Nowhere Fast
About every other Saturday, friends come over and join my son and me to play 5E D&D. Overall, it’s been rather enjoyable despite my initial misgivings. I’ve not learned not to be skeptical about new things, such as new editions of D&D. For example, I continued to play 1E for years after 2E was released. I started 2E because I couldn’t find a 1E group while stationed in Hawaii. The only reason I started playing 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder was because a good friend had purchased the 3.0 Players Handbook and insisted that I give it a try. I never touched 4E, and I played 5E for the first time because I was out of town at a conference and bored one evening while just down the street from the hotel was a game/comic shop hosting D&D night.
Most of us Saturday gamers enjoy 5E well enough, but there is one persistent complaint (mostly from one player), which is that the characters aren’t advancing in level quickly enough. The problem, however, has less to do with the game system itself, and more to do with how often we play, which is, at most, twice a month for about 4-5 hours each time.
The 5E Dungeon Master’s Guide has some XP suggestions and alternatives, all of which have been echoed in other books. For example, is there really a good reason not to give an absent player’s character at least some XP even though the character might not take part in the current session? Not really. As the DMG points out, “Few players will intentionally miss out on the fun of gaming just because they know they’ll receive XP for it even if they don’t show up.” Currently, we don’t do this. We’ve talked about it, but, for whatever reason, it’s not happened so far.
The DMG also suggests giving XP for noncombat challenges (which I’ve done for years and years) and for completing a goal or for reaching an important milestone (which I’ve done for years and years). Since I’m already using these suggestions, and the perception that characters advance too slowly remains, it doesn’t seem as if they’ll solve the perceived problem.
Next we get to “Level Advancement Without XP” (DMG, p. 261). Here’s where things get interesting. The book informs me that “session-based advancement…mirrors the standard rate of advancement, assuming sessions are about four hours long.” This means that a 1st-level character needs one session of play to reach 2nd level, another session of play to reach 3rd level, and two more sessions of play to reach 4th level. That’s a session per level up to 4th level. After that, a character should level again after every two or three sessions.
This is not what our characters have been doing.
I’m pretty sure this is because no one is building encounters using the XP budget system described in the DMG. That’s too much like work for me. Session-based advancement, however, isn’t like work. It’s like counting, and I can do that with a minimum of effort. So, since I’m currently the DM for the Saturday group, that’s what I’m going to do.
Which means after our next session that all the characters will level up, even the characters whose players don’t make it to the game because real life has gotten in the way.
As an aside, the excellent The Black Hack uses session-based advancement for characters. If don’t own The Black Hack, you’re wrong. Life’s too short to be wrong. (Nota Bene: That link The Black Hack is an affiliate link.)
