Does my party gain lvl too fast?

[hong]

Well, from what I remember, the game is balanced so that the average party, with the average gaming group, playing average game sessions, at average intervals, will reach level 20 in about a year and a half to two years of regular game play.

. . .

What Nish said. IME, advancement is fast at low levels, but once you hit about 6th-7th level, it slows down. Levelling once every 3 games sounds about right; if it makes you uneasy, just slow things down. Do keep in mind, though, that your group will then tend to accumulate more treasure than the game assumes. This could have the potential to become unbalancing unless you reduce the amount of loot per encounter.

 

[Velenne]

My group plays a given campaign once every other week, for ten hour sessions (2-Midnight or later). In that time period, I feel I've invested a pretty hefty amount of time to my character and the game. So if I don't level in that session, I surely expect to level in the next one. This is kind of the norm for our group's games and something I enjoy because of the feeling of accomplishment and the excitement of getting new abilities.

My favorite levels to game at are 7-15. You have a broader ranger of choices, a decent level of power, but you're not so powerful that most things are a joke to you. If a given campaign ends after playing 15-20 sessions (that's about a year of overall real-life time, and 150-200 hours of gaming), I'm satisfied.

But as it's been said, leveling "too fast" or "too slow" is entirely relative to the people playing in your campaign and, ultimately, you the DM.

 

[Conaill]

Have a look at "Leveling Up, By the Numbers", by WotC's Sean Reynolds:

http://www.enworld.org/Eric/3echaracters.htm

Ow what the heck, let me just reprint it here:

Here's a response from Ed Stark, creative director for D&D Core:

The "typical" number of players in a group is 4.

The typical amount of time a game session lasts is around 4 hours of gaming time.

Players play on average, once a week.

An encounter of the PCs' level, plus roleplaying, can usually be resolved in around an hour or so. Four such encounters drains the PCs to the point at which they need/want to rest.

Character resting or "down time" (time for characters to rest and recuperate) is a good time to award experience and break the session. If you have too much down time during a session, there's less gaming and more bookkeeping.

If players play once a week and follow this pattern, they'll get roughly 16 encounters of their level every four weeks. They should "level up" once a month (with some room to spare for characters that die, or slow/abbreviated sessions, or whatever) so that they feel they're accomplishing something and getting better. That means that every two months they've gone up a little more than two levels.

And a shorter response from Jonathan Tweet:

We wanted XP level breaks to be divisible by 1,000 because that's simpler.

We wanted the standard encounter to be worth 300 times the encounter level because 300 is divisible evenly whether you have 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 PCs in the party. Also, 300 gives you about the right level speed (as Ed pointed out).

That's why it doesn't come out to some nice, even number of encounters per level (because 300 doesn't fit into 1,000 nicely).

So, I'd say that leveling every 3 sessions of 7-8 hours may even be a little bit on the slow side, compared to the design standard. That's of course assuming that you actually *play* for that many hours straight. And assuming that you even give a rat's you-know-what about how fast you "should" be leveling up.

 

[Marauder]

I run a campaign every Sunday that tends to start at about 1pm and ends around 7 or 8pm on average. I have 7 PC's, so opportunities to roleplay tend to exclude a large proportion of the group so, as a result, the campaign is fairly combat heavy with most EL's exceeding the average party level.

As a result, the group has consistently been levelling once every two sessions. This seemed quick to me as well, but they are happy with it, and it also helps move the campaign along to the denoument of the first campaign plot. The minor adventures that I have not run as a result can be run in another campaign after this one ends.

I have been keeping a diary of elapsed game-time and the group has been adventuring for close to a month-and-a-half. They are now close to reaching level 6 (having started at level 1).

Basically, as long as you're happy with their rate of advancement and it fits in with the way you envision the course of events that you have planned, then there isn't really a problem.

 

[Crothian]

The true answer to this is does it feel to fast for you and your players. Only you and yours can decide how fast the level advancement should go.

 

[Altalazar]

Level as fast as is fun for all. Too fast can cheapen it a bit, but then again, some people want to be able to have 20th level characters without having grey hair.

I say one level per two to three sessions until you get into the mid level range, then it slows down just a bit.