how often does you DM level you up? [Archive] - Wizards Community

how often does you DM level you up? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
jogan
03-13-06, 01:34 PM last session, our party got from level 6 to level 7.

the campaign started at level 6, we've played 6 sessions (its now march 13th 2006, we started playing mid janurary).

i was told by the dm that it was not going to be a "hack n slash" type campaign and more of a "social" setting. i pointed out that, "if we don't actually fight that many monsters/npcs/traps etc, how will we actually get xp?", to which dm replied, "roleplaying and quest experience". cool, i thought.

my question:
if anyone else plays the type of social game where there isn't that much monster/npc bashing, how much xp are you getting for "quests" or "jobs"?

thanks

jogan
Vennettai
03-13-06, 01:43 PM my dm runs a flat rate of 1500 exp sometimes more sometimes less. it works great we dont lvl up to fast or to slow
WhrenKehrsyn
03-13-06, 01:49 PM In three and a half years my party went from level 2 to level 20. Our focus was more on the RP. To be honest getting the exp was never a concern for any of us, you can RP as well as a level 1 as you can as a level 20.

That doesnt seem terribly long to have got a level, and if you and the rest of the group are comfortable with that pace it should be fine.
Black Kitten
03-13-06, 01:56 PM We have chosen a high-power, high-magic and high-XP variant for our current campaign. We started at level 10 during January and they're now level 13/14 (except for the mage, who has reached level 15 with Mystra's grace up his arse, is to be rectified within the next sessions by the others catching up, he's missing out on the XP totally).

Next campaign might be a swashbuckler campaign, who knows... :)
geekling
03-13-06, 03:01 PM When the sufficient XP for the next level have been reached, either by your common killing things rewards, roleplaying rewards or plot-point rewards.

In our long-term game, there is no such thing as a set rate of leveling. We've been at it once a week for... oh! about seven months or so by now. In that time we've gone from lvl 1 to lvl 6, but not at a steady rate by any means. IIRC my gnome spent all of two session as a lvl 5, but about ten weeks at lvl 3.
It all depends on what goes on in the game.
Rivelstraz
03-13-06, 03:14 PM As a DM, I usually level up people every three-four adventures, which is usually translated to once every six weeks.
With some other group it took them around 3 years to go from 5 to 18, although last year was quite inactive.
feartheinvinceblehamster
03-13-06, 03:30 PM In my smaller campaigns (3 players, tops) we level up once or twice a session. may be because I always forget to divide the experience between party members and instead give each of them ALL the experience(D'oh)
syrinth
03-13-06, 03:31 PM I give half the amount of exp as given in the DMG, I find that my party levels too fast In game but we are very slow out of game:P
OravennasBrother
03-13-06, 03:52 PM .

my question:
if anyone else plays the type of social game where there isn't that much monster/npc bashing, how much xp are you getting for "quests" or "jobs"?

How hard are these "Jobs" ?
If they involve a few easy choices, folling a few gullible people, never having some threat beyond social inconvenience, etc, then 6 or seven sessions is probably kind of quick. OTOH if you were regularly trying to Lie to Cardinal Richelieu and would be burned at the stake as a Heretic if discoverred, then you may have earned more than one level.
Bruunwald
03-14-06, 12:14 PM The average core campaign, according to the DMG, ought to level up every three sessions or so.

That's about right for us, too.
Firhyanda
03-14-06, 12:32 PM Greetings :P

I think that the recommended levels of xp in the DMG are far to high I just divide them by two. If you use the recommended experience levels you should level about once every 13 encounters. For my large game group which meets once a week Friday night 26 encounters is a much better fit we try to balance hack and slash with a lot of role play and a good story line. In general I think slowing down level progression leads to a better game; and providing you are not running a Monty Haul campaign and specifically selecting treasure, magic item yielding encounters the campaign will not become unbalanced.
storm1402
03-14-06, 02:29 PM For my players I have mostly hack and slash type players and I like the social as well so typicaly I do enough battles to level once a game session and we only game about once or twice a month. The reason I allow full progression is I customize the campaign so that all the encounters lead to epic level and have a major enemy to face, once epic however I plan on putting the pcs in more the political areas where they are going to have to choose and make choices that will effect the setting I use. In effect leveling fast now will actualy hender them because right now they are not paying much attention to what the villian is doing rather then chasing him.

If they party stoped for a moment and questioned why the places they encounter the villan they would realize that he is infact spreding power as they quest instead of just running. My NPC is a vampire whos a major CR rating with a Balor fiendish servent. The part I plan on showing them is sometimes a simple hack and slash is not whats needed, if they were to "foil" the plans of the major NPC then they would find the larger scheme of events wouldnt have as much impact when it comes to the hack and slash.

Its all based on individual style of DM, I personaly when playing like alot of combat also so that slow of a progression would make me more uninterested in the game, yes the social aspects of D&D are vital and fun but you need a common ground otherwise players will do basicly like you and ask "why am I doing this? is it really that fun to sit around a table and talk all night or can we have some excitment intrige and some talk all in the same night?"
allenchan
03-14-06, 05:12 PM CRs still work in Diplomatic situations. If you haggle an agreement out with a level 8 rogue, and gain a certain advantage, you overcame his challenge. You get XP for a CR 8 creature. I recently ran the Prince of Red Hand adventure from dungeon, its all intrigue and diplomacy, and the PCs gain XP for a CR 20 at the end of it. Political campaigns dont mean screwing pcs out of XP.
Pryrates
03-14-06, 06:36 PM It vastly depends on who your DM is. In my group there are three of us who regularly DM (two of my friends who both run Forgotten Realms games one does Epic level games and the other usually runs games that go somewhere between 5-15th level; and myself, I run mid-high level games in Dragonlance). Each of us give out varrying amounts of XP for different things but we all use the same system of handing out XP for whatever combat took place (we go more for the RPing aspect so theres usually not too much of that) and then each player rights down what they accomplished from their characters perspective. On average though Id say thats about right for the level you guys are playing at, somewhere between 4-5 sessions maybe a little bit less in my groups games for that level say 3-4 sessions.
Pandaemoni
03-14-06, 08:29 PM I tend to plan on the characters going up one level every 4 or 5 gaming sessions (each session being about 5 hours of actual "game time" on average). Things are not actually proceeding quite that fast in practice, for various reasons, but that is the mark at which I am presently aiming.
Lina_Inverse
03-14-06, 08:43 PM Once every other session is about right. Assumeing your group is pretty effciant.

Its importent to remember roleplaying challenges give exp too. The importent thing about CRs is how challengeing they are to the party. Bringing a cabal of wizards to a ball is certainly an incredibly challengeing encounter.

So if you negotiate a end of hostilitys between yourself and another group you should get full exp for that. just as if youd killed them and tacken there stuff. But you wont get the stuff :(
Stev Beren
03-14-06, 09:24 PM One thing to keep in mind, at least for the IC part of things is that every single session is not neccesarily right after the other. Its entirely possible the players spend several years at a time 'fallow' - not doing anything, interspersed with several periods of rapid activity - so if it takes three real years to reach 20th. . it could have been MUCH longer for the actual players once you add in things like the weeks and days of travel, the months of off time. .etc.
Darkuwa
03-14-06, 10:02 PM my last campaign my players level once every session and one session leveled 3 times as it was the culmination of the story arc. If I was running a campaign I knew was going to run for several years straight I would make it so they got to 20 after about 2 and a half years.
Linkrulesx10
03-15-06, 12:36 AM Well we level up twice a session but we generally have 24 hour sessions... since we only get to play around 4 times a year... Being in a selective high school reduces play time.
solandras
03-15-06, 04:24 AM Whenever he feels like it/feels like we've deserved it. It really depends on what is going on. Such as if I go around and just talk to random NPC's, kill a few orcs here and there, and then chill in my castle...no level. If I battle frontline with my troops, negotiate treaties, and end the hundred year war, I'll probably level. The only time all the PC's leveled at once was when we did a huge mass battle that lasted 30hrs, we did that over 4 days time.
jogan
03-15-06, 02:34 PM i sent this to my dm buddy via email yesterday. any opinions on whether you think i was too harsh?

hey house,

just thought i'd say i'm well impressed with many aspects of the campaign that you're running now. the amount of effort you've put into creating this world has not gone unnoticed, and the fact that i - mr. paladin - have managed to create a character that would torture, assist murder and frame someone is a credit to your dming skills. i think your talent for creating political intrigue and adapting a new setting to our game has been awesome, as is your adaptibility to run a session when everything goes "**** up". the fact that you have several story lines all going off around us at once - in effect, you are multi-storyline-tasking - is something that i could never do as well as you. you've also managed to run combat more smoothly than i could ever hope to :) your consitency to be able to run a session everyweek is also outstanding, and amongst our circle of friends you are the only person i know who has been able to do this.

what i also wanted to do was give you some suggestions to make this kick ass campaign f**kin awesome. if you think i'm out of line here, please let me know.

1) can we level up a bit quicker, say at least once every 3 sessions ? i think this would add a quicker pace to the game, and advancing would be very rewarding.

2) offer greater rewards of magic items/muchos gold for completing jobs. for example, mike's 100,000gp debt to cyriss could be changed to "do this mission for us, and we'll give you a steamjack". the mission/s would be hard, but he would have a much greater drive and when he finally got the reward, he would be smiling for weeks! :).

3) tone down the "we're so much better than you" aspect of some of your npc's. it makes me feel my character is rubbish and inferior to npc's. mike being punched by a commoner - whilst very funny:) - was really demoralising for his level 6 character.

4) remove the seriousness of gun shot wounds and unavailability of healing. it is slowing down the pace of the game; having to worry about infection and doing nothing but recooperate for several days makes me feel less like a hero and more like a commoner.

i hope this hasn't offended you. the game you are running is an incredible amount of fun, and i think about it everyday, which truly is a great testament to your skill as a dm. if you did incorporated the above suggestions, i know i'd enjoy it even more.

jogan

any thoughts?
Tiran
03-15-06, 02:48 PM We've been playing for close to a year now, we've gone from level 1-13. (well we started at 10, but decided to restart at level 1)
Zolgar
03-15-06, 06:36 PM As a DM running a low-combat online game, I tend to more often than not just .. level my PCs up for some great task or another.

I do also award combat XP, and RP xp, and mission XP, and bonus XP. (makes up for the extreme lack of combat XP.)

When I was playing in an online ga,e.. the DM didn't level us up much at all.. like 3 levels in several months.
Jezabell
03-15-06, 10:44 PM i know i'm a new DM and have been doing so for a few months, but in all of the other games i have played as a character in they were hack and slash. and not much role playing we leveled about once every four sessions. so in my game i try to dp the same, my game are more on the social and role playing with a few short quest were the players may fight one monster, then at the end of my game i give xp to those i feel did a great job at playing thing like alinment or charcater or how they worked as a team to finish a quest or how well they did when one player was in trouble who helped them out, maybe i give to much xp but my player seem to be ok with the way things are going. so i would say it all depends on how you and the rest of your group feel if everyone feels like you then you all should sit and talk to your DM and reach some agreements that everyone is happy with. if it just you that feels that way then maybe you should try to work it out with your DM or find a new group that fits your needs
strcpy
03-16-06, 05:32 AM I DM for my group and they level up every three to five sessions. Though we have a session every two weeks that lasts for about 10 bours.

Four of my six players enjoy levelling up almost as much as they enjoy playing dnd. So sometimes I give a little nudge on the xp so they can go up. Even so it's taken then a year and a half to get from level 1 to level 11.

I once played under a DM, and we went from level 1 to level 3 in the first game. Then spent a month as level 3's. Then we somehow shot up to level 6 in the next three games. And on the last adventure we gained enough xp to get to level 11. I will never understand it, though I did not complain. If the DM says you get 59 000 xp for doing something, who am I to complain. (This was a freak game :))
Dragonsblood
03-16-06, 06:42 PM In the campaign I'm playing in, we started in the beginning of November at level 1, playing once a week (but skipped a few nonconsecutive sessions). Right now our characters are about 1700 from level 6.
KnightErrant
03-17-06, 07:02 PM We typically level up every three session, course we only play once per week and we only have one semester to play, actually we have only 6 sessions left (started at 3 about to hit 7)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jogan 03-13-06, 01:34 PM	last session, our party got from level 6 to level 7. the campaign started at level 6, we've played 6 sessions (its now march 13th 2006, we started playing mid janurary). i was told by the dm that it was not going to be a "hack n slash" type campaign and more of a "social" setting. i pointed out that, "if we don't actually fight that many monsters/npcs/traps etc, how will we actually get xp?", to which dm replied, "roleplaying and quest experience". cool, i thought. my question: if anyone else plays the type of social game where there isn't that much monster/npc bashing, how much xp are you getting for "quests" or "jobs"? thanks jogan
Vennettai 03-13-06, 01:43 PM	my dm runs a flat rate of 1500 exp sometimes more sometimes less. it works great we dont lvl up to fast or to slow
WhrenKehrsyn 03-13-06, 01:49 PM	In three and a half years my party went from level 2 to level 20. Our focus was more on the RP. To be honest getting the exp was never a concern for any of us, you can RP as well as a level 1 as you can as a level 20. That doesnt seem terribly long to have got a level, and if you and the rest of the group are comfortable with that pace it should be fine.
Black Kitten 03-13-06, 01:56 PM	We have chosen a high-power, high-magic and high-XP variant for our current campaign. We started at level 10 during January and they're now level 13/14 (except for the mage, who has reached level 15 with Mystra's grace up his arse, is to be rectified within the next sessions by the others catching up, he's missing out on the XP totally). Next campaign might be a swashbuckler campaign, who knows... :)
geekling 03-13-06, 03:01 PM	When the sufficient XP for the next level have been reached, either by your common killing things rewards, roleplaying rewards or plot-point rewards. In our long-term game, there is no such thing as a set rate of leveling. We've been at it once a week for... oh! about seven months or so by now. In that time we've gone from lvl 1 to lvl 6, but not at a steady rate by any means. IIRC my gnome spent all of two session as a lvl 5, but about ten weeks at lvl 3. It all depends on what goes on in the game.
Rivelstraz 03-13-06, 03:14 PM	As a DM, I usually level up people every three-four adventures, which is usually translated to once every six weeks. With some other group it took them around 3 years to go from 5 to 18, although last year was quite inactive.
feartheinvinceblehamster 03-13-06, 03:30 PM	In my smaller campaigns (3 players, tops) we level up once or twice a session. may be because I always forget to divide the experience between party members and instead give each of them ALL the experience(D'oh)
syrinth 03-13-06, 03:31 PM	I give half the amount of exp as given in the DMG, I find that my party levels too fast In game but we are very slow out of game:P
OravennasBrother 03-13-06, 03:52 PM	. my question: if anyone else plays the type of social game where there isn't that much monster/npc bashing, how much xp are you getting for "quests" or "jobs"? How hard are these "Jobs" ? If they involve a few easy choices, folling a few gullible people, never having some threat beyond social inconvenience, etc, then 6 or seven sessions is probably kind of quick. OTOH if you were regularly trying to Lie to Cardinal Richelieu and would be burned at the stake as a Heretic if discoverred, then you may have earned more than one level.
Bruunwald 03-14-06, 12:14 PM	The average core campaign, according to the DMG, ought to level up every three sessions or so. That's about right for us, too.
Firhyanda 03-14-06, 12:32 PM	Greetings :P I think that the recommended levels of xp in the DMG are far to high I just divide them by two. If you use the recommended experience levels you should level about once every 13 encounters. For my large game group which meets once a week Friday night 26 encounters is a much better fit we try to balance hack and slash with a lot of role play and a good story line. In general I think slowing down level progression leads to a better game; and providing you are not running a Monty Haul campaign and specifically selecting treasure, magic item yielding encounters the campaign will not become unbalanced.
storm1402 03-14-06, 02:29 PM	For my players I have mostly hack and slash type players and I like the social as well so typicaly I do enough battles to level once a game session and we only game about once or twice a month. The reason I allow full progression is I customize the campaign so that all the encounters lead to epic level and have a major enemy to face, once epic however I plan on putting the pcs in more the political areas where they are going to have to choose and make choices that will effect the setting I use. In effect leveling fast now will actualy hender them because right now they are not paying much attention to what the villian is doing rather then chasing him. If they party stoped for a moment and questioned why the places they encounter the villan they would realize that he is infact spreding power as they quest instead of just running. My NPC is a vampire whos a major CR rating with a Balor fiendish servent. The part I plan on showing them is sometimes a simple hack and slash is not whats needed, if they were to "foil" the plans of the major NPC then they would find the larger scheme of events wouldnt have as much impact when it comes to the hack and slash. Its all based on individual style of DM, I personaly when playing like alot of combat also so that slow of a progression would make me more uninterested in the game, yes the social aspects of D&D are vital and fun but you need a common ground otherwise players will do basicly like you and ask "why am I doing this? is it really that fun to sit around a table and talk all night or can we have some excitment intrige and some talk all in the same night?"
allenchan 03-14-06, 05:12 PM	CRs still work in Diplomatic situations. If you haggle an agreement out with a level 8 rogue, and gain a certain advantage, you overcame his challenge. You get XP for a CR 8 creature. I recently ran the Prince of Red Hand adventure from dungeon, its all intrigue and diplomacy, and the PCs gain XP for a CR 20 at the end of it. Political campaigns dont mean screwing pcs out of XP.
Pryrates 03-14-06, 06:36 PM	It vastly depends on who your DM is. In my group there are three of us who regularly DM (two of my friends who both run Forgotten Realms games one does Epic level games and the other usually runs games that go somewhere between 5-15th level; and myself, I run mid-high level games in Dragonlance). Each of us give out varrying amounts of XP for different things but we all use the same system of handing out XP for whatever combat took place (we go more for the RPing aspect so theres usually not too much of that) and then each player rights down what they accomplished from their characters perspective. On average though Id say thats about right for the level you guys are playing at, somewhere between 4-5 sessions maybe a little bit less in my groups games for that level say 3-4 sessions.
Pandaemoni 03-14-06, 08:29 PM	I tend to plan on the characters going up one level every 4 or 5 gaming sessions (each session being about 5 hours of actual "game time" on average). Things are not actually proceeding quite that fast in practice, for various reasons, but that is the mark at which I am presently aiming.
Lina_Inverse 03-14-06, 08:43 PM	Once every other session is about right. Assumeing your group is pretty effciant. Its importent to remember roleplaying challenges give exp too. The importent thing about CRs is how challengeing they are to the party. Bringing a cabal of wizards to a ball is certainly an incredibly challengeing encounter. So if you negotiate a end of hostilitys between yourself and another group you should get full exp for that. just as if youd killed them and tacken there stuff. But you wont get the stuff :(
Stev Beren 03-14-06, 09:24 PM	One thing to keep in mind, at least for the IC part of things is that every single session is not neccesarily right after the other. Its entirely possible the players spend several years at a time 'fallow' - not doing anything, interspersed with several periods of rapid activity - so if it takes three real years to reach 20th. . it could have been MUCH longer for the actual players once you add in things like the weeks and days of travel, the months of off time. .etc.
Darkuwa 03-14-06, 10:02 PM	my last campaign my players level once every session and one session leveled 3 times as it was the culmination of the story arc. If I was running a campaign I knew was going to run for several years straight I would make it so they got to 20 after about 2 and a half years.
Linkrulesx10 03-15-06, 12:36 AM	Well we level up twice a session but we generally have 24 hour sessions... since we only get to play around 4 times a year... Being in a selective high school reduces play time.
solandras 03-15-06, 04:24 AM	Whenever he feels like it/feels like we've deserved it. It really depends on what is going on. Such as if I go around and just talk to random NPC's, kill a few orcs here and there, and then chill in my castle...no level. If I battle frontline with my troops, negotiate treaties, and end the hundred year war, I'll probably level. The only time all the PC's leveled at once was when we did a huge mass battle that lasted 30hrs, we did that over 4 days time.
jogan 03-15-06, 02:34 PM	i sent this to my dm buddy via email yesterday. any opinions on whether you think i was too harsh? hey house, just thought i'd say i'm well impressed with many aspects of the campaign that you're running now. the amount of effort you've put into creating this world has not gone unnoticed, and the fact that i - mr. paladin - have managed to create a character that would torture, assist murder and frame someone is a credit to your dming skills. i think your talent for creating political intrigue and adapting a new setting to our game has been awesome, as is your adaptibility to run a session when everything goes "** up". the fact that you have several story lines all going off around us at once - in effect, you are multi-storyline-tasking - is something that i could never do as well as you. you've also managed to run combat more smoothly than i could ever hope to :) your consitency to be able to run a session everyweek is also outstanding, and amongst our circle of friends you are the only person i know who has been able to do this. what i also wanted to do was give you some suggestions to make this kick ass campaign fkin awesome. if you think i'm out of line here, please let me know. 1) can we level up a bit quicker, say at least once every 3 sessions ? i think this would add a quicker pace to the game, and advancing would be very rewarding. 2) offer greater rewards of magic items/muchos gold for completing jobs. for example, mike's 100,000gp debt to cyriss could be changed to "do this mission for us, and we'll give you a steamjack". the mission/s would be hard, but he would have a much greater drive and when he finally got the reward, he would be smiling for weeks! :). 3) tone down the "we're so much better than you" aspect of some of your npc's. it makes me feel my character is rubbish and inferior to npc's. mike being punched by a commoner - whilst very funny:) - was really demoralising for his level 6 character. 4) remove the seriousness of gun shot wounds and unavailability of healing. it is slowing down the pace of the game; having to worry about infection and doing nothing but recooperate for several days makes me feel less like a hero and more like a commoner. i hope this hasn't offended you. the game you are running is an incredible amount of fun, and i think about it everyday, which truly is a great testament to your skill as a dm. if you did incorporated the above suggestions, i know i'd enjoy it even more. jogan any thoughts?
Tiran 03-15-06, 02:48 PM	We've been playing for close to a year now, we've gone from level 1-13. (well we started at 10, but decided to restart at level 1)
Zolgar 03-15-06, 06:36 PM	As a DM running a low-combat online game, I tend to more often than not just .. level my PCs up for some great task or another. I do also award combat XP, and RP xp, and mission XP, and bonus XP. (makes up for the extreme lack of combat XP.) When I was playing in an online ga,e.. the DM didn't level us up much at all.. like 3 levels in several months.
Jezabell 03-15-06, 10:44 PM	i know i'm a new DM and have been doing so for a few months, but in all of the other games i have played as a character in they were hack and slash. and not much role playing we leveled about once every four sessions. so in my game i try to dp the same, my game are more on the social and role playing with a few short quest were the players may fight one monster, then at the end of my game i give xp to those i feel did a great job at playing thing like alinment or charcater or how they worked as a team to finish a quest or how well they did when one player was in trouble who helped them out, maybe i give to much xp but my player seem to be ok with the way things are going. so i would say it all depends on how you and the rest of your group feel if everyone feels like you then you all should sit and talk to your DM and reach some agreements that everyone is happy with. if it just you that feels that way then maybe you should try to work it out with your DM or find a new group that fits your needs
strcpy 03-16-06, 05:32 AM	I DM for my group and they level up every three to five sessions. Though we have a session every two weeks that lasts for about 10 bours. Four of my six players enjoy levelling up almost as much as they enjoy playing dnd. So sometimes I give a little nudge on the xp so they can go up. Even so it's taken then a year and a half to get from level 1 to level 11. I once played under a DM, and we went from level 1 to level 3 in the first game. Then spent a month as level 3's. Then we somehow shot up to level 6 in the next three games. And on the last adventure we gained enough xp to get to level 11. I will never understand it, though I did not complain. If the DM says you get 59 000 xp for doing something, who am I to complain. (This was a freak game :))
Dragonsblood 03-16-06, 06:42 PM	In the campaign I'm playing in, we started in the beginning of November at level 1, playing once a week (but skipped a few nonconsecutive sessions). Right now our characters are about 1700 from level 6.
KnightErrant 03-17-06, 07:02 PM	We typically level up every three session, course we only play once per week and we only have one semester to play, actually we have only 6 sessions left (started at 3 about to hit 7)