Runaway Leveling
I’ve written a couple of articles about modifying the experience tables. In the most recent, I describe how I use a more elegant function to create a better progression for experience. I still love the concept but I’ve run into an issue that I want to smooth out.
In 4e, WotC introduced the idea that every ten encounters should gain you a level. It hadn’t occurred to me before to tie the experience tables to a set number of encounters like that. I think that is a marvelous idea.
As usual though, no one at WotC bothered to check their math and their experience tables didn’t actually match their plan very well. I corrected that when I came up with my own experience tables which I like very well.
Runaway Leveling
However, this system has characters gaining levels much faster than they did in previous editions. 4e combat takes (most groups) much longer so they get through less encounters in an evening and the rapid leveling isn’t as noticeable. Since I run a heavily modified game with more 3e-like combat, this new experience table could easily result in some runaway leveling.
I want to continue to use Triangular Numbers (See Mike’s Progression) for basing my encounter experience table. This left me with quite a quandary.
Progressive Difficulty
What I came up with solves the problem for me while maintaining the elegance of the function used for the progression. At the same time, it is extremely simple.
| Level | Enc. Exp. | # Enc. | Goal |
| 1 | 10 | 6 | 60 |
| 2 | 30 | 8 | 300 |
| 3 | 60 | 10 | 900 |
| 4 | 100 | 12 | 2,100 |
| 5 | 150 | 14 | 4,200 |
| 6 | 210 | 16 | 7,560 |
| 7 | 280 | 18 | 12,600 |
| 8 | 360 | 20 | 19,800 |
| 9 | 450 | 22 | 29,700 |
| 10 | 550 | 24 | 42,900 |
| 11 | 660 | 26 | 60,060 |
| 12 | 780 | 28 | 81,900 |
| 13 | 910 | 30 | 109,200 |
| 14 | 1,050 | 32 | 142,800 |
| 15 | 1,200 | 34 | 183,600 |
| 16 | 1,360 | 36 | 232,560 |
| 17 | 1,530 | 38 | 290,700 |
| 18 | 1,710 | 40 | 359,100 |
| 19 | 1,900 | 42 | 438,900 |
| 20 | 2,100 | 44 | 531,300 |
| 21 | 2,310 | 46 | 637,560 |
| 22 | 2,530 | 48 | 759,000 |
| 23 | 2,760 | 50 | 897,000 |
| 24 | 3,000 | 52 | 1,053,000 |
| 25 | 3,250 | 54 | 1,228,500 |
| 26 | 3,510 | 56 | 1,425,060 |
| 27 | 3,780 | 58 | 1,644,300 |
| 28 | 4,060 | 60 | 1,887,900 |
| 29 | 4,350 | 62 | 2,157,600 |
| 30 | 4,650 | 64 | 2,455,200 |
Instead of having every ten encounters equate to a level, I created a progression where the experience needed to gain levels was equal to that gained from n encounters, where n increases with each level. I also reduced the number of encounters needed at the early levels.
So, as detailed in the chart, at first level a character needs six encounters to reach level two, eight for level three, ten for level four and so on. This will let low level characters level quickly, but slow them down through the levels at which the game works best.
What This Accomplishes
At ten encounters per level, a character will have completed 300 encounters by the end of level 30.
Under my new system, a character will have completed 300 encounters at the end of level 15. At the end of level 30, he will have completed over five times that many.
This doesn’t make level 30 unattainable, but it does make it far more difficult to reach. At the same time, it slows leveling down considerably at the levels that we have determined the game runs best for our group.
What’s Wrong with the Old System?
We’ve always viewed the D&D world as a living breathing world of its own. Characters come and go but the world persists. In 4e, the world exists solely for the benefit of the current group. That group levels from 1 to 30 and then the campaign ends, at which point the world dies. That’s not to say that all groups play 4e this way but that is the predominant attitude among the 4e DMs I have encountered.
Our group wants the world to be perpetual. It shouldn’t be filled with god-like characters and this system works towards that end. We don’t want our characters to have some arbitrary upper level limit that forces retirement. By making leveling progressively slower, we at least put off this possibility.
It seems you’ve developed a method of extending the life of characters at higher levels. From your comments, your group likes to run at later levels and this looks like an ideal solution. I do have one question, however. If your group does want your world to be a perpetual thing, would that end be truly benefiting from longer lasting characters? as opposed to characters who leave their mark as legends for those that come after them? I ask because my group of newbs is in agreement that we would like a continuous growing setting between numerous campaigns, and I wonder if we would benefit from this, or if 1lvl/10enc would better suit our goal.
Either way, this is definitely useful for a long lasting campaign.
This progression can certainly have the effect of extending the life of the characters. But my other (unstated) goal was to completely remove the upper limit to leveling. Not that we want characters to continue to level past 30, but instead to remove the implication that level 30 was a goal to be attained.
Our group actually prefers to play in the 6-12 range. This progression slows down leveling such that characters remain in this range longer.
In the past, players have decided, on their own, to retire their characters at some point. Usually this is around level 12 or slightly thereafter. Beyond that, characters tend to become overpowered and their adventures seem less believable.
With a flat level progression curve (one level every ten encounters), I think players may hold off retiring till later just because it is so easy to continue leveling. By reinserting speed bumps to leveling, I’m hoping that it might curb that tendency somewhat.
But we do look at the world as being permanent and the characters as temporary instead of the new trend of creating a temporary world that exists just for the current characters. Because of that mindset, I think this will work well for us. I’m really looking forward to finding out. I’m not sure how well it will work for others But I rather like the technique I used and I wanted to share it.
If you try it, please let me know how it worked out for you.
Actually 3E ran on 13.3 “level appropriate” encounters per level (or 40 per 3 levels). As a GM I’d regularly spice things up by tossing in some below-level encounters, they’d give little XP but still take up some resources and keep the party on their toes. It also meant that they didn’t always race away with levelling. You can also keep them from levelling too fast by making sure that they don’t get XP for certain things. If their goal is to Capture Mr X, then killing him in some alley doesn’t deserve XP rewards and probably results in someone else being angry and not playing nice with the PCs in the future. 4E just altered the scale, from 40 per 3 Levels to 10 per 1 level.
I dislike 4E for all sorts of other reasons.
I’m not sure where you got that math from. 3e experience from monsters went up linearly while experience needed to level followed a triangular progression. Therefore each level would require more encounters in order to gain the next level.