I just wondering what everyones take and personal experience is on character development in terms of "in-game" time? From commoner to level 1? level 1 to 5? 5 to 11? 11 to 17? and 17 to 20?
Ive been in games where the progression could be from 1-20 in as little as a year or 2 in-game time, but I remember back in the day to was paced so things felt more like a year per level or so. How do you guys pace it? Whats your preference?
I am using milestone levelling for my players. So almost impossible to tell, how much time will it take for levelling up.
Until now we have played 16 days ingame over 7 session with ~6 hours gaming time and my players leveled up from 1 to 4. Will take probably 2-3 more sessions for level 5, which can be anything from a couple of days up to some weeks ingame, depending on what the players are going to do.
It is going to vary based on the rules the DM uses and the kinds of challenges you face.
5e is a much faster pace than older editions (something it carried over from 4e or maybe 3/3.5e). I haven't played older editions, but some things I've heard was turns were much longer than 6 seconds and short and long rests were a day and week respectively, not 1-8 hours.
Low levels could reasonably level up every day or 2 depending on encounters, higher levels would take longer but could still be every few weeks (given that could be as many as 14 medium-hard encounters a week).
As DJC says, resting makes the biggest difference in time, imo. Now with full hp after 8 hours, its really easy to take a long rest and go out again. in 1e, iirc, it was 1hp per day you recovered, non-magically, and maybe there was something about it being 2 per day if it was a comfortable bed as opposed to camping. So it was common to need a week or two between heading out into the dungeon again at low levels. I think the difference in play ends up being kind of negligible, since we didn't exactly role play the two weeks in town, just more like said, we spend two weeks in town and now lets go. In theory, there was more time for characters to bond and do things in town, but in reality, we didn't. (at least that was my experience. I'm sure it was different for others.)
In a non-stop door-kicking campaign with full adventuring days with average combat encounters, I think 1-20 takes somewhere between 30-40 days, depending on if you allow players to level up mid-day or not.
That can be sped up by throwing incredibly tough encounters at players, but realistically I think most parties would go slower than that because their campaign has some semblance of pacing. There are things like travel, downtime, information gathering, and just general roleplaying that will often result in a slower leveling speed.
I get that in 5e its alot more variable than the previous editions, but how do you guys work out the way you pace things? do you prefer the sprint or the crawl or a mix at different points?
I try and make tier 1 play last a season in game, I make the other tiers last progressively long, tier 2 is 1 level per year in-game, tier 3 is 2-3 years per level and tier 4 is 5 years per level. I usually work something in for the shorter lived races to stay alive if they game gets into tier 4 play and its needed.
My group used the gritty realism rest rules so a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is 7 days for health, abilities and spell slots recharge as normal. When someone levels they have to seek out training to gain new class abilities or ASI/Feats.
As with most things in life, there is a Top-Down approach (Narrative), and a Bottom-Up approach (Empirical).
For the Top-Down approach, start with your expectations for the group.
How long do you want the campaign to last? How well can your players delay gratification? What level range do you intend to play through? Do you want growth to be linear or logarithmic? etc...
Crunch those numbers and build a roadmap for yourself. Plan you encounters accordingly.
For the Bottom-Up approach, start with World Building.
What are your world demographics? Are your players inherently powerful, or do they need to train like everyone else? Are you going to use traditional rest rules, or use a variant rule to increase the difficulty? Will your NPCs behave rationally? (Call reinforcements, flee, use their environment, learn from past experience...) etc...
For this, there isn't much pacing to do. Your characters exist within a world, and they'll choose their own risk/reward ratio.
Generally speaking, any story should have ebbs and flows, otherwise it will get boring.
I just wondering what everyones take and personal experience is on character development in terms of "in-game" time? From commoner to level 1? level 1 to 5? 5 to 11? 11 to 17? and 17 to 20?
Ive been in games where the progression could be from 1-20 in as little as a year or 2 in-game time, but I remember back in the day to was paced so things felt more like a year per level or so. How do you guys pace it? Whats your preference?
I am using milestone levelling for my players. So almost impossible to tell, how much time will it take for levelling up.
Until now we have played 16 days ingame over 7 session with ~6 hours gaming time and my players leveled up from 1 to 4. Will take probably 2-3 more sessions for level 5, which can be anything from a couple of days up to some weeks ingame, depending on what the players are going to do.
It is going to vary based on the rules the DM uses and the kinds of challenges you face.
5e is a much faster pace than older editions (something it carried over from 4e or maybe 3/3.5e). I haven't played older editions, but some things I've heard was turns were much longer than 6 seconds and short and long rests were a day and week respectively, not 1-8 hours.
Low levels could reasonably level up every day or 2 depending on encounters, higher levels would take longer but could still be every few weeks (given that could be as many as 14 medium-hard encounters a week).
As DJC says, resting makes the biggest difference in time, imo. Now with full hp after 8 hours, its really easy to take a long rest and go out again. in 1e, iirc, it was 1hp per day you recovered, non-magically, and maybe there was something about it being 2 per day if it was a comfortable bed as opposed to camping. So it was common to need a week or two between heading out into the dungeon again at low levels. I think the difference in play ends up being kind of negligible, since we didn't exactly role play the two weeks in town, just more like said, we spend two weeks in town and now lets go. In theory, there was more time for characters to bond and do things in town, but in reality, we didn't. (at least that was my experience. I'm sure it was different for others.)
In a non-stop door-kicking campaign with full adventuring days with average combat encounters, I think 1-20 takes somewhere between 30-40 days, depending on if you allow players to level up mid-day or not.
That can be sped up by throwing incredibly tough encounters at players, but realistically I think most parties would go slower than that because their campaign has some semblance of pacing. There are things like travel, downtime, information gathering, and just general roleplaying that will often result in a slower leveling speed.
I get that in 5e its alot more variable than the previous editions, but how do you guys work out the way you pace things? do you prefer the sprint or the crawl or a mix at different points?
I try and make tier 1 play last a season in game, I make the other tiers last progressively long, tier 2 is 1 level per year in-game, tier 3 is 2-3 years per level and tier 4 is 5 years per level. I usually work something in for the shorter lived races to stay alive if they game gets into tier 4 play and its needed.
My group used the gritty realism rest rules so a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is 7 days for health, abilities and spell slots recharge as normal. When someone levels they have to seek out training to gain new class abilities or ASI/Feats.
As with most things in life, there is a Top-Down approach (Narrative), and a Bottom-Up approach (Empirical).
For the Top-Down approach, start with your expectations for the group.
How long do you want the campaign to last?
How well can your players delay gratification?
What level range do you intend to play through?
Do you want growth to be linear or logarithmic?
etc...
Crunch those numbers and build a roadmap for yourself. Plan you encounters accordingly.
For the Bottom-Up approach, start with World Building.
What are your world demographics?
Are your players inherently powerful, or do they need to train like everyone else?
Are you going to use traditional rest rules, or use a variant rule to increase the difficulty?
Will your NPCs behave rationally? (Call reinforcements, flee, use their environment, learn from past experience...)
etc...
For this, there isn't much pacing to do. Your characters exist within a world, and they'll choose their own risk/reward ratio.
Generally speaking, any story should have ebbs and flows, otherwise it will get boring.