Have expectations changed regarding rate of level progression?

[tchntm43]

I am playing in an online game, and in general I've been surprised with how fast we have been leveling. We're about 5 months in and level 5 already. In contrast, a game I had run not long ago took about 6 years to get to level 7, though we had multiple gaps that were 6 months or more.

So I had thought we were moving fast, but one of the other players complained to the DM today about it being really slow. He expressed concern that it might take two or three years to get to level 20, which I had just assumed would be the case when I joined. Another played in the group agreed with him.

So what is the normal expectation for how long it should take to advance levels?

[kazaryu]

there is no "normal" expectation, i think. it all just depends on the group, the game, and the involved individuals own experiences. for example, a person that primarily plays adventurers league might expect as much as a level per session. Newer players that have never experienced a full campaign are going to be influenced by their own imagination, or stories they've heard. or actual play streams they've watched.

[Unoriginal]

I am playing in an online game, and in general I've been surprised with how fast we have been leveling. We're about 5 months in and level 5 already. In contrast, a game I had run not long ago took about 6 years to get to level 7, though we had multiple gaps that were 6 months or more.

So I had thought we were moving fast, but one of the other players complained to the DM today about it being really slow. He expressed concern that it might take two or three years to get to level 20, which I had just assumed would be the case when I joined. Another played in the group agreed with him.

So what is the normal expectation for how long it should take to advance levels?

How many sessions do you have in a months on average, and how many hours is the average session?

Last campaign I DMed, we had less than one 4-hour session per week, probably averaging to something like 12 hours per month, and it took my players a bit more than a year to go from lvl 1 to lvl 7 (after beating the final boss).

So in other words it took us ~144 hours to lvl up 6 times, meaning one level up for every ~24h.

It was milestone leveling, if it matters.

[Atranen]

Mike Mearls (in)famously suggested that players level up every 4 hours of play. AL tables by default now level up 1/session.

There's a really wide variance in rate. My favorite campaigns level up about once every few months (playing weekly).

[Mindflayer_Inc]

Milestone leveling is so good for spacing out levels correctly.

Like, you can just **feel** that you deserve the level.

Do cool or awesome stuff, get a cool reward.

[tchntm43]

How many sessions do you have in a months on average, and how many hours is the average session?

We play once per week, about 2-3 hours per session, though some sessions have been as short as 1.5 hrs. We just got to level 5 two sessions ago, and we've only had one real combat situation since hitting level 5. But someone in the group is unhappy that we're not hitting level 6 already. This is using milestone leveling (It's Tyranny of Dragons, but the DM modified it to be levels 1-20, though the extra 5 levels area all coming in the material that comes from the 2nd book)

Maybe it's as you say, he might play Adventurer's League, I'm not sure.

[Blatant Beast]

Milestone leveling is so good for spacing out levels correctly.

Like, you can just **feel** that you deserve the level.

Do cool or awesome stuff, get a cool reward.

This is not always the case. The Milestone leveling guidelines for the Icewind Dale module, recommends the PCs travel to all the 10 Towns, with their respective side quests and quirky NPCs before letting the PCs advance to fourth level, for example.

The Adventuring Group could have survived any number or randomly rolled weather events, (such as a Blizzard), survived a random encounter with a group of awakened wooly rhinoceroses, defeated a devilish cult and freed a keep, killed a sea hag and a Giant’s Skeleton, foiled the short terms plans of Duergar Revolutionaries, and more…and still not leveled up.

[Kurald Galain]

So what is the normal expectation for how long it should take to advance levels?

Well, 5E characters only barely advance anything (except hit points and spells per day) when they gain a level. Like, you need five levels to get a +1 on your main attacks. So it doesn't surprise me that (to many players) in order to actually feel mechanical progression on their character, you need to level up quickly and often.

Like, once every four hours, or once every session (which is about four hours anyway).

[Ignimortis]

Most of the games I've been in tend to skate past the first few levels quickly, in a month or two (thankfully so - I'm honestly tired of starting out at a level below 5 or so as it is, regardless of edition and system), and then slow down a bit, generally capping out at 20 after two or two-and-a-half years of play.

In the games I've most recently played, I've gone from 1 to 6 in four months, from 4 to 17 in two years (though there were breaks and the intention was to be finishing at level 20 before end of 2023), and am currently heading up to level 3 in the span of two weeks, likely to grab level 3 and 4 before the end of March too.

As far as I gather, there is no RAW normal, but 5e EXP gains are structured in a way that every 8 to 15 medium encounters will advance you a level, aside from the very first two, which require only 5 or 6 each. Overall, it's circa 200 medium encounters to level 20, so you might be expected to get there in a year or so of weekly play, I'd say.

[Mastikator]

I use milestone and follow the tiers of play guidelines from the DMG so I try to make sure that the players level up with the increasing scale of the campaign. The players are level 5, started at level 1 and we're 13 sessions in, I would like to level up faster and also play more sessions. Each session is about 6 hours long, so it's about 19.5 hours per level (I'm counting as having leveled up 4 times), or slightly less than 1 per 3 sessions.

My expectation tends to be around 3 dungeons/quests/story beats per level, which gives the players some control over pacing.

Another reason I feel I need to take it slow is that some of the players have trouble remembering what their characters can do and I want to give them time to get familiar.

[Chaos Jackal]

Milestone leveling seems to be the prevalent method of advancement in 5e (definitely in my own experience, where it's the only thing I've witnessed, but also as far as nearly anyone I've talked with about the game, online and in real life), but the pace varies.

Like, personally, I've been in a campaign where we leveled from 5 to 14 in the span of more than four years (and lv14 was basically just the last two sessions), while playing 3-4 times a month for 3-4 hours every session. But I'm currently in one where we've gone from 3 to 12 in three years (weekly sessions, 4-6 hours each) and in a short lived one where we went from 3 to 6 in ten sessions before we stopped playing.

What also varies are the gaps between levels. Even with milestone leveling, it feels like there's a certain tendency to slow things down as the levels get higher - many people, DMs included, don't like the really low levels, but on the other hand, from a point on characters can feel too complex and with too many moving bits to players who don't pay much attention and/or aren't very good at the game, or too powerful to DMs, particularly less experienced ones, trying to throw a challenge their way. And issues within the game or the DM's approach to what constitutes a milestone also add to that inconsistency. In the aforementioned 4+ years long campaign, for example, we spent an entire year stuck at the same level, because the DM's milestones were "the end of the arc" and we progressed veeeery slowly due to bad plot hooks, plotlines nobody cared about and a drawn out conflict between the DM and a player wasting time every session for basically the entire thing. Sure, a bit extreme of an example, but you get the point.

Though, is leveling overall faster than in the past? I suppose... I certainly haven't heard any stories of the "yeah, we had a seven year long campaign and we ended at lv6" type in years and it does seem that many campaigns are run over the course of a few months, so even though high level play is a rare thing, it still sees characters going from, say, lv3 to lv9 in less than a year. But even if you think there is such a tendency, the specifics are still fluid and table-dependent.

[Unoriginal]

Well, 5E characters only barely advance anything (except hit points and spells per day) when they gain a level. Like, you need five levels to get a +1 on your main attacks. So it doesn't surprise me that (to many players) in order to actually feel mechanical progression on their character, you need to level up quickly and often.

Gaining access to class and subclass features, not to mention ASIs, is big on the "mechanical progression" scale.

[Kurald Galain]

not to mention ASIs, is big on the "mechanical progression" scale.

Yes, and my point is that on most levelups you don't actually get to do that. Hence, the need for quicker levelups.

Gaining a new (sub)class feature, well, the majority of those are fairly unexciting. Most characters have something "cool" to look forward to every four or five levels.

[Mindflayer_Inc]

This is not always the case. The Milestone leveling guidelines for the Icewind Dale module, recommends the PCs travel to all the 10 Towns, with their respective side quests and quirky NPCs before letting the PCs advance to fourth level, for example.

The Adventuring Group could have survived any number or randomly rolled weather events, (such as a Blizzard), survived a random encounter with a group of awakened wooly rhinoceroses, defeated a devilish cult and freed a keep, killed a sea hag and a Giant’s Skeleton, foiled the short terms plans of Duergar Revolutionaries, and more…and still not leveled up.

Just because a module does it wrong doesn't mean I'm not right.

You could make a milestone be whatever you want it to be, winning your first fight, which is cool and awesome, or solving your first puzzle. Defeating a mini boss or helping some people (side quest).

That's up to the DM. That's the way you use milestones. It's based off how the players earned the level up.

I'm assuming competency of using the system not the opposite.

Might as well say XP doesn't work because someone decided to make low CR goblins worth 5,000 XP each in a game (yes I've seen this happen). *shrug*

[Silly Name]

This is not always the case. The Milestone leveling guidelines for the Icewind Dale module, recommends the PCs travel to all the 10 Towns, with their respective side quests and quirky NPCs before letting the PCs advance to fourth level, for example.

That's just not true. Quoting straight from the book:

- The characters advance to 2nd level after completing their first quest in this chapter.
- They advance to 3rd level after completing three quests in this chapter and advance to 4th level after completing five quests in this chapter.

[Unoriginal]

That's just not true. Quoting straight from the book:

That's what I thought.

Considering some of the towns have several quests, the minimum number of towns required is 3. But 5 is the safe bet since most of them have only one quest.

[Mindflayer_Inc]

Yes, and my point is that on most levelups you don't actually get to do that. Hence, the need for quicker levelups.

Gaining a new (sub)class feature, well, the majority of those are fairly unexciting. Most characters have something "cool" to look forward to every four or five levels.

I've advocated 3e, 4e, and 5e's levels to be "squished" for years.

3e's epic 6 houserules and 13th age really left a mark on me.

That's just not true. Quoting straight from the book:

Thanks for setting them straight. Nice to know that milestones are being used well 😂

[Skrum]

I haven't played at a traditionally leveling table for awhile (currently we don't use XP or milestone, but a secret third thing).

But when I did, we favored milestone, and it generally worked out to gaining a level every 3ish sessions. We'd play for 4 or so hours at a time, so figure 12 hours of game time per level. Could just be what I'm used to, but that feels about right - enough time passed/combats have happened that it feels earned, while also recognizing that 12 hours of game time is probably weeks to a month of RL time.

I will say though, taking 5 months to get to level 5, that does sound potentially tedious. Some classes function drastically differently before they get their subclass, and especially if a player has conceived of the character as (the subclass) but then they spend 2 months not doing that...that's a little rough. If I were to run a game that started at level 1, I would probably aim to get the party to level 5 in 6 or so sessions before slowing down to a 3-4 session/level pace.

[Ignimortis]

I've advocated 3e, 4e, and 5e's levels to be "squished" for years.

3e's epic 6 houserules and 13th age really left a mark on me.

E6 isn't really about squishing levels, though. And sure, 5e doesn't know what to do with levels after 11, but 3e kind of does (it mostly doesn't know what to do with some archetypes from 1 to 20).

[KorvinStarmast]

I am playing in an online game, and in general I've been surprised with how fast we have been leveling. We're about 5 months in and level 5 already. In contrast, a game I had run not long ago took about 6 years to get to level 7, though we had multiple gaps that were 6 months or more.

Most of the games I have been in that began at level 1 were like your second example. I am in a campaign that has been going on for over four years. It is a weekly game. However, sometimes I have to DM a separate group since my brother can't Dm every week. In the campaign I run, the PCs are level 12. In the game my brother runs, we just reached 12. He goes by XP. I tended to have more encounters per session when I ran, so our guys leveled up faster.

I'll say that again. If you use XP, having more encounters per session that earn XP increases the pacing. If you are having fewer combat encoutners, but things happen (of interest to the running arc) then award XP for them. (I know you are not a DM, but it's a thing some DMs do).
If you run a dungeon crawl, that isn't hard to make work. l

one of the other players complained to the DM today about it being really slow.

Video games and CRPG set a certain expectation of going "ding" at a faster rate. Been true for over 20 years.

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.

Compare to our Curse of Strahd campaign. Been going on for well over two years (play once every two weeks) and we are on the cusp of level 7. Not there yet. We started at level 1. Online play.

there is no "normal" expectation

Fair point.

We play once per week, about 2-3 hours per session, though some sessions have been as short as 1.5 hrs. We just got to level 5 two sessions ago, and we've only had one real combat situation since hitting level 5. But someone in the group is unhappy that we're not hitting level 6 already.

Whining is a thing that people do.

[Mindflayer_Inc]

E6 isn't really about squishing levels, though. And sure, 5e doesn't know what to do with levels after 11, but 3e kind of does (it mostly doesn't know what to do with some archetypes from 1 to 20).

It is.

Once you hit 6th your character doesn't "grow" via your classes static numbers but you get to keep getting deeper as a character by adding feats. Your levels are squished but your progression is not.

[Luccan]

It is.

Once you hit 6th your character doesn't "grow" via your classes static numbers but you get to keep getting deeper as a character by adding feats. Your levels are squished but your progression is not.

When you say squishing levels I think most people assume you mean taking all the features that exist over 20 levels and putting them into a smaller number of levels. E6 does not do this. It does reduce the number of levels in the game, but it keeps the power level roughly around the level 6-8 range (8-10, perhaps, if you're allowing a lot of the higher level ability grabbing for feats that is itself an optional rule within the homebrew of E6).

[JNAProductions]

Yes, and my point is that on most levelups you don't actually get to do that. Hence, the need for quicker levelups.

Gaining a new (sub)class feature, well, the majority of those are fairly unexciting. Most characters have something "cool" to look forward to every four or five levels.

Whereas classes like the 3.5 Fighter or Rogue were paragons of interesting design, right?

For what it's worth, I don't consider "+1 to-hit" very exciting in 3rd, 4th, or 5th Edition. It's needed, and in the aggregate it feels cool when you can hit a dude in full plate much more easily than you could ten levels ago, but a singular +1 is a 5% change on the roll.

I won't deny that 3.5 has more interesting content, primarily because it just plain has more content, but it also has a lot of stinkers too. More than 5E in sheer quantity for sure, and in my opinion and experience, in proportion too.

[Kurald Galain]

in the aggregate it feels cool when you can hit a dude in full plate much more easily than you could ten levels ago

Yes, and my point is that this aggregate feeling doesn't appear in 5E, and that is why people feel they need to level (much) more frequently in 5E.

At least, Mearls does, and the whole direction of Adventurer's League also does.

[Ozreth]

Mike Mearls (in)famously suggested that players level up every 4 hours of play. AL tables by default now level up 1/session.

There's a really wide variance in rate. My favorite campaigns level up about once every few months (playing weekly).

Every four hours of play is insane! I don't follow 5e but every time I see his name pop up around 5e the statements are questionable. My group plays weekly, about 4 hours a session. Our campaigns would hardly last half a year at his stated rate, and that's assuming we wanted to go all the way to 20, which we typically don't. So really they'd last us about 1/4 a year.

[Rukelnikov]

I haven't played at a traditionally leveling table for awhile

This is the way

[Psyren]

Well, 5E characters only barely advance anything (except hit points and spells per day) when they gain a level. Like, you need five levels to get a +1 on your main attacks. So it doesn't surprise me that (to many players) in order to actually feel mechanical progression on their character, you need to level up quickly and often.

I mean, 5e advancemen isn't measured in a stream of +1s. That's intentional; Bounded Accuracy and all that. You're getting stuff every level, it just isn't always measured in linear arithmetic.

If what you're after is +1 (or even +0.75 or +0.5) every single level and nothing else will do, well, 3.5e and 4e haven't gone anywhere.

[rel]

Adding to the chorus of people saying there is no normal.
Each table, no each game, is different.

I haven't noticed any trends towards faster leveling in my own neck of the woods, but that's hardly indicative of tastes in general.

[da newt]

Yeah - I'll also vote there is no one right answer, but everyone's opinion/preference is just as valid as anyone else's.

I believe it's a Goldilocks thing: it can be too fast or too slow but somewhere in the middle is preferred.

I mostly play AL where you gain the option to level up after every session and gain 'downtime days' that you can use to level up so that IF you want to you can advance two levels for every one session played (and there are plenty of 2hr adventures out there). IMO this is way too fast to really get to know your PC, enjoy the journey, and feel like advancement has been earned.

I prefer leveling up every 3rd or 4th session (~20hrs). Going slower than that feels stagnant. BUT if the story is really compelling, then the PC power growth becomes much less important to my enjoyment / feeling of accomplishing something worthwhile.



(I also don't like playing at really high levels as the game gets ridiculous and complicated and the cosmic scale just isn't my cup of tea)

[Dalinar]

I haven't played at a traditionally leveling table for awhile (currently we don't use XP or milestone, but a secret third thing).

I also play at a table with a homebrewed XP system, which in our case sort of splits the difference with milestone. Typically things like sidequests reward an XP for everyone, whereas certain individual achievements can grant individual XP (this can involve an MVP vote at the end of a dangerous session, or it can be arbitrarily granted by the DM for great roleplay, extreme dice rolls, or other interesting moments--such as the time one of our players survived having a building collapsed on him while he was fighting a tough monster inside).

So far (having not gotten to T3 yet) we've found with this system that the ideal pace for a level-up is around four XP in tier one and six XP thereafter. YMMV--we usually don't start new characters at level 1 these days, for instance. One of the highlights is that each XP gets to have a name, which is a fun way to reminisce once you've built up a couple levels and just generally helps make the system feel less like work than regular XP. It does have the caveat that players can fall behind, but because a good chunk of the points are in the DM's hands, catching up isn't too hard--usually everyone's within about two XP of each other. Additionally it might be annoying to keep the entire XP log if it's solely a pen-and-paper game, but as we are online, we just use a google doc.