[3.5/PF] How many sessions do you like between level-ups?

[Wonton]

Just curious, I'm DM-ing for the first time and they're probably gonna level up after 4 sessions. Feels too fast to me, although I've been following the adventure to the letter. They're gonna need the levels to survive the later challenges, but I think that if I ever make my own campaign I'm using the "slow" XP progression (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement) as levels feel more rewarding that way.

[Mr L.]

I would say every 4-5 sessions assuming you run them every week.

[ArcturusV]

Eh. I don't like measuring it by sessions. Mostly because how fast I run an adventure isn't so much up to me as it's up to players. We've all had moments where Players, using Player Logic, end up taking some like 1 hour to say, "I walk into the city, flashing my official I Can Get Into the City papers at the guy." And if they are sucking up a lot of time like that? It's going to go much, much slower.

I like to work it out by Quest Arc. Typically I like to run 2 quests per level. Between killin' stuff, bonus XP, and quest reward XP, they should be tackling events that are big enough that any two quests should be able to get them to the next benchmark. Some are quicker like a level 1 quest to break up a Goblin Warcamp done in a single session (Maybe two), some take longer like a level 12 quest to find the MacGuffin to seal a Planar Rift, taking 4 or 5 sessions.

[Alaris]

In the first chapter of my campaign, I often did it every 3-4 sessions, and it was definitely too fast. Sometimes it was 2-3 sessions.

I learned quickly that the Players got used to this, and were asking after each Session "XP Total?" So... this coming chapter, I'm going to be making it minimum 5 sessions. If not more. You have to earn your levels. And it takes time.

Edit: On second thought, Arcturus brings up a better point. XP, and therein, levels, should be awarded by goal completed. Or quest. Granted, they shouldn't be earning levels each session. It's gotta feel authentically earned. [It's why I was never a fan of starting at high level].

[Darius Kane]

Don't use XP, level them up whenever you feel like it.

[Wonton]

Don't use XP, level them up whenever you feel like it.

I've actually seen this done pretty well before. I might do this in the future but I also like numbers and consistency (I roll in front of the players and don't fudge) so for now I'm using XP.

[rot42]

I try for about 4-6 sessions to the level. This gives the players enough time to get comfortable with their new abilities without feeling too static or hurting too much from the odd dead level.

[Kol Korran]

I agree with Arcturus about basing leveling up around accomplishments. In our games the PCs get XP for attaining these goals. However, preparing how much each goals is worth is also based upon the group's expectation of "level up pace".

This pace is also quite a bit a factor of the following:
- how often does the group play? (in our case not very often, usually about once every month unfortunately :smallfrown:)
- how long is each gaming session? (in our case about 7 hours. sometime a bit less, sometime a bit more).
- in this gaming time, how much are the characters expressed, how much change do they go through? (this is much harder to gauge)

When I DM the group levels every 2-3 sessions usually, or about every 17-19 hours of play. (I too prefer slower, but the group prefers it so.)

When the other Dm Dms we level every 1-2 sessions usually, or about 9-12 hours of play. I find it waaaaaay too fast for me, but the DM has his own grasp of... XP handling.

[Alienist]

Don't use XP, level them up whenever you feel like it.

This is similar to what they do in tournaments, yes? Do X modules, level up?

I like to use XP to provide broad hints and feedback to the players. Kind of like old-style Shadowrun

You turned up: 2 karma
You did some good roleplaying: 1 karma
You were funny (in a non-disruptive way) : 1 karma
You were dramatic: 1 karma
The group accomplished goals X and Y: 2-3 karma
The group failed to accomplish goal Z: no karma

Players: "wait, we were supposed to do Z?"
DM: "yup"
Players: "but we didn't know that!"
DM: "it was part of the mission briefing, should been paying more attention"

Player: "how come Johnny got more karma?"
DM: "it's a roleplaying game"
Player: "so?"
DM: "he was roleplaying, you were just rolling dice to kill stuff"
Player: "KKKHHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!"

[Psyren]

I would say - depending on where the campaign is intended to end up, level them up quickly early on and then slow it down. First level sucks for a lot of classes and many builds just can't do what their players want them to do until much later. When the players are level 5 or so they should have a variety of fun stuff they can do, so you can then slow down the leveling and they won't feel so put out.

And personally I would do "level every X sessions" rather than tracking XP and CR and all that jazz.

[Wonton]

I would say - depending on where the campaign is intended to end up, level them up quickly early on and then slow it down. First level sucks for a lot of classes and many builds just can't do what their players want them to do until much later. When the players are level 5 or so they should have a variety of fun stuff they can do, so you can then slow down the leveling and they won't feel so put out.

I kind of agree, mid-levels are usually the best. Although there's some things that can only be done at very low levels (environment/hunger/thirst being a real problem, for example) so there's no need to discount them. It all depends on the game - I've played an Eberron game where the average hit point total in the party at level 1 was 7. Level 1 was an absolute crapshoot in that game and the DM levelled us up after only 2 sessions or something. In my game, people have 10-12 hp on average and in general level 1 doesn't have as much of that level 1 "first person to hit or get hit wins the fight" feel.


And personally I would do "level every X sessions" rather than tracking XP and CR and all that jazz.

The cool thing is that PF fixed this from 3.5 by just making monsters of a certain CR be worth a certain flat XP. I don't even bother calculating the "overall" CR, I just add up the XP rewards from all the mobs in the encounter and divide by the party size.

[Talionis]

Fast at first (1 or 2 sessions) until level six and then slow to about every four sessions. Getting a critical mass of ability that makes the PCs have options and choices in the way the approach combat and other encounters means get past the early levels.

Only caviat would be if you have some well planned out low level challenges you believe will be fun for the players. Some one was playing all PCs as 1st level commoners and was going to force them to retrain later, but he had a ton of stuff planned for commoners that he thought that his players would enjoy.

In general players enjoy characters with more options and most characters gain options after they have a few levels under their belt.

If your players aren't crafting or losing much xp with spells, etc. then you may not even want to keep track of experience points.

[ArcturusV]

I like lingering a bit at low level myself for the exact reason Psyren said not to linger. You are LESS able to depend on always having whatever tool you want on hand to accomplish your goals. And it lacks a lot of Power Gaming options. If you have a build that isn't viable and can't do anything at all effectively until you hit level (5.... 10... 15?) how were you supposedly going to get to that level anyway? Forces people to consider their first levels as something where they have to be effective, not just as a means to an ultimate end.

And since you can't power game your way past things as easily... it requires more outside the box thinking, more roleplaying. It's fun. It's also formulative to characters and a lot of idiosyncrasies that form at low level can have profound impacts (Even if the player doesn't realize it. ESPECIALLY if the player doesn't realize it).

[Psyren]

If you have a build that isn't viable and can't do anything at all effectively until you hit level (5.... 10... 15?) how were you supposedly going to get to that level anyway? Forces people to consider their first levels as something where they have to be effective, not just as a means to an ultimate end.

That's fine in theory but the system itself doesn't always reward that. If you want to be a spellsword type character for instance, you can work towards Abjurant Champion or Eldritch Knight, but at low levels you're either going to be a wimpy wizard or a muggle with a pointy stick - the class system will pigeonhole you into one or the other until you have enough levels to realize both. Unless of course, you take a class like Duskblade - but then you're obtaining early-game gratification by sacrificing late-game power, because "gish-in-a-can" classes like these typically have reduced potential caster progression. So it's a bit of a catch-22.

Even classes that can fill multiple roles on their own can fall victim to this. For instance, if you want to be a casty/blasty type of Binder, you'll want to focus on Cha - that when you finally get to vestiges like Focalor and Geryon that fit this mold, you'll be able to make the most of their powers. However, unless you have a high point-buy available that means pushing your stats away from melee when those vestiges are more prevalent at lower levels and the castery ones are weaker. (Naberius isn't much use in a fight unless you're fighting one guy or have a solid team backing you up.)



And since you can't power game your way past things as easily... it requires more outside the box thinking, more roleplaying. It's fun.

This is clear Stormwind Fallacy - you're creating a false dilemma between level of character power and level of roleplaying when the two are unrelated. A level 20 wizard can roleplay just as effectively as one at level 1, and the same goes for any class.

[ArcturusV]

Not familiar with that term. Though I shouldn't have said "Roleplay" I should have said something more like "Interact more subtly and often with the Game World" or something. Because while they CAN... there comes a point where there's no reason to do so. If you're a powerful wizard you just go point at someone and Save and Suck or Fail and Die against them. You don't have to rely on elaborate plans involving terrain, tactics, lore, etc. When you do need an elaborate plan or to interact with the game world on a deeper level to achieve something I find it's typically self interaction. Such as the "Which combo of spells provides an infinite loop to godhood and mastery of all time and space", etc.

And at first level? Well, that's not so much an option unless your DM is ultra forgiving and does Monty Haul stuff or Gimmies. Yeah, Sleep, Color Spray, or just having a high AC that means you'll only get hit 20% of the time, etc. But that sort of thing won't carry you the full way and you can't just bullhead through as much. So lacking ways to brute force it, you typically have to rely on using the game world and interacting with it outside your own abilities necessarily to maximize your potential.

That is what I meant, more or less.

I know it's a contrary view that not everyone shares. And I know there's people who don't like playing that style. Then again those are usually the people who quit out of a group the moment I say something like "We're all starting at level 1" anyway. And I've had plenty of groups who do like it. So it's a matter of taste and no claims of superiority or anything.

[Slipperychicken]

Enough to make me feel like I've earned those levels by overcoming enough strong, threatening adversity and actually learning stuff from it. Like 4-5 sessions worth of hard combats. If my character is just schmoozing nobles and scarfing feasts all day, I really don't feel like he should gain levels for that. Some xp, but not levels.

Also, leveling up a Wizard takes time, and I have better things to do than play Accountant: The Calculation all week :smalltongue:

I've played games where I felt like my character was leveling up way too fast. 1-2 sessions per level is too fast. You get this feeling like you're just rocketing upward regardless of what you do. That continuous rush of new abilities just feels unnatural.

It also depends on the in-game pacing. I can dig it if my character levels like once a week with extreme violence and hardship, or even once every few days from a 24/7 murder-marathon, but not once a day from goofing off in a city.

[TuggyNE]

Not familiar with that term. Though I shouldn't have said "Roleplay" I should have said something more like "Interact more subtly and often with the Game World" or something. Because while they CAN... there comes a point where there's no reason to do so. If you're a powerful wizard you just go point at someone and Save and Suck or Fail and Die against them. You don't have to rely on elaborate plans involving terrain, tactics, lore, etc. When you do need an elaborate plan or to interact with the game world on a deeper level to achieve something I find it's typically self interaction. Such as the "Which combo of spells provides an infinite loop to godhood and mastery of all time and space", etc.

Even that isn't necessarily true; just look at the complex and involved plots Emperor Tippy sets up for defeating high-op epic wizard NPCs. (Also, no one sensible actually attempts to use infinite loops in practice, not even Tippy.)

[andromax]

OP: IMO, as DM and player it really depends upon the level and the players.

For instance, players show up for the first game (assuming level 1) and have 2-3 successful combat encounters and 2-3 non-combat encounters involving RP, it's likely they level up for the next session.

It's always a good idea to use the xp system, even if you tell your players that you don't, if nothing other than a reference... especially if you're not a really experienced DM.

As for later levels, it's entirely dependent on how the PCs handle encounters.. you can't say 3-4 sessions or 5-6 sessions etc and expect that to work with every group, especially if they do exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly.

[Aharon]

This is similar to what they do in tournaments, yes? Do X modules, level up?

I like to use XP to provide broad hints and feedback to the players. Kind of like old-style Shadowrun

You turned up: 2 karma
You did some good roleplaying: 1 karma
You were funny (in a non-disruptive way) : 1 karma
You were dramatic: 1 karma
The group accomplished goals X and Y: 2-3 karma
The group failed to accomplish goal Z: no karma

Players: "wait, we were supposed to do Z?"
DM: "yup"
Players: "but we didn't know that!"
DM: "it was part of the mission briefing, should been paying more attention"

Player: "how come Johnny got more karma?"
DM: "it's a roleplaying game"
Player: "so?"
DM: "he was roleplaying, you were just rolling dice to kill stuff"
Player: "KKKHHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!"

I think this is a really bad method of awarding XP. There are people who don't have any acting experience or skill and still find RPGs appealing. Your method punishes those people.
If you try to weight XP by their previous experience or skill, you end up making arbitrary decisions.

I award everyone in the group the same XP. It's a cooperative game - if one player makes a really good joke, everyone wins, if another player made a character that's really good at killing stuff, everyone also wins.

@OP:
As we only play about once a month, I try to award xp so that they gain a level every two sessions. Going from Level 5 to Level 8 in a year (which would be the case if I sticked to every 4-5 sessions) isn't all too exciting, IMO.

[ArcturusV]

Yeah. Unless someone is doing something to suck their own XP away, like item crafting, I usually go for shared XP too. Discourage people trying to be Action Heroes for XP hogging or scene stealing to try and get some RPer Reward.... though sometimes I get the Action Heroes doing foolish stuff to try and get IC rewards anyway. Elf fighter who ditched the front lines of battle to try and rescue a damsel (Who was already being rescued) because he wanted that Princess Rescue Kiss sort of thing for himself. And meanwhile left the monk alone with three angry Goliaths bashing him around.

[molten_dragon]

I don't particularly like playing very low levels. 3-5 is where the game starts to get fun for me, so if I have to start a game at level 1, I prefer to level very quickly at the beginning, 2-3 sessions per level. Past that point, I'm fine with leveling every 4-5 sessions. Anything more than that starts to feel like a grind though.

[TheTick]

The 'Level them when you want to' works very well for Pathfinder adventure paths, as it tells you what level everyone should be at throughout the adventures.

[Norin]

It was a bit slow until we entered forge of fury as lvl 3. From that day its been 1 lvl per session (6-8h playtime normaly). I suspect it will slow down a bit again after that module around lvl 6 ish. 5 man party if that is relevant.

[SowZ]

I have a system where I give 1 XP per session, occasionally 2 XP if the session is super long and they get a lot done plot-wise. It takes a number of XP to level up equal to your current level. The first few levels are fast. Then it starts to seriously slow down.

[Gwazi Magnum]

I find myself here disagreeing with about everyone else who has posted...

In my d&d experience level ups were every 1-2 encounters.

Though granted I think this due to three main things.

1) Our group has a way of killing way more things than we should be able to
2) Majority of XP is roleplay experience.
3) Our sessions are typically 10-12 hours, much longer than your normal session

For example one of our more recent sessions...

You killed an Iron Golem today... 500 XP for each player.
Now for roleplay experience...
Player 1 get's 4,700
Player 2 get's 5,000

etc.

I think I enjoy combat more in d&d than anyone else in my group seems to, though I still love Roleplaying as well. But my group specificly finds d&d 3.5's combat as 'slow', 'tedious' and 'boring' that they spend the vast majority roleplaying so the vast majority of xp is given for that.

[Sception]

2 to 4, depending on session length and frequency. I generally like to level up about once a month. More often and I don't get used to my character's new abilities before moving on, less then that and progress starts to feel stale and stagnant.

[molten_dragon]

I have a system where I give 1 XP per session, occasionally 2 XP if the session is super long and they get a lot done plot-wise. It takes a number of XP to level up equal to your current level. The first few levels are fast. Then it starts to seriously slow down.

Wow. There's no way I could put up with 10 or more sessions between levels.

[SowZ]

Wow. There's no way I could put up with 10 or more sessions between levels.

I don't really run D&D beyond level 8 or so.

[Sception]

and I couldn't really handle leveling up 2 to 3 times in a single month early on...

When I'm running, characters generally start at levels 2 (allowing for multiclassing character concepts to be in place from the start of the game), and levelling up happens about once a month regardless of in game progress, so long as there's been at least two sessions. No experience is used.

Spells with XP costs are generally banned, with 'expensive material' gp costs substituted in rare exceptions (generally when the spell in question is essential to the character concept), while crafting basically comes via DM fiat. If you've got a crafting skill, then you can make the item. For basic stuff, the cost of making the item is about half the cost of the item itself, purchased as materials available in any major city or settlement. For fancier stuff, the player tells me what they want to make, I have them research it to get a list of ingredients, and then I distribute those ingredients in upcoming adventures as loot, or make them otherwise available in a controlled manner.

The ingredients generally come in the form of rare plants and organs harvested from exotic monsters, and eventually characters start collecting monster corpses as they go to use or sell. Valuable magical monster organs also end up replacing portions of monster loot, and 'gentle repose' becomes an essential spell.

[Crustypeanut]

I use the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, and I've noticed our group usually levels up once every 2-4 sessions, depending on whats going on. My group personally enjoys it - we're not leveling up 'too' slow, but not so fast that we don't get to test out our stuff before we level up.


I had one group where the DM would level us up 2 levels per session, after just a couple of fights. As someone who was wanting to test out his insane idea of an Oracle/Sorcerer/Mystic Theurge, I barely got to use any of my spells or abilities (Yay for the undead in the second half of the 6-room dungeon being retconned to ignore Channel Positive Energy.. :smallannoyed:). It was too rushed, and the group ended at about level 5 or so.


But, the current rate of 2-4 sessions seems just perfect. We usually play once a week for ~4-8 hours.

[SowZ]

and I couldn't really handle leveling up 2 to 3 times in a single month early on...

When I'm running, characters generally start at levels 2 (allowing for multiclassing character concepts to be in place from the start of the game), and levelling up happens about once a month regardless of in game progress, so long as there's been at least two sessions. No experience is used.

Spells with XP costs are generally banned, with 'expensive material' gp costs substituted in rare exceptions (generally when the spell in question is essential to the character concept), while crafting basically comes via DM fiat. If you've got a crafting skill, then you can make the item. For basic stuff, the cost of making the item is about half the cost of the item itself, purchased as materials available in any major city or settlement. For fancier stuff, the player tells me what they want to make, I have them research it to get a list of ingredients, and then I distribute those ingredients in upcoming adventures as loot, or make them otherwise available in a controlled manner.

The ingredients generally come in the form of rare plants and organs harvested from exotic monsters, and eventually characters start collecting monster corpses as they go to use or sell. Valuable magical monster organs also end up replacing portions of monster loot, and 'gentle repose' becomes an essential spell.

That's sort of why I rapid fire the first couple levels. You get to level three very fast so you get to your character concept quickly, but you also get to experience your hero coming into their own. The raise from mediocrity to that multiclassed concept, (or not,) is something the players experience. But they don't have to experience it for long.

Levels 3-6 end up being the sweet spot for this kind of level progression. That allows people to prestige if they want, some cool abilities start coming into play, and third level spells are the strongest spells you end up seeing for any significant amount of time.

[Phelix-Mu]

Don't use XP, level them up whenever you feel like it.

Lots of ramifications to this, some of which aren't immediately apparent to starting DMs.

No experience points means:

- Alternate form of item crafting needed. Expensive material components, costing 5gp/1xp are what the campaign I'm in right now is using, but the gravy train aspect of a particular campaign may make this dangerous.

- Alternate form of component for spells requiring an experience component. Same 5gp/1xp means 1500 for limited wish, 25k for wish. Surprisingly cheap at high levels, which can be a problem. Casting is now only limited by money making, further adding to problems with high-level moneygrubbing. This can be managed by making the components that cost 5gp/1xp actually hard to come by, like dragons teeth or w/e. Wish and limited wish might not seem like a problem at first, but some other spells may prove more problematic (awaken, mass awaken are coming to mind, druid hardly needs more toys).

- No experience penalty for multiclassing beyond favored class restrictions. I'm told many people ignore these rules anyway, but this basically eliminates favored class from the game, as far as I can tell, meaning that human and half-elf lose some coolness. Also totally opens the gates for a much higher level of optimization, sure to be popular with some players. Not so popular with the monsters.

[Amphetryon]

I usually divide the amount of XP needed to gain a level by 13, and multiply the resulting number by the number of encounters in a given session. It results in slightly faster than by-the-book leveling, unless the PCs go sandboxing into parts of the world that are not comfortably within their RNG.

[Psyren]

Lots of ramifications to this, some of which aren't immediately apparent to starting DMs.

And none of which apply to Pathfinder :smallbiggrin:

[Phelix-Mu]

And none of which apply to Pathfinder :smallbiggrin:

Good to know. How do they handle magic item crafting without experience points? Did they just nix that part of it? Certainly seems viable from a game mechanic perspective. Not so much from a world design perspective.

How about spells with xp component? Just curious, really, as it does seem to me that it was a tad bit strange for them to keep this stuff for 3e, when they were clearly trying to popularize the use of magic and magic item crafting relative to earlier editions, where magic was often substantially less user friendly.

[randomhero00]

2...but keep in mind a session for us is 8-10 hours. So 16-20 hours of table time.

[Slipperychicken]

Good to know. How do they handle magic item crafting without experience points? Did they just nix that part of it? Certainly seems viable from a game mechanic perspective. Not so much from a world design perspective.

How about spells with xp component? Just curious, really, as it does seem to me that it was a tad bit strange for them to keep this stuff for 3e, when they were clearly trying to popularize the use of magic and magic item crafting relative to earlier editions, where magic was often substantially less user friendly.

No xp craft costs, no xp components. Wherever there was an xp component, they replaced it with 5x that number in gold. For example, Wish costs 25k gold instead of 5k experience. 1xp = 5gp is the standard used in 3.5, so it fits.

In terms of world design, crafting now makes sense. People can feasibly produce magic items without silliness ("oh yeah I need to fill my goblin murder-quota before I make another +1 sword"), houseruling, or extensive hand-waving. You know, in earlier editions, crafting actually gave you xp, because you were accomplishing something. It just doesn't make sense that plying your trade makes you worse at it. And it certainly isn't fair for a character to be penalized for smithing gear. Forging epic weapons is standard fare in fantasy and deserves support.

[molten_dragon]

I don't really run D&D beyond level 8 or so.

Yeah, that would help keep it from becoming too long between levels.

[Phelix-Mu]

In terms of world design, crafting now makes sense. People can feasibly produce magic items without silliness ("oh yeah I need to fill my goblin murder-quota before I make another +1 sword"), houseruling, or extensive hand-waving. You know, in earlier editions, crafting actually gave you xp, because you were accomplishing something. It just doesn't make sense that plying your trade makes you worse at it. And it certainly isn't fair for a character to be penalized for smithing gear. Forging epic weapons is standard fare in fantasy and deserves support.

I agree with you sentiment here, and at risk of veering off topic, let's make a new thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14640011&postcount=1)