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Nupo
2017-07-03, 09:57 AM
I was reading some old magazines and came across an article in "Best of the Dragon" titled "D&D is only as Good as the DM" written by Gary Gygax. In it he says,

"It is reasonable to calculate that if a fair player takes part in 50 to 75 games in the course of a year he should acquire sufficient experience points to make him about 9th to 11th level, assuming that he manages to survive all that play. The acquisition of successively higher levels will be proportionate to enhanced power and the number of experience points necessary to attain them, so another year of play will by no means mean a doubling of levels but rather the addition of perhaps two or three levels. Using this gauge, it should take four or five years to see 20th level."

I remember reading this article when I first purchased this magazine back in 1980, and I think it had an effect on my DM'ing style over the years. We upgraded from 1st edition to 3.5 back in 2004, and recently have migrated to Pathfinder. Through it all I have pretty much always been DM, and level progression has remained pretty much the same. Our current campaign meets once weekly, started in March, and the characters that have survived just made 4th level. That is pretty close to what Gary Gygax recommended, and very typical of our campaigns over the years. I like this rate of progression, even though it is slower than what modern versions of the game recommend. People I have played with have also been happy with this speed of progression. When they level up, it's a big deal, a fairly major accomplishment, and reason to celebrate.

How fast do characters level up in your campaigns? Why have you decided to progress at this speed, and are you happy with it?

DigoDragon
2017-07-03, 10:33 AM
In my old group's first D&D 3.5 campaign, we played about three sessions a month for just over three years and ended it all around level 23-24. I think on average characters leveled up every 5-6 sessions, with an occasional bonus level for particularly tough story-bosses that would take up their own session to defeat. I remember leveling being fairly steady because as DM I was too busy keeping the campaign world interesting and couldn't be bothered with calculating every little exp for killing this or socializing that. It was easier to just let the party level at specific story points.


I'm in a 3.5 campaign now that the GM is very by-the-book with calculating exp and awards it after every encounter. This GM likes to throw very challenging encounters however, and there's always at least one fight per session like that, so we're leveling on average once every 3 sessions due to the large exp gains for surviving.

johnbragg
2017-07-03, 01:18 PM
When I'm DMing 3rd, I rule-of-thumb that 10 average encounters gives you a level. (A book somewhere says 13 1/3, but forget that.) Hard encounters (near TPK) count twice, easy encounters count for half. Keeps it simple. That campaign is the one in my sig, I'll count the sessions in a minute.

I'm learning 5th now, so I'm using the listed XP values. We've played maybe 10 sessions since getting the books for Christmas, and the party is 4th level. (Caveat: The module fiat-levels them up to 2 when they get to town, and I fiat-levelled them up to 4 when they finished Part 2 of the module, but they were within an encounter or two of levelling anyway.)

hymer
2017-07-03, 01:32 PM
How fast do characters level up in your campaigns? Why have you decided to progress at this speed, and are you happy with it?

In my experience, the best levels for D&D are somewhere between 4 and 8. A wide variety of opponent can still be relevant, and the PCs are powerful, and yet not such powerhouses that they become a great problem for suspension of disbelief. So I usually try to level them to about level 4 quickly, and then slow them down after that.
In a currently running 3.5 campaign, they have played about 18 sessions I think, and are recently arrived at level 7. They'll advance again in about six sessions, and again in seven or eight, and so on.

In an earlier 3.5 West Marches-style campaign, I used the XP rules to the letter. The highest level PCs had reached ECL 17 by the time the campaign ended, after something like 120 sessions IIRC. New characters were introduced at half the XP attained with the previous character, and resurrections were restricted, so that's not a good indication of how long it's supposed to take.
I felt that one had a decent rate of advancement (though I didn't much enjoy DMing for PCs in their teen levels), but only because of the loss of XP on character death.

These 5e days, I don't use XP, but milestones. Leveling is considerably reduced in speed, to as slowly as I feel I can get away with. The only reason I level the PCs at all is because the players want and expect it. They're level 6 after something like 20-25 sessions, and as far as I'm concerned, they don't need to get much higher. But that wouldn't be much fun for them.

Mastikator
2017-07-03, 02:28 PM
Your character should progress in some way every session, either personally, socially, materially or experientially.

There's also the concern of how often you play, if you can play every week then it should be less often, if it's less than once a month then you may as well level up every single time. And you could also benefit greatly from treating the sessions more like episodes, with a clear beginning and end of a semi-self contained sub plot.

Nupo
2017-07-03, 03:06 PM
In my old group's first D&D 3.5 campaign, we played about three sessions a month for just over three years and ended it all around level 23-24. I think on average characters leveled up every 5-6 sessions, with an occasional bonus level for particularly tough story-bosses that would take up their own session to defeat. I remember leveling being fairly steady because as DM I was too busy keeping the campaign world interesting and couldn't be bothered with calculating every little exp for killing this or socializing that. It was easier to just let the party level at specific story points.


I'm in a 3.5 campaign now that the GM is very by-the-book with calculating exp and awards it after every encounter. This GM likes to throw very challenging encounters however, and there's always at least one fight per session like that, so we're leveling on average once every 3 sessions due to the large exp gains for surviving.
Did you prefer leveling roughly every 5-6 sessions or every 3 sessions better?



I'm learning 5th now, so I'm using the listed XP values. We've played maybe 10 sessions since getting the books for Christmas, and the party is 4th level. (Caveat: The module fiat-levels them up to 2 when they get to town, and I fiat-levelled them up to 4 when they finished Part 2 of the module, but they were within an encounter or two of levelling anyway.)
That's pretty fast progression. Do you think it diminishes the sence of accomplishment when they level up that quick?



In my experience, the best levels for D&D are somewhere between 4 and 8.I agree, those are fun levels. First through third are also fun, because it's quite a challenge to simply keep them alive. My wife doesn't care for levels higher than about eight. She says they're too complicated to play, and it takes real powerful monsters to adequately challange them.

These 5e days, I don't use XP, but milestones
I'm not familiar with 5e, are milestones a game mechanic, or just a term for leveling them up after completing certain tasks?



There's also the concern of how often you play, if you can play every week then it should be less often, if it's less than once a month then you may as well level up every single time. And you could also benefit greatly from treating the sessions more like episodes, with a clear beginning and end of a semi-self contained sub plot.Good point, I never considered that. Way back with I was a teenager, in the summer we sometimes played in excess of 80 hours a week. Now it's a five to six hour session every sunday. If you had a group that only met once a month it would take over a year to get to third level going at my normal pace. I can see how that would be annoying.

Amphetryon
2017-07-03, 04:40 PM
My normal standard as a 3.X DM is 13 encounters are enough to gain a level. This is deliberately broad, ignoring the CR system in order to make certain levels seem more challenging based on the sort of encounters faced. It also means I don't have to recalculate the pace based on which hooks the party latches on to.

johnbragg
2017-07-03, 08:40 PM
That's pretty fast progression. Do you think it diminishes the sence of accomplishment when they level up that quick?

I think so. But it looks like that's built into 5E.


I'm not familiar with 5e, are milestones a game mechanic, or just a term for leveling them up after completing certain tasks?

It's not really a game mechanic, but I'm pretty sure it happens in the Lost Mines of Phandelver demo module for D&D Next.


Good point, I never considered that. Way back with I was a teenager, in the summer we sometimes played in excess of 80 hours a week. Now it's a five to six hour session every sunday. If you had a group that only met once a month it would take over a year to get to third level going at my normal pace. I can see how that would be annoying.

(Considering my preferred 10-average-encounters per level). In a 5-6 hour session, figure 3 encounters. So I'd expect the party to level every 4th session, so yeah, a year of gaming would get you pretty close to fourth level.

Knaight
2017-07-03, 09:02 PM
It depends. I tend not to GM D&D, which makes this more a rough translation of other mechanics than anything, but a lot of the same principles apply. So, looking at a few different speeds.

-0.3 Levels/Session: This is rare, but occasionally it can be fun to play a campaign where decay is a major motif. The world is in some way deteriorating, the past was better even within living memory, and to fit this the PCs are heroes past their prime, trying to do what damage control they can before becoming such a pale shadow of their former selves that they can only watch what happens.
0 Levels/Session: I mostly use this for fairly short campaigns (6ish sessions), where mechanical advancement just isn't the point. That zero doesn't tell the whole story though, because the characters often do mechanically change, the capabilities they had as the people they were at the beginning of the campaign fading away as they pick up the new skills that accompany the people they are at the end of the campaign.
0.3 Levels/Session: This is essentially my standard, although it's worth stressing that the 0.3 is an average. I tend to like mechanical soft caps, which make it easier to improve in an area when unskilled than when already competent. Part of this is simulation (the more skills you have to maintain your ability at the harder it is to learn something new), and part of it is that it can disincentivize minmaxing when well implemented.
1 Level/Session: A game characterized by time skips can easily fit here. I'm currently working on a game that involves following a chain of masters and apprentices through potentially hundreds of years, with each session an adventure separated by years. Coming back more skilled after seven years offscreen makes a lot of sense, particularly as age penalties are going to make an appearance anyways (and they hurt a bit more than they do in D&D).

LordCdrMilitant
2017-07-03, 09:02 PM
When running D&D/Pathfinder, I make players level about once a session, at the end of the session.

When I run Dark Heresy, I generally award 500 XP per session.

Psikerlord
2017-07-03, 09:14 PM
Your character should progress in some way every session, either personally, socially, materially or experientially.

There's also the concern of how often you play, if you can play every week then it should be less often, if it's less than once a month then you may as well level up every single time. And you could also benefit greatly from treating the sessions more like episodes, with a clear beginning and end of a semi-self contained sub plot.

I'm a big fan of session based incremental leveling (like 13th Age or LFG uses). So at the end of most sessions, pick something from your next level and gain it now. And that's how you level up (capped at 1 level per adventure).

Telok
2017-07-04, 02:02 AM
Hmm... Well, keeping in mind that there are about 3 months a year of no gaming where I live (it's not continuous, but that's what it sum to) over the past 20ish years or so of weekly play I'd guess...

AD&D: Somewhere from a level every two months to two levels every three months. So around one level every 6 to 8 sessions. With the caveat that we didn't enjoy the high level domain play as much so we tended to retire characters and reboot after 10th or 11th level.

D&D 3e: About a level a month (four game sessions).

D&D 3.5: Generally about a level every three weeks (three game sessions).

D&D 4e: Every other game session like clockwork. So twice a month.

D&D 5e: When we've played from level 1 it's been two levels the first session, another level each session for the next two sessions, one more level after two more sessions, and then we get bored with it.

Traveller: Well, it's not a levelled system but there were definite equipment and ship upgrades, some cybernetics, they missed the learning drugs side-quest and didn't bite on the psi-training hook. They did end up manufacturing a few warbots for personal use. That all took about nine or ten months.

Hero: Another non-levelled system. It fell apart a little faster because they couldn't quite break the D&D "kill everything that moves and loot it" mentality. But they had 10 to 15 xp on top of a 300 point build after two adventures, it took a bit less than three months.

Paranoia: Insert your favourite "you are not cleared for that information" tag line. They still played four missions and got a skill-up every time. Didn't eat the mutant-power granting pills though, I think they didn't like the looks of the random chart.

Professor Chimp
2017-07-04, 08:31 AM
In our group we level every 4-5 sessions on average. A little faster when I DM, a little slower when my friends does, since I'm generally more generous with rewards.

hymer
2017-07-04, 01:58 PM
I'm not familiar with 5e, are milestones a game mechanic, or just a term for leveling them up after completing certain tasks?

Milestones is a 5e game mechanic that does exactly what you imply. It's leveling when the DM or published adventure says to (ideally after finishing some chapter or division of content), no XP involved.

Frozen_Feet
2017-07-04, 03:09 PM
Playing Lamentations of the Flame Princess, after two years and at the end of the campaign, the highest character was level 18, IIRC. Granted, their leveling was sped up by a calculation error on my part that I decided to roll with. Those characters who didn't benefit from such windfall ended at levels ranging from 4 to 9.

Generally, when playing old-school D&D or retroclones, leveling is pretty fast initially. It can happen once per session, up to level 4 or so, on average 4 hours of play per level. Granted, this depends on player skill and the precise scenario - it could take 2 to 3 sessions per level (8 to 12 hours) for a less succesfull group. After level 4, progression tends to slow considerably, to the point where 10 sessions without level up is possible.

However, I've found character death is more influential in keeping a campaign from reaching high levels. IIRC, only two characters lasted the whole two years, and they were NOT the ones to reach highest levels. (Deliberate goofing off kept them from advancing.) Some players went through four or so characters. Since each death set them back by average of one level, I figure they would've all finished at around 10th if they'd been luckier.

Mastikator
2017-07-04, 03:58 PM
I'm a big fan of session based incremental leveling (like 13th Age or LFG uses). So at the end of most sessions, pick something from your next level and gain it now. And that's how you level up (capped at 1 level per adventure).

That... is a pretty cool idea. I've never considered that.

weckar
2017-07-06, 06:42 AM
Well, the thing is that we just run our encounters and get the exp by CR. So that's how fast or slow we go.

Jay R
2017-07-06, 11:51 AM
Usually about 3-4 sessions per level. In original D&D, or 1e or 2e, it would be fewer for the lowest levels, and sometimes more for the upper levels, since level requirements are exponential and xps are more-or-less quadratic.

But I'm pretty sure it averages to about 3-4 sessions per level.

Nupo
2017-07-06, 12:50 PM
It's interesting how much it varies from group to group, with some leveling up every session. It seems leveling every 3-5 sessions is pretty common. The rate Gary Gygax recommended works out to leveling every 4.5-8.3 sessions. It also appears that the newer versions of D&D core rules have characters advancing quicker than older versions. I just wonder why that is. Did people think earlier editions leveled too slow? I have always liked the system of advancing fairly quick (but not every session quick) at first, and as the levels get higher, advancing more slowly.

Mastikator
2017-07-06, 01:27 PM
It's interesting how much it varies from group to group, with some leveling up every session. It seems leveling every 3-5 sessions is pretty common. The rate Gary Gygax recommended works out to leveling every 4.5-8.3 sessions. It also appears that the newer versions of D&D core rules have characters advancing quicker than older versions. I just wonder why that is. Did people think earlier editions leveled too slow? I have always liked the system of advancing fairly quick (but not every session quick) at first, and as the levels get higher, advancing more slowly.

Maybe the power gap between levels has decreased, it certainly did between 3.x and 4, I am not up to speed about 5.

Friv
2017-07-06, 01:44 PM
When I was playing D&D, we generally levelled up every 3-4 sessions - a little bit faster at low levels. We also tended to run campaigns that didn't last more than 30 sessions, so we'd start around Level 2-3 and call it a day around Level 10-12.

hymer
2017-07-06, 02:19 PM
It also appears that the newer versions of D&D core rules have characters advancing quicker than older versions. I just wonder why that is. Did people think earlier editions leveled too slow?

I think sensibilities have changed, at least somewhat. The personal power level and to some degree the options of the individual PC has advanced at least through to 3.X, a similar trend to advancement coming faster. You see something similar in computer games, with less steep learning curves from the 80s and up through time. It used to be that completing a game was not expected to happen to most players, or at least not until a lot of time had been spent learning to master the game. You had a certain amount of tries in a game, and then game over. Start from scratch. The concept of game over is rare now. Back when I used to play WoW, game content was gradually and consistently made easier to reach and complete, so not only the elite guilds would be able to use end game content. It makes perfect sense, commercially, as long as you keep giving people the option (and the bragging rights) of doing things the hard way.

Insert Yorkshiremen sketch here.

Magic Myrmidon
2017-07-06, 04:30 PM
I typically like "leveling up" every session, but that doesn't need to be a full D&D level. 13th age style of "get a skill this session, a spell next, a class ability the next" is probably my favorite, along with XP spending systems (although those can be a pain when you need to save up for 10 sessions just to level a single part of your character *cough7thSeacough*

For when I run things like D&D, I typically level the party pretty quickly. A rate of about once per 2 sessions. This is for numerous reasons.

1: I hate experiencing 1/4th of the game. Over and over and over. I want to be able to actually play the entire level spread, and not be confined to the lower end of things.
2: I like high power/high level games.
3: I like feeling like my character is growing, learning things, and developing- not stagnating.
4: I try to apply my preferences as a player when I am DMing. I know I want to level frequently as a player, so I make it happen as a DM.
5: I have a loooot of ideas for campaigns I want to run. As such, I want my campaign to wrap up in a reasonable amount of time. I don't want a party to be created with an expectation of reaching a high level, only to end it after 10 sessions or so.

Jay R
2017-07-06, 06:39 PM
The rate Gary Gygax recommended works out to leveling every 4.5-8.3 sessions. It also appears that the newer versions of D&D core rules have characters advancing quicker than older versions. I just wonder why that is. Did people think earlier editions leveled too slow?

It depends on the old system, and how it was played.

When I was playing original D&D in '75-'77, we quite often leveled up one xp less than two levels in a session, since some of the treasures were enough to give far more xps than we could use.

On the way back to town, we buried one gp per PC just outside of town. Then we'd go back the next day, dig it up, and return to town with one more xp each, getting a second level out of it.

[Yes, you're right - an experienced DM wouldn't have let us get the next level by grabbing the buried coins without an adventure. But there were no experienced DMs.]

GungHo
2017-07-07, 12:09 PM
I've always done milestone-style leveling. I never really liked the bookkeeping aspect of tracking incremental XP. If we all think agree we done "enough learning", goals were accomplished and people are ready, levels go up. I don't send folks to grind, and you don't get a lot more out of killing 50 kobolds vs 50,000. Elminster is going to come take you away for being crazy.

LordCdrMilitant
2017-07-07, 01:42 PM
It's interesting how much it varies from group to group, with some leveling up every session. It seems leveling every 3-5 sessions is pretty common. The rate Gary Gygax recommended works out to leveling every 4.5-8.3 sessions. It also appears that the newer versions of D&D core rules have characters advancing quicker than older versions. I just wonder why that is. Did people think earlier editions leveled too slow? I have always liked the system of advancing fairly quick (but not every session quick) at first, and as the levels get higher, advancing more slowly.

I don't think it's a factor of the system, more so a factor of the group. I don't use XP with leveled systems because I just figured it to be mostly worthless and time consuming. I kept everybody at the same XP count anyway, otherwise that makes a mess when some people level and some don't. In addition, I made up XP values for all the hostiles I used anyway, so it struck me that just assigning levels when I felt like it was most practical. In addition, because I don't like pausing the session for everyone to consult the PHB to determine if they level up, it at most happens once per session and always happens at the end of the session. And finally, because this started in school where campaigns were generally written to be a semester in length, it made logical sense to level up every 1-2 sessions, thus getting to about level 10 by the end of the campaign, and still leaving space to go if it ended up being run for two semesters.