XP is way too high in 4th Edition!

[MerricB]

Hmm, I thought XP for treasure went out with 1E? I don't remember using XP for treasure in 2E.

It was there as an optional rule. Unfortunately, its removal completely broke the the XP system.

In AD&D, characters gained about 20% of their XP from killing monsters, and 80% from getting treasure. In 2E, according to the guidelines as written, they'd get 50% of their XP from monsters and 50% from story awards, with no adjustment upwards for the XP from monsters. Thus, levelling was at 40% of AD&D standard. (Which was approximately once every 5-8 sessions for levels 1-9).

This is unless you were a thief, who amongst their individual class awards gained 2 XP per gold piece value of treasure obtained. No mention of using their thief abilities to gain it. Yes, a lot of people *included* that, but given that XP for treasure wasn't included for everyone else, it caused a mockery of the XP system with thieves going up much, much quicker than everyone else.

It should be noted that Gary Gygax may well have used the Individual Class Awards that were presented in 2e; he made reference to similar awards at one point in AD&D and was surprised when we told him that they weren't in the rulebook...

There are several major flaws with the 2E system, but the top of my list has always been its XP system.

Cheers!

 

[NewJeffCT]

In 2E, according to the guidelines as written, they'd get 50% of their XP from monsters and 50% from story awards, with no adjustment upwards for the XP from monsters. Thus, levelling was at 40% of AD&D standard. (Which was approximately once every 5-8 sessions for levels 1-9).

Thanks for the info - the last big 2E campaign I was involved with ran weekly from August 1998 to Sept 1999. I know the party rogue did not get extra XP for stealing and the party did not get XP for gold... The DM ran a really tight ship, so we accomplished quite a bit each session. I think the DM took a couple of one weekend breaks in there (he had a physical disability that would occasionally catch up to him), but we had maybe four "mega" sessions that were like 3 sessions in one. So, I am guessing about 60 sessions in total. During that time, the party went from level 1 to level 8 or 9 for that big final showdown (the rogue had an easier XP path, so was 9, while my ranger was level 8, etc). After that final showdown, we all got another level for the final combat, plus a huge story award... however, that is one level every 7 1/2 sessions for my ranger, and one level every 6 2/3 sessions for the rogue.

From Sept. 2007 to early 2009, I DM'd a 3.5E campaign. We met every other week, but had nothing like a mega session. Though, we did have several overtime sessions when encounters ran long. All-in-all, we probably had about 60 sessions in two and a half years of gaming. I didn't run nearly as tight a ship as that old DM from 2E days, but we still accomplished a lot. The party went from level 1 to level 18 for that big final showdown. So, almost exactly twice as many levels in roughly the same amount of gaming. The players were leveling once every 3 1/3 sessions.

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

From a player perspective, I kinda wish ours had been more/faster. Our group has been playing over 2 years, and we're just at level 19. We play once every 2 weeks, with time off for holidays, and the occasional "everyone's out of town" thing.

I think the exp. is probably okay - our problem is, after meeting at 6pm, and playing until 3am, we've rarely done more than 1 or 2 encounters.

(it seems to be improving a little bit though).

 

[MerricB]

Incidentally, the actual quotation in the 2E DMG as to rate of advancement is:

"An average pace in an AD&D game campaign is considered to be three to six adventures per level, with more time per level as the characters reach higher levels. However, it is possible to adventure as quickly as one level per adventure or as slowly as ten or more adventures per level."

The only reasonable definition of "adventure" in that quotation is as "session". (Consider that a standard published D&D adventure covered several levels of play, and one realises that you can't use that as a guide!)

Comparatively, 3E is designed for four sessions per level (it's assumed that you spend a bit of time doing other stuff apart from the 4 encounters/session and 13.33 encounters/level), and 4E for three sessions per level or thereabouts.

Cheers!

 

[babinro]

I personally prefer doing away with XP as a game mechanic entirely. Instead associating levels with adventures. In the end I average about double the progression, leveling every 4 encounters on average.

 

[Droogie128]

I couldn't stand a slower paced game, myself. Need to show some signs of advancement. If there's no change in my character at all after too long, the game grows stale.

Also, keep in mind, there are 30 levels in 4e.

 

[hawkwind7026]

I am not really upset, but that is because I do not use experience for level advancement. I use experience to build the encounters but I level the characters when I feel it is appropriate for my story.

My current group prefers a fast progression so we have been moving along at a good clip. We average about 12 encounters per level, sometimes more and sometimes less. Ultimately, the DM controls the flow of XP, if you want to scale them back the do so. As long as everyone is having a good time, I don't think that it matters.

Thanks for all the great comments. I never even thought about not using xp? That's a great idea! As DM, I will decide when the characters level up. I guess I was being a little ridiculos in my not wanting charcters to level up so fast, but you all gave me great ideas that i will use in my campaign, I just didn't know how to incorporate all my 1-3 level dungeons with characters that are advancing to fast. i did not want them to totally wipe out a 2nd level dungeon without taking any damage themselves.

 

[hawkwind7026]

I love this idea!!!!

 

[SoulsFury]

Thanks for all the great comments. I never even thought about not using xp? That's a great idea! As DM, I will decide when the characters level up. I guess I was being a little ridiculos in my not wanting charcters to level up so fast, but you all gave me great ideas that i will use in my campaign, I just didn't know how to incorporate all my 1-3 level dungeons with characters that are advancing to fast. i did not want them to totally wipe out a 2nd level dungeon without taking any damage themselves.

Just because you have a ton of ideas, doesn't mean you have to use each of them. Your players are not going to want to dungeon crawl session after session with the same level 1-3 characters. Let them level up fairly fast to level 5-6, and then maybe do one shot adventures for 1st level characters when a few players are missing. Just because you have a dungeon/adventure in mind that you want to run, doesn't mean you should.

At the moment, I have enough basic ideas to take my level 10 group to level 30, an idea for a campaign with PCs as dragons, enough ideas to complete my PBP campaign to at least early paragon (they are fixing to hit 2nd level) and multiple ideas to take characters from level 1-4. On top of that, each time we play a session, I get new ideas.

Basically, you are never going to run out of ideas for campaigns, but you sure will run out of time. Pick and choose your best ideas for a great campaign based on what your players are enjoying.

For instance, I have had one group of players that will go through about 2 encounters per session and get bored and think their is too much combat. However, the same group, I have turned the characters against each other, taken all their stuff, ruined their characters, and they all sent me text messages the next day saying those were the best sessions ever.

On the other hand, I have a group that if their isn't four combats a session, they will all fall asleep and they don't give a crap who they are fighting.

Not everyone is going to want the same type of campaign, so make sure you go with what the players and you can both agree on. If you want 10 sessions per level, and they want 2 sessions per level, meet in the middle at 4-6 per level. I think I've rambled enough, lol. Good luck and post some of your ideas sometime! I'm always looking to steal stuff!

 

[Jhaelen]

You're both misremembering and getting the math wrong, dude.

Fair enough, I won't argue with that

Second, 2E and 4E both have roughly exponential (geometric) XP tables; the amount of XP required to reach level N+1 is approximately K times the amount of XP required to reach level N.

Ouch, yep, I was thinking of exponential progression.

3E has a quadratic XP table. The amount of XP required to reach level N is equal to (N^2 - N) * 500.

Okay, okay, I bow before your superior math

BUT: Are we talking about the same xp progression table? It seems you're referring to the level advancement table for player characters. I was referring to the CR / pc level table.

Granted, I expressed myself wrong, but you're only looking at one part of the equation. The net effect of the advancement table and the XP gained for equal level encounters means the number of encounters required to level up is constant, regardless of the party's level.

(I hope, I got it right this time )

This is in contrast to how things worked in previous editions: The number of required encounters started with (approximately ^^) 13 and steadily increased until about name levels. Of course, there was no 1:1 correllation between character levels and monster classes*. But using level-appropriate encounters only, the number of encounters increased (again, the concept of 'level-appropriate' was a bit different pre-3e, but there were _some_ guidelines).

*: in German: 'Monsterklasse', i.e. the number ranging from 1 to 10, indicating the xp range a monster fell in.

Advancement rates were different for every class. E.g. I vaguely remember druids leveled more often in the mid levels than other classes. The net-effect of the reduced xp required for rogues meant they were usually one level ahead, while magic users were usually one level behind, etc.

This did _not_ have a noticable effect on the advancement rate of the average party level, though, unless I totally misremember! (which is possible - I'M not getting any younger )

Imho, one reason why advancement didn't accelerate once you hit name levels was the unavailability of high level enemies:
Unless you regularly slaughtered demon lords and archdevils, there simply was no way to advance faster.
Also, high level encounters were deadly. At least in the kind of games I participated in (which may well have been untypical), it was simply too difficult to survive for long in the high levels.