D&D 5E XP Per Adventuring Day Per Player is Ridiculous
Even if the books don't explicitly tell you ''look, if you wait for too long, this [instert baddy here] and their lackeys just *might* do some pretty heavy damage'', it should be a plausible conclusion to draw. Just try to imagine what a PC (and I mean in-world character, not the player) would feel when knowing that their world is in danger. It is just natural that they would feel pressed to act quickly, like they were racing against time, because their lives and their world are in danger (and because they know that the world doesn't revolve around them, nor the uber evil will wait for them to get strong enough).
That said, a campaign where the world revolves around the PCs and nothing major happens without them (unless it is already written in the plot) is as valid as any other gaming-style, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. With that, you would solve the problem of hyper fast, prodigy-level learning, but it would be a trade off for uber evil, world ending threats not appearing as really world-ending and not giving a feeling of serious danger. That's why (IMHO) high-stakes storylines shouldn't start at low levels, or, if they did, they shouldn't supposedly cover a short period of time.
MarkB
Legend
You can go with some variant of the "brooding evil" concept for such scenarios. The Big Bad gets defeated, at great cost, by the civilised nations' armies, but not destroyed - it has retreated to build up its forces over years or decades, ready to go forth again at some unspecified time (i.e. when the PCs are high enough level to face it).
It may be, but at that point, I'm better off making my own story than following an adventure.
ExploderWizard
Hero
I find this to be the case at least 95% of the time.
neobolts
Explorer
I noticed this first with 4th edition. Progression rate has become more and more a meta function of the needs of a gaming group, rather than a logical progression within the game. The pace of advancement feels rewarding, so I think the problem lies more with the in-game passage of time.
Rather than try to alter advancement or add more "level grind" to the game, why not try to make the in-game timespan feel more natural? Find reasons for more downtime, travel, etc.
Or just embrace the fast pace and integrate it. In one 4e campaign, I had PCs go from zero to hero in the span of a few months in-game. War broke out, they became a strike team, soon became included in war room planning, and within months were equal shot-callers with the more established generals.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
"Oh no, the world is in danger and we are but lowly mooks. We'd better travel to Shadowdale on our fastest horses to alert Elminster and ask for help!"
This is a fantasy trope and completely rational behavior but WotC never accounts for it.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
That just makes it more ridiculously anticlimactic when they do face it. "Seriously, that thing defeated armies? It only had 500 HP!" I've played in that game before and it was not fun.
Might be fun though if it actually were an army-breaker with AC 28, thousands of HP and regeneration, massive 500' radius AoEs, etc.
Sacrosanct
Legend
IMO, I think the "need to feel rewarded" started with 3e. What I mean by that is the group of players out there who feel like if they aren't rewarded every time they level up (OMG a dead level!!!!) and by extension not rewarded by leveling up at a constant rate, then the game is broken. Having started gaming in 81, I've had many years of having fun where those two things weren't important or incorporated into the game mechanics. At least not the most important to my fun. The "dead levels" never bothered me, because as an old school gamer, even a little extra HP as pretty good, and my fun centered around what I was doing in the game, not necessarily playing a Skinner's box where the actual game play was nothing more than tasks needed to get the next new shiny. In fact, the entire MMO platform is based/dependant on a skinner's box, so it's no surprise that we see large groups of gamers want the same thing in tabletop. Not my cup of tea playstyle wise, but whatever floats the boat I guess.
Jeff Carlsen
Adventurer
XP per adventuring day, like CR, is simply a tool to tell you how much abuse the party can probably take between long rests. If they go over the adventuring day budget, they're probably out of resources and more likely to bite it.
It's not a representation of how much XP should be granted each day, or how many fights they should get in, unless you feel that you should be running the PCs dry ever session.
Where it's most useful is in designing and populating dungeons. It allows you to try and provide locations for the party to hole up for night around where they'll need them, or create natural points where they can leave and feel accomplished (say by putting one day's worth of monsters on a single floor).
It's not a representation of how much XP should be granted each day, or how many fights they should get in, unless you feel that you should be running the PCs dry ever session.
Where it's most useful is in designing and populating dungeons. It allows you to try and provide locations for the party to hole up for night around where they'll need them, or create natural points where they can leave and feel accomplished (say by putting one day's worth of monsters on a single floor).
