Hi all. I was hoping to get some feedback on a system for leveling that I'm trying to homebrew.

D&D 5e DM Missions & Personal Missions

My objectives with this system:

1. Give the players a way to track their character’s progress.
2. Promote becoming invested in the character’s character and goal.
3. Give DM full agency over what encounters they implement without worrying about XP.

Description:

As a character goes about the world and completes tasks (missions if you will) he will gain experience in the form of Leveling milestones. Some missions may award more milestones than others depending on their difficulty and danger. Additionally, as one increases in Level, the needed milestones to level up will increase.

So as seen above, a character may be able to gain a level by doing small scale missions on a city or town level early on, but as the levels become high, it will take much greater missions to gain substantial experience. However if time and age is not an issues, a character could reach level 20 by gaining one milestone at a time by completing light missions, but most races would likely die of old age before they reached 20th level if they went that route.

How to start missions:

The primary source of missions will come from the DM as the players follow the hooks offered by the DM. Sometimes the DM may present small scale mission that may only net the character 1 to 5 milestones, sometimes city saving level missions that net 10 milestones, sometimes nation saving level missions that net 50 milestones, maybe even world saving missions that net 100 milestones. Or anything in-between or beyond.

Additionally, the player can establish 1 to 3 character goals. That player can then discuss the goal(s) with the DM and meet an agreement of what they may be worth.

Mission parameters may change, so the DM is fully in his right to alter the reward of a mission at any time. (However this altering would likely be an increase as unforeseen complications arise.)

Ideal:

My hope for this system is that it adds that realistic feel to leveling up that everyone desires, but still gives the player a feeling of progression even when they are between levels, as one can feel in the real world. One does not just become strong one day after months of working out, it is a gradual change.

I also hope, by giving the player the freedom to create their own character goals, that they may become more invested in the character, and then naturally role-playing that character will come easier.

This system still ignores the small things such as individual battles and conflict conversations, but I hope that by having the player become more focused on what their character wants in life, that those small things will simply fall in place.

I would be interested to hear your reasoning behind these numbers. Looking to establish my own calculations but having difficulty finding a formula

I based my numbers on how the Required XP increase increases from level to level. For example, you need 900 XP to reach level three, but you need 3 times that much (2700) to reach level 4. So since in my table, you needed 3 milestones to reach level 3, you needed 9 to reach level 4. 

Admittedly, I did tweak those numbers around for some of the later levels to better fit what I "felt" it should be, so while the system had a Ratio approach, there's also a healthy dose of DM fiat.  

Gracias! I appreciate your reply :)

this doesn't seem much less complicated than EXP.  It is less math in theory, but with EXP I can just give the players whatever the book says for monsters.  Yeah the book doesn't tell me how much XP to  award players for stopping a war through peaceful negotiation but neither does this.  This is just EXP with slightly fewer steps.

If we are going to simplify EXP,  just do mile stone and tell the players they need to do X number of encounters to LVL up.  ex. "do 3 small missions or one big one and you'll level up."  Half the point of doing milestone is that you don't have to deal with 4 digit numbers.

My other issue is that the numbers aren't as exciting, giving out 800xp is always going to be more satisfying than getting 1 milestone.

I totally agree that my way isn't any less complicated than XP. If a DM wants simple, just fully going with RAW milestones is the way to go.

My ultimate goal was for leveling up to be goal orientated outside of the simple goal of, "Kill as many scary things as possible." My secondary goal was a numerical tracker so players (and DM) can feel that they are getting closer to leveling up as they go.

Your suggestion of telling them, "do 3 small missions or one big one and you'll level up," is fine, but I find that I'm more comfortable DMing when I can make as few arbitrary calls as possible; otherwise I end up second guessing myself. So with this system, I've kind of answered the question of, "When do we level up?" already regardless of when they ask, so I get asked that less often than I did when I was doing RAW Milestones.  

If it helps, i generally work under the rule of thumb that players should level up once every 3 to 5 sessions after level 3, I typically aim  for  4 and I design encounters under that assumption.  I find that keeps them satisfied.

secondly I think one thing we have to remember as DMs is different campaigns have different needs.  A intrigue campaign can suck if you only level up for killing things and open world games without XP leveling are boring.  You gotta ask yourself how much XP would they earn with XP leveling and would that result in a satisfying leveling arc.  It's why I go back and forth between the two between campaigns

 Is this approach actually different from what the rules use? Milestones aren't actually "level ups" but rather goals for which PCs earn XP. In other words, milestones aren't "separate" from XP but rather an optional tool with which you as the DM can award XP to the party.

Technically speaking, I suppose it's not really different from the rules. The biggest deviation is that no "xp" is awarded for random things like killing goblins. 

I really dig this system, Ginger! Planning on using a variation going forward in my current homebrew campaign. Much appreciated!

Functionally it's exactly the same system as milestone, as the DM just decides how much each of the small milestones is worth. Basically the same, but with more admin.