Experience Points
Jan. 14th, 2003 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ralphmeltonThe rate of experience gain from standard D&D is frustrating me.
Consider a party of 4 PCs fighting challenges with CR equal to their class level. According to the principles of CRs, that party should be able to handle about 4 or 5 such encounters per game day. My experience has been that that's about right; my PCs start showing a bit of concern at about the third encounter, and the one time they pushed through to a fifth encounter, they felt very concerned indeed. So call it 4 encounters per game day.
According to the principles of XP, the 4 PCs should level every 13 1/3 encounters. So, that's about every 3 game days.
Now, I have 5 PCs, so it's more like 4 game days--but it balances out.
But what this means to me is this: tonight, I want to add in a little side adventure, because I'm eager to play with my new MasterMaze stuff. But if I add enough action to make that at all challenging, it advances my PCs about a quarter of a level.
This means that just as I figure out what sorts of challenge feel right at one level, they go up a level and give me new challenges.
I should talk about handing out fewer XP. I would rather not get more stingy on my players, but it might be the right thing.
Consider a party of 4 PCs fighting challenges with CR equal to their class level. According to the principles of CRs, that party should be able to handle about 4 or 5 such encounters per game day. My experience has been that that's about right; my PCs start showing a bit of concern at about the third encounter, and the one time they pushed through to a fifth encounter, they felt very concerned indeed. So call it 4 encounters per game day.
According to the principles of XP, the 4 PCs should level every 13 1/3 encounters. So, that's about every 3 game days.
Now, I have 5 PCs, so it's more like 4 game days--but it balances out.
But what this means to me is this: tonight, I want to add in a little side adventure, because I'm eager to play with my new MasterMaze stuff. But if I add enough action to make that at all challenging, it advances my PCs about a quarter of a level.
This means that just as I figure out what sorts of challenge feel right at one level, they go up a level and give me new challenges.
I should talk about handing out fewer XP. I would rather not get more stingy on my players, but it might be the right thing.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 12:04 pm (UTC)The problem isn't inherently in the "characters level every 13 encounters or so" principle, it's inherently in the "game time and real time don't match up" principle.
If your characters aren't levelling at least once every few weeks real time, your players will get bored with their current abilities. However, if your sessions basically end up with like 2-3 encounters per session, so one month real time is 2-3 game days, the characters pretty much end up levelling up every 2-3 days, game time.
There are various solutions to this, all of which I'm sure you do to some effect anyway, but these are my thoughts on the matter:
1) Award XP on roleplaying, use of skills, etc. I'm sure you do this already. But, rather than challenging your players by throwing monsters at them all the time, challenge them in other ways. Then other stuff will happen in the game universe, and it won't be like "How did that guy get from being a street urchin to being the head of the Assassin's guild in three weeks?"
2) Reinstate the old rule where you don't just automagically "level", but have to spend some amount of time training/etc. Most people hate this, but in some ways it does make sense.
3) Unless it is time-critical that your players be beating up on a lot of stuff every day, don't have them beat up on stuff every day.
I've been in various campaigns where the levelling has happened at various rates. For example, D&D at CMU generally had us levelling every 2-3 sessions! We got from 1st level to 10th level in a school-year-long campaign, which is all of 30 sessions IF that, since we'd cancel a few. And it was only like MAYBE 3 weeks in game time! But Tal's 2nd edition campaign... I think my character levelled twice in a year and a half real time, which was also several years in game time. In our 3E campaign with Tal, though, we went from 3rd level to 11th level in.. 10 months real time. I'm not sure how long it was in game time. Mike might know a little better.
Still, I tihnk the main thing is for people to feel comfortable with the rate they're improving and expanding their characters at, more than anything else.
If this is totally off-base, feel free to delete it.