Speed of leveling

[Dirty-D]

One of the campaigns I'm playing in just went on break for the summer. At the end of last session, most of the characters hit 11th level (started at first).

This campaign has run from like October to June, and I was a little curious whether or not the leveling was a little bit faster or not in our game compared to some of you guys. Sessions were weekly, usually about 5 hours long.

 

[trentonjoe]

Seems okay to me. Actually a little slow! We level about every third game, it seems you guys go every 4-5 weeks.

It is all a matter of taste though. There is no RIGHT answer.

 

[Uller]

Actually it works out to 1 level every 3.5 sessions or so. My experience has been that level ups are fast for levels 1 thru 4 or 5(about 1 level ever 2 sessions) and then things slow down from there. In one campaign, our PCs are around 6th and 7th level and the DM has started slowing level advancement down to one ever 4 levels because we thought things were going a little too fast.

 

[Jeremy]

I can't relate to level-per-session averages. I have to ask for hours-per-level averages because we play a minimum of 10 hours (2pm-12am) and a maximum of 12 hours though usually we end somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30 (except for the first game I DM'd, played til the sun came up oops! And everyone was still awake, musta done something right).

Normally we level about once a session because our DM's have this problem with presenting "20% of your resources" encounters and prefer 100%-120% 5 hour I-Don't-Know-How-We're-Gonna-Make-It-Outta-This-One combats. Though I'm attempting to slow that in my campaign to about once every four sessions. But as we alternate campaigns every week between two DM's, my game is every two weeks (I voted very strenuously against this as not only do you have two weeks since you did something, but you also have 10-12 hours of some other game stuck in your head to further erase any continuity from your mind, but alas, 5 to 2 isn't even close to a majority)---some people are complaining because they are used to once a session and now it's once every 6 weeks which to them is felt like once every 60-72 hours of play (even though it's half that, another thing I don't like about the system).

That and the body count on the campaign is up to 7 (extremely high for us, especially before 10th level) which is making some of them start new characters and some of them to get raised which either way is costing them levels or in their minds 60-72 hours of work.

So go figure, find something that is fun for your players that won't make you uncomfortable or terminate your game before you are ready for it. And remember, high level gaming is COMPLETELY different (totally different animal, can't stress this enough) than low level gaming but it is just as fun and even more rewarding once you get the hang of it. You get what you pay for, and while high level gaming costs more in every department, the payoffs are stories you can tell to non-gamers and they'll think it came out of a book or an anime.

 

[Belares]

The campaign I am running is now levels 9th and 10th and we have been playing 6 months or so. I have decided that lowering the experience will not affect the way we play just slow down the progression. I have asked the group if they have a problem with that and no one seems to mind. It is not a penalty, just a way to have more fun at the levels they are at. I wish I had started it a couple of levels ago, though.

 

[Leopold]

what is the ratio of encounters/level. Sunday my pc's had a whopping 9 encounters (they are monster hungry and have death wishes)! and 2 of the players gained 2500xp and some got the ball park of 1500. Now they are 2nd level and went from 2nd to 3rd in one session. Is this bad? I figure with the overall amount of death reigning down on them that they took a licking and kept on ticking!

 

[Belares]

what is the ratio of encounters/level. Sunday my pc's had a whopping 9 encounters (they are monster hungry and have death wishes)! and 2 of the players gained 2500xp and some got the ball park of 1500. Now they are 2nd level and went from 2nd to 3rd in one session. Is this bad? I figure with the overall amount of death reigning down on them that they took a licking and kept on ticking!

There is nothing in the books or ules saying you cannot advance more than 1 level a session.

As far as is it right ..wel if they fought and won through all the things you allude to ..then yes go ahead and give them thier reward.

 

[Leopold]

There is nothing in the books or ules saying you cannot advance more than 1 level a session.

As far as is it right ..wel if they fought and won through all the things you allude to ..then yes go ahead and give them thier reward.

they are a hack n'slash group that is learning the beauty of roleplaying more and more..since i give bonus xp out for roleplaying at the end they have to work harder and harder to snuff out that "KILL EVERYTHING!" mentality and really roleplay. I am all for letting them level up rapidly suits my needs just fine, just gauging whether there was a 4 encounters /lvl rule in effect.

 

[Taloras]

As Belares said, we have been playing about 5-6 months (the current game started Feb 18 for 3 of us, the DM and one player had been playing for a bit before that) and are now 9th level or so....playing every week. I wouldnt say we are leveling too fast.

 

[Dreaddisease]

I thought level advancement was an average of 13.3 encounters per advancement when all of those encounters are at the same level of the average party memeber. 13.3 sounds about right. I know I go through 7-9 encounters per level because we are fighting things that are 1-2 level(s) higher than us on average.

I agree that level advancement should not be counted in sessions. one encounter in one session and 5 in another session can off balance the advancement/session ratio drastically. Advancement per encounter is a better way to judge the advancement. Slowing down is very much acceptable.

If your really into the RP aspect than the party shouldn't be fighting baddies to get that feat or that special ability at that next level but to further the story line. A good DM should get responses from players that are more towards the story line than the number of monsters. That is my opinion. There will always be rules debates and extraordinary situations that require you to thumb through pages of the core rules/accesories for a few minutes but if they are more concerned about returning that sacred sword to the queen of light that they had to retrieve from that dungeon full of baddies more than how many baddies they killed then its a game worth playing.

I would also suggest to the DMs that they don't consistently throw hard hard monsters at their players. This leads to players wanting to be more powerful to defeat these things. Sometimes its nice for the players to know just how powerful their players are by defeating lower CR creatures. Just a thought.

As an example we had a sorcerer focused on fire spells and few other spells (being from an elemental plane of ice) and me a rogue who had incredible back stab stats. After 3 combats of fire resistent constructs the sorcerer and I were ready to change classes and couldn't wait until the next level to get some different spells and so my rogue could specialize in a weapon other than a dagger. The next battle after these we were pitted against a creature who wasn't immune to critical hits and another that was but was not immune to fire. Sorcerer let it rip and the rogue was happy.

I know the DMG goes over this but I can't stress that the game should be fun and challenging.

Wow, this is too long.