D&D 5E Wandering Monsters 01/29/2014:Level Advancement...

[DMZ2112]

I think the important questions asked are:

1. How many sessions should it take to level?
2. How long should it take to reach level twenty if you play regularly?

What is "regularly?"

The more I think about it, the more I think that advancement rate is a useless discussion for the core rules. Every group is different. One might meet weekly for four hours a pop. Another might meet monthly for that long, while a third meets monthly but sets a whole day aside for 12 hours of marathon campaigning.

Both session length and session frequency are completely unknowable variables. Not only is it useless to talk about advancement in terms of real time, but it is also useless to talk about it in terms of sessions because even the difference between a four- and a six-hour session is going to dramatically skew expectations in a group that is advancement-focused.

The rules should specify XP awards and XP requirements and just leave the rest up to the dungeon masters. They're smart enough to figure out what works for their group, and they don't need to be made to feel inadequate because their gaming schedule doesn't match some Platonic ideal.

 

[Uller]

I don't think it is useless to know what expectations they were basing xp rewards on. That makes it easier for individual DMs to adjust to fit their game. Me...I manipulate XP so level ups occur either right after completing some important milestone in the campaign or right befor the final session of an adventure so players can bring the hammer on the BBEG with new found powers. Generally its every 3-4 sessions. Quicker at low levels so I'm good with their rate in the articl.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Both session length and session frequency are completely unknowable variables. Not only is it useless to talk about advancement in terms of real time, but it is also useless to talk about it in terms of sessions because even the difference between a four- and a six-hour session is going to dramatically skew expectations in a group that is advancement-focused.

We could ask how many hours of playing the same character before leveling, instead...

Cheers,

 

[DMZ2112]

We could ask how many hours of playing the same character before leveling, instead.

Even more arbitrary. What a group is capable of accomplishing in an hour varies /dramatically/ from group to group, and even from session to session!

The /only/ constants are XP values and XP requirements.

 

[Blackwarder]

I am not really interested in discussing this point, because it is obviously grotesquely contentious and we will find no common ground. But my position on this matter is that Dungeons & Dragons, at is core, is about exploring dungeons, bypassing traps, dealing with dragons, and gathering treasure. It is /great/ that the system can be stretched to do other things, and I often stretch it myself, but all of those things are icing.

As icing, they should not influence the core rules of the game. Before D&D can be anything else, it must first be a dungeon crawler. Then we can start talking about elven politics in the Gnarley or extended trade missions to Zakhara.

EDIT: I overstepped my position on the monster front -- you don't have to /kill/ the dragons, but you have to engage them in a way that renders them non-threatening for at least the short term.

I have no idea why you think that we won't find any common ground, I agree with you completely!
My (misunderstood) point was that I would rather have XP both for defeating monsters and getting treasure because I think that D&D is formost a dungeon exploration game and in my book XP from treasure is the best way to facilitate this. I find that gaining XP solely from fights turn the game into one combat encounter after another and that's boooooooring.


Warder

 

[delericho]

Both session length and session frequency are completely unknowable variables.

They're really not. As I mentioned up-thread, WotC did a lot of market research before the release of 3e, and found that the average group met roughly once a week for 4 hours at a time. They tailored the 3e advancement rate accordingly.

Since then, it's likely that those numbers have changed. However, there's no reason they couldn't re-do that research. And, in fact, it's a good bit easier now, thanks to the internet. (Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find they had already done that research. Knowing your market is, after all, a good thing.)

 

[DMZ2112]

The equation for how many levels a PC gains in an arbitrary length of time (we'll call it a month) looks like this:

levels/XP * XP/encounter * encounters/hour * hours/session * sessions/month

It's a string of increasingly difficult to predict ratios. Setting an XP requirement for levels is fairly straightforward. Setting XP values for encounters is more difficult, given the roughly infinite number of possibilities, but is achievable within a reasonable margin of error given a set of logical rules.

From there the bottom falls out of the prospect. The number of encounters per hour, hours per session, and sessions per month are all unlinked variables, different for every group, and therefore subject to broad estimation. So by the time you finish the equation you've exponentially increased your previously reasonable margin of error by the power of four.

You can streamline your system so that an average encounter is /supposed/ to take an hour, bringing your third variable as close to 1 as possible, but that's the end of the developer's power over the players and it is not particularly effective. It relies too heavily on controlling encounter complexity and player focus.

You can estimate the number of hours per session at five, because that is /probably/ the top of the bell curve, but right off the bat I don't know anyone who games for five hours. Four, yes, six, yes, but at five you're already making what seems to me to be a faulty assumption. Everyone is going to be slightly off the mark.

And finally, sessions per month is a total non-starter. An individual player or dungeon master might be in different campaigns with different values here. One game meets weekly, another monthly, another biweekly. Maybe he games with friends he only sees once in six months.

Maybe someone can set me straight, I don't know -- I just don't see the value in wasting thought and paper trying to pin down a phantom.

 

[DMZ2112]

They're really not. As I mentioned up-thread, WotC did a lot of market research before the release of 3e, and found that the average group met roughly once a week for 4 hours at a time. They tailored the 3e advancement rate accordingly.

I just feel like an average value is meaningless for this purpose.

Also, I have grave personal doubts that once a week is any kind of /average/. That implies there are a lot of groups out there meeting /more/ often.

 

[DMZ2112]

I apologize; I am totally spamming this thread. I'm usually better about consolidating my responses.

I have no idea why you think that we won't find any common ground, I agree with you completely!
My (misunderstood) point was that I would rather have XP both for defeating monsters and getting treasure because I think that D&D is formost a dungeon exploration game and in my book XP from treasure is the best way to facilitate this. I find that gaining XP solely from fights turn the game into one combat encounter after another and that's boooooooring.

Excellent. Glad to find out I was wrong. I definitely agree that exploration, hazard avoidance, and goal achievement should be part of XP calculation. I've always viewed "XP for gold piece value" a bit askance, but mostly because it's never been explained to me.

 

[am181d]

None of the groups I play in or run use XP to level (and that has been the case for 99% of the games I've played in or run going back to the early 80s). Leveling has always been by milestone, whether in game (complete adventure) or out (X number of sessions played).

That said, the XP totals for monsters are helpful for building balanced encounters. (Assuming that they're accurate.) If I have a chart that says 2000 XP worth of creatures will be a tough encounter for a 8th level party, that's a VERY helpful resource. As long as I have that, I don't care how many XP WotC says it takes to hit each level.