So we are on session 16 of our current campaign, session length is generally 2 - 2 1/2 hours long. Remote with 8 players so they run a little slower. A player asked me the other day if I could give a rough overview of how I would be determine leveling, wasn’t pushing to level up, just wanted to understand a bit more of my process and it got me thinking.
So far the party are level 3, if I ignore how long things have taken so far they have had 2 major entanglements, and some minor encounters while traveling, and are currently just finishing off a third “dungeon”.
Major Encounter 1 was fighting bandits robbing a house, that got them to level 1,
Number 2 was based off the goblin cave of lost mines but I made it bigger with more bugbears (3) and goblins in it. They also had 5 very minor encounters in the forest leading up to the cave system.
This third one is an undead fight, lots of zombies, skeletons, will o wisps, Spectors, poltergeists an alip and a wight.
My sense is that they won’t level after this temple, partly because they have dealt with it all very easily, but also because in game terms it has been 2 days since they last leveled :). I am running a sandbox so there are a number of things they can do in any order, my gut is that they will level after the next one.
But I wondered how do other DMs control leveling in milestone campaigns, is it time based (in or out of game) do you work out the xp of each fight just to see if it feels right to level, or do you use some other method?
In general,there three things to consider rewards(what else did they get for this task),story(how much did this impact the story),and difficulty (how much effort where they putting in).The higher of each of these,the more reasonable it is to give a level.
I don't pay much attention to XP outside of Challenge rating calculations, and it has nothing to do with game time. It's sort of based on Story Arcs. Any time a major sub-plot is ended, any time a full Story arc ends, at the end of an entire Adventure, that's when I'll give out a Milestone and they go up a level. In your example, fighting off the bandits trying to raid a house would be a Milestone. Finishing out the entire system of caves would be another, and once they finish the temple, that would be where they get the third. If there are sub-plots that get resolved along the way, as long as all the characters are involved, I'll probably give them a Milestone for that, but people who go off solo don't get levels, I keep all of the party at the same level pretty much.
At higher levels, I get more stingy, and it will take a lot more Miles before they level I just have to kind of think in terms of a story as having chapters, and each one of them might be a Milestone. At the higher end, it takes a whole book.
One thing I've seen before is going for like... multiples of 2. After 1 session everyone reaches level 2. Then two more Sessions from there to 3. Four more sessions to 4. Eight more sessions to 5, etc., etc. I don't think that system fully works for a very long campaign, or a campaign where the players spend a lot of time screwing around where it would feel weird for everyone to gain a level after spending a whole session hanging out with Boblin the Goblin trying to teach him a dirty limerick.
I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m talking about, since I’m a self taught DM who is still pretty new. When I started running games, I didn’t understand the XP system, so I kind of came up with my own way to level players up. Lol, until recently, I had no idea there was an actual name for said method. The way I do milestone leveling is based on plot points. However, I also pay attention to how easy or difficult different situations were for the players, and choose whether or not to let them go to the next level or not. It seems to work pretty well for my group and I. Then again, we are all newbies with a lot to learn.
One thing I've seen before is going for like... multiples of 2. After 1 session everyone reaches level 2. Then two more Sessions from there to 3. Four more sessions to 4. Eight more sessions to 5, etc., etc. I don't think that system fully works for a very long campaign, or a campaign where the players spend a lot of time screwing around where it would feel weird for everyone to gain a level after spending a whole session hanging out with Boblin the Goblin trying to teach him a dirty limerick.
I have seen this suggestion and presonally really don't like it, we can have 3 sessions covering the same day sometimes which feels far to quick to be levelling.
One thing I've seen before is going for like... multiples of 2. After 1 session everyone reaches level 2. Then two more Sessions from there to 3. Four more sessions to 4. Eight more sessions to 5, etc., etc. I don't think that system fully works for a very long campaign, or a campaign where the players spend a lot of time screwing around where it would feel weird for everyone to gain a level after spending a whole session hanging out with Boblin the Goblin trying to teach him a dirty limerick.
Even to get to moderate levels this take wouldn't really work, playing weekly the players would spend 15 months at level 7.
If you use XP levellig at early levels you might need double the XP for each level but the plyers will earn XP much faster, at level 1 players might get 50XP for an encounter while at level 4 they might get 300XP for an encounter of equal challenge. In practice while there are some anomalies using XP levelling means the characters fairly quickly advance to level 3 and then each level roughly the same amount of effort up to level 11 (at which point levelling gets to be a bit faster)
I think to have a rough outline of one session for level 1, two sessions for level 2 and four session for every level after that woiuld be reasonable, this would mean a year long campaign with weekly sessions would get players to around level 14. If you expect the capaign to last longer you might want ot level up on average evey 6 or 8 sessions. This does not mean levle up the players 4 weeks after they last levelled up but is to give an indication of how major the achievments need to be to get a level up.
One thing to remember, Milestones don't have to be worth a full level. Maybe each is a quarter unless the party does something extraordinary, then it's worth half a level. Maybe the party finished a story arc but, didn't really learn anything from it so, no advancement. It's all DM's Fiat with Milestones.
The secret is in the name "Milestone level" - when they reach an important milestone in the plot (e.g. clear the town of the secret evil society) they gain a level. You as DM decide when that milestone has been reached.
I tend to do it based on what has been accomplished. If the players find an easy shortcut, that's fine, they accomplished the same amount, if they make life difficult for themselves, that's fine too. It encourages them to actually solve problems instead of trying to encounter as much as possible.
I do it every 2 sessions up to level 5, then every 4 after that. My sessions generally each have a full adventuring day, run 3-4 hours, and are pretty episodic. At this point, I also try to leave at least one in-game week for level-ups to justify the characters' training.
Just to clarify more interested in how you all do it yourselves, I have been milestone leveling for years now, this group of players are all new to it and it just got me wondering how others manage it.
I do it every 2 sessions up to level 5, then every 4 after that. My sessions generally each have a full adventuring day, run 3-4 hours, and are pretty episodic. At this point, I also try to leave at least one in-game week for level-ups to justify the characters' training.
If I had done that, even doubling out cos my sessions are half the length of yours Then they would be level 4 and barely completed the goblin caves. Traditionally I run games much slower then this, so it isn’t unusual for 12 hours of game time to encompass just 1 day. Not all the time, sometimes we will spin through a few weeks in narrative form, but generally.
If you plan and play a homebrew-campaign try set your milestones roughly every 4 to 5 Sessions. If the players decide to durdle around or go shopping a full session, that's not a big Problem and player agency. Going shopping the hole day will slow down their progress. Not, that this is a big problem, but if players are aware of their own procrastination it willl become even less of a problem. I highly recommend that there should only be one Session with level one. Playing with a party of commoners is no fun for anyone at the table. Level 2 depends but i like the suggestion of jegpeg. 2 mabye 3 Sessions at level 2.
BUT: Just don't level up your Players every 4-5 Sessions. This is where your Milestone-planing comes in. In the milestone system the players should understand and feel why they gained a level. Usualy after epic battles, or great successes/losses or another accomplishment, that feels meaningful to them.
The secret is in the name "Milestone level" - when they reach an important milestone in the plot (e.g. clear the town of the secret evil society) they gain a level. You as DM decide when that milestone has been reached.
This is pretty much how I am using Milestone leveling.
I started a new campaign for my players if we ran into a situation where not enough people can play the main game but have enough for small parties and I use Milestone leveling. I have a bunch of interconnected 'modules' that act as the milestone markers and once a certain amount of 'modules' have been completed there is the opportunity to level up.
I do it every 2 sessions up to level 5, then every 4 after that. My sessions generally each have a full adventuring day, run 3-4 hours, and are pretty episodic. At this point, I also try to leave at least one in-game week for level-ups to justify the characters' training.
If I had done that, even doubling out cos my sessions are half the length of yours Then they would be level 4 and barely completed the goblin caves. Traditionally I run games much slower then this, so it isn’t unusual for 12 hours of game time to encompass just 1 day. Not all the time, sometimes we will spin through a few weeks in narrative form, but generally.
Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone’s game! My games tend to be fast-paced with all Deadly combats and clear objectives, and my players are all experienced, so it’s easy to get through a small dungeon in a few hours even with a lot of roleplaying. But I think that’s the exception and not the rule.
I do it every 2 sessions up to level 5, then every 4 after that. My sessions generally each have a full adventuring day, run 3-4 hours, and are pretty episodic. At this point, I also try to leave at least one in-game week for level-ups to justify the characters' training.
If I had done that, even doubling out cos my sessions are half the length of yours Then they would be level 4 and barely completed the goblin caves. Traditionally I run games much slower then this, so it isn’t unusual for 12 hours of game time to encompass just 1 day. Not all the time, sometimes we will spin through a few weeks in narrative form, but generally.
Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone’s game! My games tend to be fast-paced with all Deadly combats and clear objectives, and my players are all experienced, so it’s easy to get through a small dungeon in a few hours even with a lot of roleplaying. But I think that’s the exception and not the rule.
Yeah I run huge sandbox campaigns with lots of intricacies, it isn’t unusual for a social interaction to last most of a session with the characters interacting with and talking to people. The players are all experienced, just always done XP campaigns, which I found odd in this day and age lol.
I'm running my group through ToD right now and we're in RoT. The module has laid out when to level up the party but some of those milestones don't feel particularly level-up worthy. (frex it says to level them up after the first attempt of the cult to assassinate the party but that attack comes shortly on the heels of them going through another episode of the module that also grants a level-up so they won't be going from level 10 to 11 and then two days later suddenly they're at level 12.)
I view it in terms of novel writing in a way. Your plot structure of the novel has turning points and big milestones along the way where the characters achieve great victory or experience great loss. In a novel those might come close on the heels of each other but generally there will be lots of little steps along the way that get the character from one to the next big milestone.
In a sandbox game, I'd recommend looking at it from the perspective of impact to the characters or the world. Big earth-shattering outcome of the party clearing that temple of its corruption? Level up. Huge step forward in that character's search for the answers about why their parents sold them to a monastery as a baby? level up. Party hired to clear out a cavern system and retrieve someone's lost heirloom? Maybe not a level up unless it's been a long while since they did and that heirloom being returned to the family means some BBEG somewhere has just been dealt a severe setback to their plans.
So we are on session 16 of our current campaign, session length is generally 2 - 2 1/2 hours long. Remote with 8 players so they run a little slower. A player asked me the other day if I could give a rough overview of how I would be determine leveling, wasn’t pushing to level up, just wanted to understand a bit more of my process and it got me thinking.
So far the party are level 3, if I ignore how long things have taken so far they have had 2 major entanglements, and some minor encounters while traveling, and are currently just finishing off a third “dungeon”.
Major Encounter 1 was fighting bandits robbing a house, that got them to level 1,
Number 2 was based off the goblin cave of lost mines but I made it bigger with more bugbears (3) and goblins in it. They also had 5 very minor encounters in the forest leading up to the cave system.
This third one is an undead fight, lots of zombies, skeletons, will o wisps, Spectors, poltergeists an alip and a wight.
My sense is that they won’t level after this temple, partly because they have dealt with it all very easily, but also because in game terms it has been 2 days since they last leveled :). I am running a sandbox so there are a number of things they can do in any order, my gut is that they will level after the next one.
But I wondered how do other DMs control leveling in milestone campaigns, is it time based (in or out of game) do you work out the xp of each fight just to see if it feels right to level, or do you use some other method?
In general,there three things to consider rewards(what else did they get for this task),story(how much did this impact the story),and difficulty (how much effort where they putting in).The higher of each of these,the more reasonable it is to give a level.
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I don't pay much attention to XP outside of Challenge rating calculations, and it has nothing to do with game time. It's sort of based on Story Arcs. Any time a major sub-plot is ended, any time a full Story arc ends, at the end of an entire Adventure, that's when I'll give out a Milestone and they go up a level. In your example, fighting off the bandits trying to raid a house would be a Milestone. Finishing out the entire system of caves would be another, and once they finish the temple, that would be where they get the third. If there are sub-plots that get resolved along the way, as long as all the characters are involved, I'll probably give them a Milestone for that, but people who go off solo don't get levels, I keep all of the party at the same level pretty much.
At higher levels, I get more stingy, and it will take a lot more Miles before they level I just have to kind of think in terms of a story as having chapters, and each one of them might be a Milestone. At the higher end, it takes a whole book.
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One thing I've seen before is going for like... multiples of 2. After 1 session everyone reaches level 2. Then two more Sessions from there to 3. Four more sessions to 4. Eight more sessions to 5, etc., etc. I don't think that system fully works for a very long campaign, or a campaign where the players spend a lot of time screwing around where it would feel weird for everyone to gain a level after spending a whole session hanging out with Boblin the Goblin trying to teach him a dirty limerick.
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I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m talking about, since I’m a self taught DM who is still pretty new. When I started running games, I didn’t understand the XP system, so I kind of came up with my own way to level players up. Lol, until recently, I had no idea there was an actual name for said method. The way I do milestone leveling is based on plot points. However, I also pay attention to how easy or difficult different situations were for the players, and choose whether or not to let them go to the next level or not. It seems to work pretty well for my group and I. Then again, we are all newbies with a lot to learn.
I have seen this suggestion and presonally really don't like it, we can have 3 sessions covering the same day sometimes which feels far to quick to be levelling.
Even to get to moderate levels this take wouldn't really work, playing weekly the players would spend 15 months at level 7.
If you use XP levellig at early levels you might need double the XP for each level but the plyers will earn XP much faster, at level 1 players might get 50XP for an encounter while at level 4 they might get 300XP for an encounter of equal challenge. In practice while there are some anomalies using XP levelling means the characters fairly quickly advance to level 3 and then each level roughly the same amount of effort up to level 11 (at which point levelling gets to be a bit faster)
I think to have a rough outline of one session for level 1, two sessions for level 2 and four session for every level after that woiuld be reasonable, this would mean a year long campaign with weekly sessions would get players to around level 14. If you expect the capaign to last longer you might want ot level up on average evey 6 or 8 sessions. This does not mean levle up the players 4 weeks after they last levelled up but is to give an indication of how major the achievments need to be to get a level up.
One thing to remember, Milestones don't have to be worth a full level. Maybe each is a quarter unless the party does something extraordinary, then it's worth half a level. Maybe the party finished a story arc but, didn't really learn anything from it so, no advancement. It's all DM's Fiat with Milestones.
The secret is in the name "Milestone level" - when they reach an important milestone in the plot (e.g. clear the town of the secret evil society) they gain a level. You as DM decide when that milestone has been reached.
I tend to do it based on what has been accomplished. If the players find an easy shortcut, that's fine, they accomplished the same amount, if they make life difficult for themselves, that's fine too. It encourages them to actually solve problems instead of trying to encounter as much as possible.
I do it every 2 sessions up to level 5, then every 4 after that. My sessions generally each have a full adventuring day, run 3-4 hours, and are pretty episodic. At this point, I also try to leave at least one in-game week for level-ups to justify the characters' training.
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Just to clarify more interested in how you all do it yourselves, I have been milestone leveling for years now, this group of players are all new to it and it just got me wondering how others manage it.
If I had done that, even doubling out cos my sessions are half the length of yours Then they would be level 4 and barely completed the goblin caves. Traditionally I run games much slower then this, so it isn’t unusual for 12 hours of game time to encompass just 1 day. Not all the time, sometimes we will spin through a few weeks in narrative form, but generally.
If you plan and play a homebrew-campaign try set your milestones roughly every 4 to 5 Sessions. If the players decide to durdle around or go shopping a full session, that's not a big Problem and player agency. Going shopping the hole day will slow down their progress. Not, that this is a big problem, but if players are aware of their own procrastination it willl become even less of a problem. I highly recommend that there should only be one Session with level one. Playing with a party of commoners is no fun for anyone at the table. Level 2 depends but i like the suggestion of jegpeg. 2 mabye 3 Sessions at level 2.
BUT: Just don't level up your Players every 4-5 Sessions. This is where your Milestone-planing comes in. In the milestone system the players should understand and feel why they gained a level. Usualy after epic battles, or great successes/losses or another accomplishment, that feels meaningful to them.
This is pretty much how I am using Milestone leveling.
I started a new campaign for my players if we ran into a situation where not enough people can play the main game but have enough for small parties and I use Milestone leveling. I have a bunch of interconnected 'modules' that act as the milestone markers and once a certain amount of 'modules' have been completed there is the opportunity to level up.
Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone’s game! My games tend to be fast-paced with all Deadly combats and clear objectives, and my players are all experienced, so it’s easy to get through a small dungeon in a few hours even with a lot of roleplaying. But I think that’s the exception and not the rule.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Yeah I run huge sandbox campaigns with lots of intricacies, it isn’t unusual for a social interaction to last most of a session with the characters interacting with and talking to people. The players are all experienced, just always done XP campaigns, which I found odd in this day and age lol.
I'm running my group through ToD right now and we're in RoT. The module has laid out when to level up the party but some of those milestones don't feel particularly level-up worthy. (frex it says to level them up after the first attempt of the cult to assassinate the party but that attack comes shortly on the heels of them going through another episode of the module that also grants a level-up so they won't be going from level 10 to 11 and then two days later suddenly they're at level 12.)
I view it in terms of novel writing in a way. Your plot structure of the novel has turning points and big milestones along the way where the characters achieve great victory or experience great loss. In a novel those might come close on the heels of each other but generally there will be lots of little steps along the way that get the character from one to the next big milestone.
In a sandbox game, I'd recommend looking at it from the perspective of impact to the characters or the world. Big earth-shattering outcome of the party clearing that temple of its corruption? Level up. Huge step forward in that character's search for the answers about why their parents sold them to a monastery as a baby? level up. Party hired to clear out a cavern system and retrieve someone's lost heirloom? Maybe not a level up unless it's been a long while since they did and that heirloom being returned to the family means some BBEG somewhere has just been dealt a severe setback to their plans.
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