About how much real time do you take to gain a level?

[Endarire]

Intro
Greetings, all!

One thing I wished I would have understood much earlier in life is the amount of real time (and, by extension, effort) needed to progress through each level. D&D (at least 3.5) is a time sink when it comes to this, nevermind the amount of time spent making characters, discussing theory on boards, and just doing research (which can each be a separate time sink).

This post offers some simple math to show leveling speed and some snags I've encountered.

Assumptions
-Numbers in this post take into account only time spent playing at the table (physical or virtual).

-Each session is assumed to be an average of 4 hours.

-The number of sessions to play through (not just reach) a level is, on average, the same across all levels.

-Each session is played, on average, once per week. Only 40 of the 52 weeks of the year are playable due to holidays, breaks, emergencies, etc.

-Character creation is its own time investment, one that could take 4+ hours of real time to research, write down, and properly format. In more extensive cases, character creation could take 20+ hours. Sometimes (like with many people of this board), making a single character takes 40+ hours due to wanting the mechanics and flavor to be just right.

-Each character gets approximately its assumed wealth by level at each level.

Here Are Some Numbers
-Assuming 1 session played per level, it will take 4 hours to gain a level. Playing through 5 levels will take 20 hours over 5 weeks. Playing through 10 levels will take 40 hours over 10 weeks. Playing through 20 levels will take 80 hours over 20 weeks. That's about half a year to play through levels 1-20.

-Assuming 2 sessions played per level, it will take 8 hours to gain a level. Playing through 5 levels will take 40 hours over 10 weeks. Playing through 10 levels will take 80 hours over 20 weeks. Playing through 20 levels will take 160 hours over 40 weeks. That's about a year to play through levels 1-20.

-Assuming 3 sessions played per level, it will take 12 hours to gain a level. Playing through 5 levels will take 60 hours over 15 weeks. Playing through 10 levels will take 120 hours over 30 weeks. Playing through 20 levels will take 240 hours over 60 weeks. That's about a year and a half to play through levels 1-20.

-Assuming 4 sessions played per level, it will take 16 hours to gain a level. Playing through 5 levels will take 80 hours over 20 weeks. Playing through 10 levels will take 160 hours over 40 weeks. Playing through 20 levels will take 320 hours over 80 weeks. That's about 2 years to play through levels 1-20.

-Assuming 5 sessions played per level, it will take 20 hours to gain a level. Playing through 5 levels will take 100 hours over 25 weeks. Playing through 10 levels will take 200 hours over 50 weeks. Playing through 20 levels will take 400 hours over 100 weeks. That's about 2.5 years to play through levels 1-20.

Personal Trends
-I've noticed that most campaigns I've played in have run from level 1 to 6 at most and required about 3 sessions, on average, to play through a level. Assuming we played through levels 1-5 and had just reached or were just about to reach level 6, that's about 4 months of real time committed to one low-level game, playing every week, before interest waned.

-In contast to that previous figure, many games I played never lasted long enough for me to gain a character level. These campaigns just petered out.

-Games I GMed tended to last longer due to my being the expert D&D 3.5 player in the group. I wanted to play the game the most and that easily translated into my wanting to keep the game going.

Applying This To Character Builds
-How patient is your group? How patient are you? These are the biggest defining factors on how far you get to play your build.

-Each character building resource (each feat, each class level, each spell known) is precious. Getting a feat now instead of in 3 levels means you have it for perhaps months more!

-How long are you willing and able to wait to become awesome? A trick that comes online in 5+ levels means you have to wait perhaps months or years of real time before you get a chance to use it!

Advice for GMs
-Talk with your group to determine what pace is most appropriate for the campaign. Leveling every X sessions means the game has the chance to radically change its balance at every level.

-Players (especially those unfamiliar with the material) need time to understand and try out their new abilities. Is this your first time in 7 years casting a level 4 spell? Some more leniency is assumed than someone who has this as a routine.

[Aetis]

Our group plays at an expedited speed.

First session generally takes us from level 1 to 5, second session to 7, third session to 9, and fourth session to 10 or 11.

We usually stop and restart after hitting lv 11. We sometimes play a fifth session to hit 12-13.

Each session is about 6 hours. We try to play every week.

Leveling up isn't really a time sink, since everyone has a favorite build or two that they use regularly. (leveling up takes maybe 5 minutes real time)

[Sagetim]

For me it varies entirely by campaign. In one game I went up four levels in one session because we defeated an encounter outside our ecl range, and that was 'gained four levels after splitting xp 10 ways'. In the session after that we went up a few more levels, and in the next two sessions we gained a level in each of them for hard combat and smart tactics respectively. That campaign I've been a part of for a few weeks now, and the party has gone from level 4ish to level 13.

Much more usually the campaigns I'm involved in have a particular gm running them who hates to actually give xp for anything, so instead he lets us gain a level when he thinks we've done enough to earn it. This is usually Looooong after xp would have earned us a level. In a particular campaign we went from 3 to 18 over 4 years, but that's also including breaks in that campaign that lasted for months, including the longest break right before the end that lasted for about a year on it's own. We were playing other campaigns in the mean time.


When I run a game, I don't set the difficulty to match the party, I set the difficulty and let come what may. The players gain the xp they earn (including xp for bypassing fights, because intelligence should be rewarded instead of punished). And wealth by level is a starting ballpark. I haven't actually had players not exceed their wealth by level by the time they hit that level. This is because I will not arbitrarily limit what the players find in a given location. If the players put in the time and effort to successfully raid an enemy base, they're going to find stocked armories, gear from the enemies they killed, loose change, and depending on the campaign, they could wind up with bonus pay or salaries on top of that. In one game the players were tasked with setting up a settlement on a remote island, with regular influxes of people and certain supplies. Cash money was not one of them, so they established an economy based on the whore house that they established with the blessing of the npc clerics (one of which had an unfortunate accident for being a prude) and minted their own wooden tokens using arcane mark.

[Eldonauran]

-Assuming 3 sessions played per level, it will take 12 hours to gain a level. Playing through 5 levels will take 60 hours over 15 weeks. Playing through 10 levels will take 120 hours over 30 weeks. Playing through 20 levels will take 240 hours over 60 weeks. That's about a year and a half to play through levels 1-20.

This is about right for my group. It varies a bit depending on if one or two sessions are spent in a dungeon crawl. We play about 4 hours each session. Roughly 13 CR appropriate encounters = 1 level up, or about 3 1/2 adventuring days.

[Tuvarkz]

Generally the DM in my most constant group gives us a level each two sessions on average (3-3.5 hour length). Generally it's after defeating an encounter, but last levelup was after an encounter we'd managed to escape from twice (And since we had discovered the secret of the place we were exploring, +other stuff before); he decided to give us a power boost in the form of a levelup so we could get through the encounter.

[Curmudgeon]

With 4-hour sessions played with food and non-game conversation, it generally takes 4-5 sessions to gain a level. We tend to spend a lot of time planning.

[Gabrosin]

In my most recent campaign, my group has taken 3-4 RT months per level. Some factors:

1. We try to play weekly but we usually only make it 2-3 times a month.

2. We only get about an hour and a half of game time per session.

3. We started this campaign at level 11.

[ellindsey]

My campaign has a had 37 sessions so far. We meet twice a month, so that's about a year and a half of gaming. Each session is 2-3 hours, so that's about 90 hours of gaming total. My players started at level 1, and hit level 6 a few sessions ago, so that's about 18 hours of game time per leveling up. However, I am largely handwaving XP and instead having them all level up after every major plotline/quest, which generally take 6-7 sessions to complete.

[Elkad]

And this completely ignores the massive jump in xp in 3rd edition.

A 1st edition orc was worth 15xp, plus 3-5xp for his treasure. 20 tops.

2500xp for your MagicUser to gain a level. So you had to solo 125 orcs to make it to 2nd level.

Now it's 6 and 2/3rd orcs, or about 18x faster.

I typically cut xp by at least half, and have been known to use 10%.

In 1st edition, I played in the same campaign, in the typical high-school-nerd caffeine-fueled 38-hours-straight weekend sessions, for years. Even with those ridiculous sessions, we only leveled about once a month.

[Psyren]

3 sessions per level is our average. At higher levels it tends to slow down to about 5-6, then the campaign ends. (Note that "higher levels" simply means "when we're getting close to the end of the story - this can be near 20, or it can be as low as 8.)