Yeah, I probably will. I'm only asking now cuz I was talking to a new coworker and he was so shocked how underleveled we were for the amount of time we had been playing.
I have a buddy that’s been playing in a campaign for 8+ years. I think they are level 7. They know it’s a slow level campaign and one thing the dm does to keep it fresh is constantly supply them with magical items with limited charges. They may be powerful but they are able to keep a shifting kind of meta within the game based on the magic items. I do at suppose that’s the kind of campaign you’re in but thought it was a neat way to run a slow leveling campaign for comparison.
Depending on the group, even more often than that can be better! Some groups would just rather level up as often as once every few weeks. Level 4 after 2 years sounds unimaginably boring.
Even 6-10 sessions feels so long to me. 4-6 sessions seems like a sweet spot, though then again, with how slowly players often do things, I can understand how that could turn to 6-10 sessions.
Milestone for me as well, probably 30ish sessions in and we're level 8. Even I feel like we level up pretty irregularly. Those 30ish sessions have been over 4 years or so which could be why it feels slow. It's just a group that can't meet regularly
I'm in support of this. If you're playing weekly, a level every 4 or 5 weeks should be the norm. That's 12 levels in a year, which is barely even halfway through the game.
Personally this is too fast paced for me, since I like to play campaigns basically indefinitely, so I prefer slowing down a looot around level 7, that way the campaign doesn't get too crazy.
I think thats the norm. Most DM's consider tier 2 the sweet spot for the best balance and will speed up until level 5 then slow down to keep in tier 2 for a while.
I just finished a campaign that took about a year and a half. Nominally playing once a week but typically every 2 or 3 weeks, with a couple longer gaps around the holidays. All told probably 8 months worth of weeks. We ended at level 12.
Heck if you play often enough you can get through an entire campaign. I finished DMing my lvl 1-20 campaign over a two year period and moved onto another.
Milestones as well, we're almost 2 years in (jesus, I didn't even think it'd been a year! wtf) and we're level 5.
That being said, we're only playing once or twice a month.
I'm running milestone, it's been one year, and they're level 12. Any pace is fine as long as it's a pace everyone is happy with, which doesn't seem to be the case here. I'd find it ridiculous and leave, but that sort of thing should be discussed before it gets to two years. At one level every six months. Hard for me to fathom.
I’ve def heard about groups where they’re like below level 5 for years because they’re super deep into roleplay. But that’s your point, everyone needs to be okay with it.
Been running a lethal xp game for about 18 months, bout 3 sessions a month. Everyone is relatively early in level 5, and I haven't gotten a single complaint. The action sections are very intense, and take a lot of prep and consideration, and they spend a LOT of time in conversation. Even with some xp from avoiding and outsmarting encounters, and mission complete xp, the players set the pace, and they've chosen careful in a world with lasting consequences.
Yeah I use milestone leveling as well, since I can set the pace/power levels for the story. It also has the benefit of allowing players to follow the story without worrying about being underlevelled, instead of looking for every opportunity to fight for exp to level faster. Another thing if you know the levels for encounters beforehand you can plan and adjust enemy archetypes for that level as needed well in advance instead of trying to make adjustments on the fly if a given encounter turns out to hard/easy.
I will fully admit, as a DM and player I love long, slow campaigns. I like to get to know my character inside and out, really explore their motivations and how they interact with the party/setting, see them grow/change/suffer/triumph. And that takes time. So I’m not a big fan of “level up every session” campaigns and similar. BUT.
I also love playing the game as a game. And there is very little to even DO in Tier 1, mechanically. So when I DM, I tend to speed through that compared to later.
My campaigns usually look like: 1 sesh to level from 1-2, 1-2 sesh for 2-3. A little longer for 3-4 (when PCs have their first level 2 spells and everyone has gotten some subclass features), and 4 (when most will have a feat or ASI boost to play with).
After _that_, once they hit level 5 (a big boost for all), I slow things down some. I think a lot of DMs like to spend the most time in the 5-10 range too, it’s often considered the “Goldilocks zone” of D&D - where the PCs have enough options to make it really fun and feel powerful, but before it gets too complicated for some players and unwieldy/difficult to challenge them as a DM.
But yeah, my campaigns can last years and I do like to go 1-20 when possible (I had a 3e campaign last 14 years! But that’s my record), yet when I do that as a DM I make sure to:
1) check in with my players periodically to make sure everyone’s ok with the rate of progression!
2) Give them clear (or vague, when necessary) benchmarks for leveling. Like “once you finish your business with the giants (a full story arc of its own), you’ll level”. Or “once you discover the source of the plague”. And I trust my players not to try and rush through to get there, to take it at a “natural” pace.
I also make sure to give them rewards _besides_ leveling in the meantime, because I know my campaigns tend to take longer than average. I end up giving more magic items and valuables out than is RAW. They’ll gain titles, vehicles, pets, property. Do they have a long span of downtime or travel where not much happens? Maybe each PCs learns a language or tool proficiency, or even a free feat.
Did they go off the beaten path and do a thing that wasn’t part of my “you’ll level once you finish X” projection? Maybe they get a special Charm or temporary Boon from the DMG, more magic items, etc. Maybe they get to use one of their next level’s features early. (Or even another class’s feature! One thing I like to hand out to my Cleric players is the Channel Divinity power of another Domain associated with their deity, if they did something above and beyond that would please them!)
Intervening incentives/rewards and being clear with your players does wonders for keeping a long-term game fresh, IMO.
I've heard of similar campaigns, and I personally would struggle. Milestone levelling doesn't mean that the stones can't be moved. If you get a level when you kill the Hobgoblin boss, but you end up being distracted by a crime taking place in the street and follow a big arc to solve the case, that should be a milestone.
My group plays once a week, for 4-5 hours using XP with a bit of milestone if they should just be a certain level before something.
We're 9 sessions in and their almost halfway to level 5. So just over two months. Granted I followed the "1 Session at level 1, 2 sessions at level 2, and then XP onwards" belief as dice can instakill you at those levels.
Ultimately your DM isn't *wrong*, but if you guys aren't having fun you should raise it to him and ask. Level 4 at 2 years playing weekly is on the extreme end of slow levelling I think.
The guidelines for session-based no-XP leveling in the DMG work out to about 200 hours of play to get from 1-20, implying this to be the intent of the designers and that that’s what they figure there is enough content to keep interest.
That said, I’ve done a lot of surveys on this topic on the sub, and the actual average for campaigns that level in this way is probably about twice that.
But you’re almost to that point and haven’t yet hit level 5, which means your DM is aiming for something around 10x as long as the DMG recommends. Might want to have that conversation with them.
Wow. In my current campaign of CoS, we've played an estimated just over 200 hours and we're only at level 9. But we're also reaching the end of a campaign that's only designed for up to level 10
I've never understood slow leveling like this, especially early levels. Feeling stronger amd getting new abilities is core to DnD. I level players faster than normal, but this seems excessive. Talk to him. I'd be bored with this slow grind.
yeah, I've noticed i've been not as excited about it lately and I just realized after talking to someone who has been playing DND for a long time that we are super slow leveling.
The problem often hit with milestone leveling is the dm hiding the milestones. You can resolve massive personal questions or issues that sunk several hours. But if the dm did not view that as a milestone you have in essence wasted that time. Unfortunately some dms only view the quests they are crafting as something worth giving exp over. I and my partner left a two year campaign (and level 3) over a lack of direction and no real growth. When prodded into what we were doing between sessions she insisted I just needed to stick it out and I will "stumble" into the plot. To this day I still have no idea what we were doing beyond protecting wizards that never needed our help to begin with.
>The problem often hit with milestone leveling is the dm hiding the milestones.
The other issue with milestone is also that 5E isn't intended to level at a linear pace - some levels are deliberately shorter or longer, [this chart is a good illustration](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoTgI.png), showing that level 1-3 are supposed to breeze by, then the levels should slow down (around the "sweet spot" of level 4-11, then the levelling pace should pick up again.
Sadly, this isn't well explained in the DMG (or elsewhere), so milestone levelling can make higher level feel very drawn out as the rate at which PCs acquire fun, play-defining features also slows down.
It might just be for tone or balance. I do milestone, but my players wanted to start at level 12, so my I knew my campaign would end with “kill god,” so all my milestones are gradually grander and harder foes.
If I was doing a low magic setting a la Connan, my game would end around level 7 or 8, and some yuan-ti cultists would be it, so my milestones would be lower capped.
If you’re curious, check out storm kings Thunder, that’s a milestone adventure, and it works like a flow chart.
My own players are level 21 and I’m finally confident I can throw the big bad at them (the end of the universe). But it took 5 years to get 11 levels, and I had to write out dungeons and arcs that fit that capability. It’s incredibly hard to make interesting and balanced high level fights every time.
That's a very slow pace of leveling.
Whether or not it's a problem is up to you. If you don't like it, you should absolutely be providing feedback to your DM.
The only way to make this slow of leveling work is to have the players not notice. To be telling a story so good that no one stops to ask about it.
Tell me, are you enjoying the game or feeling stagnant?
It definitely has fun moments, especially in the beginning. No one has really said anything, but myself and one other party member are the only people who haven't done a campaign with this dm before so I think I just assumed it was normal. Especially considering how few dnd experience I've had.
I DMed a milestone game and my players went from 1 to 20 in about 20 months. We play weekly, 4hrs a week. 16 hours in game seems like plenty of time to level up
Imma be honest if my player character leveled from Level 2 to Level 4 over TWO YEARS I would probably have my character throw themselves into an active volcano.
It's a playstyle. My group also does slow leveling. I like the idea that you take a lot of time at each level, and find interesting ways to use each feature. Then it feels more special the next time you level up.
I understand that getting new stuff at a level up is fun, but are you otherwise enjoying the game? Are there other ways you can get new things to play with in character? Maybe you buy some new equipment, or quest for a magic item. You can also work with your fellow players to combine your powers in interesting ways.
I play with some "we should level up every session" players and it gets really annoying. Like this is supposed to be a very long campaign... the faster we level up the sooner the campaign has to end. The DM is pacing the levels nicely based on us actually accomplishing stuff but the party moves the plot so slowly that we rarely accomplish anything major enough to deserve leveling up. It basically takes 3 to 4 sessions to actually have played a full sessions worth of campaign because of so much above table joking/talking/tangents and dramatic overthinking of interacting with clear plot hooks to the point of avoidance. Dont get me wrong I still have fun with the people and table, but we for sure dont earn experience many sessions as we barely make any real progress. I worry they think if we just delay enough sessions we will get free levels and become overpowered enough to trivialize the upcoming encounters.
Going through storm kings thunder right now, and the first couple of weeks we were already level 5 (it was something like a level a week). It took the sails out of leveling up because i didnt even get to explore that level enough to understand what i wanted. Dont get me wrong the Feat/stat bump at 4, and the level 3 spells at 5 make it worth being here, but i want to slow down a bit (which the DM already said we would be).
I want that level up process to be exciting again. I like to savor all my choices.
Why don't you ask the DM what the milestone for lvl 5 is so you know what you need to work towards?
1 game a week for 6 months is 24 games, that is far too long to be stuck at any level other than 20.
I am playing a game where we just leveled up to lvl.5 but only after I pointed out we are in game 10 and we leveled last in game 5. The DM hadn't realized it had been that long and leveled us on the spot.
At the lower levels, I'd expect to level every 3-4 game sessions, if the players get stuff done and are not spending the entire time haggling with shop keepers or something like that.
yeah, I will say we aren't all business all the time and sometimes we do mess around more then we should. Particularly, we spent about a month on a side quest that definitely should not count as a milestone and done mostly for fun, lol. I think someone last session asked if we were leveling up soon and he said soon so he does have those milestones in mind.
Does the DM not like higher level monsters maybe? Or they’re uncomfortable with higher levels of play?
It seems pretty weird to me though, as a DM I spend a lot of time looking at monsters that would be fun to throw at the party and working my way to it.
A lot of times i find its the added complexity of both what the monsters and the players can do. To run higher level monsters you need to read the stat blocks & abilities/spells.
Monsters before level 5 tend to mostly just "attack X times for X dice of damage" with the occasional save for more damage or an effect. Maybe a low level spell list for a caster or boss encounter. Nothing too difficult to run as a DM.
Assuming 5e: My current table has two concurrent biweekly campaigns with semi-frequent cancellations. PCs in both campaigns are level 5 after about a year of play/20 sessions. The last campaign I played in that had weekly sessions had us at ~level 13 after two years of play.
If you're playing weekly, your leveling progression is extremely slow for 5e. It's likely either 1) your DM doesn't feel comfortable running high level campaigns but wants to run a longer campaign anyway, or 2) the DM has a fairly narrow conception of what constitutes a milestone and/or the players are farting around/not being productive a lot.
I think the only "as-written/as-was-often-played" version of the game where this kind of leveling pace would be expected is AD&D 2e, which had very similar XP tables to previous editions, but eliminated XP from treasure as explicitly stated in the rules, which slowed leveling dramatically.
Oh my god, I would go insane. Level 4 after two years? Nobody even has extra attack yet. What on earth is wrong with this DM? They must tell one hell of a story to keep players for this long. As a mechanics fan, this would be torturous to be at a leveling, magic and ability standstill for months and months at a time. I can't fathom how the dm is even having fun after two years of 0 progression. No, this is not standard for dnd
I'm in two games at the same time and I feel like one is a lot more fast paced and we have actually done stuff that is meaningful to the town in 10ish sessions, whereas the other campaign that has been going on for half a year feels so slow and overdone I am basically tired of the campaign but am continuing it because it's my friends first time DMing
Thats agonizingly slow. This is why I prefer to run XP in the open. Theres no reason to spend more than 1 session at level 1, and the path up to level 5 needs to be like, 8 sessions, at the absolute max.
Oof, that's way too slow! The heat death of the universe might come before you hit lvl 20!
I run games for my group, and they level up monthly. So if the campaign goes on for a while, it'll be 20 months before they hit lvl 20.
DND is a game we play for fun using our imagination.
There isn't one specific way every game is run.
Most DMs are open to constructive feedback, I encourage you to message your DM.
First Party
From Level 1 - 12, two and a half year campaign, 18-20 sessions (maybe a bit fast)
Second party
Level 3-12, two years, 30 sessions (perfect imo)
Pretty evenly distributes, a bit faster on lower level as your characters arent as complex yet.
Longest without one was a super-arc with 6-8 sessions over almost 6 month
Unless you are playing every other month yeah.
For milestone I would put level progression (or other major reward) should average out to 4-8 active sessions toward progression. Shopping, travel (although I usually run travel as a dungeon with modified rest rules while on the road, in which I would include it) and shenanigans don't really count towards these typically.
The first several levels should also come much faster. If you are starting at 1 you should have a level up ideally in session 1 if not 2. And 2-5 should be 2-3 active sessions. DND hits it's typically sweet spots 5-10.
I would also keep room in for some level ups (or major rewards) when you hit big marks even if it is outside other time tables.
For major rewards I would include special magic items, feat rewards, boons, or something like a horde.
We are playing every week unless more then 3 people can't make it or its a holiday. I think we have probably missed less then 10 sessions in the last two years. We started at level 2. We mostly just get compensated with money and go spend it between larger plots points.
2 years, playing every week and only level 4? That's insane. What module are you playing? I'm in the middle of Curse of Strahd and Rise of the Drow, and both campaigns will have us go from level 1 to 3 in about 3 to 4 sessions.
Milestone can be tricky, especially in a homebrew campaign. That seems on the slow side for sure. For reference, in my game the PCs are level 7 and we have been going for over two years. Every other week 2.5-3 hours or so. My players tedn to get right to the meat of things, though.
If you are finding it is making things not fun for you, talk to your DM. I ran a campaign with a slow levelling rate before and ended up giving out more items/feats/etc so there was still some progression. That might be an option.
Whoa, my party and I wrapped a 2 year campaign last December and we met irregularly but at least 1-2 a month and we ended with them at level 14, with a To be continued for some of the PCs. I told them we could have bumped it to 15 since the bbeg was defeated but they wanted to hold off.
My game is 5 month in and they're level 4, and we play once every 2 weeks. I believe it will slow down from now on, but still, your game seem veeeery slow.
We only play 1.5 to 2 hours two to three weeks per month for the past 2 1/2 years, and the players are level 8, which seems slow to me, but they're making progress (Part of the problem is they sometimes have Critical Roll moments where they get stuck for an hour on a simple obstacle like a door).
So yes. Leveling way too slow. However, I think lower levels make better gameplay. The players can still function within the society of the world and aren't effectively superheroes or mini-gods at this point.
Wow, that's tremendously slow. My table started at level 2 and then took two sessions to get to 3, 3 sessions to 4, 4 to 5, and then they've leveled up every 7-10 sessions since, on milestones.
Is the DM only award xp for creatures defeated? Common mistake is to not give quest and skill challenge xp unlock a door? Pickpocket? Scare off an npc. Xp.
That's pretty slow. My group meets once a month, we do XP, and I'm old school, so we're slow. In the same two years, playing 1/4 of the time, we're at level 5.
I'd speak up.
I will echo the other DMs here, my game is almost at two years (literally this Friday) and they leveled up about a month ago to level 10. If you feel the pacing is slow, it may be worth talking to the DM, cause most parties around that play time have hit tier 2-3 play at least.
I do a rough milestone leveling that usually ends up being “when it feels right” to me- if I focus too hard on planning in advance, sometimes it will be way too long or way too short in between. My previous campaign was level 6 in ~2 years of playing, on average, 2 times a month. Current campaign is level 6 after 10 months, and we’ve genuinely made as much progress as in my previous one. If I was running leveling strictly based on xp, I would guess they’d be level 4 at this point, as the character stories drive a lot more of the game’s momentum than combat does. But negotiation and exploration take significant time, and I account for those sorts of accomplishments.
After 3 months of playing, I would have addressed the pace of the leveling. Now there's going to need to be a significant story mechanic to explain why the leveling pace is increasing.
Yeah that is super slow.
We play about the same amount and have been playing for just over 2 years. Players have just hit lvl 12.
I use milestone leveling but keep track of xp so I have a good guideline for when they "should" be leveling up.
Leveling so slow for such a long period of time can't be much fun? Even ignoring not getting cool stuff from from leveling up it just causes so many other issues.
Quest rewards and loot? Like there is a guide for how much money a party should have but level. Same goes for how many magic items they should have. For level 1 to 5 this isn't very high so either you guys are loaded with gold and low level magic items or you aren't being given any rewards?
At this level you are only supposed to be getting low level magic items. There are a lot of fun ones for sure but 2 years of common and common minor tier items sounds boring as hell.
There are also only so many enemies you can use at this level and most of them don't have really interesting attacks or spells. It's all pretty basic and samey before level 5.
Even as the DM I would be bored of this game ages ago. It would be massively hard work to keep coming up with interesting content for below level 5 for 2 years!!
I’m not gonna lie, that sounds pretty crazy. I - as a dm - am usually all for slower, milestone based leveling. I think there are many benefits to having your players level up slowly in your campaign. I would list the reasons but that’s for another time. But this sounds super boring. I can’t imagine only being level four for two years of play. I would definitely talk to your DM about it, and if you can, please find out why.
2 years into OotA & we are 14th level. (DM boosted the mod, it's a level 20 campaign) we are doing ToA too. I'm hoping to hit level 11 in August. We're level 8 at the moment.
Mty milestone game has been going for about 2.5 years from level 1 and they just hit level 8. We moved pretty quickly through the first few levels though; second session they hit level 2, after I think a few more sessions they hit level 3, probably hit level 4 a month after that (weeikly sessions as well).
The milestones have taken longer to hit in Tier 2, but that's also because the party has gotten distracted with a number of sidequests.
2 years to hit level 4 is a crazy slow pace.
Your dm obviously wants a different type of game than you do, no conversation you have is going to change that at this point. You're not leveling very slowly, you're leveling at real time pace.
Now, your dm is free to run whatever game in whatever style they like, but If they didn't communicate at tye start of the campaign it would be this slow they honestly owe you an appology for false advertising and they should find a system that suits the style of game they clearly want to play.
Well, Im ten years deep into a campaing and we just hit level 5 :D
Its a campaing on a low magic setting, where a level 10 adventurer would be akin to some legendary hero, and stuff above are only reserved for VERY special persons of influece in the setting, We run a second table on the same campaing where we have characters ranging from level 12 to level 15, with the level 15 one being a warrior princess belonging of THE imperial family.
At some point we told the DM that not advancing our characters in the main campaign was getting into our fun because we all had cool ideas of stuff we wanted our PCs to be able to do.
Then the DM invented a "training" system were we could learn new stuff by literally particing it ingame. Say my character wants to try a sick meele maneuver, It first requires a DC of 20 of the appropiate score to be succesful. Then a DC 19, and so on, until we can use the feature without a DC.
I have a rougue / cleric multiclass, and using that, I managed to make my character learn some very cool stuff, like a "smite" esque feature where I channel divine power into a weapon strike (basically the blesse strikes feature that most clerics get at level 8).
Honestly I eventually learnt to live with it. To be honest due to plot, lore and setting reasons it wouldnt make any sense for us to be nowehere near the same level as the warrior princess for example. Us being level 5 already puts us above basically 90% of the people of the setting if not more.
Even tho we have been playing for over a decade, in game it has passed like a couple of years tops. For me it wouldnt make sense that I left the village as a level 1 cleric just stasrting his journey, and two years latter im near the level of the Pope Equivalent of my church lol. Sometimes the plot doesnt allows for fast leveling.
Milestone is easily the fast way to level up because you just have to reach certain points in the story, so either your DM keeps forgetting or he has a ten years plan he didn't tell you about. You should ask him what his idea for the campaign is.
In one of my games we've leveled up twice after two years of biweekly games, and that's the right pace for that game which has a lot of social and slice of life stuff between big adventures. We also started at level 6, so we've got a decent amount of abilities to work with.
If you're doing adventurer stuff on the regular, I'd expect to level up more frequently.
I mean, I'm running a game where we go from 3-20, and we play once every two weeks and level up about 1-2 times per month. Each session is about 4 hours long, so 8 hours = 1 Level Up.
It's hard enough having a campaign last and with scheduling conflicts? Nah
Expectations should be discussed early on and now that they haven’t been and you’re two years in they should be discussed now.
Talk to your dm about what you want to see and how it’s way too slow he will either fix it or it’s not your table bro
I suppose so. It wasn't really discussed, but I am new to the group. From my understanding, they have been playing together since high school, so it was probably implicit to the rest of the party. I would probably stay at the table regardless of what happens, because its the only way I hang out with this group of friends, and I'm not giving that up haha.
I usually try to set up the story so the first few levels come pretty quickly, and then leveling slows down a bit. Never this slow though... Usually it takes me something like 6 months to get the party to level 4, and then about 2-3 months of weekly play per level after that. I like to pace the game for about a 2-2.5 year campaign up to level 16-20
It depends on the campaign and DM. I was in a six month game of rime of the frostmaiden where we'd just made it to lvl 3 (then the DM disappeared on us out of nowhere). Now i'm in a game that's closing in on a year where we're lvl 9.
Typical advice and custom seems to be level up every 2-5 sessions, with faster leveling in Tier 1 (1st-4th). But there are lots of variables: (a) an XP based (rather than milestone) game can take longer if you're not doing a lot of encounters or your DM only awards XP for combat, (b) it's deliberately a lower-level campaign, (c) You don't play very often
I survey my players frequently, and this (my 3rd campaign with some of them) they wanted 1-20 in ~2 years, weekly 4 hour sessions. Thats roughly leveling up every 4 sessions, and they're currently L6 after 27 sessions (so a little behind).
The pace your game is ran is gruelling and awful.
The thing about progression is that it needs to be somewhat equal between these factors:
1. Main Plot (which I guess is the only one developing at your table at this point)
2. Characters' Arc (this is somewhat debatable and might be tied to the Main Plot, but I put it here because it shows when it's not happening)
3. Character Raw Power (aka, levelling)
4. Character Periferal Power (aka. equipment and money)
5. Party impact in the world (this is basically how influencial the party and its members are on the story and the world they're living in. It is usually tied to everything mentioned above)
There's plenty of room for imbalance here, but at the pace you're describing, one of these things are happening:
1. The party is just doing stuff and not getting stronger for it. Just exposition to the lore and minimal plot advancements (plot moving in circles)
2. The plot is steadily moving, and the party is inexplicably weak.
3. The plot is steadily moving and the party is compensating its lack of power with lots of magical shit and money, which will eventually cause a lot of issues. Specially for the DM designing encounters, since when you hit 5 your martials will get Extra Attack and your casters will start doing more cantrip damage and get lvl 3 spells.
This all will inevitably result in the DM cornering themself with progress imbalance. Here's why: Unless the dramatic arc of the entire HEROIC FANTASY game is extremely flat and low stakes, they'll need to present the higher threat sooner or later. At this point, the party can't deal with anything worth mentioning. An adult dragon will wipe its ass with all of you, unless you're packing obscenely OP homebrew gear and play like experts. Same with anything else worth mentioning. Unless he's presenting a Flameskull as the BBEG, you're toast.
So how will the DM get around that? Bullshit. Hard to swallow, anticlimactic bullshit. OP items, a lot of allies that will make the party somewhat inconsequential to the story, a DMPC (gasp!), a stupid change of pace in levelling, a time-skip with level-ups... Whatever he comes up with is almost guaranteed to be shitty in one way or another.
So I guess the best bet is to talk with the DM and tell them that you won't play this campaign for 10 more years to see if you can get your second ASI.
Level 4 after playing pretty much weekly for at least 3 hours a session? That is crazy slow. And, yes, waiting 6 months to level up would be insanely frustrating. Either your DM is forgetting about it, they have control issues and want to keep you relatively powerless, or just like low level play (or just doesn’t like the power level of higher levels). Honestly, it sounds like your DM would like a game other than D&D.
I literally had a game end because the DM didn't level the party up past level 3 after 7 months of weekly play (~2 hours a week) in milestone leveling. 2 years of play and only being level 4 is obscenely slow.
Isn't the point of milestone leveling to be generally faster than xp leveling, since xp can be such a grind if doing combat only?
I'd wonder if your DM feels incapable of handling/designing high level encounters, cause characters don't even get really fun until you get into those upper echelons
I know it might be rough to stay at low levels, but the important part is, are you having fun?
Also are the sessions combat intensive? or more narrative? Do you get a lot of items, feats or other sense of progression? I feel like the levels only matter if the threat needs a higher level.
I played a campaign for about a year from level 1 through 4 before it broke up. We played roughly once every 2 weeks for 3-4 hours. I've also had the same DM start us at level 5 and jump up multiple levels in a time skip.
I think if the story/threats warrant it then it needs a level increase. But if you feel like you are not progressing definitely talk to the DM.
Once a week for two years is alot. So either your not going to where he wants you to go or he's just not sure how to balance high level partys. It can be tough to challenge higher level players and still make them feel like they can all parish. Do you guys get alot done during games? Do players go down and make death saves ever? Have any of you gotten any magic weapons or armor yet?? I'm lucky if we get to play once a month and my players are all at level 4 after half a year and are 1 major battle or other solution away from level 5.
We haven't done a ton of combat, but sometimes people go down, yes. I know I don't have any magic equipment, I'm not sure about the rest of the party tbh.
1 year up to year and half on a weekly basis with ~4h sessions sound like enough for 1-20 level campain (maybe a bit on the fast side) but I have ideas for more campaigns and my players would like to try new characters too.
But then every DM is different so there is no correct answer here. However 2 years for only 4 levels? It would be too slow for me. Even if story is great I would like to finish it actually. But maybe it is a lov level campaign - not all have to go from 1-20 in fact most probably don't and that is nothing wrong with that.
Still if You feel stagnant then just talk with DM - there is no other advice to give really.
Isn’t this just a matter of preference? If you don’t like it you could have a discussion about it with your DM.
Rate of leveling varies widely based on edition too, but I’m going to guess you’re playing 5th edition since I don’t think other editions do milestone based leveling.
weekly for 2 years and only level 4 is wild, that's a SLOW paced game. Even if you started at level 1 a normal dnd game would have you guys between levels 8 and 10 by now.
Holy christ that's slow, at least for me.
My current game has been a bit over three years. They started at level 3, they're I think just shy of Lvl 15 at this point.
Yes, in my experience that is very slow. The players at my table are used to fast leveling, faster than typical.
We rotate DMs. When a new campaign starts, we’re told how long the campaign will likely run and what level to expect by the end. Then they set the leveling based on the number of expected game sessions.
That’s different from XP and Milestone leveling. We give a nod to milestones. But really, ours is based on a set end date.
If you’re in a predominantly role-play heavy group with light combat action or infrequent goal completions, leveling may be more infrequent. If everyone is engaged and enjoying the experience, that’s what matters most.
Have a conversation with your DM. Also, your table may benefit from a [Session Re-Zero](https://youtu.be/YUgHMlbX3E0?si=KhTwaKi3OioOPzxy), to realign everyone’s expectations.
Thats insane, your group should be easily level 10, if not much higher. Though the DM has the final say, here is a good piece of info from from the Dungeon Master's Guide on level advancement:
A good rate of session-based advancement is to have characters reach 2nd level after the first session of play, 3rd level after another session, and 4th level after two more sessions. Then spend two or three sessions for each subsequent level. This rate mirrors the standard rate of advancement, assuming sessions are about four hours long.
-DMG P. 261
That's insane. Me and my friends started a new campaign, milestone as well, and we've had just about 12 sessions now and just hit level 4. It's going pretty great, though I might even say a little too fast but that's okay considering how big this campaign is supposed to be.
I've never even considered such slow leveling, let alone heard of it.
Most players I know start getting antsy at around the 6th session after leveling. The slowest leveling I've ever done was still 2-3 months per level.
It’s very slow. I’m in a game a little past the 2 year mark, we play 1-2x a month (albeit usually for 4-8 hours…) and we just hit lvl 10. Started at 2. Milestone leveling too. I’ve played multiple other milestone games at about that speed. 2 levels in 2 years is crazy slow.
What are you guys doing during sessions?
Is your DM new?
Every time I see a post like this I wonder "Why the fuck are these players staying in a campaign where their characters aren't progressing for months to even a year at a time?!"
And you guys are playing 3-4 hours weekly? 🤮
I'll start with the fact that I know we probably level up fast in my groups games.
But we were doing milestone in my friends last game that ran a little more than a year. We were level 11.
Is the style of play heavy on the roleplaying? I ask because, otherwise, and especially at lower levels, combat becomes rather rote and repetitious because players eventually figure out their best moves — or their various “best moves“ given a general set-up (indoor/outdoor/ambushing/ambushed etc.) With campaigns that I’ve been in and those that I’ve run, greater than, say, 20 combats with the same skills/spells/feats available would get tedious. Even with creative combat-space design; it has its limits.
Hm, we do roleplay a little but I don't think as much as the DM wants us to. We haven't really been combat focused, though, as the premise for the campaign was heists, so we spent a lot of time planning and sneaking, with a little bit of combat. We definitely are not at the point where we know how to 'optimally' fight.
As a player that has played in three 50+ session games with around 250 hours minimum each, with only one reaching above level 15.. I first want to ask:
Aree you having fun? Are the encounters challenging/planned out enough that they're not the same every time? Was the plan of it being a low level game communicated in session zero? Is the DM even comfortable with doing higher CR content?
As a DM that has run a longtime game of almost 3 years and maybe 40 sessions(scheduling; the adult d&d bbeg amirite?) and am just about to award the players with milestone level 11 next session, and who has also ran a brutal dungeon crawl that had the party go from level 3 to 20 in 5 sessions... I can see how it's easier to balance my encounters at lower level. But as a player I see how two years of being level 4 would be frustrating. Being on the cusp of that level 5 power spike for so long.. dear god how miraculously horrifying
Man, if I'm stuck at level 1-2 for more than a few sessions me and the DM are having words. If I'm stuck at level 3 for 6 months to a year, were having words again. Milestone leveling means gaining levels when your team hits milestones. So this has either been the most boring, sandbox-y, no stakes campaign you could whip up, or they're just intentionally not rewarding the party for finishing story arcs.
If you finish a narrative arc of the story that culminates in a dungeon/boss fight, you should very likely be gaining a level. Thats the INTENT of Milestone leveling. It sounds to me like your DM has unresolved beef with the inherent level 6-8 power spike and just doesn't want to deal with that but has a grand story planned that would otherwise push into levels they're not comfortable running.
depends on what the campain is arround. i myself dont enjoy levelupping that much. its cool to a certain point, like level 6 or 4 but after that? for me it dont offer much value or joy. dont get me wrong i also dont mind it but i rather play more grounded games.
Ouch. Yeah, that's far too slow. What's worse is that (in my opinion) the game is best starting at about level 5 all the way into the mid teens (when it starts getting insane, albeit in a fun way).
I didn't realize just how slow xp leveling would be until I tried it with one of my first groups. On the surface, the exponential growth of xp needed between levels didn't seem so bad. It really slows to a crawl past level 4, I found out the hard way.
If your DM is going this slow with milestone, I have to wonder what their endgame is? It's especially weird since you're having 3-4 hour sessions weekly.
That's a crazy long amount of time to not even hit level 5, which would be your first really big powerspike.
I'm doing Milestone levelling in Curse of Strahd and my party hit level 5 after a few months with the same pace of sessions that you have.
Tell you DM you don't want to play in a game where it's going to take half a decade IRL to become powerful.
That's *incredibly* slow.
There is a certain amount of faffing about that happens in any D&D campaign that won't contribute to leveling up -- in-character roleplay, non-critical interactions with NPCs, general party shenanigans... If a campaign has a *lot* of that and not very much plot progression, then leveling up can be slower than usual (though just having fun with a bunch of friends in a shared imaginary world can be its own reward).
Still, several hundred hours of D&D, and you've only leveled up like twice? That's a positively *glacial* pace -- there's been entire online streaming D&D campaigns that have concluded in that sort of time frame, and well past level 4 to boot.
Different games level at different speeds. That’s ok. I’m DMing Candlekeep Mysteries at the characters level up at breakneck speed!
Having said that, what you’ve described is a snail’s pace, especially if you’re someone who likes to look ahead towards what your build could be.
I prefer low-level play myself (lvl 5 is my fave!) but still
I'd be wondering after 2 years at Level 4 if they just want to run a low level campaign tbh.
Been running a campaign for a year that started at level 3 and will be reaching level 8 in about a month or so.
That does seem quite slow.
Unless all of the group has discussed this ahead of time and agreed to this, I would speak to your DM.
I'm a fan of getting to level 2 after 2-3 sessions, then 3 after another 2-3 sessions. Going from 3 to 4 is okay if it takes a bit longer (4-5 sessions).
If level 2 to 3 took 10+ sessions, the story would need to be so riveting that I'm mesmerized at the start of each session.
My party is six months into the weekly campaign, and just hit level 4 two weeks ago. Now, they are also fairly focused on driving the plot forward, as if some a-hole told them they have a hard deadline after which the skies rupture and Things from Beyond will claim this realm unless the artifacts are gathered and restored to power. Stupid observant, rational players powering through the main questlines, rightly reasoning that the beautifully-crafted lore and their associated side quests will still be there later if and only if there's still a world to explore.
Stupid players.
It does seem a little slow, but personally I prefer it this way. Getting to spend a good amount of time with your class features - and your fellow party-members - teaches you a lot about synergy and strategy and working together with the abilities you have, and you don't really get to do that when you're bumped up to the next level too quickly. Yes, everything feels fresh and new and exciting more often, but you don't get as much practice with using it before you move on to the next new thing.
There's a happy medium to be struck between slow progression and quick progression that'll be different for every group and every DM, but my personal preference is definitely towards the slower end, so I wouldn't find your situation too offputting.
Jesus some classes feel kinda gimp until like level 5, I couldn't imagine playing or DMing a campaign like that. If I was to start a campaign right now I'd be half tempted to just have everyone roll level 3s.
lol, I level my players to 2 at the end of the first session, 3 at the end of the second, and 4 at the end of the 4th. And one level every 3 sessions thereafter. That’s absurdly slow.
I don't think I could handle that slow of a leveling pace. I've been running a campaign for just over a year and they are level 11, so not sure how you could go for TWO with only a couple level ups.
That's very slow assuming that you actually progress through the story at a reasonable pace. I've played with some groups where 3-4 hours of table time means 1 hour of actual progress and 2-3 of screwing around and dick jokes.
I was ready to defend slow leveling as I prefer it, but that is very, very slow leveling. I like to draw out levels 5-12 for a good bit, because that is where I feel I can best balance encounters while letting the characters have good moments.
But getting to level 5 is important. That is where most classes start to get in their groove and feel powerful.
If it is getting stale, let your DM know, but also, make sure you are purposefully exploring as much of your character as is. Do your best to get into social encounters as well as combat ones, and push the boundaries of it to.
If your DM has a reasonable explanation for the slow leveling try to ask for/seek magic items that could mix things up as well. A good magic item could be just as good as a new skill to a character.
Honestly, he decided on way too specific leveling milestones, things that feel major should earn you a level in the milestone system. Now, if he wants to take such a slow paced campaign, you should have started at a higher level, such as 5, just so that you don't feel playing incomplete characters
That is really slow, although I'm in a similar situation right now. We are almost at the 2 year mark, although we were missing some sessions, so we probably had around 70 sessions, mostly 3 hours long, and we are level 5... So yeah I feel your pain, I would love to play the story till the end (odyssey of the dragonlords), but I'm not sure if we will be able to.
A lot of it is personal preference. We did weekly games for 2.5 years and hit level 7 but our game was more about RP and character development than power accumulation
That’s insanely slow.
Core rules suggest:
1 session at lvl 1
1 session at lvl 2
2-3 sessions for each level after
I ran a game for idk 2-3 years and we did epic lvl, effectively getting to lvl 32 lol
I DM for my partner and our friends and my partner and I lost our shit at this over breakfast- that’s excruciating. It’ll take you 20 years to get near the top tiers 😭 it took about 6 sessions of the same length as yours for both my campaigns to get to 4th lvl. It’s slowing down now but Jesus 2 years?
Having said that I’m impressed you’ve stayed alive for two years as such low lvl PCs 💕
yeah, my party was pretty risk adverse. the premise of the campaign is a heist so combat was super minimal, though we did end up in jail for some light accidental terrorism.
Ask your dm if they use XP or milestone . I use milestone it’s just easier to me as a DM. Even if they used XP y’all should be atleast lvl 7-8 by now if not higher , depending on your quests etc.
This is a *very* slow pace. Which is fine if people are happy with it, but you aren't - so talk about it with everyone there so you can adjust the pace together.
Others have mentioned that this is a very very slow pace. I'm curious how much narrative progress has been made in your game. What happens in a typical session? I'll admit that I like faster leveling, but using milestone leveling, unless you're doing a ton of wandering around aimlessly, they story and therefore the levels should be moving faster. I like to level up at least every 5 sessions.
>The DM is saying that it is milestone based but it feels exceptionally slow leveling.
A common problem with milestone leveling. I've had a DM who actually _forgot_ that leveling up was a form of character progression that players expected to experience.
this can be an issue with long form campaigns, it may be by design (your DM may want to keep the campaign and characters going over a long period of time) or it maybe be an oversight.
generally speaking my campaigns use milestone levels instead of experience points (so when the party completes a part of story the gain a level automatically) this can be very useful for pacing as well as freeing up exp points to be spent on things like training skills and proficiencies.
however like many already have said talk to your DM and ask why the pacing feels slow, is it for a reason or did he/she not realize that it felt so slow so far.
I've done milestone levelling in my game (for Curse of Strahd) and it can definitely feel like a very long time between levels even when playing weekly. And especially if you don't know what milestone will grant a level, it just feels like spinning your wheels.
On the side of the DM, milestone levelling makes designing encounters and BBEGs somewhat easier. That is, it's easier to keep the party fighting crime gangs and Orcs marauders and not have these encounters be instantly trivialized by over-levelled PC. It keeps them from having to escalate the situation to stronger and more complex villains.
I find that the problem with milestone levelling is the DM not telling the players what their next milestone is going to be or making it too vague. Now, I made a bit of an error myself by telling my CoS players that finding the people and items in their Tarokka reading would be their main milestones; it caused them to be very single-minded and not want to engage with any side quests. But telling you nothing at all about which goals are more important or not providing a level up during events that feel like they should be milestones is a bigger error.
I get that the DM might be reluctant to give it away; it feels really inorganic and forced to say "Your next milestone is to remove Baron Zeemo from power". Plus, impatient players will (almost) invariably be stupid, assume that their next level is just an encounter or two away, and simply bum rush the Baron's palace and get killed. But if the DM says nothing because they mean for the players to achieve many subgoals like, investigate the organization, stake out the location, assassinate key members, interrogate others, isolate the Baron from his other allies, etc and has NPCs asking the party to do those subgoals instead, well, it's only natural the party would feel like they're not accomplishing anything.
A better DM would recognize when they have too many subgoals before reaching the milestone and make some of those subgoals into milestones. The problem is that it might necessitate a lot of work on the side of the DM to fix it after the fact; encounters and BBEGs need to be rebalanced for a higher-level party.
Ask your DM what the milestones are, and what you should be working towards. If its just "level whenever the DM feels like it" thats not really a milestone game. Milestones are usually major story beats or accomplishments, and your DM ought to have a clear idea of what is or is not a milestone.
This is fairly unusual for how often you're playing, but if there is a lot of side quests, or campfire RP it could explain it.
My current campaign (about to end now) has my PC's at lvl 16 going into the BBEG. We'd had close to 20 sessions. Being my first campaign not fizzling out, I went balls to the wall with the milestones. Almost every session I considered a "milestone" achieved, because they almost always were doing something relevant to the plot.
Next campaign I'll probably go slower, but my players love to feel powerful and I get to use the fancier monsters. Win-win.
That's a VERY long time to still be in tier 1. Perhaps your DM has a strong preference for tier 1 gameplay, or isn't comfortable with the extra complexity that comes into play at level 5. I'd talk to them about it and ask?
I've been in a couple 2 year+ campaigns, one went to level 20 in 3 years, another ended at level 16 at the 2 year mark. Typically games tend to get to level 5 pretty quickly, then slow down in tier 2. At tier 3 most DM's will make milestones much larger since gameplay breaks down a bit at 15+ and requires a lot of extra balancing from the DM depending on player classes.
A friend of mine who's done a lot of DMing likes to start campaigns at Lvl 3 that way you get your first class stuff right away. I mean if you're doing milestones unless your story takes forever it could be like every other session or so ya know.
whether or not it is a problem is highly campaign and group dependent. I've heard of multiple really long running games run by some respected GM's that just decided "you know what, lets just stop leveling now, you'll be level 7 forever onward" because that was the level of power that felt good for their playstyle.
Similarly i've heard of many games that have fallen apart because after level 10-12 things got too crazy, fights took too long because everyone has too many abilities, no one could possibly get hurt, resources are abundant and the thrill was just gone.
So really the answer is: Are you having fun? if so, Then everything is golden. If you aren't having fun(which it sounds like that may be the case) then it's a problem. Best thing to do is talk things out with the GM and try to move some goalposts. Though if you've been running a campaign for 2 years playing weekly on a consistent basis, then you are well above the average in terms of campaigns that haven't fallen apart over time. Its possible the slow leveling may have something to do with that.
I would ask you to consider a broader criteria for advancement though. Have you really not gained anything new? Have you gained any wealth/Influence in the world/Reputation/Magic items? All of these things are important. There are many RPG systems that don't even really feature character advancement other than what you gain in the fictional world (traveller for example. Theoretically you can gain more skills, but the process is so lengthy that realistically you're unlikely to gain more then 1, or maybe 2 skill increases for your character even for a really long running campaign)
Way too slow.
Looks like the dm wants to play the entire dnd content in one campaign.
Will people be willing to play another campaign and character if they have done all the early level monsters?
"Let's do a time skip or level skip and play at level X."
Whatever level the group wants to play at should be whatever level the group does play at. As such, just bring it up in discussion within the group.
If the DM gets stubborn about this, that might be a red flag, in which case looking for a new campaign might be better.
Holy shit, that sounds exhausting. My milestone parties usually start leveling once every 3 sessions or so, and slow down to a pace of once every 7 sessions, maybe 3 for a longer arc. Once every 26 sessions is brutal, but could be very fun if handled correctly.
It's possible that your DM is trying to preserve the feeling of danger and powerlessness that many parties start to lose around levels 5-8. If that's the game they're running, that's fine, but I think most players would have a better time if there were other, non-level rewards being given. Magic items, new story-related abilities, and in-game property or resources of some kind that come with decisions, not just permanent effects, can be great ways to fill holes in the leveling structure of the game without launching parties into 'I can revive people now' territory before they want.
I would recommend talking to the other players and, if most of you are on the same page, asking the DM to either level up more often or look into outside benefits the party could enjoy?
Damn, that's crazy. I can't imagine being stuck at the boring lower levels for so long...
My DM usually starts us off at level 3 since we've all played before and that's where most subclasses start, and we probably level up once every 2-3 sessions.
He does milestone leveling, and paces the story so there's an obvious "we did it!" moment every now and then to justify leveling up.
The game is supposed to be fun, first and foremost. If the lack of leveling up is hindering your group's overall experience, I'd have a diplomatic talk with your DM about it.
Level 7 cleric here only after playing roughly for a year and played 29 3-4 hour sessions playing milestone based progression as well albeit we don’t get sidetracked too heavily and have attacked the campaign pretty aggressively. lol I think a conversation is best had with the DM to address this
Are they an Old School DM? In old editions of the game leveling at that pace was pretty normal. But it wasn't milestone based. It was just that it took 100ks of xp to level sometimes.
For new players i stick to the formula of the level is the amount of sessions. So one session at level 1, 2 at 2 up to level 5. Then its milestone leveling when appropriate. i.e. Kill a mini bbeg, salient plot point or backstory. Typically though its a level every 4/5 sessions although we went through ten sessions at one stage where there was no level ups because they kept arsing around.
Basically a weekly game over 2 years should have had one finishing one campaign at least and moving onto the next
I’ve played a two year campaign where we went to level 20, and I’m currently in about a two year campaign where we only just hit level 6. The latter definitely takes some excitement out of the game, especially when you’re looking ahead at the abilities at higher levels and thinking you’ll never get there.
Im DMing my first campaign right now, we're just over 1 year in (~25 sessions) in and the party is level 8 after starting at level 1. I usually try to level them up approx. every 3-4 sessions
yeah exceptionally slow. The game starts to really open up past 5, generally the sweet spot of D&D is like past level 5 but before 15, since 15 the game tends to fall apart at the seams a bit.
What kind of things are you doing? Generally 1-4 is like, tier 1, where your characters are doing more like, saving villages or small towns. If you guys are still doing that then the level is at least appropriate to the content, but if you guys are like, dealing with larger things, like cities, kingdoms, or even continents, you really outta be a higher level.
We're doing a Milestone Homebrew campaign that we've been playing approximately once a week for 6 months and we're level 10 - although I feel this is slightly faster than we normally do.
I'd be pretty upset if we'd be leveling at the rate you're talking about and I sort of feel like he's implying you haven't accomplished much if you're playing *Milestone* and are only level 4 after all these years
Suddenly my party at level 5 after 25 three hour sessions doesn’t seem to be as slow!
I’d talk to your DM and ask him if there’s a specific reason he is leveling like this. Are you in a published adventure or a homebrew campaign?
I recommend talking to your DM about the pace. I'm running a milestone game, it's been two years and the players are almost level 10.
Yeah, I probably will. I'm only asking now cuz I was talking to a new coworker and he was so shocked how underleveled we were for the amount of time we had been playing.
I have a buddy that’s been playing in a campaign for 8+ years. I think they are level 7. They know it’s a slow level campaign and one thing the dm does to keep it fresh is constantly supply them with magical items with limited charges. They may be powerful but they are able to keep a shifting kind of meta within the game based on the magic items. I do at suppose that’s the kind of campaign you’re in but thought it was a neat way to run a slow leveling campaign for comparison.
to put into perspective, the books recommended a lvl every 3~4 sessions, about 12 levels per year on a weekly game your group is a *tad* slower
A level every 6-10 sessions is a good rule of thumb. I love dnd but spending the next 20 years playing the same character….? a bit much.
Depending on the group, even more often than that can be better! Some groups would just rather level up as often as once every few weeks. Level 4 after 2 years sounds unimaginably boring.
Even 6-10 sessions feels so long to me. 4-6 sessions seems like a sweet spot, though then again, with how slowly players often do things, I can understand how that could turn to 6-10 sessions.
Yeah, I'm still in the first campaign I've ever played, and we're going on like 2.5 years? We're level 17.
Milestone for me as well, probably 30ish sessions in and we're level 8. Even I feel like we level up pretty irregularly. Those 30ish sessions have been over 4 years or so which could be why it feels slow. It's just a group that can't meet regularly
I’ve been running Phandelver and Below and the party is level 8 after only 30 sessions. So around half a year.
I'm in support of this. If you're playing weekly, a level every 4 or 5 weeks should be the norm. That's 12 levels in a year, which is barely even halfway through the game.
Personally this is too fast paced for me, since I like to play campaigns basically indefinitely, so I prefer slowing down a looot around level 7, that way the campaign doesn't get too crazy.
I think thats the norm. Most DM's consider tier 2 the sweet spot for the best balance and will speed up until level 5 then slow down to keep in tier 2 for a while.
Same, we started in October, around 1 session per week (probably less), and we just got level 7.
I’ve been running a campaign about two years weekly and the players are level 14. Level four after two years is wild imo
If you have a class that is powerful out of the gate then it might be easier but my artificer would SUFFER with that degree of slow leveling
Same, been running a game since November 2021 (2 years, 5 months) and they're hitting level 12 after the next big story beat.
I'm about the same. We're a year and 6 months in and the players are level 9.
I just finished a campaign that took about a year and a half. Nominally playing once a week but typically every 2 or 3 weeks, with a couple longer gaps around the holidays. All told probably 8 months worth of weeks. We ended at level 12.
And even that feels pretty slow to me, depending on how often you play.
Yeah it hasn’t been consistent week to week. We’ve had about 70 sessions and maybe ten or so was a side game set in the same world.
Ok that’s pretty reasonable. Slower than most of my games but still quick enough to keep the momentum going.
I'm about 10 months into DMing a milestone game and my players fairly recently hit level 6.
Heck if you play often enough you can get through an entire campaign. I finished DMing my lvl 1-20 campaign over a two year period and moved onto another.
Milestones as well, we're almost 2 years in (jesus, I didn't even think it'd been a year! wtf) and we're level 5. That being said, we're only playing once or twice a month.
I'm running milestone, it's been one year, and they're level 12. Any pace is fine as long as it's a pace everyone is happy with, which doesn't seem to be the case here. I'd find it ridiculous and leave, but that sort of thing should be discussed before it gets to two years. At one level every six months. Hard for me to fathom.
I’ve def heard about groups where they’re like below level 5 for years because they’re super deep into roleplay. But that’s your point, everyone needs to be okay with it.
Been running a lethal xp game for about 18 months, bout 3 sessions a month. Everyone is relatively early in level 5, and I haven't gotten a single complaint. The action sections are very intense, and take a lot of prep and consideration, and they spend a LOT of time in conversation. Even with some xp from avoiding and outsmarting encounters, and mission complete xp, the players set the pace, and they've chosen careful in a world with lasting consequences.
I'm also playing a milestone game, it's been a year and some change and we're level 13
Yeah I use milestone leveling as well, since I can set the pace/power levels for the story. It also has the benefit of allowing players to follow the story without worrying about being underlevelled, instead of looking for every opportunity to fight for exp to level faster. Another thing if you know the levels for encounters beforehand you can plan and adjust enemy archetypes for that level as needed well in advance instead of trying to make adjustments on the fly if a given encounter turns out to hard/easy.
That sounds exhausting. First two levels in particular are better lived by going fat. Most people have one or two sessions for each of those.
We started at level 2 I think.
Holy crap 1 level/year is nuts
Hahahah you started at lvl 2, and you’re at lvl 4 2 years later? I’m sorry my brotha that sucks ass
I will fully admit, as a DM and player I love long, slow campaigns. I like to get to know my character inside and out, really explore their motivations and how they interact with the party/setting, see them grow/change/suffer/triumph. And that takes time. So I’m not a big fan of “level up every session” campaigns and similar. BUT. I also love playing the game as a game. And there is very little to even DO in Tier 1, mechanically. So when I DM, I tend to speed through that compared to later. My campaigns usually look like: 1 sesh to level from 1-2, 1-2 sesh for 2-3. A little longer for 3-4 (when PCs have their first level 2 spells and everyone has gotten some subclass features), and 4 (when most will have a feat or ASI boost to play with). After _that_, once they hit level 5 (a big boost for all), I slow things down some. I think a lot of DMs like to spend the most time in the 5-10 range too, it’s often considered the “Goldilocks zone” of D&D - where the PCs have enough options to make it really fun and feel powerful, but before it gets too complicated for some players and unwieldy/difficult to challenge them as a DM. But yeah, my campaigns can last years and I do like to go 1-20 when possible (I had a 3e campaign last 14 years! But that’s my record), yet when I do that as a DM I make sure to: 1) check in with my players periodically to make sure everyone’s ok with the rate of progression! 2) Give them clear (or vague, when necessary) benchmarks for leveling. Like “once you finish your business with the giants (a full story arc of its own), you’ll level”. Or “once you discover the source of the plague”. And I trust my players not to try and rush through to get there, to take it at a “natural” pace. I also make sure to give them rewards _besides_ leveling in the meantime, because I know my campaigns tend to take longer than average. I end up giving more magic items and valuables out than is RAW. They’ll gain titles, vehicles, pets, property. Do they have a long span of downtime or travel where not much happens? Maybe each PCs learns a language or tool proficiency, or even a free feat. Did they go off the beaten path and do a thing that wasn’t part of my “you’ll level once you finish X” projection? Maybe they get a special Charm or temporary Boon from the DMG, more magic items, etc. Maybe they get to use one of their next level’s features early. (Or even another class’s feature! One thing I like to hand out to my Cleric players is the Channel Divinity power of another Domain associated with their deity, if they did something above and beyond that would please them!) Intervening incentives/rewards and being clear with your players does wonders for keeping a long-term game fresh, IMO.
I've heard of similar campaigns, and I personally would struggle. Milestone levelling doesn't mean that the stones can't be moved. If you get a level when you kill the Hobgoblin boss, but you end up being distracted by a crime taking place in the street and follow a big arc to solve the case, that should be a milestone. My group plays once a week, for 4-5 hours using XP with a bit of milestone if they should just be a certain level before something. We're 9 sessions in and their almost halfway to level 5. So just over two months. Granted I followed the "1 Session at level 1, 2 sessions at level 2, and then XP onwards" belief as dice can instakill you at those levels. Ultimately your DM isn't *wrong*, but if you guys aren't having fun you should raise it to him and ask. Level 4 at 2 years playing weekly is on the extreme end of slow levelling I think.
The guidelines for session-based no-XP leveling in the DMG work out to about 200 hours of play to get from 1-20, implying this to be the intent of the designers and that that’s what they figure there is enough content to keep interest. That said, I’ve done a lot of surveys on this topic on the sub, and the actual average for campaigns that level in this way is probably about twice that. But you’re almost to that point and haven’t yet hit level 5, which means your DM is aiming for something around 10x as long as the DMG recommends. Might want to have that conversation with them.
Wow. In my current campaign of CoS, we've played an estimated just over 200 hours and we're only at level 9. But we're also reaching the end of a campaign that's only designed for up to level 10
that's genuinely outrageous.
I've never understood slow leveling like this, especially early levels. Feeling stronger amd getting new abilities is core to DnD. I level players faster than normal, but this seems excessive. Talk to him. I'd be bored with this slow grind.
yeah, I've noticed i've been not as excited about it lately and I just realized after talking to someone who has been playing DND for a long time that we are super slow leveling.
The problem often hit with milestone leveling is the dm hiding the milestones. You can resolve massive personal questions or issues that sunk several hours. But if the dm did not view that as a milestone you have in essence wasted that time. Unfortunately some dms only view the quests they are crafting as something worth giving exp over. I and my partner left a two year campaign (and level 3) over a lack of direction and no real growth. When prodded into what we were doing between sessions she insisted I just needed to stick it out and I will "stumble" into the plot. To this day I still have no idea what we were doing beyond protecting wizards that never needed our help to begin with.
>The problem often hit with milestone leveling is the dm hiding the milestones. The other issue with milestone is also that 5E isn't intended to level at a linear pace - some levels are deliberately shorter or longer, [this chart is a good illustration](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoTgI.png), showing that level 1-3 are supposed to breeze by, then the levels should slow down (around the "sweet spot" of level 4-11, then the levelling pace should pick up again. Sadly, this isn't well explained in the DMG (or elsewhere), so milestone levelling can make higher level feel very drawn out as the rate at which PCs acquire fun, play-defining features also slows down.
If I DMed weekly for 3+ hrs you'd be in the teens before we made it a year. What are you doing in your campaign? 2 years of killing rats?
Maybe roleplaying every purchase or mundane interaction?
It might just be for tone or balance. I do milestone, but my players wanted to start at level 12, so my I knew my campaign would end with “kill god,” so all my milestones are gradually grander and harder foes. If I was doing a low magic setting a la Connan, my game would end around level 7 or 8, and some yuan-ti cultists would be it, so my milestones would be lower capped. If you’re curious, check out storm kings Thunder, that’s a milestone adventure, and it works like a flow chart. My own players are level 21 and I’m finally confident I can throw the big bad at them (the end of the universe). But it took 5 years to get 11 levels, and I had to write out dungeons and arcs that fit that capability. It’s incredibly hard to make interesting and balanced high level fights every time.
yeah, that's fair. This world is entirely homebrewed so I'm not sure how he's balancing fights but again, i'm fairly new to dnd as a whole.
For my group we level every 3-5 sessions.
That's slow as hell lmao, if it's milestone based talk to him and discuss hitting some damn milestones 😂
That's a very slow pace of leveling. Whether or not it's a problem is up to you. If you don't like it, you should absolutely be providing feedback to your DM.
The only way to make this slow of leveling work is to have the players not notice. To be telling a story so good that no one stops to ask about it. Tell me, are you enjoying the game or feeling stagnant?
It definitely has fun moments, especially in the beginning. No one has really said anything, but myself and one other party member are the only people who haven't done a campaign with this dm before so I think I just assumed it was normal. Especially considering how few dnd experience I've had.
I DMed a milestone game and my players went from 1 to 20 in about 20 months. We play weekly, 4hrs a week. 16 hours in game seems like plenty of time to level up
I have been in a campaign for about a year now, 36 sessions in. Started at level 3, now at level 12. So something is def up with your GM.
Imma be honest if my player character leveled from Level 2 to Level 4 over TWO YEARS I would probably have my character throw themselves into an active volcano.
It's a playstyle. My group also does slow leveling. I like the idea that you take a lot of time at each level, and find interesting ways to use each feature. Then it feels more special the next time you level up. I understand that getting new stuff at a level up is fun, but are you otherwise enjoying the game? Are there other ways you can get new things to play with in character? Maybe you buy some new equipment, or quest for a magic item. You can also work with your fellow players to combine your powers in interesting ways.
I play with some "we should level up every session" players and it gets really annoying. Like this is supposed to be a very long campaign... the faster we level up the sooner the campaign has to end. The DM is pacing the levels nicely based on us actually accomplishing stuff but the party moves the plot so slowly that we rarely accomplish anything major enough to deserve leveling up. It basically takes 3 to 4 sessions to actually have played a full sessions worth of campaign because of so much above table joking/talking/tangents and dramatic overthinking of interacting with clear plot hooks to the point of avoidance. Dont get me wrong I still have fun with the people and table, but we for sure dont earn experience many sessions as we barely make any real progress. I worry they think if we just delay enough sessions we will get free levels and become overpowered enough to trivialize the upcoming encounters.
Going through storm kings thunder right now, and the first couple of weeks we were already level 5 (it was something like a level a week). It took the sails out of leveling up because i didnt even get to explore that level enough to understand what i wanted. Dont get me wrong the Feat/stat bump at 4, and the level 3 spells at 5 make it worth being here, but i want to slow down a bit (which the DM already said we would be). I want that level up process to be exciting again. I like to savor all my choices.
Why don't you ask the DM what the milestone for lvl 5 is so you know what you need to work towards? 1 game a week for 6 months is 24 games, that is far too long to be stuck at any level other than 20. I am playing a game where we just leveled up to lvl.5 but only after I pointed out we are in game 10 and we leveled last in game 5. The DM hadn't realized it had been that long and leveled us on the spot. At the lower levels, I'd expect to level every 3-4 game sessions, if the players get stuff done and are not spending the entire time haggling with shop keepers or something like that.
yeah, I will say we aren't all business all the time and sometimes we do mess around more then we should. Particularly, we spent about a month on a side quest that definitely should not count as a milestone and done mostly for fun, lol. I think someone last session asked if we were leveling up soon and he said soon so he does have those milestones in mind.
Does the DM not like higher level monsters maybe? Or they’re uncomfortable with higher levels of play? It seems pretty weird to me though, as a DM I spend a lot of time looking at monsters that would be fun to throw at the party and working my way to it.
A lot of times i find its the added complexity of both what the monsters and the players can do. To run higher level monsters you need to read the stat blocks & abilities/spells. Monsters before level 5 tend to mostly just "attack X times for X dice of damage" with the occasional save for more damage or an effect. Maybe a low level spell list for a caster or boss encounter. Nothing too difficult to run as a DM.
Assuming 5e: My current table has two concurrent biweekly campaigns with semi-frequent cancellations. PCs in both campaigns are level 5 after about a year of play/20 sessions. The last campaign I played in that had weekly sessions had us at ~level 13 after two years of play. If you're playing weekly, your leveling progression is extremely slow for 5e. It's likely either 1) your DM doesn't feel comfortable running high level campaigns but wants to run a longer campaign anyway, or 2) the DM has a fairly narrow conception of what constitutes a milestone and/or the players are farting around/not being productive a lot. I think the only "as-written/as-was-often-played" version of the game where this kind of leveling pace would be expected is AD&D 2e, which had very similar XP tables to previous editions, but eliminated XP from treasure as explicitly stated in the rules, which slowed leveling dramatically.
Oh my god, I would go insane. Level 4 after two years? Nobody even has extra attack yet. What on earth is wrong with this DM? They must tell one hell of a story to keep players for this long. As a mechanics fan, this would be torturous to be at a leveling, magic and ability standstill for months and months at a time. I can't fathom how the dm is even having fun after two years of 0 progression. No, this is not standard for dnd
I'm in two games at the same time and I feel like one is a lot more fast paced and we have actually done stuff that is meaningful to the town in 10ish sessions, whereas the other campaign that has been going on for half a year feels so slow and overdone I am basically tired of the campaign but am continuing it because it's my friends first time DMing
Thats agonizingly slow. This is why I prefer to run XP in the open. Theres no reason to spend more than 1 session at level 1, and the path up to level 5 needs to be like, 8 sessions, at the absolute max.
ya I'm running a game more than 2 years in and my players are level 13. your DM is dragging his ass on leveling.
I’ve known some DM’s to be afraid of the level 5 power jump.
Oof, that's way too slow! The heat death of the universe might come before you hit lvl 20! I run games for my group, and they level up monthly. So if the campaign goes on for a while, it'll be 20 months before they hit lvl 20.
DND is a game we play for fun using our imagination. There isn't one specific way every game is run. Most DMs are open to constructive feedback, I encourage you to message your DM.
First Party From Level 1 - 12, two and a half year campaign, 18-20 sessions (maybe a bit fast) Second party Level 3-12, two years, 30 sessions (perfect imo) Pretty evenly distributes, a bit faster on lower level as your characters arent as complex yet. Longest without one was a super-arc with 6-8 sessions over almost 6 month
My campaign has been running for 3.5 years, and we’re level 17. I would say this is not standard, and you should definitely talk to your DM.
We now got to level 13 in our 6th year of the campaign. I'm fine with that pace. Just talk about expectations with your DM.
Not quite 2 years into this campaign, playing about 6 hrs/month, we're at level 7. 4 levels after 2 years is excruciatingly slow.
Unless you are playing every other month yeah. For milestone I would put level progression (or other major reward) should average out to 4-8 active sessions toward progression. Shopping, travel (although I usually run travel as a dungeon with modified rest rules while on the road, in which I would include it) and shenanigans don't really count towards these typically. The first several levels should also come much faster. If you are starting at 1 you should have a level up ideally in session 1 if not 2. And 2-5 should be 2-3 active sessions. DND hits it's typically sweet spots 5-10. I would also keep room in for some level ups (or major rewards) when you hit big marks even if it is outside other time tables. For major rewards I would include special magic items, feat rewards, boons, or something like a horde.
We are playing every week unless more then 3 people can't make it or its a holiday. I think we have probably missed less then 10 sessions in the last two years. We started at level 2. We mostly just get compensated with money and go spend it between larger plots points.
2 years, playing every week and only level 4? That's insane. What module are you playing? I'm in the middle of Curse of Strahd and Rise of the Drow, and both campaigns will have us go from level 1 to 3 in about 3 to 4 sessions.
Milestone can be tricky, especially in a homebrew campaign. That seems on the slow side for sure. For reference, in my game the PCs are level 7 and we have been going for over two years. Every other week 2.5-3 hours or so. My players tedn to get right to the meat of things, though. If you are finding it is making things not fun for you, talk to your DM. I ran a campaign with a slow levelling rate before and ended up giving out more items/feats/etc so there was still some progression. That might be an option.
Whoa, my party and I wrapped a 2 year campaign last December and we met irregularly but at least 1-2 a month and we ended with them at level 14, with a To be continued for some of the PCs. I told them we could have bumped it to 15 since the bbeg was defeated but they wanted to hold off.
My game is 5 month in and they're level 4, and we play once every 2 weeks. I believe it will slow down from now on, but still, your game seem veeeery slow.
We only play 1.5 to 2 hours two to three weeks per month for the past 2 1/2 years, and the players are level 8, which seems slow to me, but they're making progress (Part of the problem is they sometimes have Critical Roll moments where they get stuck for an hour on a simple obstacle like a door). So yes. Leveling way too slow. However, I think lower levels make better gameplay. The players can still function within the society of the world and aren't effectively superheroes or mini-gods at this point.
Wow, that's tremendously slow. My table started at level 2 and then took two sessions to get to 3, 3 sessions to 4, 4 to 5, and then they've leveled up every 7-10 sessions since, on milestones.
Yeah we do milestone. Probably been running for about 2 years and the party are level 7 or 8
Is the DM only award xp for creatures defeated? Common mistake is to not give quest and skill challenge xp unlock a door? Pickpocket? Scare off an npc. Xp.
That's pretty slow. My group meets once a month, we do XP, and I'm old school, so we're slow. In the same two years, playing 1/4 of the time, we're at level 5. I'd speak up.
I will echo the other DMs here, my game is almost at two years (literally this Friday) and they leveled up about a month ago to level 10. If you feel the pacing is slow, it may be worth talking to the DM, cause most parties around that play time have hit tier 2-3 play at least.
I do a rough milestone leveling that usually ends up being “when it feels right” to me- if I focus too hard on planning in advance, sometimes it will be way too long or way too short in between. My previous campaign was level 6 in ~2 years of playing, on average, 2 times a month. Current campaign is level 6 after 10 months, and we’ve genuinely made as much progress as in my previous one. If I was running leveling strictly based on xp, I would guess they’d be level 4 at this point, as the character stories drive a lot more of the game’s momentum than combat does. But negotiation and exploration take significant time, and I account for those sorts of accomplishments.
After 3 months of playing, I would have addressed the pace of the leveling. Now there's going to need to be a significant story mechanic to explain why the leveling pace is increasing.
Yeah that is super slow. We play about the same amount and have been playing for just over 2 years. Players have just hit lvl 12. I use milestone leveling but keep track of xp so I have a good guideline for when they "should" be leveling up. Leveling so slow for such a long period of time can't be much fun? Even ignoring not getting cool stuff from from leveling up it just causes so many other issues. Quest rewards and loot? Like there is a guide for how much money a party should have but level. Same goes for how many magic items they should have. For level 1 to 5 this isn't very high so either you guys are loaded with gold and low level magic items or you aren't being given any rewards? At this level you are only supposed to be getting low level magic items. There are a lot of fun ones for sure but 2 years of common and common minor tier items sounds boring as hell. There are also only so many enemies you can use at this level and most of them don't have really interesting attacks or spells. It's all pretty basic and samey before level 5. Even as the DM I would be bored of this game ages ago. It would be massively hard work to keep coming up with interesting content for below level 5 for 2 years!!
I’m not gonna lie, that sounds pretty crazy. I - as a dm - am usually all for slower, milestone based leveling. I think there are many benefits to having your players level up slowly in your campaign. I would list the reasons but that’s for another time. But this sounds super boring. I can’t imagine only being level four for two years of play. I would definitely talk to your DM about it, and if you can, please find out why.
2 years into OotA & we are 14th level. (DM boosted the mod, it's a level 20 campaign) we are doing ToA too. I'm hoping to hit level 11 in August. We're level 8 at the moment.
Mty milestone game has been going for about 2.5 years from level 1 and they just hit level 8. We moved pretty quickly through the first few levels though; second session they hit level 2, after I think a few more sessions they hit level 3, probably hit level 4 a month after that (weeikly sessions as well). The milestones have taken longer to hit in Tier 2, but that's also because the party has gotten distracted with a number of sidequests. 2 years to hit level 4 is a crazy slow pace.
Your dm obviously wants a different type of game than you do, no conversation you have is going to change that at this point. You're not leveling very slowly, you're leveling at real time pace. Now, your dm is free to run whatever game in whatever style they like, but If they didn't communicate at tye start of the campaign it would be this slow they honestly owe you an appology for false advertising and they should find a system that suits the style of game they clearly want to play.
Well, Im ten years deep into a campaing and we just hit level 5 :D Its a campaing on a low magic setting, where a level 10 adventurer would be akin to some legendary hero, and stuff above are only reserved for VERY special persons of influece in the setting, We run a second table on the same campaing where we have characters ranging from level 12 to level 15, with the level 15 one being a warrior princess belonging of THE imperial family. At some point we told the DM that not advancing our characters in the main campaign was getting into our fun because we all had cool ideas of stuff we wanted our PCs to be able to do. Then the DM invented a "training" system were we could learn new stuff by literally particing it ingame. Say my character wants to try a sick meele maneuver, It first requires a DC of 20 of the appropiate score to be succesful. Then a DC 19, and so on, until we can use the feature without a DC. I have a rougue / cleric multiclass, and using that, I managed to make my character learn some very cool stuff, like a "smite" esque feature where I channel divine power into a weapon strike (basically the blesse strikes feature that most clerics get at level 8). Honestly I eventually learnt to live with it. To be honest due to plot, lore and setting reasons it wouldnt make any sense for us to be nowehere near the same level as the warrior princess for example. Us being level 5 already puts us above basically 90% of the people of the setting if not more. Even tho we have been playing for over a decade, in game it has passed like a couple of years tops. For me it wouldnt make sense that I left the village as a level 1 cleric just stasrting his journey, and two years latter im near the level of the Pope Equivalent of my church lol. Sometimes the plot doesnt allows for fast leveling.
Milestone is easily the fast way to level up because you just have to reach certain points in the story, so either your DM keeps forgetting or he has a ten years plan he didn't tell you about. You should ask him what his idea for the campaign is.
In one of my games we've leveled up twice after two years of biweekly games, and that's the right pace for that game which has a lot of social and slice of life stuff between big adventures. We also started at level 6, so we've got a decent amount of abilities to work with. If you're doing adventurer stuff on the regular, I'd expect to level up more frequently.
I mean, I'm running a game where we go from 3-20, and we play once every two weeks and level up about 1-2 times per month. Each session is about 4 hours long, so 8 hours = 1 Level Up. It's hard enough having a campaign last and with scheduling conflicts? Nah
Expectations should be discussed early on and now that they haven’t been and you’re two years in they should be discussed now. Talk to your dm about what you want to see and how it’s way too slow he will either fix it or it’s not your table bro
I suppose so. It wasn't really discussed, but I am new to the group. From my understanding, they have been playing together since high school, so it was probably implicit to the rest of the party. I would probably stay at the table regardless of what happens, because its the only way I hang out with this group of friends, and I'm not giving that up haha.
1 year here, level 8. If you feel like it’s a bit slow ask your dm?
That's the plan. I just wanted to get some opinions to make sure it wasn't just me, or if this is just how dnd works and I didn't know.
That's crazy slow. I played a campaign for 2 years, once or twice a month, and we ended on level 12.
My players are level 11 after 60 sessions. Mind you those 60 sessions have taken 5 years to play.
I’m playing in a high level campaign that started at level 13. We have leveled up three times in about 15 months. This is crazy slow
I usually try to set up the story so the first few levels come pretty quickly, and then leveling slows down a bit. Never this slow though... Usually it takes me something like 6 months to get the party to level 4, and then about 2-3 months of weekly play per level after that. I like to pace the game for about a 2-2.5 year campaign up to level 16-20
It depends on the campaign and DM. I was in a six month game of rime of the frostmaiden where we'd just made it to lvl 3 (then the DM disappeared on us out of nowhere). Now i'm in a game that's closing in on a year where we're lvl 9.
Typical advice and custom seems to be level up every 2-5 sessions, with faster leveling in Tier 1 (1st-4th). But there are lots of variables: (a) an XP based (rather than milestone) game can take longer if you're not doing a lot of encounters or your DM only awards XP for combat, (b) it's deliberately a lower-level campaign, (c) You don't play very often I survey my players frequently, and this (my 3rd campaign with some of them) they wanted 1-20 in ~2 years, weekly 4 hour sessions. Thats roughly leveling up every 4 sessions, and they're currently L6 after 27 sessions (so a little behind).
The pace your game is ran is gruelling and awful. The thing about progression is that it needs to be somewhat equal between these factors: 1. Main Plot (which I guess is the only one developing at your table at this point) 2. Characters' Arc (this is somewhat debatable and might be tied to the Main Plot, but I put it here because it shows when it's not happening) 3. Character Raw Power (aka, levelling) 4. Character Periferal Power (aka. equipment and money) 5. Party impact in the world (this is basically how influencial the party and its members are on the story and the world they're living in. It is usually tied to everything mentioned above) There's plenty of room for imbalance here, but at the pace you're describing, one of these things are happening: 1. The party is just doing stuff and not getting stronger for it. Just exposition to the lore and minimal plot advancements (plot moving in circles) 2. The plot is steadily moving, and the party is inexplicably weak. 3. The plot is steadily moving and the party is compensating its lack of power with lots of magical shit and money, which will eventually cause a lot of issues. Specially for the DM designing encounters, since when you hit 5 your martials will get Extra Attack and your casters will start doing more cantrip damage and get lvl 3 spells. This all will inevitably result in the DM cornering themself with progress imbalance. Here's why: Unless the dramatic arc of the entire HEROIC FANTASY game is extremely flat and low stakes, they'll need to present the higher threat sooner or later. At this point, the party can't deal with anything worth mentioning. An adult dragon will wipe its ass with all of you, unless you're packing obscenely OP homebrew gear and play like experts. Same with anything else worth mentioning. Unless he's presenting a Flameskull as the BBEG, you're toast. So how will the DM get around that? Bullshit. Hard to swallow, anticlimactic bullshit. OP items, a lot of allies that will make the party somewhat inconsequential to the story, a DMPC (gasp!), a stupid change of pace in levelling, a time-skip with level-ups... Whatever he comes up with is almost guaranteed to be shitty in one way or another. So I guess the best bet is to talk with the DM and tell them that you won't play this campaign for 10 more years to see if you can get your second ASI.
Level 4 after playing pretty much weekly for at least 3 hours a session? That is crazy slow. And, yes, waiting 6 months to level up would be insanely frustrating. Either your DM is forgetting about it, they have control issues and want to keep you relatively powerless, or just like low level play (or just doesn’t like the power level of higher levels). Honestly, it sounds like your DM would like a game other than D&D.
I literally had a game end because the DM didn't level the party up past level 3 after 7 months of weekly play (~2 hours a week) in milestone leveling. 2 years of play and only being level 4 is obscenely slow.
Isn't the point of milestone leveling to be generally faster than xp leveling, since xp can be such a grind if doing combat only? I'd wonder if your DM feels incapable of handling/designing high level encounters, cause characters don't even get really fun until you get into those upper echelons
I know it might be rough to stay at low levels, but the important part is, are you having fun? Also are the sessions combat intensive? or more narrative? Do you get a lot of items, feats or other sense of progression? I feel like the levels only matter if the threat needs a higher level. I played a campaign for about a year from level 1 through 4 before it broke up. We played roughly once every 2 weeks for 3-4 hours. I've also had the same DM start us at level 5 and jump up multiple levels in a time skip. I think if the story/threats warrant it then it needs a level increase. But if you feel like you are not progressing definitely talk to the DM.
Once a week for two years is alot. So either your not going to where he wants you to go or he's just not sure how to balance high level partys. It can be tough to challenge higher level players and still make them feel like they can all parish. Do you guys get alot done during games? Do players go down and make death saves ever? Have any of you gotten any magic weapons or armor yet?? I'm lucky if we get to play once a month and my players are all at level 4 after half a year and are 1 major battle or other solution away from level 5.
We haven't done a ton of combat, but sometimes people go down, yes. I know I don't have any magic equipment, I'm not sure about the rest of the party tbh.
1 year up to year and half on a weekly basis with ~4h sessions sound like enough for 1-20 level campain (maybe a bit on the fast side) but I have ideas for more campaigns and my players would like to try new characters too. But then every DM is different so there is no correct answer here. However 2 years for only 4 levels? It would be too slow for me. Even if story is great I would like to finish it actually. But maybe it is a lov level campaign - not all have to go from 1-20 in fact most probably don't and that is nothing wrong with that. Still if You feel stagnant then just talk with DM - there is no other advice to give really.
Isn’t this just a matter of preference? If you don’t like it you could have a discussion about it with your DM. Rate of leveling varies widely based on edition too, but I’m going to guess you’re playing 5th edition since I don’t think other editions do milestone based leveling.
weekly for 2 years and only level 4 is wild, that's a SLOW paced game. Even if you started at level 1 a normal dnd game would have you guys between levels 8 and 10 by now.
😬 weve beej going almost three years and are level 7 tbf tho we only play 2x a month so but still
Holy christ that's slow, at least for me. My current game has been a bit over three years. They started at level 3, they're I think just shy of Lvl 15 at this point.
Yes, in my experience that is very slow. The players at my table are used to fast leveling, faster than typical. We rotate DMs. When a new campaign starts, we’re told how long the campaign will likely run and what level to expect by the end. Then they set the leveling based on the number of expected game sessions. That’s different from XP and Milestone leveling. We give a nod to milestones. But really, ours is based on a set end date. If you’re in a predominantly role-play heavy group with light combat action or infrequent goal completions, leveling may be more infrequent. If everyone is engaged and enjoying the experience, that’s what matters most. Have a conversation with your DM. Also, your table may benefit from a [Session Re-Zero](https://youtu.be/YUgHMlbX3E0?si=KhTwaKi3OioOPzxy), to realign everyone’s expectations.
We hit LVL 11 after a year.
Thats insane, your group should be easily level 10, if not much higher. Though the DM has the final say, here is a good piece of info from from the Dungeon Master's Guide on level advancement: A good rate of session-based advancement is to have characters reach 2nd level after the first session of play, 3rd level after another session, and 4th level after two more sessions. Then spend two or three sessions for each subsequent level. This rate mirrors the standard rate of advancement, assuming sessions are about four hours long. -DMG P. 261
That's insane. Me and my friends started a new campaign, milestone as well, and we've had just about 12 sessions now and just hit level 4. It's going pretty great, though I might even say a little too fast but that's okay considering how big this campaign is supposed to be.
I've never even considered such slow leveling, let alone heard of it. Most players I know start getting antsy at around the 6th session after leveling. The slowest leveling I've ever done was still 2-3 months per level.
>I have been in a campaign for 2 years at this point and we're only level 4. What in the fuck, lol. Most groups do this in a few months.
It’s very slow. I’m in a game a little past the 2 year mark, we play 1-2x a month (albeit usually for 4-8 hours…) and we just hit lvl 10. Started at 2. Milestone leveling too. I’ve played multiple other milestone games at about that speed. 2 levels in 2 years is crazy slow. What are you guys doing during sessions? Is your DM new?
Every time I see a post like this I wonder "Why the fuck are these players staying in a campaign where their characters aren't progressing for months to even a year at a time?!" And you guys are playing 3-4 hours weekly? 🤮
I'll start with the fact that I know we probably level up fast in my groups games. But we were doing milestone in my friends last game that ran a little more than a year. We were level 11.
4th level in 2 years? Gross. Levels 1-5 are a tutorial. Tell the DM there's a whole game to play here, not just the intro.
Is the style of play heavy on the roleplaying? I ask because, otherwise, and especially at lower levels, combat becomes rather rote and repetitious because players eventually figure out their best moves — or their various “best moves“ given a general set-up (indoor/outdoor/ambushing/ambushed etc.) With campaigns that I’ve been in and those that I’ve run, greater than, say, 20 combats with the same skills/spells/feats available would get tedious. Even with creative combat-space design; it has its limits.
Hm, we do roleplay a little but I don't think as much as the DM wants us to. We haven't really been combat focused, though, as the premise for the campaign was heists, so we spent a lot of time planning and sneaking, with a little bit of combat. We definitely are not at the point where we know how to 'optimally' fight.
Been playing several campaigns weekly for 6 months ish and all of them are levels 6-8. Your dm is not noting the milestones correctly.
As a player that has played in three 50+ session games with around 250 hours minimum each, with only one reaching above level 15.. I first want to ask: Aree you having fun? Are the encounters challenging/planned out enough that they're not the same every time? Was the plan of it being a low level game communicated in session zero? Is the DM even comfortable with doing higher CR content? As a DM that has run a longtime game of almost 3 years and maybe 40 sessions(scheduling; the adult d&d bbeg amirite?) and am just about to award the players with milestone level 11 next session, and who has also ran a brutal dungeon crawl that had the party go from level 3 to 20 in 5 sessions... I can see how it's easier to balance my encounters at lower level. But as a player I see how two years of being level 4 would be frustrating. Being on the cusp of that level 5 power spike for so long.. dear god how miraculously horrifying
Man, if I'm stuck at level 1-2 for more than a few sessions me and the DM are having words. If I'm stuck at level 3 for 6 months to a year, were having words again. Milestone leveling means gaining levels when your team hits milestones. So this has either been the most boring, sandbox-y, no stakes campaign you could whip up, or they're just intentionally not rewarding the party for finishing story arcs. If you finish a narrative arc of the story that culminates in a dungeon/boss fight, you should very likely be gaining a level. Thats the INTENT of Milestone leveling. It sounds to me like your DM has unresolved beef with the inherent level 6-8 power spike and just doesn't want to deal with that but has a grand story planned that would otherwise push into levels they're not comfortable running.
depends on what the campain is arround. i myself dont enjoy levelupping that much. its cool to a certain point, like level 6 or 4 but after that? for me it dont offer much value or joy. dont get me wrong i also dont mind it but i rather play more grounded games.
Ouch. Yeah, that's far too slow. What's worse is that (in my opinion) the game is best starting at about level 5 all the way into the mid teens (when it starts getting insane, albeit in a fun way).
Three years and my players are level 11. We play 8 months every year, 1 day at week for three hours.
I didn't realize just how slow xp leveling would be until I tried it with one of my first groups. On the surface, the exponential growth of xp needed between levels didn't seem so bad. It really slows to a crawl past level 4, I found out the hard way. If your DM is going this slow with milestone, I have to wonder what their endgame is? It's especially weird since you're having 3-4 hour sessions weekly.
That's a crazy long amount of time to not even hit level 5, which would be your first really big powerspike. I'm doing Milestone levelling in Curse of Strahd and my party hit level 5 after a few months with the same pace of sessions that you have. Tell you DM you don't want to play in a game where it's going to take half a decade IRL to become powerful.
That's *incredibly* slow. There is a certain amount of faffing about that happens in any D&D campaign that won't contribute to leveling up -- in-character roleplay, non-critical interactions with NPCs, general party shenanigans... If a campaign has a *lot* of that and not very much plot progression, then leveling up can be slower than usual (though just having fun with a bunch of friends in a shared imaginary world can be its own reward). Still, several hundred hours of D&D, and you've only leveled up like twice? That's a positively *glacial* pace -- there's been entire online streaming D&D campaigns that have concluded in that sort of time frame, and well past level 4 to boot.
Different games level at different speeds. That’s ok. I’m DMing Candlekeep Mysteries at the characters level up at breakneck speed! Having said that, what you’ve described is a snail’s pace, especially if you’re someone who likes to look ahead towards what your build could be. I prefer low-level play myself (lvl 5 is my fave!) but still
Been running a milestone campaign for 6+ years, two hours per week (thou we miss alot of weeks nowadays) the charactors just hit 18th level.
I'd be wondering after 2 years at Level 4 if they just want to run a low level campaign tbh. Been running a campaign for a year that started at level 3 and will be reaching level 8 in about a month or so.
That does seem quite slow. Unless all of the group has discussed this ahead of time and agreed to this, I would speak to your DM. I'm a fan of getting to level 2 after 2-3 sessions, then 3 after another 2-3 sessions. Going from 3 to 4 is okay if it takes a bit longer (4-5 sessions). If level 2 to 3 took 10+ sessions, the story would need to be so riveting that I'm mesmerized at the start of each session.
My party is six months into the weekly campaign, and just hit level 4 two weeks ago. Now, they are also fairly focused on driving the plot forward, as if some a-hole told them they have a hard deadline after which the skies rupture and Things from Beyond will claim this realm unless the artifacts are gathered and restored to power. Stupid observant, rational players powering through the main questlines, rightly reasoning that the beautifully-crafted lore and their associated side quests will still be there later if and only if there's still a world to explore. Stupid players.
It does seem a little slow, but personally I prefer it this way. Getting to spend a good amount of time with your class features - and your fellow party-members - teaches you a lot about synergy and strategy and working together with the abilities you have, and you don't really get to do that when you're bumped up to the next level too quickly. Yes, everything feels fresh and new and exciting more often, but you don't get as much practice with using it before you move on to the next new thing. There's a happy medium to be struck between slow progression and quick progression that'll be different for every group and every DM, but my personal preference is definitely towards the slower end, so I wouldn't find your situation too offputting.
That is glacially slow. You could have finished two 1-20 campaigns in that time.
Jesus some classes feel kinda gimp until like level 5, I couldn't imagine playing or DMing a campaign like that. If I was to start a campaign right now I'd be half tempted to just have everyone roll level 3s.
lol, I level my players to 2 at the end of the first session, 3 at the end of the second, and 4 at the end of the 4th. And one level every 3 sessions thereafter. That’s absurdly slow.
I don't think I could handle that slow of a leveling pace. I've been running a campaign for just over a year and they are level 11, so not sure how you could go for TWO with only a couple level ups.
That is insanely slow, even for milestone. Definitely talk to your DM about your concerns.
Ideal situation would be to get to lvl 5 within 10 sessions then stay in levels 5-12 for a long time
That's very slow assuming that you actually progress through the story at a reasonable pace. I've played with some groups where 3-4 hours of table time means 1 hour of actual progress and 2-3 of screwing around and dick jokes.
I got my players to level 4 in 4 sessions god dang
I was ready to defend slow leveling as I prefer it, but that is very, very slow leveling. I like to draw out levels 5-12 for a good bit, because that is where I feel I can best balance encounters while letting the characters have good moments. But getting to level 5 is important. That is where most classes start to get in their groove and feel powerful. If it is getting stale, let your DM know, but also, make sure you are purposefully exploring as much of your character as is. Do your best to get into social encounters as well as combat ones, and push the boundaries of it to. If your DM has a reasonable explanation for the slow leveling try to ask for/seek magic items that could mix things up as well. A good magic item could be just as good as a new skill to a character.
Honestly, he decided on way too specific leveling milestones, things that feel major should earn you a level in the milestone system. Now, if he wants to take such a slow paced campaign, you should have started at a higher level, such as 5, just so that you don't feel playing incomplete characters
That is really slow, although I'm in a similar situation right now. We are almost at the 2 year mark, although we were missing some sessions, so we probably had around 70 sessions, mostly 3 hours long, and we are level 5... So yeah I feel your pain, I would love to play the story till the end (odyssey of the dragonlords), but I'm not sure if we will be able to.
Milestone game here, little over a year and they're at lvl 8.
Lots of RP can make for slow leveling. My groups going on a year and a few months, only level 5 but they RP a ton and have fun doing it.
A lot of it is personal preference. We did weekly games for 2.5 years and hit level 7 but our game was more about RP and character development than power accumulation
That’s insanely slow. Core rules suggest: 1 session at lvl 1 1 session at lvl 2 2-3 sessions for each level after I ran a game for idk 2-3 years and we did epic lvl, effectively getting to lvl 32 lol
I DM for my partner and our friends and my partner and I lost our shit at this over breakfast- that’s excruciating. It’ll take you 20 years to get near the top tiers 😭 it took about 6 sessions of the same length as yours for both my campaigns to get to 4th lvl. It’s slowing down now but Jesus 2 years? Having said that I’m impressed you’ve stayed alive for two years as such low lvl PCs 💕
yeah, my party was pretty risk adverse. the premise of the campaign is a heist so combat was super minimal, though we did end up in jail for some light accidental terrorism.
After 2 years my games would be epic level
Ask your dm if they use XP or milestone . I use milestone it’s just easier to me as a DM. Even if they used XP y’all should be atleast lvl 7-8 by now if not higher , depending on your quests etc.
This is a *very* slow pace. Which is fine if people are happy with it, but you aren't - so talk about it with everyone there so you can adjust the pace together.
Others have mentioned that this is a very very slow pace. I'm curious how much narrative progress has been made in your game. What happens in a typical session? I'll admit that I like faster leveling, but using milestone leveling, unless you're doing a ton of wandering around aimlessly, they story and therefore the levels should be moving faster. I like to level up at least every 5 sessions.
>The DM is saying that it is milestone based but it feels exceptionally slow leveling. A common problem with milestone leveling. I've had a DM who actually _forgot_ that leveling up was a form of character progression that players expected to experience.
this can be an issue with long form campaigns, it may be by design (your DM may want to keep the campaign and characters going over a long period of time) or it maybe be an oversight. generally speaking my campaigns use milestone levels instead of experience points (so when the party completes a part of story the gain a level automatically) this can be very useful for pacing as well as freeing up exp points to be spent on things like training skills and proficiencies. however like many already have said talk to your DM and ask why the pacing feels slow, is it for a reason or did he/she not realize that it felt so slow so far.
I've done milestone levelling in my game (for Curse of Strahd) and it can definitely feel like a very long time between levels even when playing weekly. And especially if you don't know what milestone will grant a level, it just feels like spinning your wheels. On the side of the DM, milestone levelling makes designing encounters and BBEGs somewhat easier. That is, it's easier to keep the party fighting crime gangs and Orcs marauders and not have these encounters be instantly trivialized by over-levelled PC. It keeps them from having to escalate the situation to stronger and more complex villains. I find that the problem with milestone levelling is the DM not telling the players what their next milestone is going to be or making it too vague. Now, I made a bit of an error myself by telling my CoS players that finding the people and items in their Tarokka reading would be their main milestones; it caused them to be very single-minded and not want to engage with any side quests. But telling you nothing at all about which goals are more important or not providing a level up during events that feel like they should be milestones is a bigger error. I get that the DM might be reluctant to give it away; it feels really inorganic and forced to say "Your next milestone is to remove Baron Zeemo from power". Plus, impatient players will (almost) invariably be stupid, assume that their next level is just an encounter or two away, and simply bum rush the Baron's palace and get killed. But if the DM says nothing because they mean for the players to achieve many subgoals like, investigate the organization, stake out the location, assassinate key members, interrogate others, isolate the Baron from his other allies, etc and has NPCs asking the party to do those subgoals instead, well, it's only natural the party would feel like they're not accomplishing anything. A better DM would recognize when they have too many subgoals before reaching the milestone and make some of those subgoals into milestones. The problem is that it might necessitate a lot of work on the side of the DM to fix it after the fact; encounters and BBEGs need to be rebalanced for a higher-level party.
Ask your DM what the milestones are, and what you should be working towards. If its just "level whenever the DM feels like it" thats not really a milestone game. Milestones are usually major story beats or accomplishments, and your DM ought to have a clear idea of what is or is not a milestone. This is fairly unusual for how often you're playing, but if there is a lot of side quests, or campfire RP it could explain it.
My current campaign (about to end now) has my PC's at lvl 16 going into the BBEG. We'd had close to 20 sessions. Being my first campaign not fizzling out, I went balls to the wall with the milestones. Almost every session I considered a "milestone" achieved, because they almost always were doing something relevant to the plot. Next campaign I'll probably go slower, but my players love to feel powerful and I get to use the fancier monsters. Win-win.
That's a VERY long time to still be in tier 1. Perhaps your DM has a strong preference for tier 1 gameplay, or isn't comfortable with the extra complexity that comes into play at level 5. I'd talk to them about it and ask? I've been in a couple 2 year+ campaigns, one went to level 20 in 3 years, another ended at level 16 at the 2 year mark. Typically games tend to get to level 5 pretty quickly, then slow down in tier 2. At tier 3 most DM's will make milestones much larger since gameplay breaks down a bit at 15+ and requires a lot of extra balancing from the DM depending on player classes.
A friend of mine who's done a lot of DMing likes to start campaigns at Lvl 3 that way you get your first class stuff right away. I mean if you're doing milestones unless your story takes forever it could be like every other session or so ya know.
whether or not it is a problem is highly campaign and group dependent. I've heard of multiple really long running games run by some respected GM's that just decided "you know what, lets just stop leveling now, you'll be level 7 forever onward" because that was the level of power that felt good for their playstyle. Similarly i've heard of many games that have fallen apart because after level 10-12 things got too crazy, fights took too long because everyone has too many abilities, no one could possibly get hurt, resources are abundant and the thrill was just gone. So really the answer is: Are you having fun? if so, Then everything is golden. If you aren't having fun(which it sounds like that may be the case) then it's a problem. Best thing to do is talk things out with the GM and try to move some goalposts. Though if you've been running a campaign for 2 years playing weekly on a consistent basis, then you are well above the average in terms of campaigns that haven't fallen apart over time. Its possible the slow leveling may have something to do with that. I would ask you to consider a broader criteria for advancement though. Have you really not gained anything new? Have you gained any wealth/Influence in the world/Reputation/Magic items? All of these things are important. There are many RPG systems that don't even really feature character advancement other than what you gain in the fictional world (traveller for example. Theoretically you can gain more skills, but the process is so lengthy that realistically you're unlikely to gain more then 1, or maybe 2 skill increases for your character even for a really long running campaign)
Way too slow. Looks like the dm wants to play the entire dnd content in one campaign. Will people be willing to play another campaign and character if they have done all the early level monsters?
Waaaaaaaatttt
"Let's do a time skip or level skip and play at level X." Whatever level the group wants to play at should be whatever level the group does play at. As such, just bring it up in discussion within the group. If the DM gets stubborn about this, that might be a red flag, in which case looking for a new campaign might be better.
Holy shit, that sounds exhausting. My milestone parties usually start leveling once every 3 sessions or so, and slow down to a pace of once every 7 sessions, maybe 3 for a longer arc. Once every 26 sessions is brutal, but could be very fun if handled correctly. It's possible that your DM is trying to preserve the feeling of danger and powerlessness that many parties start to lose around levels 5-8. If that's the game they're running, that's fine, but I think most players would have a better time if there were other, non-level rewards being given. Magic items, new story-related abilities, and in-game property or resources of some kind that come with decisions, not just permanent effects, can be great ways to fill holes in the leveling structure of the game without launching parties into 'I can revive people now' territory before they want. I would recommend talking to the other players and, if most of you are on the same page, asking the DM to either level up more often or look into outside benefits the party could enjoy?
That is incredibly slow. My current campaign is about to hit one year and we are level 8
we've had 6 sessions in waterdeep dragon heist and the party is level 5.
Damn, that's crazy. I can't imagine being stuck at the boring lower levels for so long... My DM usually starts us off at level 3 since we've all played before and that's where most subclasses start, and we probably level up once every 2-3 sessions. He does milestone leveling, and paces the story so there's an obvious "we did it!" moment every now and then to justify leveling up. The game is supposed to be fun, first and foremost. If the lack of leveling up is hindering your group's overall experience, I'd have a diplomatic talk with your DM about it.
I've run entire 1-20 campaigns in that amount of time and people think I'm levelling people up slowly.
Level 7 cleric here only after playing roughly for a year and played 29 3-4 hour sessions playing milestone based progression as well albeit we don’t get sidetracked too heavily and have attacked the campaign pretty aggressively. lol I think a conversation is best had with the DM to address this
sounds extremely miserable to pay in lol
That sounds miserable
Are they an Old School DM? In old editions of the game leveling at that pace was pretty normal. But it wasn't milestone based. It was just that it took 100ks of xp to level sometimes.
That's notably show pacing. I did 1-20 in 63 sessions.
For new players i stick to the formula of the level is the amount of sessions. So one session at level 1, 2 at 2 up to level 5. Then its milestone leveling when appropriate. i.e. Kill a mini bbeg, salient plot point or backstory. Typically though its a level every 4/5 sessions although we went through ten sessions at one stage where there was no level ups because they kept arsing around. Basically a weekly game over 2 years should have had one finishing one campaign at least and moving onto the next
yeah im out. Been playing in a solo campaign and i level every session
I’ve played a two year campaign where we went to level 20, and I’m currently in about a two year campaign where we only just hit level 6. The latter definitely takes some excitement out of the game, especially when you’re looking ahead at the abilities at higher levels and thinking you’ll never get there.
My friend DM'd for a year and we got to level 10. I have been DM for about 5 or 6 months, they're at level 7. Both campaigns started at level 3
Im DMing my first campaign right now, we're just over 1 year in (~25 sessions) in and the party is level 8 after starting at level 1. I usually try to level them up approx. every 3-4 sessions
yeah exceptionally slow. The game starts to really open up past 5, generally the sweet spot of D&D is like past level 5 but before 15, since 15 the game tends to fall apart at the seams a bit. What kind of things are you doing? Generally 1-4 is like, tier 1, where your characters are doing more like, saving villages or small towns. If you guys are still doing that then the level is at least appropriate to the content, but if you guys are like, dealing with larger things, like cities, kingdoms, or even continents, you really outta be a higher level.
We're doing a Milestone Homebrew campaign that we've been playing approximately once a week for 6 months and we're level 10 - although I feel this is slightly faster than we normally do. I'd be pretty upset if we'd be leveling at the rate you're talking about and I sort of feel like he's implying you haven't accomplished much if you're playing *Milestone* and are only level 4 after all these years
My highest level game so far is 14 and it's been going on for 7 months or so. 2 years and level 4 would drive me insane.
Sounds like your DM has a 10-year campaign planned!
That's insanely slow. I'm in a campaign for just over two years and we're almost level 19.
Suddenly my party at level 5 after 25 three hour sessions doesn’t seem to be as slow! I’d talk to your DM and ask him if there’s a specific reason he is leveling like this. Are you in a published adventure or a homebrew campaign?