One of the questions that came out of our last episode about game pace was, “How quickly should players level up?” What we’re finding as we play through our own games is that campaigns that level up faster seem to be more fun for the players and, to some extent, the DMs.
That left us asking: Does faster leveling just make for a better game? Especially in 5E?
Milestone Leveling vs. Classic XP
What brought this to a head was our three D&D 5th Edition games. Tony and Dave are running Storm King’s Thunder and Curse of Strahd, respectively, while I’m running my homebrew world.
The homebrew has 7 PCs and uses XP rewards based primarily on the monsters they defeat (or avoid, talk their way past or otherwise overcome) along with bonuses I throw in for ground they cover and cool stuff the players did.
This was everyone’s first 5E game, so I wanted to run it pretty close to the books to see how it played. I focused on building fun, challenging encounters, and just rewarded XP based on the DMG guidelines.
With 7 PCs, games often get through 2 or 3 encounters in a 6-ish hour session. I push the monster levels and numbers up, so they should be advancing at an accelerated rate. Ideally, I wanted them to level up every 2-3 games. But I wasn’t actively building encounters or changing monster XP to hit that.
As we crossed into the second tier, leaving leveling in the hands of WotC’s XP system has really slowed the advancement. They started leveling more like every 4 to6 sessions, and often it finally happened just because I threw in extra XP to give them a level and new powers to play with.
Honestly, it got a little slow.
In the other games, the guys both have milestone leveling in SKT and CoS, and they generally level up every session or every other session.
You know what? Those games have been more fun.
I keep increasing the XP rewards in my game while they’re sometimes slowing advancement so we don’t go through 2 levels in one session. (Like Tony has said in the podcast, it sometimes feels like SKT hands out a level for successfully navigating an ice cream shop.)
The difference is pretty huge. So huge that I made jokes about WotC slowing advancement on the XP chart so players would have more fun with the milestone leveling in its book modules. (OK, it’s only half joking.)
However, even the published modules slow down after a while. And once you hit the ideal level for the end game, advancement seems to stall out.
The XP chart isn’t a simple progression, either. Advancement varies in counter-intuitive ways. For example, it takes 21,000 XP to get from level 10 to 11, but only 15,000 XP to get from 11 to 12.
| Experience Points | Level | Proficiency Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | +2 |
| 300 | 2 | +2 |
| 900 | 3 | +2 |
| 2,700 | 4 | +2 |
| 6,500 | 5 | +3 |
| 14,000 | 6 | +3 |
| 23,000 | 7 | +3 |
| 34,000 | 8 | +3 |
| 48,000 | 9 | +4 |
| 64,000 | 10 | +4 |
| 85,000 | 11 | +4 |
| 100,000 | 12 | +4 |
| 120,000 | 13 | +5 |
| 140,000 | 14 | +5 |
| 165,000 | 15 | +5 |
| 195,000 | 16 | +5 |
| 225,000 | 17 | +6 |
| 265,000 | 18 | +6 |
| 305,000 | 19 | +6 |
| 355,000 | 20 | +6 |
So, are we supposed to slow down advancement heading into level 11, then speed it up through 12? Encounter-wise, that might be the case, but it’s a strange design decision. And I bet a book module covering those levels would advance a lot faster.
Time Spent vs. Reward
The reason I think the leveling pace difference jumped out to us in these games is that level is the biggest mechanical reward PCs get for the time they invest in playing.
In the podcast, Tony talked about how you want to get some kind of reward for the time you spend, and leveling is the main way characters develop mechanically.
The treasure system doesn’t really support some of the rewards we’re used to giving from earlier editions like 2E (not 4th, where treasure was even less meaningful). Big treasures like artifacts can feel rewarding, but those only come up a few times in a campaign.
As far as daily treasure goes, the constraints on magic items keep anything from giving too big of a bump. And there’s just not enough to do with gold for treasure hunting to feel that rewarding. (Although, there certainly could be if you design more things to buy into your world.)
Story rewards count here, too, but that varies game-by-game. Our players, at least, seem to like to level up.
Based on feedback from our groups, playing is not always its own reward. They want the DM to give them some levels and stuff, too. This is especially true if we’re playing monthly instead of bi-weekly. Going several months without leveling up feels like a very slow grind.
So leveling is one of the most reliably rewarding ways to give the players a feeling of accomplishment that ties into the game mechanics.
Every group is different, so obviously adjust this to suit your players, timing, story rewards and other situations. But at our tables, making players sit 5 or 6 sessions at one level has not been a good idea.
What Is the Best Pace for Leveling Up?
There’s a lot of thought around the D&D 5E blogosphere on this question. WotC seems to expect players to level up roughly every 12 to 16 encounters based on the XP rewards, but a lot more quickly based on published adventure milestones.
Our informal Twitter poll currently says 53% favor leveling every 2-3 sessions, and no one voted for leveling “every session.”
How quickly should players level in #DnD5e?
— 3wisedms (@3wisedms) August 16, 2020
Related to this week’s podcast on game pacing for DMs https://t.co/1kKPD59EbU#DnDpodcast #DnD #TTRPG #DMTips
Frankly, a level every 2 to 3 sessions is my preference, too. But it might need adjusting based on play frequency and tier.
Going 3 months – a whole season of the calendar year – without leveling up is too slow. If you’re playing monthly, every session or every other session is probably the right pace.
If you’re playing bi-weekly or more frequently, you can go a bit slower. But I feel like WotC’s apparent guideline of 16 encounters per level is too slow. I’d still shoot to level every 3 to 4 game sessions just because it gets boring to come back 5 times in a row with the same power set. You have to give them some new things to play with.
I do think tier should make a difference here, as well. Most classes don’t come into their own until they’re 4 or 5 levels into their stuff. So, leveling once per session to about level 4 or 5 is starting to look right. Then I might try slowing down to 2 or 3 sessions per level beyond that.
And, honestly, we haven’t hit epic tier in any of these games yet. Maybe things slow down there and it makes sense to level every 6 sessions or more. (Although I still think leveling up once in 6 months sounds boring.)
Making It Fun
So, is faster leveling better? Based on our conversations in the podcast, I think it’s most important that players feel rewarded for the time they spend in the session, and leveling is one of the best ways to do that. But it’s not the only way.
As always, you should get feedback from your playgroup and adjust based on what they enjoy. I’m personally cautious about skipping past low-middle levels too quickly because in the past I’ve found I miss that level of play when we speed through it. Fighting demons and demigods is fun, but when it’s all you do, it gets boring. I like to spend some time around the hobgoblin levels where you can still have tense encounters around non-epic threats.
So, I don’t want to get to the Ancient Dragon Levels too fast. But there are happy mediums that let you use all the monsters and encounters at those tiers and still make players feel like they’re growing bigger and stronger every time you get together.
If you really want to slow level, think about other kinds of rewards to keep the game fun and leave the players feeling rewarded.
A hierarchy of social/government titles for players to earn that come with in-world powers (like noble titles in the real world) can be fun in a totally different way. That still gives you new things to play with, even when levels aren’t rocketing by. Vampire The Masquerade did a lot of cool things with this idea.
There are similar things you can do with in-game powers, items, and cool places for players to access. Give the PCs an airship! Players love airships. Lovecraftian games often have secret societies like The Silver Twilight Lodge that have libraries with the “real truth,” and opening those kinds of things is rewarding, too.
In the end, the important piece is to make sure players have new things to play with. So long as your game gives them that, everyone can have a good time.