Troll Lord Games

How many hours of play do you think it should take to level a character?

Asked my players a while back and got a big range of time.

What do you think???

Ace of Swords wrote:
How many hours of play do you think it should take to level a character?

Asked my players a while back and got a big range of time.

What do you think???

For me it actual depends on level, and in general it works out to be their level to attain in hours times 4.

So a level 4 character would take about 20 hours of play to become 5th level.

I have found I even stay kind of close to this rule for first level making second level, they tend to make level 2 in 6 to 10 hours of play. I don't religiously stick to this by any means, but generally, I tend to be close.
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I like to get players off 1st level ASAP but as PCs gain levels I feel progression should be slower. How many hours depends on the campaign you're running and the style of play you have as a group. Are you playing at maximum intensity with a group serious "roll players" or is it a "beer and pretzels" experience with the game as much of a social occasion? How much of actual play has experience earning potential?

Too tough to describe. Totally on a game-by-game basis. At times, the PCs in my games do weird things to slow down the XP. They are still having fun, but the XP doesn't flow like it would if they were doing lots of fighting. I do award story and RP xp all the time, but still monsters tend to have the edge when it comes to large chunks of XP awards.

~O
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Tenser's Floating Disk wrote:
I like to get players off 1st level ASAP but as PCs gain levels I feel progression should be slower. How many hours depends on the campaign you're running and the style of play you have as a group. Are you playing at maximum intensity with a group serious "roll players" or is it a "beer and pretzels" experience with the game as much of a social occasion? How much of actual play has experience earning potential?

Generally speaking, I support the notion that the first few levels should be moved up pretty quickly. But you're right about the intensity of the gameplay making a big difference.

Define "play." Actual adventure vs. "role-play?" For example, does 3 sessions, each at 4 hours, doing nothing but buying supplies count as "time" or does it not? I would not award XP and the like for that. Beside that, I don't think a specific amount of time is needed -- that is why harder challenges can be overcome, or lots, and lots, and lots of weaker ones. Also, if a "specific time requirement" is introduced, it tends to cut down on the "coolness factor" that players might be willing to cntribute, with fresh and amazing ideas, or surprise situations and the like... it boils down to a "I can just sit here and will level anyway, even if I don't do anything." Of course, this depends on the players... some will take to it fine, and others will not. But, if I had to do something like it....

Level 1 - 3 --- 40 hours. Why so long? These are the forming period of the character's "life." These are the moments that define the character, and create the basis for the campaign. It has to start somewhere, and the start is the hardest part.

Levels 4 - 7 -- 30 hours, each. Levels get harder to earn.

Levels 8 - 12 -- 40 hours each.

Now, I am basing this off of my own 4 hour weekly session, assuming the majority of time spent is on the actual game. Since it is not, I'd be looking at nearly 5 months to get to 2nd level... and much longer thereafter. The dynamics of your own group would dictate things, so it's not really fair to say with certainty what may work for you.
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Serl's Corner

my group has played for about 14 hours, and only the rogue has leveled. As Peter/Gideon suggests, it all depends on what they've been doing. I think that in the first 10 hours they accrued possibly 150 ep each. That's because a lot of those early hours were plot and character building hours. In the third session they actually accomplished a fair amount (partly by negotiation which I admired), and I awarded a fair amount of ep. As a result the rogue leveled. But I can't see the rest of hte group levelling for another 10-12 hours, actually.
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I have one character who's in the 27th level range. It took me about 10 years of actual game time, even when able to play once or twice a week, to get that character to that point. I think thats reasonable myself.
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"We'll go out through the kitchen!" Tanis Half-Elven

Peter Bradley

Yeah, I think you may get just as broad answers here as you will/did at your gaming table.

I've heard DMs that give a level after every (bi-weekly) session. I've heard of DM that track absolute invididual experience awards for different players and level rates vary wildly.

I think it will vary by the style of game or the speed of the sessions. I give my players all the same XP total, and sometimes adjust it if a player does something truly memorable. This usually ends up being 2-3 sessions early on, but goes to maybe 4-5 sessions toward the mid/middle-upper levels. And my sessions are 4-5 hours, bi-weekly.

But yeah, I mean no offense Ace, but the answers you get here will probably be very diverse.
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Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

I expected diverse answers just wanted to see how the spread went.

My campaign blew up, player vs player...ugh i know.

But the game ran some 3 months playing weekly 8 to 10 hour games.

Characters started from 7 to 9th level (exsisting old chars ported to C&C)

one fellow never leveled and i felt like i was being too stingey with the xps.

I apreciate the responces if i ever get a game going again i plan to map out advancement a bit more.

Desing a mega dungeon that will give enough xp and loot to level as each floor is cleared.

My group consists of 6 players and I (as CK).

We play every two weeks, for around 4 hours a session.

After 14 sessions (since April--about 7 months) the rogue is 5th level, the ranger and cleric are 4th level, and the wizard/illusionist is 3rd level. The remaining players either a) joined late, and are subsiquently 3rd level; or b) died and created new characters, and are 3rd level.

I issue exp BTB (combat & treasure), with an additional 200 exp per player per session for roll-playing, and an additional 400 exp per player for every sucessful story arc completion.

I guess that breaks down to 1 level every 3 1/2 sessions.

Wanna know a secret?

The game levels up as fast -- or as slow -- as you, the GM, wants it to:

Fast: I played in one AD&D game where we went from 1 to 16 in a year and half. Yeah, the GM was giving out XP by the bucket loads, but he ran a fast, intense, epic game that pit us up against demigod tyrants.

Slow: I bowed out of a 3.0 game because the GM announced he was going to cut XP by a factor of 6 and wanted me to play the Rogue. They asked me back two years later when they reached 6th level. (I might have took up the invite if we'd been playing CnC.)

I generally figure out how fast I WANT them to advance and then do the math get the average XP to dole out for decent RP and/or combat.

Leveling and XP are tools, not rules. I can't tell you how many threads I seen that ask "After a war, why aren't there dozens of 20th level Knights and hundreds of 20th-level conscripted peasants?" (Especially in edition vs. edition posts) And the honest answer is always the same. Because they aren't the NPCs or important people.