Quote from: Omega;1054076I saw that and guessed it was the case. Its 1mil EXP to get to level 30. Not exactly sure how well though it equates to regular D&D levels though. Is a level 20 wizard on par with a 2e level 20 wizard or is the level 30 4e Wizard on par with the level 20?

They're not really comparable, a 4e Wizard never gets the world-altering magics of a 2e Wizard. Certainly a 4e Wiz-30 is closer to a 2e Wiz-20. A 4e Wiz-30 might be fighting Orcus on his home plane. A 4e Wiz-20 can't hit Orcus. He might at most be fighting an avatar of Orcus. His adventures will be more like those of a 2e Wiz-10, he'll have been fighting eg fire giants and such high Paragon Tier monsters.

Quote from: S'mon;1054089They're not really comparable, a 4e Wizard never gets the world-altering magics of a 2e Wizard. Certainly a 4e Wiz-30 is closer to a 2e Wiz-20. A 4e Wiz-30 might be fighting Orcus on his home plane. A 4e Wiz-20 can't hit Orcus. He might at most be fighting an avatar of Orcus. His adventures will be more like those of a 2e Wiz-10, he'll have been fighting eg fire giants and such high Paragon Tier monsters.

Yeah - really the only salient point of comparison is the kind of opponents they're expected to fight.

Quote from: Omega;1054070Ive graphed it out and surprisingly, by comparison, 5e advancement is slower than most of AD&Ds core classes aside from the MU. And if it kept following the progression past level 20 then it would end up slower than even the MU.

Bemusingly 3e and especially 4e are even faster than 5e or even the AD&D Thief for levelling speed. 4e goes so fast it should create a time warp. Nearly 3x as fast as 5e. 3e levels about twice as fast.

Heres my old chart as I was curious just how fast 5e was in comparison.

Your table seems to use the actual 3e 4e & 5e XP amounts needed, without taking account the rate at which XP is earned.
Your table numbers for AD&D seem to bear no(?) relation to actual amounts of XP needed. Did you take a 0 off the end? eg the AD&D Thief needs 220,000 XP for 11th and 220,000 XP per level after 11th level. You table appears to show him needing 22000 for 11th.

Of 3e 4e and 5e, 4e plays slowest in terms of sessions to level due to long battles, but 5e is the edition where you generally need to do the most 'stuff' to level up. None are comparable to AD&D.

I never said anything about the how of the EXP as this was just a comparison of the exp curves.

In O, B+ and AD&D you can level really darn fast depending on what sort of treasure and goodies you find on an adventure. Turning in that +3 sword instead of keeping it netted in AD&D 7000 exp via selling it. As Gronan oft pointed out. It was better to just bypass combat and go straight for the treasure by whatever means could be concocted. In BX though you did not get any EXP for magic items. Not sure about OD&D but probably no magic item EXP there either?

2e is where levelling slowed down as they removed (relegated to optional) the gp to exp part and far as I can tell at a glance seems no EXP for magic items either unless the PCs actually craft it? Doing a quick comparison, aside from one or two tweaks at certain levels for each class, 2e uses overall the same EXP progression as AD&D.

Interestingly O and BX classes exp progression was a little faster than A or 2e depending on the class.

So over time the ways to get EXP have shifted which can alter the speed of levelling up. Especially when combined with the way editions handle the progression. AD&D had the potential to allow for some rather fast levelling depending on treasure and wether or not the PCs sold off the item.

Quote from: Omega;1054095AD&D had the potential to allow for some rather fast levelling depending on treasure and wether or not the PCs sold off the item.

Yeah, my experience running AD&D with RAW XP daily lunch times as a teenager was that PCs could level pretty fast.  With UA the PCs could chop through monsters & get lots of treasure, which then gave lots of XP and rapid advancement.

The main feature of OD&D - AD&D XP compared to 3e-4e-5e is that it is a U shaped progression rate, with the pit of slowest advancement around Name level, and then accelerating thereafter as the amount to level becomes a fixed (large) amount. PCs who played through the pit around 9th-12th found advancement speeding up again. Whereas 5e as written has slowest advancement before 11th and a sudden jump to fast advancement at 11th. Which is designed to work well with adventure path 'quest' play* but IMO is not so well suited to sandboxing.

*I ran a converted PF to 5e mashup of Rise of the Runelords/Shattered Star from 1st level to 18th, and the 5e XP table did indeed work well. 5e in general is well designed for running Paizo type adventures.

I already run extremely slow level advancement compared to the internet at large, apparently.

We've been playing around 3 years and everyone is just hitting level 7.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1054136I already run extremely slow level advancement compared to the internet at large, apparently.

We've been playing around 3 years and everyone is just hitting level 7.

Yeah, I've seen PCs go from 1st to 20th (one PC*, in my Wilderlands sandbox campaign) and 18th (another two PCs, different campaign - Runelords of the Shattered Star) in just a couple years of weekly play. As written** a PC can get 1st-10th in a year, and 11th-20th in another year.

*Hakeem Greywolf; I think it took him 120 or so online sessions, at about 3 hours a session. He was played a fair bit beyond that too, enough to get a couple Epic boons. By the end he was pretty much strangling gargantuan ancient black dragons bare-handed.

** I mean, using the XP tables as written. The official advice is that PCs should level every 2-3 sessions, which could get them to 20th in a year of weekly play. 3e said the same. IMO that's way too quick.

Really depends on what the PCs and players are doing. If they are doing alot of stealth and avoidance or political intrigue plays then they might not garner as much EXP depending on whats going on in 5e. Though you are supposed to get EXP for non-com solutions too.

One of the big things of pre-3e D&D was that you got less or even no EXP if the encounter wasnt challenging in some way. A and 2e especially spelled it out that you go zero EXP for killing harmless animals, villagers, helpless foes, merchants, whatever.

The system when we designed it was set up so that the slowest advancement was meant to be at the sweet-spot mid-levels.

But it is pretty easy to change in order to slow it all down. Just give less XP.

The system when we designed it was set up so that the slowest advancement was meant to be at the sweet-spot mid-levels.

But it is pretty easy to change in order to slow it all down. Just give less XP.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1054336The system when we designed it was set up so that the slowest advancement was meant to be at the sweet-spot mid-levels.

But it is pretty easy to change in order to slow it all down. Just give less XP.

Thanks - yes, I find the level 5-10 XP table works really well. Problem is when there are PCs of 5-10 and 11+ in the same party; the more powerful higher level PCs shoot ahead while the lower levels advance slower.

I think just having a rule (which I'll ask the other GMs in the shared campaign world to follow) that PCs of level 11+ get half XP ought to work for me. I understand why they don't want PCs feeling 'stuck' at 11-13 in an Adventure Path or 'epic quest' type campaign, and the table as written has worked well for me in the past with my two campaigns that went to very high level. But I think for running Stonehell Dungeon it will be better for PCs to spend plenty of time in the 11-15 range.

(a) Less risk of them out-levelling content.
(b) Lower level PCs can catch up with high levels.

It will likely be a good while before anyone reaches 11th level, but it will be good to be ready & have a rule in place.

S'mon, another thing I do that you might consider:  I award 20% bonus experience to anyone that is a lower-level than how I've rated the adventure.  Typically, with my groups, that means everyone but the highest level characters in the party for that particular session.  It sounds counter-intuitive for slowing down advancement, but remember this is in the context of also generally lowering the rates (only 10% XP for wandering monsters).  

The bonus 20% seems to have been a good number to smooth out radical level differences quickly, while not so much as to make the higher level characters feel cheated.  It tends to minimize level differences greater than 4, which is my preference.  (I've got a couple of very occasional players that don't follow this scheme.  They just get a character about 1 level below the max, as they play so rarely, they are more like guests than regulars.)

Thanks - yes I may well give lower level pcs a bit more than standard xp; indeed I already give a lot of non combat awards. Main thing I think is to have high levellers level slower than low level pcs in same group.

Well, while I don't tend to use it, there's certainly precedent in the idea of XP awarded being based on challenge. So if you have a mixed level party, characters of lower level can get a certain percentage modifier of higher XP representing the greater challenge, while the higher-level characters a percentage xp-reduction, to reflect the lower challenge.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1054956Well, while I don't tend to use it, there's certainly precedent in the idea of XP awarded being based on challenge. So if you have a mixed level party, characters of lower level can get a certain percentage modifier of higher XP representing the greater challenge, while the higher-level characters a percentage xp-reduction, to reflect the lower challenge.

Yup, there's the OD&D formula of XP divided by character level/dungeon level, so 9th level PC on level 6 gets 2/3 XP. Or by monster hit dice so level 9 PC killing level 1 orcs gets 1/9 XP.

I think I could go with:
Paragon Tier PCs (11+) in Heroic Tier (5-10) zone get 1/2 XP.
Heroic Tier PCs in Paragon zone get x2 XP.

Either way the high level PCs get half as much as the lower level PCs.