D&D 4E What level have you achieved in a 4E campaign?

[Cerebral Paladin]

I've run an intermittent campaign for roughly the last year or so. With lots of deaths, and some changing PCs, the highest level characters have made it to about 4th. Because it's an oversized group, combat goes slowly, and I do XP by the book, so that has slowed the advancement rate.

My son has leveled up his character to 2nd level, but because he's only four and a half, I haven't been tracking XP. He'll level up to 3rd level when I think he's ready to add the complexity of another power, or getting bored with his current mix (or when his friend, who he plays with occasionally but who mostly games with his dad, has leveled up his character to 3--at their age, parity is a good thing.) He's probably gotten enough XP to technically be well into 3rd level, over the course of about 7 sessions of play.

I'm also in an online War of the Burning Sky campaign. We're at the end of the second adventure, and I think we're solidly in the middle of Heroic tier--around level 6, IIRC.

 

[dangerous jack]

My one-3hour-session-a-month game has been going since Fall 2008, and we've just hit level 6. We level up after between 5-8 encounters at 2 per night, and have had several two-month breaks due to the births of 3 children.

I recently decided to end it spectacularly (i.e. one way or another) at level 10 rather than run a 12 year campaign. But I also plan on de-levelling some epic foes. After all, the party does have it in their minds that they'll be stopping an alliance between Vecna & Zehir... permanently.

 

[Cobalt Meridian]

I've been DMing a 4th. Ed game for the past year and my first campaign ended last week with the characters all at 8th level. This took 38 sessions at 3 hours each session.

Technically they earnt enough xp from the last adventure to put them at 9th but they didn't want to continue with those characters so we called time on it there.

Campaign 2 starts in a week or so's time and I'm aiming to increase the progression rate a little, hopefully so that they'll go from 1st to mid-paragon in about 30 sessions.

I've noted that levelling in 4th Ed. has been (or at least seems to have been much faster) than the 2nd Ed. campaign I ran before, where the characters also reached 8th level but it took them over 80 sessions to do so. On the flip side it's much slower than the Pathfinder game I play in where my character has gone from 1st-4th in 6 sessions so far.

In other words, any speed of progression is just fine as long as you and your players are having fun

 

[Vael]

We started back at first level, pretty much when 4e came out. A TPK at level 10 lead to a new party starting at level 11, which is now almost to level 16. We probably should be epic by now, but there have been detours, we started Seekers of the Ashen Crown, which fizzled when two members left, and then another hiatus for someone else to run the Forgotten Realms adventure.

 

[The Human Target]

Our current game is the longest we've run straight from first on so far, and we just hit 7th.

Planning on trying to make it to 30th though.

Edit- We play every other week for lets say 6 or so hours usually. We've been playing this game since late May/early June of last year very consistently.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, the weekly online game I run is now at 12th level (will be this week). We only get in around 2-3 hours a week though on that one. We started in the fall of '08. I figure we'll just continue that one on up as far as the players want to stick with it. Everyone is having a great time. Can't say I really track XP much anymore though. Technically we're still going by XP, but really with 4e you can pretty much just eyeball it and there's no real point to dealing with leveling different PCs at different times.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

My ongoing campaign that started over the summer just hit 9th last Sunday. The plan is to go through Epic, but I may cut it short at 20th. Not sure atm.

 

[Goonalan]

I've run three 'proper' campaigns so far with 4e, and another three that have stalled or fallen apart for one reason or another, of the three that sort of made it then-

#1 Maptools game 5+ hours/session weekly 80 or so sessions Level 13 PCs then crashed to a stop (WOTC Core grind).

#2 Face-to-face game 4-5 hour sessions now bi-weekly (with attendance issues) 50 or so sessions Level 12 PCs (Next up P2- yes I'm trying the WOTC core modules again but with different players (and more plot/story built in)).

#3 Maptools game 3-4 hour sessions weekly 13 sessions played (as of last Thursday) same players as campaign #1 Level 3 (as of last Thursday). 50% Roleplay 50% Dungeon (et al)- much more satisfying than previous campaigns.

Cheers Goonalan

 

[The Human Target]

These threads always make me think the next editions should focus on what is now the heroic tier and only have like 5 to 10 levels.

 

[Shroomy]

In our first 4e campaign, we reached 17th level. We could have reached epic tier, but our DM was having a baby and could no longer devote the time to it anymore. Instead, I took over as DM for a new campaign and they've got to 4th level before we went on a holiday-inspired hiatus. We're either going to continue with that campaign or I'm going to start a new one depending on whether or not we have more than the one player drop out.