I plan on running my game with the variant "you get a level when I say" instead of murderhobo style.
The theme of this campaign is to be an epic adventure, so the PCs are going to start at 1st level and grow in power. What's a good rate for them to grow at?
Also, out of curiosity, how fast does leveling to 20 tend to occur in the murderhobo method (killing monsters gives exp)? I'd like to mimic that somewhat in speed, if not method.
Prescient wrote:
There really is no right answer. Two quick suggestions....
1) Level them up after they've had time and opportunity to use all the abilities gained at their current level at least once, but before they get bored with them
2) Up them when you've got a great new idea for a challenge that can (only, or more easily) be overcome with abilities gained at the next level (example, wizard gains Fly spell)
I award experience on combat and quest resolution myself, but the pace has been close enough to the milestones I aimed at as the beancounting I'm doing. It's all homebrew, though I referenced HotDQ a few times for ideas about progression myself. Below is the party's rate of leveling up if you're looking for more specific examples.
Going from level 1 to 2 was one session, consisting of three combat encounters and a 'quest complete' resolution.
2 to 3 was two sessions, five combats, another leg of the main adventure resolved.
3 to 4 was also two sessions, though one of them ran fairly long. Side quest pursued and resolved along with their main objective.
4 to 5 took a break from the main campaign to pursue PC quests I had been setting up. Four sessions, more exploration and NPC interaction than previous sessions. They were actually pretty close to 5 by the end of the 3rd session, but I wanted to wrap up their personal quests before doing that. They were over 1/4 of the way through 5th level when the fourth session ended.
5 to 6 was two sessions. This was a combat heavy level, as I knew my players were eager to test out their new powers.
We're at 6 now, two sessions in. Looking forward, I'll probably try to pace them to level up every 3-4 sessions through 10th, then every 4-5 through 15th. Hard to say with any degree of certainty though. If we manage to hit 20th level, it should take around two years, assuming we get together 2-3 times a month and don't ever deviate with one-shots or alternate parties. There's a lot of real life that can come up between now and then, so I didn't even think about it that much til you posed the question. =P
That's exactly the info I needed.
Thanks!
This is my current campaign spreadsheet:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=3187F8C3C74196F!39545&authkey=!AHW9pi4sb107zI4&ithint=file%2cxlsx
On the first sheet you can see how the party is progressing level wise and session wise. To give you an indication of timeframe, we play 1-2 sessions for 2-4 hours per week each.
Our rule of thumb is that it takes N sessions to level up, where N is the current level.
So 1 session to go to 2nd level, then 2 sessions to level 3, then 3 sessions to level 4, etc.
It makes progression at higher levels very slow. This is only a problem if your table can't have fun without frequent leveling.
Prescient wrote:
Have you tried just using XP, but changing how you get it?
I find using exp puts the story second in the minds of the players.
The story is second though - it is created as a result of playing the game. Putting the story first is putting the cart before the horse. (See the link in my signature, "Structure First, Story Last.") If you want your players to follow your plot, just give XP for engaging with your plot points and achieving objectives you put forth and for nothing else and the story will happen on its own. If your players are interested in character advancement and XP is the means for that advancement, then just change what it takes to get XP.
Going off of Iserith, I like having the Characters be first, with the story second (if only for the fact I like the story as it relates to the characters, instead of vice-versa!)
But! I get what you mean. You have an expectation that this shouldn't be treated like a video game 
And there's nothing wrong with that, inherently. Though you know your group better than we do! And there's always the idea of just giving XP in chunks (if any at all) without actually saying why or where the numbers come from.