I normally start my D&D parties at level 3. Its 900xp total to get from level 1-3 and 1&2 arent fun. If you do xp based leveling ...big difference the further you get. I ran a 2 year 1-2x a week campaign and they ended at level 11.
Character Advancement
Experience Points Level
0 1
300 2
900 3
2,700 4
6,500 5
14,000 6
23,000 7
34,000 8
48,000 9
64,000 10
85,000 11
100,000 12
120,000 13
140,000 14
165,000 15
195,000 16
225,000 17
265,000 18
305,000 19
355,000 20
You can see that you need 126,000 total XP for a 6 man party to move them from 10-11. A CR22, Ancient Red Dragon, is 62,000xp. Those are end of campaign level fights. A CR10 YOUNG red is 5,900xp. The party would need to find and slay 22 Young Dragons, 7 Adults, or 2.5 ancients to level. When you are typically fighting more "yard trash" creatures youre talking 30-40 challenging and 70 middling things that are part of a harder monsters coterie. Thats for 1 level.
So early levels are fasssst and 3 is a milestone because of schools, archetypes, styles, etc... for most classes. at level 5 you get 2 attacks and the game changes. Getting to 3 - fast. Gettin to 5 medium. from there out its a long journey to 8 and 9 and 10 just kind of stretch. That makes it hard for multiclass people because even 1 level of multiclass means you miss feat / ASI at level 8 because its CLASS level not CHARACTER level that gets you the every-4-level boons.
Having it only to level 10 means they need to make the stretch interesting, Im not sure how theyll do that. as a DM is means a lot of work on politics, social stuff, new environments, groups...its everything that ISNT combat that draws people in at that point.
