I think this is an interesting topic for us to discuss. I know each game and each table will be different, but I would like to know what YOUR game is like.
How many sessions, in average, players take to UP one level in your game?
If you don't know an average amount you can simply take the session number you're currently in and divide by the players average level
For example, in my game we're at Session 11 and players are level 5, so 2,2 sessions per level so far.
You can also comment below details because I think the number of sessions will go up as the players level also increase. So in early game number of sessions per level would be smaller than in late game. But nevertheless the goal here is to get an average number
Hard to tell. First, it varies a lot from the session contents, some sessions yield a lot of progress, some don't. Second, level gain is exponential, the higher the level, the more progress is needed to level up.
From my recent campaign, levels 2 to 5 took 1/2/4/6 sessions to level up each time.
My general rule is it takes a number of sessions to hit the next level equal to the current level. So it should take around 3 sessions to get from 3rd to 4th level, around 4 sessions to get from 4th to 5th level, around 5 sessions to get from 5th to 6th, etc. Those are 3-4 hour long sessions, and that’s only a ballpark number. So in reality it ends up generally taking somewhere between 3-5 sessions to get from 4th to 5th level, and between 4-6 sessions to go from 5th to 6th level, etc. Make sense?
My general rule is it takes a number of sessions to hit the next level equal to the current level. So it should take around 3 sessions to get from 3rd to 4th level, around 4 sessions to get from 4th to 5th level, around 5 sessions to get from 5th to 6th, etc. Those are 3-4 hour long sessions, and that’s only a ballpark number. So in reality it ends up generally taking somewhere between 3-5 sessions to get from 4th to 5th level, and between 4-6 sessions to go from 5th to 6th level, etc. Make sense?
Im a slow leveller. They go up a level after they demonstrate mastery of their current level AND pass a test like complete an adventure milestone or defeat a miniboss. Also people gotta do something super significant to go up a tier.
I'm a level Scrooge lol. My players seem to enjoy it tho.
My players in my three campaigns started at Level 1.
End of Session 1 - Up to Level 2 End of Session 3 - Up to Level 3 End of Session 6 - Up to Level 4 End of Session 12 - Up to Level 5
The sessions are fortnightly but I've basically taken a milestone approach guided by the XP table. So, I don't tell them what XP they've got but will give them all a headsup to think about the direction they're taking their characters so that we get a level up montage in game. I also like to ensure that my players have got to grips with their abilities though, so tend to try and make sure I throw encounters that will encourage the use of the new abilities and spells. It means that they have the opportunity to train those abilities. For example, when the Warlock at Session 6 still hadn't used anything but Eldritch Blast, the group came up against Helmed Horrors who were immune to Eldritch Blast. It encouraged them to rethink and work out how they would approach the encounter.
Current weekly campaign though is once a week and after four sessions they're sitting at around 1723xp (1413 if we don't count them being able to talk their way around an encounter) so it'll be a while before they are heading for Level 4.
Not the way everyone does it, but it's how I've managed the last few campaigns.
I sense a lot of DMs like to play tier 1 and low tier 2 and then abandon the game.
Although XP required to level increases. The XP gain from defeating level appropriate challenges also increases. The tier change levels at 5, 11, 17 take significantly more XP but the rest are fairly reasonable. However, with the exponential increase in sessions needed to level that a lot of folks seem to use, it is hardly surprising that players and DMs lose interest in the game when it takes so long in real world time for the characters to show any progress.
In the campaign I've been running for the last couple years, mostly weekly, the characters have reached level 9 so far which is probably something like 1 every 6 or 7 sessions on average except for level 2 which was 2 sessions and level 3 which was another 2 or so. However, levels have been mostly related to completing adventures (I have been running published content - a combination of GoS, TftYP and CM) and leveling them at about 1/2 the rate or a bit less compared to the rate in the modules. Playing through the Hidden Shrine of Tamochan took quite a number of sessions for example compared to Salvage Mission or the Abbey on the Island but completing any of these could award a level if run as published.
Anyway, I am hoping to run this to 20 and if the number of sessions required to get there increased either in proportion to the level or exponentially or some other method then folks would lose interest long before the story line reached completion.
I think a decent compromise is an average of one level/4 sessions or so. I've also played a lot of AL where the rate of leveling is typically about 1/session unless you are playing a hardcover. Playing AL gives a very different perspective on character advancement and really opens up the possibilities of trying out the higher levels.
Im a slow leveller. They go up a level after they demonstrate mastery of their current level AND pass a test like complete an adventure milestone or defeat a miniboss. Also people gotta do something super significant to go up a tier.
I'm a level Scrooge lol. My players seem to enjoy it tho.
This is how I run my games, too. My campaign also happens to be a bit of a slow burn intrigue thing, and our sessions only last three hours. We've played for exactly two years today, and they've gone from level 4 to level 10. Weekly games.
The slower pace suits my table well, and because level ups are relatively rare, everyone gets really excited when it happens. Sweeter payoff, in a way.
I sense a lot of DMs like to play tier 1 and low tier 2 and then abandon the game.
Yes and no. I think you're right that when people say "a number of sessions equal to the level" they are not talking about campaigns that go beyond 10-11. But you can have a satisfying end to a campaign at pretty much any level depending on the story. So these games may not be "abandoned," but rather they wrap up. A lot of the game math starts to break down after 11 or so, so I get it. Every tier 4 game I've been in required quite a bit of homebrew to actually be challenging, and not everyone wants to do all that work.
The leveling rate of my games depends on the campaign. A story with a faster pace, an aggressive rising threat that requires the heroes to rise to meet it, might see level-ups every 2-3 sessions. A slower, more character-driven or open world campaign may be significantly longer. Rather than having a rule of thumb, I base it on how I want the campaign to feel. A faster pace can be fun mechanically, allowing players to play with a lot of class features and try builds that don't come online until later levels, and a slower pace can allow players to really dig in and deeply develop their characters. Having both options allows us to scratch whichever itch we're currently feeling.
Mechanically speaking, an adventuring day's worth of adjusted xp is about a level at level 1-2, half a level beyond that. Since leveling up uses base xp rather than adjusted xp, it works out to something like 3 adventuring days to hit level 3, another 3 per level past that.
An adventuring day is a bunch of fights (possibly as few as two, but if so they're going to be really gnarly fights), I don't think most groups are going to manage an adventuring day's worth of challenges in a single session, so if you're leveling up by tracking xp (rather than waypoints) it's probably going to be something like five sessions per level. Waypoint leveling is usually faster than that.
A good rate of session-based advancement is to have characters reach 2nd level after the first session of play, 3rd level after another session, and 4th level after two more sessions. Then spend two or three sessions for each subsequent level. This rate mirrors the standard rate of advancement, assuming sessions are about four hours long.
Personally, the DMG recommendation is too quick for me. I use one or two sessions for 2nd level, three sessions for 3rd level, and four sessions for each subsequent level.
I go sessions were players obtained meaningful experience = 1 session. Then add sessions to level
lvl 1 - end of session one
lvl2 - +2 more sessions from start of lvl 1
lvl3 - +3 more sessions from start of lvl 2
lvl 4 - +4more sessions from start of lvl 3
and so on. Has been working so far. I will also -/+ a session to level at a meaningful moment. If they defeat a chapters BGG or solved some huge mystery they were working on, I will grant the level right there.
I am in 2 campaigns, in one we started at level 3 and after just over 100 sessions are at level 13. The other we started at level 1, had a few more sessions (at a guess 120) and are currently level 12. So for campaigns 10 to 12.
I also am in a Westmarch style group, which levels according to XP where levelling is typically after 2 sessions (occasionally 3, less often 1)
As this appears to have been resurrected after two years, let me share an additional two year's worth of experience. For one of my games players played weekly for two whole years, they finished their campaign at level 18. That was then 104 sessions to level 18 on a milestone system which included downtime, sidetracks, shopping sessions, and the like.
For my next campaign, it is worth saying that the DMG and in fact whole leveling table is pretty poorly thought out (like so very much in the DMG). The best advice to offer is to level up according to your campaign design. I split my adventures into 'acts' and 'quests'. A two quests will result in a level, an act will be a tier of play. So, there are eight quests which once resolved or ignored will have allowed enough time to pass in world that an act will come to a close with a world event. The first world event will be the (attempted) murder of a city official who until this point has been the key point of contact for the party. At this time the party ought to be level four and have clearly proven themselves as heroes of note. Following this are the rise (and potential attack) of a dragon cult, then the attempt by an enemy to open a gate (portal) to the hells.
- 8 Day-to-day quests up until a world event (where the party have the opportunity to earn 4 levels worth of milestones) - World event - Attempt on the life of a city official - 8 more day-to-day quests linked to the world event (where the party have the opportunity to earn 4 levels worth of milestones) - World event - the dragon cult attack the city - 8 specific quests world event (where the party have the opportunity to earn 4 levels worth of milestones) - World event - Portal to hells prevented or opened
This allows for a few things, the party can outright show no interest in a quest - which is fine - but they would lose the progress opportunity. Or the party could follow all of the core quests gaining the milestone progress on either success or failure as long as they made attempts. It also allows me to tailor the quests to their playstyles as they progress. This is why session based progress is less useful than quest based progress. The party might want a shopping and downtime session. They might drag out a single quest for two sessions longer than you planned. Don't ever plan for level ups according to sessions if this is the case. It has a potential of skewing the scaling of the world and adventure.
More importantly, each key world event allows me as DM to scale the world to a more appropriate level of challenge. The citizens of the city for example can become less trusting of people after the attempt on the city official's life leading to naturally higher social and CHA based DCs. After the attack of the dragon cult, the adventurers might find themselves less able to enter sensitive parts of the city, or resources may be more difficult to come by (more expensive).
My long winded point here is - trash what the DMG says. Think instead of scales and tiers. Define the major progress points of the adventure and world - award milestones equally across them. In my example above the adventure has an optional fourth world event depending on party actions. So I've taken those world events and between them scattered enough quests to get from 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20.
I've been using XP for my current year long 5e game. We play every other week and have played 22 sessions. They are just on the cusp of leveling up to level 6 which gives an average of 4 sessions per level. I did not plan this, but this has also roughly aligned to each small dungeon arc. I am primarily using the dungeons from "tales of the yawning portal" and a select few levels from "dungeon of the mad mage". So the rythm of the game has basically been each dungeon is a 3-4 session arc which ends in a level up. I anticipate this pace may slow down as we get to upper levels and the xp thershold begins to widen, but it is a pace I like so far.
I'm still a pretty green DM. Only been doing it about a year at a session every month or so. I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak, with a couple of custom quests thrown in. So far my party have got to level 6 over 11 quests, and will hit level 7 after the next three quests after they kill the dragon. I started using the milestones in the campaign but have altered them a little.
Similar to some of the others, I like to get to third level in three sessions total, level four in another three sessions, then follow the same pattern for five. After that point I aim for 4-6 depending on session content.
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I think this is an interesting topic for us to discuss. I know each game and each table will be different, but I would like to know what YOUR game is like.
How many sessions, in average, players take to UP one level in your game?
If you don't know an average amount you can simply take the session number you're currently in and divide by the players average level
For example, in my game we're at Session 11 and players are level 5, so 2,2 sessions per level so far.
You can also comment below details because I think the number of sessions will go up as the players level also increase. So in early game number of sessions per level would be smaller than in late game. But nevertheless the goal here is to get an average number
Hard to tell. First, it varies a lot from the session contents, some sessions yield a lot of progress, some don't. Second, level gain is exponential, the higher the level, the more progress is needed to level up.
From my recent campaign, levels 2 to 5 took 1/2/4/6 sessions to level up each time.
My general rule is it takes a number of sessions to hit the next level equal to the current level. So it should take around 3 sessions to get from 3rd to 4th level, around 4 sessions to get from 4th to 5th level, around 5 sessions to get from 5th to 6th, etc. Those are 3-4 hour long sessions, and that’s only a ballpark number. So in reality it ends up generally taking somewhere between 3-5 sessions to get from 4th to 5th level, and between 4-6 sessions to go from 5th to 6th level, etc. Make sense?
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Sure it does, I'm basically using the same rule
Im a slow leveller. They go up a level after they demonstrate mastery of their current level AND pass a test like complete an adventure milestone or defeat a miniboss. Also people gotta do something super significant to go up a tier.
I'm a level Scrooge lol. My players seem to enjoy it tho.
My players in my three campaigns started at Level 1.
End of Session 1 - Up to Level 2
End of Session 3 - Up to Level 3
End of Session 6 - Up to Level 4
End of Session 12 - Up to Level 5
The sessions are fortnightly but I've basically taken a milestone approach guided by the XP table. So, I don't tell them what XP they've got but will give them all a headsup to think about the direction they're taking their characters so that we get a level up montage in game. I also like to ensure that my players have got to grips with their abilities though, so tend to try and make sure I throw encounters that will encourage the use of the new abilities and spells. It means that they have the opportunity to train those abilities. For example, when the Warlock at Session 6 still hadn't used anything but Eldritch Blast, the group came up against Helmed Horrors who were immune to Eldritch Blast. It encouraged them to rethink and work out how they would approach the encounter.
Current weekly campaign though is once a week and after four sessions they're sitting at around 1723xp (1413 if we don't count them being able to talk their way around an encounter) so it'll be a while before they are heading for Level 4.
Not the way everyone does it, but it's how I've managed the last few campaigns.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I sense a lot of DMs like to play tier 1 and low tier 2 and then abandon the game.
Although XP required to level increases. The XP gain from defeating level appropriate challenges also increases. The tier change levels at 5, 11, 17 take significantly more XP but the rest are fairly reasonable. However, with the exponential increase in sessions needed to level that a lot of folks seem to use, it is hardly surprising that players and DMs lose interest in the game when it takes so long in real world time for the characters to show any progress.
In the campaign I've been running for the last couple years, mostly weekly, the characters have reached level 9 so far which is probably something like 1 every 6 or 7 sessions on average except for level 2 which was 2 sessions and level 3 which was another 2 or so. However, levels have been mostly related to completing adventures (I have been running published content - a combination of GoS, TftYP and CM) and leveling them at about 1/2 the rate or a bit less compared to the rate in the modules. Playing through the Hidden Shrine of Tamochan took quite a number of sessions for example compared to Salvage Mission or the Abbey on the Island but completing any of these could award a level if run as published.
Anyway, I am hoping to run this to 20 and if the number of sessions required to get there increased either in proportion to the level or exponentially or some other method then folks would lose interest long before the story line reached completion.
I think a decent compromise is an average of one level/4 sessions or so. I've also played a lot of AL where the rate of leveling is typically about 1/session unless you are playing a hardcover. Playing AL gives a very different perspective on character advancement and really opens up the possibilities of trying out the higher levels.
This is how I run my games, too. My campaign also happens to be a bit of a slow burn intrigue thing, and our sessions only last three hours. We've played for exactly two years today, and they've gone from level 4 to level 10. Weekly games.
The slower pace suits my table well, and because level ups are relatively rare, everyone gets really excited when it happens. Sweeter payoff, in a way.
Starting at level 1, I will level the players up after the first session as a group or level them up if doing one on ones before the group meets.
After that it really depends, but up to level 4 is pretty quick. Campaign I just finished up took 4 years to get to level 20.
Yes and no. I think you're right that when people say "a number of sessions equal to the level" they are not talking about campaigns that go beyond 10-11. But you can have a satisfying end to a campaign at pretty much any level depending on the story. So these games may not be "abandoned," but rather they wrap up. A lot of the game math starts to break down after 11 or so, so I get it. Every tier 4 game I've been in required quite a bit of homebrew to actually be challenging, and not everyone wants to do all that work.
The leveling rate of my games depends on the campaign. A story with a faster pace, an aggressive rising threat that requires the heroes to rise to meet it, might see level-ups every 2-3 sessions. A slower, more character-driven or open world campaign may be significantly longer. Rather than having a rule of thumb, I base it on how I want the campaign to feel. A faster pace can be fun mechanically, allowing players to play with a lot of class features and try builds that don't come online until later levels, and a slower pace can allow players to really dig in and deeply develop their characters. Having both options allows us to scratch whichever itch we're currently feeling.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Apparently the the baseline design of 5e is:
1 session Level 2
2 sessions Level 3
4 sessions Level 4
7 sessions Level 5
10 sessions Level 6
13 sessions Level 7
16 sessions Level 8
19 sessions Level 9
22 sessions Level 10
25 sessions Level 11
27 sessions Level 12
29 sessions Level 13
31 sessions Level 14
33 sessions Level 15
35 sessions Level 16
37 sessions Level 17
39 sessions Level 18
41 sessions Level 19
43 sessions Level 20
but the length of session can vary wildly, of course :)
For adventurer's league maybe.... leveling every 2 sessions? no.
Mechanically speaking, an adventuring day's worth of adjusted xp is about a level at level 1-2, half a level beyond that. Since leveling up uses base xp rather than adjusted xp, it works out to something like 3 adventuring days to hit level 3, another 3 per level past that.
An adventuring day is a bunch of fights (possibly as few as two, but if so they're going to be really gnarly fights), I don't think most groups are going to manage an adventuring day's worth of challenges in a single session, so if you're leveling up by tracking xp (rather than waypoints) it's probably going to be something like five sessions per level. Waypoint leveling is usually faster than that.
That's not what the DMG says:
Session-Based Advancement
Session-Based Advancement
A good rate of session-based advancement is to have characters reach 2nd level after the first session of play, 3rd level after another session, and 4th level after two more sessions. Then spend two or three sessions for each subsequent level. This rate mirrors the standard rate of advancement, assuming sessions are about four hours long.
Personally, the DMG recommendation is too quick for me. I use one or two sessions for 2nd level, three sessions for 3rd level, and four sessions for each subsequent level.
I go sessions were players obtained meaningful experience = 1 session. Then add sessions to level
lvl 1 - end of session one
lvl2 - +2 more sessions from start of lvl 1
lvl3 - +3 more sessions from start of lvl 2
lvl 4 - +4more sessions from start of lvl 3
and so on. Has been working so far. I will also -/+ a session to level at a meaningful moment. If they defeat a chapters BGG or solved some huge mystery they were working on, I will grant the level right there.
I am in 2 campaigns, in one we started at level 3 and after just over 100 sessions are at level 13. The other we started at level 1, had a few more sessions (at a guess 120) and are currently level 12. So for campaigns 10 to 12.
I also am in a Westmarch style group, which levels according to XP where levelling is typically after 2 sessions (occasionally 3, less often 1)
As this appears to have been resurrected after two years, let me share an additional two year's worth of experience. For one of my games players played weekly for two whole years, they finished their campaign at level 18. That was then 104 sessions to level 18 on a milestone system which included downtime, sidetracks, shopping sessions, and the like.
For my next campaign, it is worth saying that the DMG and in fact whole leveling table is pretty poorly thought out (like so very much in the DMG). The best advice to offer is to level up according to your campaign design. I split my adventures into 'acts' and 'quests'. A two quests will result in a level, an act will be a tier of play. So, there are eight quests which once resolved or ignored will have allowed enough time to pass in world that an act will come to a close with a world event. The first world event will be the (attempted) murder of a city official who until this point has been the key point of contact for the party. At this time the party ought to be level four and have clearly proven themselves as heroes of note. Following this are the rise (and potential attack) of a dragon cult, then the attempt by an enemy to open a gate (portal) to the hells.
- 8 Day-to-day quests up until a world event (where the party have the opportunity to earn 4 levels worth of milestones)
- World event - Attempt on the life of a city official
- 8 more day-to-day quests linked to the world event (where the party have the opportunity to earn 4 levels worth of milestones)
- World event - the dragon cult attack the city
- 8 specific quests world event (where the party have the opportunity to earn 4 levels worth of milestones)
- World event - Portal to hells prevented or opened
This allows for a few things, the party can outright show no interest in a quest - which is fine - but they would lose the progress opportunity. Or the party could follow all of the core quests gaining the milestone progress on either success or failure as long as they made attempts. It also allows me to tailor the quests to their playstyles as they progress. This is why session based progress is less useful than quest based progress. The party might want a shopping and downtime session. They might drag out a single quest for two sessions longer than you planned. Don't ever plan for level ups according to sessions if this is the case. It has a potential of skewing the scaling of the world and adventure.
More importantly, each key world event allows me as DM to scale the world to a more appropriate level of challenge. The citizens of the city for example can become less trusting of people after the attempt on the city official's life leading to naturally higher social and CHA based DCs. After the attack of the dragon cult, the adventurers might find themselves less able to enter sensitive parts of the city, or resources may be more difficult to come by (more expensive).
My long winded point here is - trash what the DMG says. Think instead of scales and tiers. Define the major progress points of the adventure and world - award milestones equally across them. In my example above the adventure has an optional fourth world event depending on party actions. So I've taken those world events and between them scattered enough quests to get from 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I've been using XP for my current year long 5e game. We play every other week and have played 22 sessions. They are just on the cusp of leveling up to level 6 which gives an average of 4 sessions per level. I did not plan this, but this has also roughly aligned to each small dungeon arc. I am primarily using the dungeons from "tales of the yawning portal" and a select few levels from "dungeon of the mad mage". So the rythm of the game has basically been each dungeon is a 3-4 session arc which ends in a level up. I anticipate this pace may slow down as we get to upper levels and the xp thershold begins to widen, but it is a pace I like so far.
I'm still a pretty green DM. Only been doing it about a year at a session every month or so. I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak, with a couple of custom quests thrown in. So far my party have got to level 6 over 11 quests, and will hit level 7 after the next three quests after they kill the dragon. I started using the milestones in the campaign but have altered them a little.
Similar to some of the others, I like to get to third level in three sessions total, level four in another three sessions, then follow the same pattern for five. After that point I aim for 4-6 depending on session content.