D&D 5E XP Chart and High-level NPCs

[TheCosmicKid]

No, they were all low-level fights and we run fast. There's not exactly much to run on a kobold or a guard.

I mean in-universe. Does group number ten have an opinion about the fact that groups one through nine got slaughtered? Why didn't they either mass their forces better or run away? Were they unaffiliated? What are the odds of adventurers running into ten unaffiliated groups of monsters in five hours?

And I'm also trying to understand your math here. If they really were all guards and kobolds, by my reckoning that's 260 kills per character to get to level 5. You say you also gave some quest XP, but unless the quest XP dominates the total (in which case, there's your problem), we're still talking hundreds and hundreds of kills. In five hours. Those are figures Rambo would struggle to hit, and he's got automatic weapons. How many people in the history of the world do you figure have managed to kill, hand-to-hand, two hundred actively resisting opponents in five hours? If nothing else, don't you think they'd get tired?

What I'm saying is, if the pace of the slaughter in your game is so... accelerated, any conclusions you draw about the rate of XP advancement are bound to be a little skewed.

 

[MostlyDm]

Given the difference between level 1 and level 20 isn't as wide as it is now, you may be right.

Bingo.

For example, per Pauper's post a few notches up... The 20th level fighter from the previous campaign can't singlehandedly defeat a whole army.

I think the assumption that a lot of high level people exist is probably fine... Because high level people are substantially less intimidating and deadly. In 5e, Drizzt would get eviscerated by a thousand orcs (disclaimer: I never read that book, just basing this on the name.)

The example Archmage NPC is something like a 19th level wizard, for example. In my campaign I'm expecting the terrifying necromantic minions of a major Lich will probably use that stat block, with some heavy tweaking. There might be a dozen of them in the major city ruled by that Lich.

High level NPCs aren't necessarily incompatible with a campaign where the PCs matter... The PCs just may not be the only thing that matters.

 

[Sunseeker]

I mean in-universe. Does group number ten have an opinion about the fact that groups one through nine got slaughtered? Why didn't they either mass their forces better or run away? Were they unaffiliated? What are the odds of adventurers running into ten unaffiliated groups of monsters in five hours?

They did marshall their forces. The initial combats were against a few guards in isolated locations (3 guards, all lvl 1 fighters with extra hp) they had about 3 of these combats before the city watch started to catch on. 2 following encounters were larger groups of 5 tracking the party down. Eventually they cornered the party in the tavern the party had retreated to and arrived with about 20+ guards. The party however came up with a creative escape route and was able to get out of the city. After that they ran into 3 guard (4 guards, 1 captain as a lvl5 fighter) patrols as they ran for the woods. I built my NPCs as basic fighters instead of using existing stat-blocks (except for when they actually for some kobolds, that was from the book, there were 12 kobolds though).

If nothing else, don't you think they'd get tired?

Sure, but the rules don't say "you get tired after 150 kills". They say you get tired after not sleeping for 24 hours in the form of exhaustion points.

What I'm saying is, if the pace of the slaughter in your game is so... accelerated, any conclusions you draw about the rate of XP advancement are bound to be a little skewed.

Would it have made a difference if I held these fights had taken place over some make-believe series of days? It's 5 hours of real-world gameplay, not 5-hours in game. I don't know what their timeline was in game, probably 2-3 days. We just rolled fast at the table.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But I honestly think you should ask yourself "why am I assuming NPCs follow PC rules when it gives me trouble believing in my world?"

Thing is: there is nothing that suggests NPCs follow PC rules. If anything, they are about half as strong as player characters, always use d8 hit dice and very rarely get the cool class features PCs get.

The assumption has to be there, because the alternative would create inconsistencies within the narrative, since there is nothing within the game world which distinguishes a PC from an NPC.

NPCs use d8 hit dice and lack complex class features because that way the game is easier to run. It's not meant to accurately model what those characters can do within the game world, because by and large, those things won't ever come up. The simplified model is good enough for our purposes, even though it may be less accurate.

 

[Grainger]

I just give XP arbitrarily, rather than for kills. Partly because I don't like the "kill things for XP" mindset it encourages, but also because I can control the rate of progression much better. My preference is fairly slow progression (after the first couple of levels, which are "training levels" really in 5e), for the very reason that I don't like the idea of a world full of high-level NPCs. Sure, as noted in this thread, the PCs don't have to level at the same rate as NPCs (they are the heroes of the story after all), but too much disparity and it gets silly.

In my (relatively) realistic medieval campaign world, if it really was too easy to reach higher levels, half the knights in the kingdom would be off seeking their fortune, and the society would collapse. Hell, half the serfs would be trying their luck in the local caves, even though it's illegal for them to do so, as it would be a viable way to get out of their situation.

On the other hand, if the PCs somehow level up much faster than everyone else, then that raises other questions (in less you come up with some super-heroish "bit by a radioactive spider" reason for their fast levelling ability).

So instead, I dish out XP whenever I feel like it (I try to retain a sense of progress, so it doesn't stagnate). I should add that this wouldn't work for an experienced or power gamery group. My players have some experience at RPGs, but nothing recent prior to 5e, and they're not ones to pore over the books wishing they were at X level so they can get Spell of Ultimate Destruction. If my players expected frequent levelling up, I'd have to go with that, I suppose, even though it kinds of breaks a low-power world like mine.

There's also the issue of the level ceiling. 20 level just seems too low for me - I always thought BECMI's 36-level scope (combined with slow levelling) got it about right. It's better to have a bit of headroom, so that there's always more for the players to achieve, always heights for (very rare) legendary NPCs of the past to have reached (without the players having reached it). And of course, BECMI had "levels" of immortality above this, if you wanted to go there.

20 levels in a couple of years is insanely fast, not just from a power gaming perspective, but because it doesn't leave you anywhere to go. Who wants to be at 20th level with no prospect of advancement, in a game that has levelling at its core? Do you just retire the character and start again? And if so, where does that retired PC fit into the game world. They'd be a world-shaker for sure; it raises all sorts of issues, unless you parcel them off (immortality, like in the old BECMI rules?).

 

[Pauper]

For example, per Pauper's post a few notches up... The 20th level fighter from the previous campaign can't singlehandedly defeat a whole army.

This threatens to get off-topic, but might actually be germane. There's a reason why I chose the word 'rout' rather than 'defeat' when describing the level 20 fighter vs the king's army: the soldiers comprising the army are almost certainly not genre-savvy enough to know that 'bounded accuracy' is supposed to make them a collective threat to the fighter**.

That might be the way out of our problem with NPCs, though -- the king's advisor might not be genre-savvy enough to realize that the adventuring wizard he advised and who defeated the previous apocalyptic threat is actually more powerful than he is now. "He is but a whelp who only survived based on my counsel -- he certainly could not replace me!" Add in that most DMs are loath to bring previous high-level PCs into a new lower-level game, or to portray such to their former players, and you get at least a decent story-based explanation of why the status quo would persist despite the previous party's victory. (It's a little bit harder to justify in shared-world environments like the Forgotten Realms, where thousands upon thousands of heroes have adventured -- you still end up, when a new party starts out adventuring, effectively hitting the 'Start Game' button and firing up the campaign from the default settings.)

** - And I'm not sure an army could easily defeat a 20th level fighter, even with 'bounded accuracy'. Give me a sword-and-board Champion fighter in +3 plate mail, the Heavy Armor Master feat, and a Cloak of Displacement. If he goes up against an army composed of Guards from the DM Basic Rules, only 1 in 400 is likely to hit him in any given round (they need a 20 to hit, and the Cloak imposes disadvantage on their attacks), and each hit is going to do a single point of damage on average. And of course, once they do manage to whittle the fighter down to half his starting HP, he'll regain somewhere between 8 and 10 hit points each round he's below half. The main question would be, how long would the army persist on pursuing this fight before an increasing number of them just say 'the heck with this' and take off? The fighter might well rout a 10,000 man army this way, killing only a few hundred.

--
Pauper

 

[Ristamar]

NPCs use d8 hit dice and lack complex class features because that way the game is easier to run. It's not meant to accurately model what those characters can do within the game world, because by and large, those things won't ever come up. The simplified model is good enough for our purposes, even though it may be less accurate.

Far less accurate, though I disagree that it's solely for ease of play, or that it disrupts narrative consistency. Most low level humanoid encounters would be far more deadly if they had more than a shadow of the PC's abilities. The early game would be an absolute TPK blood bath if all sorts of common thugs and bandits were using powerful tools like Action Surge, Second Wind, or Sneak Attack.

 

[Ristamar]

** - And I'm not sure an army could easily defeat a 20th level fighter, even with 'bounded accuracy'. Give me a sword-and-board Champion fighter in +3 plate mail, the Heavy Armor Master feat, and a Cloak of Displacement. If he goes up against an army composed of Guards from the DM Basic Rules, only 1 in 400 is likely to hit him in any given round (they need a 20 to hit, and the Cloak imposes disadvantage on their attacks), and each hit is going to do a single point of damage on average. And of course, once they do manage to whittle the fighter down to half his starting HP, he'll regain somewhere between 8 and 10 hit points each round he's below half. The main question would be, how long would the army persist on pursuing this fight before an increasing number of them just say 'the heck with this' and take off? The fighter might well rout a 10,000 man army this way, killing only a few hundred.

Assuming the DM isn't a slave to merely rolling dice to attack and doesn't run the soldiers like mindless automatons, the soldiers would quickly tackle, restrain, and disarm the fighter through sheer numbers.

 

[MostlyDm]

This threatens to get off-topic, but might actually be germane. There's a reason why I chose the word 'rout' rather than 'defeat' when describing the level 20 fighter vs the king's army: the soldiers comprising the army are almost certainly not genre-savvy enough to know that 'bounded accuracy' is supposed to make them a collective threat to the fighter**.

That might be the way out of our problem with NPCs, though -- the king's advisor might not be genre-savvy enough to realize that the adventuring wizard he advised and who defeated the previous apocalyptic threat is actually more powerful than he is now. "He is but a whelp who only survived based on my counsel -- he certainly could not replace me!" Add in that most DMs are loath to bring previous high-level PCs into a new lower-level game, or to portray such to their former players, and you get at least a decent story-based explanation of why the status quo would persist despite the previous party's victory. (It's a little bit harder to justify in shared-world environments like the Forgotten Realms, where thousands upon thousands of heroes have adventured -- you still end up, when a new party starts out adventuring, effectively hitting the 'Start Game' button and firing up the campaign from the default settings.)

** - And I'm not sure an army could easily defeat a 20th level fighter, even with 'bounded accuracy'. Give me a sword-and-board Champion fighter in +3 plate mail, the Heavy Armor Master feat, and a Cloak of Displacement. If he goes up against an army composed of Guards from the DM Basic Rules, only 1 in 400 is likely to hit him in any given round (they need a 20 to hit, and the Cloak imposes disadvantage on their attacks), and each hit is going to do a single point of damage on average. And of course, once they do manage to whittle the fighter down to half his starting HP, he'll regain somewhere between 8 and 10 hit points each round he's below half. The main question would be, how long would the army persist on pursuing this fight before an increasing number of them just say 'the heck with this' and take off? The fighter might well rout a 10,000 man army this way, killing only a few hundred.

--
Pauper

Nice points about lack of genre-awareness, in both directions.

Also: In addition to non "basic attack" vectors of defeating such a fighter, I'd just also mention that most high level NPCs aren't going to be tricked out in the way you describe, and a very wide variety of viable PC archetypes would not stand up nearly so well to 1,000 CR 1/8 guards. It's only when you specifically min/max for AC that you can achieve the result you desire.

Even ignoring grappling/overwhelming this fighter though, your math is off: if half the guards Help the other half, you go from 1/400 to 1/40 hitting with a crit (why is that crit dealing just 1 damage, by the way?)

Anyway, I think that most level 20 characters aren't as army-immune as you seem to be implying.

 

[MostlyDm]

For example if we have 1,000 men fire a volley at a single high level target, here's a DM adjudication that seems reasonable to me: treat half the shooters as Helping the other half. Therefore 500 viable shots have a 1/20 chance of success (advantage counteracting disadvantage from displacement), resulting in 25 hits, which are all critical hits.

Assume 1d6+1 base damage for these archers, or 2d6+1 on crit for a total of 8x25=200 damage in this volley.

Yeah. Even your very impressive fighter will feel that.

I recognize this requires some adjudication, as if memory serves you can't Help at range like that. But... Does it strike you as wildly unreasonable? Punitive? Or a decent way of modeling the situation at hand?