D&D 5E XP per Session !!???

[jrowland]

I'm inclined to agree, but it is a matter of taste. If you played bi-weekly, you'd reach level 20 in 2.5 years (one level every 6 weeks), at the slowest end of that spectrum (levelling every 3 sessions). That's far too fast for me (level 20 is meant to be pretty much Legendary Hero status), but it depends how common those levels are in your game-world, and which levels you want to play at.

There's also the meta-game aspect: 2.5 years is a LONG time for any group. As a 40+ adult, this is not a problem with my "regular" group - we are old and boring and this is our "bowling night" activity. But at 20+ (ie college) it was harder as people were more mobile (change schools, jobs, relocate, etc), pursued other interests (girls, video games, boys, skiing, girls, hiking, boys, etc), and so on.

For me a 3 year campaign from 1-20 is about right: Year one is levels 1-10, year two is levels 10-15, and year three is levels 16-20. As such, I don't worry about tallying xp earned, and simply announce a level up such that I maintain that general pace. Bi-monthly 4 hour sessions means about 20 sessions per year (4 usually missed due to holidays, real life interruptions) so essentially its a level every other session (1 per month) for the first year, then it slows down to once every other month. My steady group maintains this, but when I run other groups, it rarely lasts a year. And even for my regulars, 2-3 campaigns and another edition comes out!

 

[Coredump]

OTOH, lets look at what they have actually put out.

Expeditions are about 5-600 XP each. So it will take 3-4 4-hr sessions to get from 3 to 4, and 6-8 4-hr sessions to go from 4 to 5.

HotDQ Ep3 has mini-encounters supposedly worth about 300XP each, so it will take 13 of them to go from 4th to 5th level, and I don't see getting through them in 8-12 hours. I think it is likely to be closer to 25 hours, or another 6 sessions.

Ep2 is mostly a dungeon crawl... but evenso, I don't see it taking only 8 hours to complete (though I suppose its possible)

 

[Grainger]

There's also the meta-game aspect: 2.5 years is a LONG time for any group. As a 40+ adult, this is not a problem with my "regular" group - we are old and boring and this is our "bowling night" activity. But at 20+ (ie college) it was harder as people were more mobile (change schools, jobs, relocate, etc), pursued other interests (girls, video games, boys, skiing, girls, hiking, boys, etc), and so on.

For me a 3 year campaign from 1-20 is about right: Year one is levels 1-10, year two is levels 10-15, and year three is levels 16-20. As such, I don't worry about tallying xp earned, and simply announce a level up such that I maintain that general pace. Bi-monthly 4 hour sessions means about 20 sessions per year (4 usually missed due to holidays, real life interruptions) so essentially its a level every other session (1 per month) for the first year, then it slows down to once every other month. My steady group maintains this, but when I run other groups, it rarely lasts a year. And even for my regulars, 2-3 campaigns and another edition comes out!

Agreed - there are a lot of real-world considerations, as well as in-game ones. In some ways, I wish the levels went higher (I miss BECMI's 36-level limit, but not the wackiness with some classes having much lower level caps), as you get the best of both worlds then - a sense of progression, without the risk of reaching the higher level tiers too soon if you don't want to (you can, of course, always start at a higher level if you want to play more powerful characters).

 

[Doctor Futurity]

5e is about going up in levels really fast. Its easy enough to dial back. But when adapting old materials you need to kind of be aware of how fast they go up as you work on the foes and challenges.

I've been having a hard time with getting XP gain to match leveling pace in my own games, and have resorted to boosting story awards a bit to make up for the slow pace. At the rate my group is going it's taking 4-8 sessions to creep up a level from 5 on. I think it's because XP gain from monsters is less frequent in my games, so I am being forced to compensate with story awards. That said....I think it's not so obvious from my play experiences that leveling pace is that fast....that or I'm doing something wrong? I don't think so....I like an advancement that takes at least 4 sessions.

 

[Grainger]

I just give some XP (based on how fast I want them to level) every session. The players always achieve something every session be it fighting, exploring, diplomacy, puzzling, infiltrating, planning...

 

[Doctor Futurity]

There's also the meta-game aspect: 2.5 years is a LONG time for any group. As a 40+ adult, this is not a problem with my "regular" group - we are old and boring and this is our "bowling night" activity. But at 20+ (ie college) it was harder as people were more mobile (change schools, jobs, relocate, etc), pursued other interests (girls, video games, boys, skiing, girls, hiking, boys, etc), and so on.

For me a 3 year campaign from 1-20 is about right: Year one is levels 1-10, year two is levels 10-15, and year three is levels 16-20. As such, I don't worry about tallying xp earned, and simply announce a level up such that I maintain that general pace. Bi-monthly 4 hour sessions means about 20 sessions per year (4 usually missed due to holidays, real life interruptions) so essentially its a level every other session (1 per month) for the first year, then it slows down to once every other month. My steady group maintains this, but when I run other groups, it rarely lasts a year. And even for my regulars, 2-3 campaigns and another edition comes out!

I remember in my college days (back in the early 2E era) I timed my campaigns to conclude at the end of each semester because you could never be sure you'd have the same players next semester. So every campaign would run for a few months and wrap. In 2E that got us about 6 levels typically, but I can see a lot of advantages to 5E's format under that pressure.

Of course, decades later, I am also very comfortable with the idea of a 3-year leveling format like you outline.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I've been having a hard time with getting XP gain to match leveling pace in my own games, and have resorted to boosting story awards a bit to make up for the slow pace. At the rate my group is going it's taking 4-8 sessions to creep up a level from 5 on. I think it's because XP gain from monsters is less frequent in my games, so I am being forced to compensate with story awards. That said....I think it's not so obvious from my play experiences that leveling pace is that fast....that or I'm doing something wrong? I don't think so....I like an advancement that takes at least 4 sessions.

We are doing monster and story, mostly monster so far, and its quicker than 1e by a million times and 3e by a fair bit I think. I think the design goal was like 1-20 in a year of college or something along those lines.

 

[Uller]

I've been having a hard time with getting XP gain to match leveling pace in my own games, and have resorted to boosting story awards a bit to make up for the slow pace. At the rate my group is going it's taking 4-8 sessions to creep up a level from 5 on. I think it's because XP gain from monsters is less frequent in my games, so I am being forced to compensate with story awards. That said....I think it's not so obvious from my play experiences that leveling pace is that fast....that or I'm doing something wrong? I don't think so....I like an advancement that takes at least 4 sessions.

You're not doing anything wrong. Your game sounds like its just a bit less combat oriented than a typical game. Story awards are a great way to govern the pace. In practice it really isn't all that different than milestone leveling but imxp players like to get xp...myself included.

Our last game I expected my players to accomplish two things and gain a level. Instead they accomplished one but much more thoroughly than I anticipated. They were just a bit shy of gaining the level but it felt like the right time so I gave them a story award, acted like it was what I planned all along and they got their level. They're happy. I'm happy. The story is about to move in a new direction....all good things.

 

[Grainger]

You're not doing anything wrong. Your game sounds like its just a bit less combat oriented than a typical game. Story awards are a great way to govern the pace. In practice it really isn't all that different than milestone leveling but imxp players like to get xp...myself included.

Our last game I expected my players to accomplish two things and gain a level. Instead they accomplished one but much more thoroughly than I anticipated. They were just a bit shy of gaining the level but it felt like the right time so I gave them a story award, acted like it was what I planned all along and they got their level. They're happy. I'm happy. The story is about to move in a new direction....all good things.

Yep, my players sometimes go for whole sessions without combat, and rarely have more than two or three small-ish fights in a session. If I ran XP for monsters defeated, they'd never level up! That's why I just dish out XP per session; I suppose if they didn't achieve anything in a session I might rethink it, but that's unlikely to happen.