How long does it take for something to level up?

[Jazath]

To further figure out the age on a character, I was wondering about how many years of straight adventuring does it take for a character to level up? Not in PC terms but just in the fantasy world of d&d itself? Would it take years? Months?

[RNightstalker]

Leveling up doesn't require time, it requires experience. If what you're asking is how long does it take to acquire that experience, then here goes.

Most campaigns I've been in don't wait to stop and smell the roses. We've gone epic in less than a year of in-game time. Is that standard? That's hit or miss. Some people enjoy passing the time to craft stuff, which takes time. They'll build castles, businesses, etc. If you're looking at "realistic" estimates, I would try to go back through NPC stats for the well known characters and see how they progress through the timelines/editions.

[Lilapop]

As a single point of data, our current campaign is kinda dense in travelling from one gig to the next and I've been sometimes erring on the side of more xp so I can take off the training wheels quicker. One of the biggest delays was bushwhackin' it through the forest to the not-Aztec temple and back, a week each way. They will however eventually hop over to a different climate zone, which should take at least a month per trip without a whole lot of encounters and session time.

Levelups were at:
2 - evening of day 1
3 - day 10
4 - day 19
5 - day 21
6 - day 25
7 - will be at day 27

[Jazath]

Leveling up doesn't require time, it requires experience. If what you're asking is how long does it take to acquire that experience, then here goes.

Most campaigns I've been in don't wait to stop and smell the roses. We've gone epic in less than a year of in-game time. Is that standard? That's hit or miss. Some people enjoy passing the time to craft stuff, which takes time. They'll build castles, businesses, etc. If you're looking at "realistic" estimates, I would try to go back through NPC stats for the well known characters and see how they progress through the timelines/editions.

Yes I was asking that. :smalltongue:
Alright, Jazath is a 603 Wizard/5 Archmage/32 Fighter/18 Legendary Dreadnought. He spent half the time leveling up while the other half building and constructing spells. So what should his age range be?
Also, he spent 3,000 years in imprisonment due to him being a phane

[Telok]

Lowball the danger. 13.3 encounters at average 4/day by the book. Taking it easy we'll say 15/level and only 3/day. Thats 5 adventure days per level. Double it for general downtime and hanging around taverns looking for a date. Call this 10 days per level then.

Add travel time. I saw wizard so it's completely up in the air. You could be teleporting everywhere by 9th level or you could have to walk through null magic planes for weeks to get to the next xp.

Add special downtime. 3000 years of imprisonment? Whatever, add it in. Spell research has guidelines, go ahead and use those. Figure out all the researched spells or stuff and do the math there. Build a castle by hand? Rules somewhere, just find them.

[Jazath]

Lowball the danger. 13.3 encounters at average 4/day by the book. Taking it easy we'll say 15/level and only 3/day. Thats 5 adventure days per level. Double it for general downtime and hanging around taverns looking for a date. Call this 10 days per level then.

Add travel time. I saw wizard so it's completely up in the air. You could be teleporting everywhere by 9th level or you could have to walk through null magic planes for weeks to get to the next xp.

Add special downtime. 3000 years of imprisonment? Whatever, add it in. Spell research has guidelines, go ahead and use those. Figure out all the researched spells or stuff and do the math there. Build a castle by hand? Rules somewhere, just find them.

However, I didn't build a castle. I built a solar system sized construct. And an army of Super Borg to ravage the galaxy.
So....I'm guessing that took about 5 thousand years to build something that massive? Especially all the Nuetronium I had to harvest before I could use conversion beams to convert planets to Nuetronium. All this would take maybe 10 thousand years for me to harvest all i need?

[Biggus]

Yes I was asking that. :smalltongue:
Alright, Jazath is a 603 Wizard/5 Archmage/32 Fighter/18 Legendary Dreadnought. He spent half the time leveling up while the other half building and constructing spells. So what should his age range be?
Also, he spent 3,000 years in imprisonment due to him being a phane

As absurd as it sounds, it only takes 6 years (almost exactly) of constant adventuring at 4 encounters per day to reach level 658.

Personally when I'm creating ultra-high-level characters (which in my games only means level 40-100) I assume their encounters slow down considerably as their level goes up, because there's less and less that can challenge them enough to grant XP.


However, I didn't build a castle. I built a solar system sized construct. And an army of Super Borg to ravage the galaxy.
So....I'm guessing that took about 5 thousand years to build something that massive? Especially all the Nuetronium I had to harvest before I could use conversion beams to convert planets to Nuetronium. All this would take maybe 10 thousand years for me to harvest all i need?

A solar system sized construct? OK, I'll assume by "solar system sized" you mean "out to the orbit of Neptune".

Looking at the stone golem and greater stone golem, the greater one is twice the height and a little over twice the price. Let's say twice the price for simplicity's sake. The greater stone golem is 18ft tall and costs 196,000GP to make. The solar system out to Neptune has a diameter of about 3x1013 feet, a little over 1012 times longer, so would cost about 4x1014GPs to make, which would take about 400 billion years, or nearly 30 times the age of the universe. Even with Efficient Item Creation and 20 levels of Master Arcane Artisan, you're still looking at about 4 billion years.

A more practical solution would be to take advantage of the power of exponential growth, create a "builder" construct which can self-replicate. Some of them start building the base, some make more builders (this seems to fit well with your "super borg" theme). This could get the construction time down to perhaps even just a few decades, if you can supply them with enough material.

Oh, and I think you probably mean Neutronium? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutronium

[Crake]

A more practical solution would be to take advantage of the power of exponential growth, create a "builder" construct which can self-replicate. Some of them start building the base, some make more builders (this seems to fit well with your "super borg" theme). This could get the construction time down to perhaps even just a few decades, if you can supply them with enough material.

Seems more akin to the replicators from stargate than the borg from star trek.

[Zanos]

As absurd as it sounds, it only takes 6 years (almost exactly) of constant adventuring at 4 encounters per day to reach level 658.

Personally when I'm creating ultra-high-level characters (which in my games only means level 40-100) I assume their encounters slow down considerably as their level goes up, because there's less and less that can challenge them enough to grant XP.
I was about to say, I think you're at the point of needing to slay literal gods to get any XP at all. The highest CR I remember is one of the dragon magazine epic dragons, which would no longer be worth XP after level 98. So at some point I think you're just killing your own clones to get more XP, or deliberately cultivating 'heroes' to challenge you so you can keep leveling up.

Or you bring in some of the spicy 3rd party content with the solar system sized constructs made out of collapsed stars, which probably isn't out of line if you're playing a level 600 character.

[Biggus]

Seems more akin to the replicators from stargate than the borg from star trek.

Never watched Stargate. I just meant in the sense that the Borg assimilate everything into themselves to make more ships and more Borg.

[InvisibleBison]

I was about to say, I think you're at the point of needing to slay literal gods to get any XP at all. The highest CR I remember is one of the dragon magazine epic dragons, which would no longer be worth XP after level 98. So at some point I think you're just killing your own clones to get more XP, or deliberately cultivating 'heroes' to challenge you so you can keep leveling up.

Or you bring in some of the spicy 3rd party content with the solar system sized constructs made out of collapsed stars, which probably isn't out of line if you're playing a level 600 character.

I came here to make more or less this point. You get experience from overcoming challenges. What could possibly be a challenge for a level 600+ wizard? For that matter, what could be a challenge for a level 60+ wizard? And what possible growth in power could there be between these two points?

[Zombimode]

To further figure out the age on a character, I was wondering about how many years of straight adventuring does it take for a character to level up?


What exactly is "straight adventuring"? It's not really a day job.



Not in PC terms but just in the fantasy world of d&d itself? Would it take years? Months?

Levelling and gaining XP by the rules in the DMG are a metagame construct. It can only be discussed in the context of Player Characters.


D&D is not a fantasy world simulator.

[Asmotherion]

This is very dependant on multiple things:

A) The level we're talking about. A level 1 character may level up in a couple days, while a level 19 character to get to level 20, it would take a significant amount of time, typically a year or so.

B) The DM's views. A DM may feel comfortable to level up characters with enough xp by the end of the session. An other DM may require some dawntime, and an other, may want to implement some kind of dawntime RP that allows the characters to level up.

I can't give you an exact number, but I personally like to implement that every level equals a number of months equal to it's level in time. For example, a Lv1 character would attain lv2 in 2 months, while a lv2 would attain lv3 in 3 months.

This way, an adventurer would need aproximatelly 16 years of adventuring to reach lv20 from lv1.

[Jazath]

I came here to make more or less this point. You get experience from overcoming challenges. What could possibly be a challenge for a level 600+ wizard? For that matter, what could be a challenge for a level 60+ wizard? And what possible growth in power could there be between these two points?

World Sized Beholders. Quasar Dragons, Radion parasites, Neutronium Golems, God Cannibals, Planet-sized mimics, Gigabeings, Macrobes, Time Lords, Overgods, Universe ending threats, you know. The Basics.

[InvisibleBison]

World Sized Beholders. Quasar Dragons, Radion parasites, Neutronium Golems, God Cannibals, Planet-sized mimics, Gigabeings, Macrobes, Time Lords, Overgods, Universe ending threats, you know. The Basics.

Okay, so you've got a bunch of high-CR homebrew monsters to fight against. Unfortunately, that means that none of us are able to answer the actual question of this thread, as the rate that your character is going to level up depends entirely on how common these monsters are, which we don't know.

[Jazath]

Okay, so you've got a bunch of high-CR homebrew monsters to fight against. Unfortunately, that means that none of us are able to answer the actual question of this thread, as the rate that your character is going to level up depends entirely on how common these monsters are, which we don't know.

Fair point, We figured out the answer. but the answer to that is sometimes it is rapid if we encounter a adventure while others is rare. Progression is mixed.
Jazath will be 56,006,290 years old. Creating his superior borg when he was 27,003,234
Meaning the Borg are around 29,003,056 years old. We think they own entire quadrants of the Galaxy, and infest multiple other galaxies. A setback 18,000 years ago we named "The Dark Rebellion." Was a moment the Borg spun out of control, waging war with eachother. As well as other significant moments in history.

[Zanos]

What exactly is "straight adventuring"? It's not really a day job.
I'd imagine based on the typical structure of having 4 CR = ECL encounters per day. You level once ever 13.3 encounters under that structure, since both XP awards and XP requirements are purely linear.

But yeah it isn't a day job. Typically you spend far more time traveling and doing in between activities than you spend actually locked in day to day combat.



Levelling and gaining XP by the rules in the DMG are a metagame construct. It can only be discussed in the context of Player Characters.


D&D is not a fantasy world simulator.
Eh...it kind of floats in and out. NPCs certainly seem to have some understanding that crafting magic items, for example, takes something other than gold, and there are spells and items to transfer or replace that cost(transference, liquid pain, ambrosia, etc.)

[ciopo]

I don't feel we can really mileage an xp-to-age relationship

my 1st level druid is 26 years old, that same druid is 8th level 3 months later, but starting age for a 1st level druid was 15y+4d6 unless I misremember.

I don't see how I can pin down a relationship between age and level with the above sillyness, there is a big limbo of somehow classless individuals when they are below a mostly arbitrary X age, a narrow window of one year of so when those people are between level 1 and 20, and everybody older than that is epic :smallconfused: