Have expectations changed regarding rate of level progression?

[TaiLiu]

Like everyone else said: I'm not sure there ever was a standard rate of level progression. If the rate of leveling seriously impacts fun, it might be a good time to have another session zero and chat about expectations.

The rate of leveling in my last campaign was slower than most—about a level every ten sessions or so. So 30–40 hours between level-ups. It didn't feel terribly slow to me.

[Vegan Squirrel]

I'm seriously kind of shocked that AL is advancing characters so rapidly! If I had to level up my character every session, I would probably (amicably) leave the game after a few sessions. I want to enjoy each level for a while. And leveling up heavily spotlights the game side of the RPG, whereas I'm there to immerse myself in the world. Obviously, everyone has their own preferences, and of course they're all valid. Mine would be something like 3–6 sessions per level, preferably staying in T2 as long as possible.

When I'm running, I do calculate XP, but I've also toyed with using my own simplified XP systems (re-scaled to a static 100 or so XP per level, less granularity in how much XP to award per encounter). I include XP rewards for milestones as well, for accomplishing goals the characters set or completing quests they've agreed to take on. Or sometimes just for discovering something noteworthy.

[Theodoxus]

I typically use 1 session per the current level. So, one session to level from 1 to 2, three sessions to level from 3 to 4, etc. I haven't run any campaign past level 12 using that method, but I find it gets through the early levels quickly enough to curb boredom but slowly enough that the players can experiment with their new abilities / spells in a satisfying manner.

I also, usually, start each new level with slightly weaker foes and graduate to harder ones before the next level.

[Keravath]

There has never been a "standard" rate of level progression. Player have ALWAYS wanted to level whenever they could. The DM limits the advancement either to XP earned or milestones or whatever fits their story.

Originally, XP was the most common and possibly even the only method used to level. I never heard of folks using milestones when I first started. Leveling could take a long time. In most of those campaigns I played, characters barely made it to 7th level. The highest level AD&D character I ever played was about level 12 ... I think they leveled to 13 on the last session they were ever played. That progression took years.

Over the years, different approaches to leveling up have become more common. Different DMs run it differently. In 5e, particularly in most of the published modules, leveling can be much faster. This is especially true in the introductory modules like LMoP or DoIP where typically the characters can level about once every 2 quests. Adventurer's League pushes leveling to the extreme since characters can effectively gain two levels for every session played. Most don't do that for obvious reasons. The level gain is optional and the player gets to decide how many to accept or turn down. This works fine for the AL style of play (essentially serial one shot adventures with possibly different groups of players each time so creating a character story arc if desired is up to the player and not the DM).

For comparison ...

In my home game with players I have known for years and who started with AD&D ... the party is now level 15 after about 3.5 years. In that same time frame, I have run DoIP to level 7, CoS to level 12, and OotA to level 8 so far as well as played in RotFM to level 8 - about 35 total levels - with a different group of people. Each game runs about 3 hours/week.

In the first group, several of the players feel we are STILL leveling up quite quickly compared to what they are used to ... while the second group generally has the feeling that leveling has been a bit slow :).

One of the big changes with 5e I have found is that the game is quite playable at the high levels. There are cool spells, cool bad guys and the game hasn't broken yet the way high level play in AD&D appeared to from my limited experience with it. So instead of campaigns that would go until level 7-9 before starting something else ... a campaign to level 20 is feasible now.

Anyway, from my limited set of data, I would say that om average the current trend is towards faster leveling than was the case in the past.

[J-H]

DMing
Castle Dracula: 3 to 12 over about 23-24 sessions (~4hrs? each) in person. Milestone, levelup after each area/boss is cleared.
Against the Idol of the Sun: 13 to 20+2 epic boons over about 40 sessions (~3hrs each?) in person. Milestone, based on accomplishing stuff.
Dracula's Curse (ongoing): 2 levels over 4 months realtime, currently 28 hours game time into the campaign. High-intensity, 5-8 combats per day. Milestone. Party should reach 9-10 by 2-3 weeks ingame. It's Castlevania 2, for those who are familiar with it.

Playing
PBP 5e RHOD: 3 levels over 1 year real time. XP tracking. Ongoing.
Privateers of Lssthp: 4 levels over maybe 4 months real time. Milestone, 1-2 fights (but big ones) per levelup. Ongoing.

[Falrexion]

Much less about speed of progression but I'm curious, do most people start campaigns at level 1?

I don't think a game I've played in in the last five years has not started at level 2/3, with a level up after the first session, so really starting the actual campaign at level 3/4. From there it's milestone with about 4 sessions per level to five, and then maybe 6 sessions per level up to about eight or nine. We don't often make it past that but the few games that do have had very strong story beats for further level ups. Maybe it's because we don't play the same campaign regularly, we rotate DMs depending on the time of year and availability. We're only levelling about three times a year, but most of the games take place in the levels around tier 2 which is what we're all most comfortable with. We also play a lot of one shots which cover all levels depending on the concept, but our regular campaigns are not covering the full range of the game.

[Joshthemanwich]

I use a combined Combat XP/Gold XP system in D&D and it works pretty well. how you handle leveling can really influence how people play after all. I notice that leveling this way can lead to strange idiosyncrasies where there weren't many combat encounters yet now everyone fights better and there was a ton of major combats now the ranger can explore better. I find it better than milestone because I know that what I see as important is WAY different than the average play culture of 5e. I have contemplated "Modifying" (Stealing) WFRP 4e's goal system as a way to improve social leveling. although I always find that the consensus is to keep an inane level of parity in the party XP wise so I doubt that would help.
On the topic of pacing, I find my method allows my players to be in complete control of when they level so it feel pretty diegetic compared to my personal experience with milestone which felt like GM fiat 92% of the time.

[Crusher]

Much less about speed of progression but I'm curious, do most people start campaigns at level 1?

I don't think a game I've played in in the last five years has not started at level 2/3, with a level up after the first session, so really starting the actual campaign at level 3/4. From there it's milestone with about 4 sessions per level to five, and then maybe 6 sessions per level up to about eight or nine. We don't often make it past that but the few games that do have had very strong story beats for further level ups. Maybe it's because we don't play the same campaign regularly, we rotate DMs depending on the time of year and availability. We're only leveling about three times a year, but most of the games take place in the levels around tier 2 which is what we're all most comfortable with. We also play a lot of one shots which cover all levels depending on the concept, but our regular campaigns are not covering the full range of the game.

I usually DM and mostly start campaigns at level 1. I get that everyone's frustrated their characters are so fragile and limited. But I feel the party experiencing that, even if for only a little while (I mean, the party is usually level 2 by session 2 or at worst 3), imparts a sense of vulnerability on the characters you otherwise don't get. If the campaign starts at level 5, sure, they can still be threatened, but the characters are never *not* broadly competent tanks. You skip the first third or whatever of the character arc that way and never have that "fresh off the farm" or out of the academy or whatever phase.

That having been said, every campaign has a different vibe and that usually brings a slightly different cadence depending on what I'm going for. I generally ballpark the XP from the encounters and then fudge the results a little depending on various things. Also, I typically make the party find a safe place to rest for a couple days to level and at the end of a session, so that shifts things around a bit sometimes. Sometimes I want the characters to feel powerful for whatever reason so I'll level them faster. Like, the current campaign is a more spooky eldritch horror than usual so I've been using a lot of weird monsters the players likely don't know as well and the fights have been more dangerous than usual, plus there's an escalating "things are getting worse" feeling so I'm leveling the characters a little faster than usual so I can keep upping the threat w/o just wrecking them.

One thing I will say is that I think the "best" playing experience in 5e is around level 5-8 and I'll typically level the party faster outside that range and slower when they're in it. Once they get past level 10 or 11 5e doesn't handle them as well and they tend to be starting to head towards the climax. But, again, depends on the campaign. My campaigns seem to usually run around a year and a half, with the party getting to level 9 or 10 around a year in and maybe level 14-15 by the end.

Usually I wrap up campaigns somewhere between levels 12 and 15 or so, but I've done 1-20 a couple times because it suited the story and that's fine as long as you handle it properly, imo. One time it turned out fine, and the other time we didn't get to the end because at level 17 or so the party ran into a moral conundrum so divisive it nearly turned into PvP and everyone agreed to pause things for now and start the next campaign instead (its been a few years so I don't think it'll happen). Basically, Vlaakith's lich body was decaying and she had prepared a "vessel" (hinted to be an artifact) she could transfer her soul into, and the party was working with some Githzerai to steal the vessel and destroy it. Turns out, the "vessel" was actually a magically talented, but innocent, teenage githyanki girl who had no idea what was going on. Kill her? Hide her? Walk away? Perhaps we'll find out one day. I was happy with that narrative.

[Kurald Galain]

Much less about speed of progression but I'm curious, do most people start campaigns at level 1?

No. Unless it's with first-time players, I start at the least at level 3 so people have a subclass, and probably level 4 so they have a feat. I find level one pretty boring (but to be fair, I also find that in earlier editions of the game, except with first-timers).

[tokek]

Much less about speed of progression but I'm curious, do most people start campaigns at level 1?

My online games tend to have been starting in the 2-5 range, mostly 2 or 3

My weekly campaign started at level 1, made it to 20 and now we have restarted we went from 1 again

I'm about to start DMing at the local microbrewery (nice gig) and as its going to be a mix of new starters and more experienced players I will ease them into it at level 1 - then run to level 8 at which point we will discuss how we go forward and redo session zero.

[RedMage125]

By comparison: Our DM (@Phoenix Phyre) has us in campaign number 3. Campaign 1 lasted for just over a year, and his rule for that campaign was level up to 2 after session 2, then level up after every third session. We played once per week with a few weeks off. 1-20 campaign.
Our second campaign was slightly different. We began at level 3 and leveled up after every fourth session.
Campaign went from 1-17 in about a year.
We are using the same progression for this campaign. Start at level 3, level up after every fourth session. We just got to level 14 recently. It helps that all four players have remained the same, and that all four of us engage with the world and put the effort in to know our characters really well. That makes the game play during the sessions pretty smooth.

Omg, we're you one of the players who basically wrecked reality and your characters became deities to try and fix things?

[elyktsorb]

I dunno, my only line of thinking would be that people have been playing 5e long enough that they've played the earlier levels so much that everyone likes moving onto the later ones sooner? I mean that's my primary concern, I intensely dislike having to go through the first 4 levels these days.

[da newt]

"Adventurer's League pushes leveling to the extreme since characters can effectively gain two levels for every session played. Most don't do that for obvious reasons. The level gain is optional and the player gets to decide how many to accept or turn down. This works fine for the AL style of play (essentially serial one shot adventures with possibly different groups of players each time so creating a character story arc if desired is up to the player and not the DM)."

My AL experience is different. We see a whole bunch of level 4, level 10 and level 16 PCs (the top level of each tier) and few PCs at the lower end of any tier. With the newest iteration of player character creation rules you can start a new PC at level 5 with enough down time days to be level 9, one magic item (+1 weapon or spell casting item), starting items and 500 gp; it's even more common to skip levels.


Also a game with a mix of PC levels is tougher to balance - ESPECIALLY when some PCs are level 1 and others are min-maxed level 4 w/ a magic item. When I DM tier 1 games (level 1-4) I give the level 1 PCs temp hp just so I don't kill them off by accident.

[KorvinStarmast]

Omg, we're you one of the players who basically wrecked reality and your characters became deities to try and fix things?

Not really. (Are you in one of his campaigns?) Our campaigns happen after the Cataclysm, about 250-252 AC.

Campaign 1 (Noefra): we did end up getting one of the 16 deities in the Pantheon ... removed.
That had an effect on the world that apparently all other groups "felt" in one way or another.
Campaign 1 also saw us prevent an ancient black dragon from taking over as the Death entity/deity. In the process we restored some of the shadar kai/gweroesi who had been more or less kicked to the curb.

We did not become deities nor demigods. Level 20 is influential, sure, but we ain't in any pantheon.
We did, however, ensure that a mind flayer lich was banished from reality. That took a lot of work.

Spoiler: More detail

Show

The Hexblade/Fighter is now a Gleaner for the Death deity. His Shadar Kai/Gweroesi mate is leaning into the henpecking trope, with love.
The Bard runs a shipping company and intends to support the goblin revolt on a southern island, against the gith surrogates. She's making a small bundle in royalties from some of her songs being distributed and performed on the Astral Plane. Yes, she made a deal with a devil, with the paladin by her side as "muscle" during the negotiations. Oh, yeah, her mate is an ancient gold dragon. She has a daughter by him. \

The Paladin halfling is running for the presidency of one of the adventuring guilds (bard is helping with the politics) and is trying to improve the economy of the local halfling homeland.
The Sorcerer/Warlock is trying to gain The Serpent Throne. Bard intends to help him when the time is right.
(These are all of their "retirement" pursuits)

And by the way: what mountain?

Campaign 2(Soefra) ended up with a massive war/battle on the southern continent.
Monsters from the beginning of time and creation showed up - well, at least one did. The ancient-nearly-immortal-elf-emperor of the Phoenix Empire (Southern Continent) met his demise.
There were timeline switches throughout the campaign, and we were either in the present time, in a few alternate time lines, or in the deep and distant past.
We ended up changing the status of a few spirits tied directly to the Nameless One. (More or less pure Chaos from the beginning of time).
The paladin(Watchers) retired to start a spec ops/ranger school for the Kingdom of Ikela. The Wizard is in another country taking over a wizard school. The dragon rider is doing something. The (homebrew class) mutation expert is running an orphanage in the capital.

We ended at level 17. My Paladin's mount is a griffon named Keith. He is often seen flying along the river or over the forest in and around the area called Morton's Thumb. (A small duchy he was awarded by the king for services rendered).

Campaign 3 (Noefra):
So far, helped to end a war, recovered some old dwarven artifacts, reopened some highways in the Feywild that had been closed, helped an ancient dragon/wyrm finally rest in peace after a centuries long labor of preventing the land and mountains from devolving into earthquakes. We were tempted to set off a huge volcano on an island north of Khotima, but we decided not to. The lava spirit in the volcano is still mad at us about that.
We are still working on a few issues with Air, Fire. Water, and Earth elemental based problems.
The Twisted's influence is being felt and countered as we move from task to task.
Currently at level 14

Some of the previous campaign's players seem to have ascended to demigod status or deity status (see the Dawn of Hope wiki); none of our PCs have.

[RedMage125]

Not really. (Are you in one of his campaigns?) Our campaigns happen after the Cataclysm, about 250-252 AC.

I am not. But I've had a lot of world building discussions with him, and shared a lot of ideas, and his story just stuck with me, I guess. I hadn't realized how much until you mentioned being in one of his 1-20 campaigns. It triggered me remembering that, and I just wanted to ask.

[Easy e]

They have changed a lot for me.

When I started in the dark ages, leveling was based on XP. Therefore, Murder-Hoboing was a very valid tactic.

Now, we mostly do Milestone and sometimes it takes a long time to get through a milestone, and sometimes it happens fast. It depends on how much we screw around. Murder-hoboing is less useful here.

In addition, there are many Milestones we reach without ever drawing a weapon. This never happened in the old XP days.

I have also played some campaigns where no one levels at all!

Therefore, my "expectations" of leveling has also changed a lot, and how I approach leveling as a player has also changed alot.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am not. But I've had a lot of world building discussions with him, and shared a lot of ideas, and his story just stuck with me, I guess. I hadn't realized how much until you mentioned being in one of his 1-20 campaigns. It triggered me remembering that, and I just wanted to ask.

EDIT:
As far as I can tell, we may have been his only 1-20 campaign. Not sure.
The group you referred to was called "The Divine Three" - one of them, a deity that I am familiar with in our current adventures, is Pinwheel. (Basically a Trickster deity).

I don't remember if the Cataclysm was the transition point between the 4e campaigns and 5e campaigns, but I think it was).
There was a group called the Catalysts who I think were involved in that time frame. The three person party whose ghosts we fought in campaign wasn't the Divine Three. I think they were based on some 4e PCs and their avatars / ghosts were close to being demigods. After the battle in an OOC discussion is when he described them as 4e high level characters.

[jjordan]

If we accept that video game design principles were long ago adopted by Wizards for D&D TTRPG then we can compare leveling speeds in video games. Larian says that Baldur's Gate 3 takes 75-100 hours to complete and characters max out a level 12 and the anecdotal 'evidence' I can find indicates it takes 50-60 hours to reach level 12. So, it takes from 4.16 to 8.3 hours per level.

Icewind Dale takes 35 hours to finish and has a level cap of 30 meaning you level up approximately once every hour.

Neverwinter Nights takes about 50 hours to finish and has a level cap of 20 meaning you level up roughly every 2.5 hours.

Personally, I've been playing a 4-hours per week game for the last three years and players are at level 10 (when I expected them to be 15 at this point but three of them are new and risk averse).

[Rukelnikov]

If we accept that video game design principles were long ago adopted by Wizards for D&D TTRPG then we can compare leveling speeds in video games. Larian says that Baldur's Gate 3 takes 75-100 hours to complete and characters max out a level 12 and the anecdotal 'evidence' I can find indicates it takes 50-60 hours to reach level 12. So, it takes from 4.16 to 8.3 hours per level.

Icewind Dale takes 35 hours to finish and has a level cap of 30 meaning you level up approximately once every hour.

Neverwinter Nights takes about 50 hours to finish and has a level cap of 20 meaning you level up roughly every 2.5 hours.

Personally, I've been playing a 4-hours per week game for the last three years and players are at level 10 (when I expected them to be 15 at this point but three of them are new and risk averse).

I've finished IWD multiple times, and even in a solo playthru I've never reached lvl 30, a game having an "estimated length" and a level cap, doesn't mean you rech the level cap in said runtime.

[jjordan]

I've finished IWD multiple times, and even in a solo playthru I've never reached lvl 30, a game having an "estimated length" and a level cap, doesn't mean you rech the level cap in said runtime.

Yes, and other anecdotal evidence I've seen on the internet suggests that you can reach maximum level in less than the manufacturers estimated/suggested playing time. So the numbers may vary and I chose the estimated playing time as the baseline average and accepted that my numbers will be fuzzy rather than exact.

My point is that when you look at those numbers you start to approach the four hour number Mike Mearls tweeted and the every session number for adventurers league. Which suggests that, yes, there has been a change in expectations regarding level progression rates and that it is likely driven by some serious video game research on effort and reward ratios with the goal of maximizing participant enjoyment so they continue to participate.

Which is not a criticism and may drive improvements in how we plan campaigns to engage players. Or not, because the video game model is not an exact match for TTRPGing and players may have different expectations. Which leaves us with the good old fashioned model of talking to the players so everyone agrees what the structure and pace of the game will look like.

[Zuras]

There were always groups that leveled fast and those that leveled slow. Nobody was ever getting to 36th level in BECMI with slow level gain.

I will agree that in 5e, faster leveling feels more common than it did in 2017, as more DMs became comfortable with milestone leveling.

As far as expectations, I think most players expect to level up at least every 20 hours of table time, minimum. If you’re running slower advancement than this, players might be fine with it but they would expect a heads-up about your campaign using slow leveling.