into a bit of a dissonance there in one group I play in. Several of the player want to hit high levels. In response the DM has said we're going to 20th. We're currently 12th. But while I get to play with new and cool toys, fights go longer, magic solves things we used to have to be clever about in other pillars of play, and I am enjoying the experience - but would likely enjoy more a 4-10th level experience.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah. I'm hitting into a bit of a dissonance there in one group I play in. Several of the player want to hit high levels. In response the DM has said we're going to 20th. We're currently 12th. But while I get to play with new and cool toys, fights go longer, magic solves things we used to have to be clever about in other pillars of play, and I am enjoying the experience - but would likely enjoy more a 4-10th level experience.

Yeah, I'm weird. I prefer really low levels because we have to be more creative on problem solving and not just blow **** up. That and I always feel more character growth at lower levels.

I think next time I do a campaign I'll probably set up some secret polling and see what people want.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Yeah, I'm weird. I prefer really low levels because we have to be more creative on problem solving and not just blow **** up. That and I always feel more character growth at lower levels.

From levels 1-3, you more than double your HP. A Fighter's offensive power doubles from 4th to 5th level. Doublings don't really happen again for anybody after maybe 6th or 7th.

My OoTA players observed early on, "It feels like just yesterday that nobody could even cast Fireball, and we're already 9th level." Personally, I haven't particularly enjoyed DMing the campaign. It's fine. I liked ToEE better. If I were going to write a campaign that ends with defeating high level demons, I'd probably want to spend a much longer amount of time as an epic hero rather than still dungeon-spelunking at level 14.

 

[S'mon]

My OoTA players observed early on, "It feels like just yesterday that nobody could even cast Fireball, and we're already 9th level." Personally, I haven't particularly enjoyed DMing the campaign. It's fine.

I had the same experience GMing POTA and power-levelling the PCs to hit the expected levels - I used an XP system, but it was about twice as fast as RAW 5e XP so they could go from 1 to 14 over the campaign. It was ok, but it all felt a bit shallow and superficial.

I've decided I like RAW XP and slow advancement in 5e. I've run a lot of 5e campaigns now, including 1st to 20th+ in Wilderlands and in Runelords. 5e handles high level play far better than 3e and better than 4e IME, but it's still set up to work best in the 3-10 range; and the XP system is designed to promote play in that range.