How fast do you think PCs should be leveling up through a campaign? I saw someone mention they don't like the current 5E adventures and how they rocket the PCs to level 15 through one adventure.

What is your ideal rate? 1 level per session? 5 levels in a single campaign? Etc.

I like 5E's progression of first 3 levels coming quick then slowing down. Just eyeballing it, it seems fine. Haven't got past 5th level in a game yet so no real evidence either way. Most games built like D&D (zero to hero) have a sweet spot where you have a lot as a character you can do but you have things to look forward to and the GM has lots of choices in challenges In 3.5 that was say 7-10 or so. Older editions maybe a level or two lower. In 5th I will have to wait and see.

I prefer games of starting levels of competence and slow advancement from there.  Both types scratch different itches though

Let me just start in as your outlier.

I dumped class levels and went class/Guild based years ago, with one big reason to better control the rate of reward. My games tend to go on and on, and on top of that I like gritty, non-superheroic games.  Add those two together, and something has to give.

In my main live game, running since 2002, the highest hit points are 46 (PCs start with 3-12 normally).  Players grow out as well as up (often learning new skills and working on those, as it is easier to learn the basics of a new skill than to go from level 5 alchemist to level 6).  That group is over 150 sessions.

The current online game I'm running is for a group of first year students students in the collegium arcana.  Again, I can't have them outstripping their teachers after a year or so of play.  We've done 47 full sessions and some 30 intermezzo (one one one) sessions.  I'd say each player has broken 3-4 total skill levels, in a few spell skills or in social.

So, not that my way is in any way the right way, but i work for constant, very tiny improvements in a large array of areas to feed the reward system, but to allow for very long, gritty campaigns.

My preference, as Player and GM, is slow to no advancement of innate stats... but have most of the PC's experience reflect in their accumulation of contacts, reputations, equipment and allies.
I've also found I'm not too fond of higher levels in class/level games... and would generally prefer to start a new PC before getting too far past 6th. So if a campaign is fun I'd rather draw out that process a while. I've played with GMs who handed out XP like candy on Halloween and put leveling on a fast track... but I've never much enjoyed that.
If I want to play a superhero game I'd rather just start off in that genre.

In recent 13th Age and 5e games it has been about 1 level per session. The others like it that way and it's cool when you play fortnightly and want to experience the full system, but frankly I find it all a bit of a blur. I think fast to 3rd level and then slow down would suit me.

I haven't looked at D&D 5e very closely yet, but the "quick to 3, slow down from there" progression others have mentioned seems about right to me. My current group usually goes about half a dozen adventures between leveling. I like that pace. I want to have plenty of time to play with all the bells and whistles of the current level and get a feel for how it all works before stacking on new abilities. Plus, as Simlasa stated, I generally feel the accumulation of contacts, allies, even enemies, as well as gear to a lesser extent, are at least as rewarding as the mechanical bennies of a new level.

One of the problems with the people bitching about the "reach level 15 in one adventure" is that that one adventure is something like two or three TSR era modules in one. Some of which could advance you from level one to pretty darn far by the end even for AD&Ds glacial advancement by comparison.

The other thing they fail to note or possible even take the time to see is that the progression is somewhat the same as in AD&D. Just knock a 0 off AD&Ds progression and it meshes somewhat. There was a thread over on BGG/RPGG where something like that complaint came up and when we looked at it it wasnt as bad as people were whinning about when you take into account that the monsters are giving less EXP in general as well and more importantly. You are not getting EXP for treasure, which was a huge chunk of AD&Ds EXP revenue.

In a level game i prefer 3 or 4 sessions to get used to any new doo-dads i might have got for leveling up. Non-level games it depends on the system.

3 - 4 sessions per level is good, but I'm flexible.

5e's initial very fast advancement seems to be working well in my 5e online game, but I'm looking forward to it slowing down once the PCs get to 5th-10th level (after 10 sessions, currently most of the PCs are 4th level; individual XP, no PC has played every session). I'm not sure about the way it speeds up again at 11th level, so I am likely to be tweaking that somewhat. But generally online chatroom play is about half as fast as tabletop play, so 5e's advancement rate is a very good fit for chatroom gaming.

I was looking over my Mentzer for my Classic D&D campaign, it recommends 3-5 'adventures' (sessions) per level, which is about how the initial solo run for my son has gone (4-8) and should work pretty well for the new group of 1st levellers; probably towards the low end for the first few levels, 5 or so in the 6-10 range, speeding up a bit later. I'd like to see fairly rapid advancement in this weekly game, maybe even get up into Companion Set territory (levels 15-25), which at 3 sessions/level for 14 levels would be 42 weeks of play. I'm doing individual XP though, so with deaths etc will be slower in practice.

My long term 4e campaign is very consistent at 4 sessions/level since 10th level, almost always, even though I calculate XP normally with a few bonuses. After 4 years (83 sessions) of mostly fortnightly play it has just reached 23rd level, and looks likely to run to 30th level around July/August 2016. This rate seems fine, as did the ca 3 sessions/level rate at Heroic Tier (levels 1-10). I have to reduce monster hp & give generous quest awards though, 4e RAW is about 6 sessions per level and too slow.

My Pathfinder Adventure Path campaign (with medium track party XP) skyrocketed up from 2nd to 10th level at just over 2 sessions/level, with 3e/PF advancement PCs doubled in power every 4 sessions and the Summoner PC went from awesome to completely ridiculous very fast (it's slowed down a bit now the PCs are 11th).  This is the only one that feels 'off' to me, advancement was too fast for the challenges overcome, but PCs had to go up that fast to keep pace with the AP. I don't think I'll be GMing a Pathfinder campaign again - converting APs to 5e looks like a better bet.

As a general rule I'd suggest that 3-5 sessions of play at 3-4 hours per session is a good guide for when PCs should level up, possibly a bit slower if levels are huge leaps in power as in 3e/PF.

Something of why I like GURPS.  A couple points a session, people see incremental advancement without the metaphoric bank being busted.

In D&D, I prefer much slower advancement than is popular today. From 1st to 2nd level, 1 or 2 sessions of play. From 2nd to 3rd, 3-5 additional sessions. From 3rd to 4th, additional 4-6 sessions. From 4th to 5th, 5 to 7 additional sessions. From 6th to 7th, 6 to 8 additional sessions. Etc. Note that is is for a group of characters around the same level. When there are lower level characters mixed with higher level characters, the lower level characters tend to advance faster than this -- sometimes much faster if they are well below party level.

My preference is a match to the genre.

I just started in a new LotFP campaign. We just finished one that took about two years to finish, playing once a month. It was a converted Keep on the Borderlands.

Each player went through about three characters each. My final character hadn't quite reached 3rd level. I think the highest level character was almost fifth level - but that player also had fewer deaths than the rest of us.

LotFP puts most of the reward on "bringing home treasure", pretty much an XP per silver (or whatever you default base coin is); monsters would pull in a modest number, but then that divided between our party.

I don't want every type of game to be as slow, or as focused on treasure as these LotFP games. If Im playing in a game where there are a lot of useful and necessary skills, then it makes sense to get the XPs to get the skills needed to accomplish that kind of mission.

Quote from: Ravenswing;827110Something of why I like GURPS.  A couple points a session, people see incremental advancement without the metaphoric bank being busted.

Indeed.  Fits the long term games well.

Found my old conversion graph.

Converting the AD&D EXP to 5e's 10% less got the following.

5e is positioned just about in the average between the fastest and slowest advancing classes. The Thief leaps ahead the fastest and the magic user the slowest.

From levels 1-5 AD&D and 5e advance about the same rate. From 5-10 5e actually advances slower. But then speeds up from 11 on. Closest to the Clerics rate. Not sure if that was intentional or accidental.