XP progression: too fast, too slow, or just right?

[Michael Silverbane]

I am somewhere between too fast and too slow, but not at just right...

At the lower levels, I like to speed things up a little bit. Two sessions at 1st level is plenty enough for me. My players have all been first level characters a million times before, so they know what is going on and how the game works and they are ready to start engaging in some serious butt-kickery. So... We zoom through those formative levels, allowing for just enough tome for them to be... you know... formative.

At about level 6 or 7, I like to slow... things... down... slowing the progression to about eight sessions per level.

When I say session, I mean about a four hour block of gaming, give or take. And I have recently formalized this, and actually just started telling my players when they level up. I used to keep track of XP and finangle the numbers or the number of encounters (or both) per session so that It would seem all legitimate like, but then I decided that I wasn't going to bother with that any more.

In order to make sure that the players remain involved and feel like they will be rewarded for good play, I use action points, and grant an action point any time someone does something cool, daring, heroic, memorable... whatever. I also use action points for magic item creation and spell xp costs.

Most of this stuff was stolen from Piratecat...

Later
silver

 

[S'mon]

My preferred advancement rate is about 1/5 sessions, as advocated in the old Rules Cyclopedia. In 3e, giving 1/2 XP gives this rate. Full XP gives more like 1 level per 2-3 sessions, rather than the 3-4 sessions the 3e DMG advocates.

 

[S'mon]

I can't speak for everyone here at EN World but I would have thought that once a week would be about as many times as most people play. I play once a fortnight and even that sometimes becomes difficult to organise due to scheduling clashes. Sure there are some people that might play multiple times per week but I would have thought that they would be in the minority.

Olaf the Stout

We play twice a month, with occasional breaks. After 22 months & ca 34 sessions in our Barakus campaign the PCs have reached 8th level, from a 1st level start.

 

[brainstorm]

Too Fast?

I'm amazed at the number of "too fast" responses here. I wonder if these are all responses from DMs or if some players agree that leveling is too fast. Although I DM full-time and haven't been a player in a while, I do recall wishing that our DM would speed things up so I could get to the cool powers at higher levels. If I had to play eight sessions to gain a level, as some have suggested here, I think I'd be looking for another game.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I'm amazed at the number of "too fast" responses here. I wonder if these are all responses from DMs or if some players agree that leveling is too fast. Although I DM full-time and haven't been a player in a while, I do recall wishing that our DM would speed things up so I could get to the cool powers at higher levels. If I had to play eight sessions to gain a level, as some have suggested here, I think I'd be looking for another game.

I am both a player and a DM of 3e (sometimes it could hardly accurately be called 3e, but that mostly applies when I´m ´behind the screen´), and yes I think it should be slower.

But it is, of course, a matter of taste.

 

[arscott]

IIRC, the XP rules in the DMG were designed such that after 2 years of weekly play, a group would reach level 20. That's a schedule of advancement that I'm perfectly comfortable with.

That said, I've yet to play in a long-running game that used the DMG's XP rules, so I have no idea how they hold up. But as long as they work as advertised, I say the porridge is just right.

 

[Hairfoot]

I'm amazed at the number of "too fast" responses here.
...I do recall wishing that our DM would speed things up so I could get to the cool powers at higher levels.

Well, I guess that's the other dynamic of level progression - which levels are the "sweet spot"? I get bored rapidly after about 8th level, because I generally like to play characters on a more...human scale, i.e. Indiana Jones rather than Wolverine.

I can see how players who enjoy high-level campaigns (without starting out high) will find the standard progression more satisfying.

 

[brehobit]

I'm using the standard EXP rules for the first time. What I'm noticing is that the more powerful the PCs start out (stats, using lots of non-core stuff, etc.) the faster they advance. We did 1st level as 32-points, 1 extra feat and a ~2000GP item to start. As such, CR1 challenges were not a challenge at all and CR2 stuff was still sorta easy for them. As such, they go up levels much more quickly. A 25-point buy without the bonuses I gave would advance much more slowly I think....

Moral: I think low-point buy and shorting them a bit on items makes the advancement go slower.

Mark

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Too slow.

However, I'm comparing it to a system where advancement is nearly constant but much more incremental. I want to level up every session, if not every encounter, but I don't want to go from struggling to solo a wounded goblin to shaking the pillars of heaven in a month or two.

Heck, if it weren't for the prohibitive bookkeeping, I'd love to move to a system like that of some electronic tactics-RPGs, where *every action* gives you XP/SP that can be spent on incremental advancements.

Interestingly, if you use the level every session system for a bi-weekly game, it *almost* fits, going over 20 by just six games. Chop one off for group chargen, two for an epic finale and maybe three weeks off during a year... that's really not bad at all.

 

[kaomera]

I'm amazed at the number of "too fast" responses here. I wonder if these are all responses from DMs or if some players agree that leveling is too fast. Although I DM full-time and haven't been a player in a while, I do recall wishing that our DM would speed things up so I could get to the cool powers at higher levels. If I had to play eight sessions to gain a level, as some have suggested here, I think I'd be looking for another game.

I voted "too fast", but I pretty much only ever DM (not completely by choice). What I have found (in the games I run, YMMV) is that I really wish players would do more with the "cool powers" they have, rather than always looking to the next level. It just ends up that the players always want more skills, more feats, more magic items, and then they're disappointed when they get them and the cycle begins anew. I've seen a bunch of fifth-level PCs take over a major city; not without a lot of work, but IMHO accomplishing that at fifth level was way cooler than walking in with fifteenth-level characters and doing it with one or two barely-challenging die rolls. Gaining levels too often seems (again, IMHO) to make them less significant and less special. I usually try to find other ways to reward players, just about anything that they can actually put on the character sheet and say "See! My character did that!" to try and help "pad things out" when I'm a bit stingier than I might be with XP and treasure.

I really find that all the joy gets sucked out of the game (for me as a DM) at high levels. I find that players have all this "great" stuff they want their characters to have and be able to do, but they don't really know what to do with most of it (in terms of making the game fun for everyone). Also, I feel like I'm forced to "adapt" to the PCs' power level by, basically, taking away all of their cool powers, and I just don't enjoy that. For example: running a high-level dungeon I decided not to simply block all teleportation and scrying into and out of the place. The PCs had some (roleplaying) reasons to actually go through at least most of the dungeon, and a limited timeframe that kept them from doing unlimited divinations, but I expected that this would be a chance for all of their cool stuff to shine. Instead they cashed in favors to get a totally-overkill strike-force of NPCs and teleported directly into the BBEG's sanctum with them. No big deal for me (I don't like long fights anyway), but the players where incredibly disappointed that I didn't make things "more fun" and that the whole adventure was over in one (short) session. (Plus there was grumbling that if they didn't actually need all those extra guys, then they shouldn't have been available. To me that's like saying that you shouldn't be able to expend charges from your magic item if the DM knows that you don't really need to...)

I'm not trying to suggest that this is a problem for everyone, and I know that I could have handled that situation better in some ways, but in the group I run I just wish that the players had a much more "with great power comes great responsibility" mentality. The more powerful the PCs, the more impact the players will have on how the game actually runs... I'm not a perfect GM, and so I try to avoid things that make my "job" harder, because they tend to lead to less fun sessions.