Me and a few friends are a few sessions into our first ever campaign. Due to life happening some players miss sessions every now and then. My question is how should we handle experience between players? Some of the characters are about half way through level 4 while some are sitting at the beginning of level 3.
Is it that much of a difference to be a level or 2 behind? If so what is the best way to keep players up to speed without handing them free experience? Also do some classes being a few levels behind make more of a difference than others? (I’m asking because the tempest cleric and rogue have missed the most sessions)
We usually have the DM use the characters that are missing as NPCs or have a present player use 2 characters to keep the group balanced. It's usually easier to play and DM a group who keeps the character levels close. For those who always show up, more personal rewards and goal fulfillment. For the rest, enough xp to keep them from being more than a level behind and rewards only given out when present. For example, they would miss out on any found items or loot they were not present for.
On the other hand, as a player, I wouldn't mind if absent players were able give their characters full xp and loot if the DM would allow it.
A gap of one level is never really enough to cause any problems, a gap of two levels is only really seen when you see ASIs or major class features, anything beyond that is going to create a power gap that is noticeable.
A good way to compensate for that is to give the missing players half xp when they're absent. Have the DM, or other players, choose actions and how they help out during the game. This way they're still active in the scene even when not present. It also creates a reason they get half xp rather than leveling up mannequins or PC zombies.
If you have the time, and if it fits the story, do a few sessions with only the missing players going on a side adventure to make up the XP.
Maybe they took a different route than the rest of the party to reach their destination and ran into some trouble along the way.
Being kidnapped is a very easy explanation but you want to make it impactful story-wise rather than just "Hey, Charlie, where ya been?" "Oh, I was trapped in a warehouse for a few weeks by some thugs." "You good now?" "Yeah, I'm good."
Maybe they found a lead regarding the BBEG, especially if you had a previously unexplored story hook that they missed back at level 1 or 2 you want to try and reintroduce. Rework the encounters you previously had in mind, they make some progress on their own whether fighting certain enemies or gaining certain political information, then deciding it's too risky to carry on without the rest of the party.
Everyone misses games now and then, and it always sucks to behind everyone else. As a player and dungeon master I don't mind if others keep up when they miss, nor do most of my friends. It's about fun for the whole group, not a competition. Besides everyone being the same level makes scaling encounters easier, and makes real life less stressful. Nothing worse than punishing your friends because real life is a *****.
Here's an example of why punishing players if they miss is a bad idea, let's say your friend's mom dies, and they need to go out of town to attend the funeral, as a result they miss the game. If the idea of telling them, "sorry your mom died, everyone else leveled their characters while you were gone, so you'll have to be a level behind" makes you feel like an ass, which it should, then it's probably a good idea to skip such nonsense entirely and keep everyone leveled together. As I said, everyone has to miss sometime, no reason making it a big deal.
If someone misses regularly for dumb reasons, they simply aren't that interested, and that's an entirely different conversation altogether.
Seeing as sometimes its hard to get everyone together, either milestones or one-shots involving that character could be a fun way to avoid the stress of worrying about them missing something. Something as simple as them being kidnapped/missing/training/on a mission (as long as what is going on during that run is not completely vital they are there for) it could also be a good way for them to come back the following week and claim something happened to them while they were gone, or give them some XP if you also have a lot of combat and they arent played by another player or the DM. It always sucks to get left behind in a session or two, but coming up with a creative way to work them being gone into that run as long as it doesnt go beyond the scope of reasoning for those characters or even the players, it could prove a fun activity.
My group uses milestone leveling, so the party is always the same level.
I'm a big fan of Milestone levelling. I find it just simplifies everything so much.
One of my groups just switched from Milestone to XP based leveling, but the DM levels the party rather than individual characters; if we earn 7,000 xp in a session, that is split evenly amongst the group even if a player is absent. If a player is absent, and not abusing being absent just to level without having to play, or may be out for an extensive period of time, he usually just has them off doing other tasks applicable to the party, or plays them himself during initiatives. That's one way he likes to handle things in parties of three or more because it makes it a lot easier to keep track of the characters. In addition to that, you don't wind up having a player just XP hunting as their primary focus to level up.
My group uses milestone leveling, so the party is always the same level.
The problem with milestone levelling is that unless you are planning a whirlwind campaign, levels should be slowing down at least somewhat as level increases. Getting from 1 to 2 is pretty easy and a session or so, but 2 to 3, longer... and so on. Otherwise you have a party of 20th level characters before they have even finished their first year of adventuring .. then what? Start another sprint from scratch?
With xps, there is more paperwork, but it is easier to manage levelling.
No one said anything about leveling quickly with milestones.
You can even use milestones to slow down party growth.
With XP there is more paperwork and it is harder to manage leveling, because players track their own XP and will level when they have enough, whether you want them to or not.
There is also the issue of XP incentivizing combat to get it.
If you want levelling to slow down as the party levels don't use XP. The first couple of levels are pretty simple to get the players used to the game / class so XP is basedaround leveling up being reasonably quick at this point but this only applies up to about level 3. The XP required to get from 5-6 is 7500 which is the equivalent of just over 4 CR5 monsters. The XP required t get from 11 to 12 is 15000 the equivalent of just over 2 CR11 monsters. To be fair 11 is a relatively "short" level if you XP for some reason you need 21000 XP to go from 10 to 11 (3.5 CR 10 monsters) but in general after the first couple of levels if you use XP levelling is liable to speed up over time at least in a combat focussed campaign.
It might depend on how itchy the group is to level but there is nothing wrong with the DM having major milestones in mind and if the group take a long tie to achive a particualtr milestone that is not a problem, even if the party swaps and canged between wroking towards two milestones eventually hitting the two relatively close together this is not really different to the party getting to a point where they have a couple of tough combat sessions just before they reach level 11 and find themselves quickly at level 12.
Looking at campaign 2 of critical role the characters have levelled in sessions 1,5,13,18,30,41,49,58,76,88,100,108 so after levelling quickly to level 3 each level has taken 8-12 sessions, the exception to this was they spent 18 sessions at level 9, I think Matt Mercer is conciencious enough a DM not ot forget they were due a level up and instead the party just took a long time to reach another milestone (trying to avoid spoilers, there were at least 2 milestones coming up during this time and if the party had acted differently either of them could have happened sooner. Also note the party have been adventuring for nearly 3 years and are still only level 13.
IMO, it’s not that important that levels be earned by the player. If a player misses a session, sometimes I’ll have another player play their character in combat. In that case, the character would still get XP. In other cases, I’ll have a player tell me in advance they need to drop out of the game for a while, and I’ll have the character leave the party in world. Some months later they may decide to rejoin. The other party members may have leveled up once or twice since then. I’ll have their character level up to match, and assume their character got up to some adventures while they were away to earn their levels.
Playing an underleveled character can be fun as a casual guest character, but it’s not great for your main character, since the risk of dying and losing all the narrative progress your character has been working on is high.
My group uses milestone leveling, so the party is always the same level.
The problem with milestone levelling is that unless you are planning a whirlwind campaign, levels should be slowing down at least somewhat as level increases. Getting from 1 to 2 is pretty easy and a session or so, but 2 to 3, longer... and so on. Otherwise you have a party of 20th level characters before they have even finished their first year of adventuring .. then what? Start another sprint from scratch?
With xps, there is more paperwork, but it is easier to manage levelling.
No one said anything about leveling quickly with milestones.
You can even use milestones to slow down party growth.
With XP there is more paperwork and it is harder to manage leveling, because players track their own XP and will level when they have enough, whether you want them to or not.
There is also the issue of XP incentivizing combat to get it.
When using milestones, there is a common tendency to simply say 'You level.' And unless you are doing that relatively often, then you sort of have to keep track of how long it has been since the last milestone, which is not really that much different than keeping track of xps. I suppose one could give out fractional levels as milestones, but then that is even more like sticking with xps.
This sounds like a DM problem, not a problem inherent to milestones.
Keeping track of how long it has been since you leveled is nowhere near as complicated as trying to balance your story/encounters for xp. This is about managing levels, not keeping track of the actual xp after it has been awarded.
Saying "you level" is literally how you convey to your players when they can level.
The entire point of milestones is to have greater control over the pacing of levels. There is no "lvl 20 party in under a year" unless the DM explicitly chose to allow that to happen.
Our own group (of noobs, including myself) uses milestones, and the party all level together. We are starting by levelling up pretty quickly to level 3 or 4, maybe 5, roughly a level per "quest". After that, we intend to go a fair bit slower. I got this idea from a starter kit, and it felt simple and fun.
If a player misses a session and there is a reasonable opportunity for them not to be there (i.e. not right in the middle of a dungeon), we just allow them not to be present. We ask them when they return to give a description of what they have been doing, which everyone quite likes (so far). If it is not reasonable for them not to be there, we plan to have either the DM or another player stand in for them, although this would be a path of last resort where we could not justify the character not being present. Either way, the story the player tells of their character's time away is intended to "justify" their levelling at the same rate.
To me, though, that comes across as simply handing out levels for 'time played' irrespective of what the party did, whether they actually accomplished anything meaningful (plot- or otherwise) or merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats solely for the meta/ooc goal of xps.
That is not what milestone is, though. Milestone means just that, that the paryt levels up when they reach a milestone in their journey. "merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats" is hardly a milestone in any hero's journey and thus own't justify levelling up.
The DM still has control over pacing of levels handing out xps.
Not by RAW, since monsters are always worth a set number of XP. But if you mean thta the DM can, by DM's privilege, deny players XP even though they defeat monsters then the same principle goes for milestone levelling. Unless the DM allows it, you don't get any better.
To me, though, that comes across as simply handing out levels for 'time played' irrespective of what the party did, whether they actually accomplished anything meaningful (plot- or otherwise) or merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats solely for the meta/ooc goal of xps.
Again, all of the problems you perceive are an issue with the DM, not an issue with the milestone system.
If the DM says "We've played 4 sessons, time to level" that is a choice made by the DM. If that seems unfulfilling, that is on the DM.
Xp can completely ruin the pacing if I have a large interconnected adventure planned. I have the freedom to set up any number of scenarios and make them as big or as small as I see fit, and still when the party makes it to the BBEG they will be at the level I planned for them to be from the beginning.
If my players have to:
go to the goblin cave to rescue the villagers
talk to the sage about the magical artifact they found
fend of assassins
convince an ogre to give them some of his special sauce
fight off wild animals in the middle of the night
help a cat out of a tree (the cat is a very confused Rakshasa)
trek through the sewers to close a magic portal (demons are pouring out)
attend a dinner party with the Mayor and protect him from more assassins
investigate a warehouse at night guarded by thugs all to uncover that the Mayor of the city is actually a Rakshasa in disguise
the Rakshasa in the tree is the actual mayor with magics cast on him, and the evil Rakshasa wants the magical artifact to do evils
BUT I had planned the entire scenario around level 10 characters and they leveled up twice before getting to the planned Rakshasa battle BECAUSE XP, then if I want the intended challenge I had planned I have to constantly readjust the remaining encounters as the party levels.
MAYBE I account for the possibility of them leveling during the middle of the adventure. However, who says they have to do every single thing in the order I just laid out. They might discover that the Rakshasa was disguised as the Mayor very early and decide to ambush him at the dinner party, but they are a level or two lower than I had planned because they hadn't completed all of the XP rewarding encounters I had prepared, and it proves far too challenging of an encounter. It would be more work for me to then decrease the challenge of the encounter, and if I don't do it well on short notice, it may still prove too difficult or too easy.
But you think milestones are "we played X sessions so level up." And although that is an option in the description of milestones, it is just that: an option. If I have a hard and fast rule to level every 5 sessions that tell me nothing about where they are in the story or what they have accomplished. If I thought they would encounter the Rakshasa on session 11, but they make it there on session 4, they are levels behind. If they take too long and I planned for a session 4 Rakshasa battle but get there on sessions 11, the fight is too easy.
BUT NOW my party is level 12, and there is a whole big wide world of level 10-11 encounters available that would fit my story, but by the time they finish my next scenario they are level 15 and story-wise everyone should only be level 12, and I have 3 more scenarios that make much more sense for lvl 14 characters but before they even get that far they are all level 20 BECAUSE I handed out XP for every creature slain.
Or, I can say you don't level until I am prepared for the story to advance into that next stage.
It is also really weird that you included "merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats solely for the meta/ooc goal of xps" while disparaging the milestone system which doesn't use xp. This is again a problem within the xp system and one that is inherently negated by milestones.
The DM still has control over pacing of levels handing out xps.
To me, though, that comes across as simply handing out levels for 'time played' irrespective of what the party did, whether they actually accomplished anything meaningful (plot- or otherwise) or merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats solely for the meta/ooc goal of xps.
Or, I can say you don't level until I am prepared for the story to advance into that next stage.
It is also really weird that you included "merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats solely for the meta/ooc goal of xps" while disparaging the milestone system which doesn't use xp. This is again a problem within the xp system and one that is inherently negated by milestones.
The DM still has control over pacing of levels handing out xps.
Summarily refuted.
You seem to be ignoring (or perhaps do not realize) some key portions of my argument:
- With milestones, there is no giving out partial levels. Giving out partial levels is just another way of saying 'giving out xps.'
- A bad DM or inexperienced is a bad or inexperienced DM either way, so that is a wash.
- If you only give out full levels (milestones) then smaller noteworthy achievements would either also get full levels or be left unrewarded xp-wise.
As for your argument that you control levels based on what you have planned and written in advance, I put it to you that you are planning and writing too much in advance, or at least would be well advised to get better at writing side adventures for when the party are still too low level. It feels like you are either artificially holding players back based on what you have pre-written, or charging them ahead for similar reasons, rather than writing for the party as they are.
And then you summarily dismiss the statement that the DM would still have control, despite the DM still deciding how many xps, if any, any given situation or session is worth.
Giving out XP that isn't enough to level up is equally worthless to giving out partial levels. It's just an illusion of a reward. It the end it's all the same. In any case. The problems you invent with milestone levelling has nothing to do with actual milestones but with bad DMing. Bad DM is bad no matter if it's milestone or XP.
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Me and a few friends are a few sessions into our first ever campaign. Due to life happening some players miss sessions every now and then. My question is how should we handle experience between players? Some of the characters are about half way through level 4 while some are sitting at the beginning of level 3.
Is it that much of a difference to be a level or 2 behind? If so what is the best way to keep players up to speed without handing them free experience? Also do some classes being a few levels behind make more of a difference than others? (I’m asking because the tempest cleric and rogue have missed the most sessions)
Thank you in advance!
We usually have the DM use the characters that are missing as NPCs or have a present player use 2 characters to keep the group balanced. It's usually easier to play and DM a group who keeps the character levels close. For those who always show up, more personal rewards and goal fulfillment. For the rest, enough xp to keep them from being more than a level behind and rewards only given out when present. For example, they would miss out on any found items or loot they were not present for.
On the other hand, as a player, I wouldn't mind if absent players were able give their characters full xp and loot if the DM would allow it.
A gap of one level is never really enough to cause any problems, a gap of two levels is only really seen when you see ASIs or major class features, anything beyond that is going to create a power gap that is noticeable.
A good way to compensate for that is to give the missing players half xp when they're absent. Have the DM, or other players, choose actions and how they help out during the game. This way they're still active in the scene even when not present. It also creates a reason they get half xp rather than leveling up mannequins or PC zombies.
If you have the time, and if it fits the story, do a few sessions with only the missing players going on a side adventure to make up the XP.
Maybe they took a different route than the rest of the party to reach their destination and ran into some trouble along the way.
Being kidnapped is a very easy explanation but you want to make it impactful story-wise rather than just "Hey, Charlie, where ya been?" "Oh, I was trapped in a warehouse for a few weeks by some thugs." "You good now?" "Yeah, I'm good."
Maybe they found a lead regarding the BBEG, especially if you had a previously unexplored story hook that they missed back at level 1 or 2 you want to try and reintroduce. Rework the encounters you previously had in mind, they make some progress on their own whether fighting certain enemies or gaining certain political information, then deciding it's too risky to carry on without the rest of the party.
My group uses milestone leveling, so the party is always the same level.
Everyone misses games now and then, and it always sucks to behind everyone else. As a player and dungeon master I don't mind if others keep up when they miss, nor do most of my friends. It's about fun for the whole group, not a competition. Besides everyone being the same level makes scaling encounters easier, and makes real life less stressful. Nothing worse than punishing your friends because real life is a *****.
Here's an example of why punishing players if they miss is a bad idea, let's say your friend's mom dies, and they need to go out of town to attend the funeral, as a result they miss the game. If the idea of telling them, "sorry your mom died, everyone else leveled their characters while you were gone, so you'll have to be a level behind" makes you feel like an ass, which it should, then it's probably a good idea to skip such nonsense entirely and keep everyone leveled together. As I said, everyone has to miss sometime, no reason making it a big deal.
If someone misses regularly for dumb reasons, they simply aren't that interested, and that's an entirely different conversation altogether.
Seeing as sometimes its hard to get everyone together, either milestones or one-shots involving that character could be a fun way to avoid the stress of worrying about them missing something. Something as simple as them being kidnapped/missing/training/on a mission (as long as what is going on during that run is not completely vital they are there for) it could also be a good way for them to come back the following week and claim something happened to them while they were gone, or give them some XP if you also have a lot of combat and they arent played by another player or the DM. It always sucks to get left behind in a session or two, but coming up with a creative way to work them being gone into that run as long as it doesnt go beyond the scope of reasoning for those characters or even the players, it could prove a fun activity.
I'm a big fan of Milestone levelling. I find it just simplifies everything so much.
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Yeah, that's what my current DM is doing.
One of my groups just switched from Milestone to XP based leveling, but the DM levels the party rather than individual characters; if we earn 7,000 xp in a session, that is split evenly amongst the group even if a player is absent. If a player is absent, and not abusing being absent just to level without having to play, or may be out for an extensive period of time, he usually just has them off doing other tasks applicable to the party, or plays them himself during initiatives. That's one way he likes to handle things in parties of three or more because it makes it a lot easier to keep track of the characters. In addition to that, you don't wind up having a player just XP hunting as their primary focus to level up.
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Dear Ardenwolf, this is Jihae, I was just wondering does Dungeons and Dragons have any levels?
Thanks for responding,
Jihae Jeon Cho-Lee
No one said anything about leveling quickly with milestones.
You can even use milestones to slow down party growth.
With XP there is more paperwork and it is harder to manage leveling, because players track their own XP and will level when they have enough, whether you want them to or not.
There is also the issue of XP incentivizing combat to get it.
If you want levelling to slow down as the party levels don't use XP. The first couple of levels are pretty simple to get the players used to the game / class so XP is basedaround leveling up being reasonably quick at this point but this only applies up to about level 3. The XP required to get from 5-6 is 7500 which is the equivalent of just over 4 CR5 monsters. The XP required t get from 11 to 12 is 15000 the equivalent of just over 2 CR11 monsters. To be fair 11 is a relatively "short" level if you XP for some reason you need 21000 XP to go from 10 to 11 (3.5 CR 10 monsters) but in general after the first couple of levels if you use XP levelling is liable to speed up over time at least in a combat focussed campaign.
It might depend on how itchy the group is to level but there is nothing wrong with the DM having major milestones in mind and if the group take a long tie to achive a particualtr milestone that is not a problem, even if the party swaps and canged between wroking towards two milestones eventually hitting the two relatively close together this is not really different to the party getting to a point where they have a couple of tough combat sessions just before they reach level 11 and find themselves quickly at level 12.
Looking at campaign 2 of critical role the characters have levelled in sessions 1,5,13,18,30,41,49,58,76,88,100,108 so after levelling quickly to level 3 each level has taken 8-12 sessions, the exception to this was they spent 18 sessions at level 9, I think Matt Mercer is conciencious enough a DM not ot forget they were due a level up and instead the party just took a long time to reach another milestone (trying to avoid spoilers, there were at least 2 milestones coming up during this time and if the party had acted differently either of them could have happened sooner. Also note the party have been adventuring for nearly 3 years and are still only level 13.
IMO, it’s not that important that levels be earned by the player. If a player misses a session, sometimes I’ll have another player play their character in combat. In that case, the character would still get XP. In other cases, I’ll have a player tell me in advance they need to drop out of the game for a while, and I’ll have the character leave the party in world. Some months later they may decide to rejoin. The other party members may have leveled up once or twice since then. I’ll have their character level up to match, and assume their character got up to some adventures while they were away to earn their levels.
Playing an underleveled character can be fun as a casual guest character, but it’s not great for your main character, since the risk of dying and losing all the narrative progress your character has been working on is high.
This sounds like a DM problem, not a problem inherent to milestones.
Keeping track of how long it has been since you leveled is nowhere near as complicated as trying to balance your story/encounters for xp. This is about managing levels, not keeping track of the actual xp after it has been awarded.
Saying "you level" is literally how you convey to your players when they can level.
The entire point of milestones is to have greater control over the pacing of levels. There is no "lvl 20 party in under a year" unless the DM explicitly chose to allow that to happen.
Note that a milestone can be as simple as do X number of quests, rather than only milestones such as kill NPC Y, or destroy castle Z.
Our own group (of noobs, including myself) uses milestones, and the party all level together. We are starting by levelling up pretty quickly to level 3 or 4, maybe 5, roughly a level per "quest". After that, we intend to go a fair bit slower. I got this idea from a starter kit, and it felt simple and fun.
If a player misses a session and there is a reasonable opportunity for them not to be there (i.e. not right in the middle of a dungeon), we just allow them not to be present. We ask them when they return to give a description of what they have been doing, which everyone quite likes (so far). If it is not reasonable for them not to be there, we plan to have either the DM or another player stand in for them, although this would be a path of last resort where we could not justify the character not being present. Either way, the story the player tells of their character's time away is intended to "justify" their levelling at the same rate.
That is not what milestone is, though. Milestone means just that, that the paryt levels up when they reach a milestone in their journey. "merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats" is hardly a milestone in any hero's journey and thus own't justify levelling up.
Not by RAW, since monsters are always worth a set number of XP. But if you mean thta the DM can, by DM's privilege, deny players XP even though they defeat monsters then the same principle goes for milestone levelling. Unless the DM allows it, you don't get any better.
BUT I had planned the entire scenario around level 10 characters and they leveled up twice before getting to the planned Rakshasa battle BECAUSE XP, then if I want the intended challenge I had planned I have to constantly readjust the remaining encounters as the party levels.
MAYBE I account for the possibility of them leveling during the middle of the adventure. However, who says they have to do every single thing in the order I just laid out. They might discover that the Rakshasa was disguised as the Mayor very early and decide to ambush him at the dinner party, but they are a level or two lower than I had planned because they hadn't completed all of the XP rewarding encounters I had prepared, and it proves far too challenging of an encounter. It would be more work for me to then decrease the challenge of the encounter, and if I don't do it well on short notice, it may still prove too difficult or too easy.
But you think milestones are "we played X sessions so level up." And although that is an option in the description of milestones, it is just that: an option. If I have a hard and fast rule to level every 5 sessions that tell me nothing about where they are in the story or what they have accomplished. If I thought they would encounter the Rakshasa on session 11, but they make it there on session 4, they are levels behind. If they take too long and I planned for a session 4 Rakshasa battle but get there on sessions 11, the fight is too easy.
BUT NOW my party is level 12, and there is a whole big wide world of level 10-11 encounters available that would fit my story, but by the time they finish my next scenario they are level 15 and story-wise everyone should only be level 12, and I have 3 more scenarios that make much more sense for lvl 14 characters but before they even get that far they are all level 20 BECAUSE I handed out XP for every creature slain.
Or, I can say you don't level until I am prepared for the story to advance into that next stage.
It is also really weird that you included "merely bickered among themselves or entered meaningless combats solely for the meta/ooc goal of xps" while disparaging the milestone system which doesn't use xp. This is again a problem within the xp system and one that is inherently negated by milestones.
Summarily refuted.
Giving out XP that isn't enough to level up is equally worthless to giving out partial levels. It's just an illusion of a reward. It the end it's all the same. In any case. The problems you invent with milestone levelling has nothing to do with actual milestones but with bad DMing. Bad DM is bad no matter if it's milestone or XP.