To me, leveling seemed really fast. Not sure if it's just me or what. But I made a second playthrough of BG3, and I was really surprised at how fast I hit the level cap. I didn't think that it happened MEGA fast my first playthrough, but I did feel like I got to level 3 quite a bit faster than I had expected. In my second playthrough, all I've done is (***SPOILERS***) kill the head druid so the tieflings could take over the grove, ran over to the goblin camp, recruited them, killed all the tieflings, and boom. Level 4. I've hardly done anything in the act yet, but I've already leveled up to the cap. There's still TONS left. When they remove the cap, I feel like by the end of act 1 I'll be level 6 or 7 if they removed the cap. I realize leveling gets a lot slower the higher level you are, but to me, it's kinda fun to be a low level noob. I haven't gone and checked to see if the same amount of experience is required for levels or if the amount of experience is given per goblin or whatever, but dang it really seems like it goes fast. I don't even remember doing anything when I was second level.

Just a thought that maybe they need to pull back the reins on leveling speed. I get that a lot of people don't like being a noob, but to me, it inspires strategy. When you have an impossible fight in DnD, there's always a way to win. The creativity of players always amazes me in tabletop DnD.

If the xp gains and amount of xp required per level is straight out of the DnD rulebook, I guess it's fine. To me it just seems a little fast.

yeah the first 3 levels go by really quick in D&D, then it gets progressively harder to level up after that. It's by design, do to first 3 levels your pretty much just getting the feel for everything. Also lets DM's and players help new players, by walking (at times) through their skills, abilities, and things. Which is why most DM's with experienced players start after level 3.

This is deliberate in 5th edition D&D. If look at a graph of the leveling rate from 1-20 it is really fast at levels 1-5 and levels 16-20, but slows from 6-15. Traditionally a lot of people have felt they have the most fun at levels 5 to 14 or so. As such the current leveling scheme stretches the time you are in those levels. Levels 1-4 are basically so fast that you could see them as the tutorial. For example, you're assumed to hit level 2 at the end of your first session assuming 4 hours.

I think there an issue with encounter size. If they were using the rules as written, tossing a dozen of anything at a party of 4 would probably end up in a total party kill so we are killing more mobs then a tabletop adventuring party would so leveling seems faster?

Guess now I have to do another playthrough and just keep track of everything I am killing and keep track of when I level.

Yeah some of the fights I've noticed would end up in tpk's if played straight up by rules listed in rulebook. The fact that your the same level as everything else alone would end up in alot of tpk's on tabletop. Though it could be a reason for all these other effects, the whole larger swarm of enemies, barrels, surface things as well. to try and level the playing field, while keeping enemies in larger numbers.

begs the question are the levels like CR rating, or they just standard game levels?

Probably closer to CR since monsters and NPCs don't usually use the same class/level structure as PCs.

Yeah some of the fights I've noticed would end up in tpk's if played straight up by rules listed in rulebook. The fact that your the same level as everything else alone would end up in alot of tpk's on tabletop. Though it could be a reason for all these other effects, the whole larger swarm of enemies, barrels, surface things as well. to try and level the playing field, while keeping enemies in larger numbers.

begs the question are the levels like CR rating, or they just standard game levels?[/quote]

Lets take the for example which is cr3. Having (not all the time) to fight 4 of them PLUS their additional jump skill that does dmg and brings up their avg dpr?

IF this was straight raw, you'd be dead.

I'm glad those levels came quickly, cause everything else you fight has multi attack and other terrible things. Those extra spell slots / hp comes in handy.

I'm almost a little concerned about what it means for the rest of the game. I feel like by the time we're past the beginning area we'll be like level 5 or 6, leaving no room for the rest of the adventure.

Leveling feels too fast to me. The first map is so loaded with stuff (combat). You get to level 4 so quickly just exploring one area you don't really even have time to get a feel of levels 1-3. I didn't even get to the underground areas yet.

The XP gains from kills seemed really inconsistent though. Maybe the values aren't final yet.

I really hope they do the "lone wolf" concept by simply giving more XP when there's less people to share it.

Let's say we are at 100k XP total. 4 characters with 25k each would be level 7. 2 characters with 50k each would be level 9. A single character would have just made level 12. That sounds a bit strong but the exact numbers could be tweaked. Those couple extra levels for having less characters in the party are a lot more fun than giving them some random numerical buffs that override the rules.

This is, again, pretty standard design in 5e campaign supplements. There's often an optional starter adventure to get the characters from 1st to 3rd in a hurry (in Ghosts of Saltmarsh it was that bit with the haunted house...in Princes of the Apocalypse it was the corrupt town members sending them rumor chasing, Strahd had the Death House).

4th and 5th are also meant to pass pretty fast and then everything slows down a lot at 5th level onward with most of the campaigns ending somewhere between 10th and 15th level. (Curse of Strahd ends around 10th Level, Ghosts of Saltmarsh around 11th, and Princes around 15th)

This and the abundance of magical items (most of which are not worth using) are the two main points I listed in my suggested changes thread. Were it not for the XP Limit, you could get to level 5 solely in the content we've gotten so far. This is almost 1/2 of the levels we're probably going to get in the game. (level cap probs 11-12)
I think all they need to do is space the xp out more. Move level 3 to goblin camp area. make level 4 the final possible level in act 1, something like that. it shouldn't be too hard to change, and I really think they should. I mentioned the fact that classes progress through the levels differently, and jumping to level 5 so quickly removes a lot of levels were classes like War domain clerics, barbarians, etc shine brighter compared to other classes and the same thing goes for specific subclasses.

edit: or make level 3 the final level in act one and save the asi/feat for the start of act 2, that might be cooler.

So started another playthrough.

encounter 1 3 Imps, 30 exp.
2 2 Imps 50 exp total
3 6 Imps 240 exp total so go some experience for finishing the prolog, almost level 2 which seems OK.

Yeah, this matches the 5e design of 1st Level lasting only one session.

I thought it was paced pretty decently actually. The game really is boring at levels 1-2 so getting to 3 quicker and getting some features to play with seems like good design...

It doesn't seem fast to me. I've played 35 hours almost and I'm only level 3 still.

Okay, I have a bit of a problem with playing games slowly, exploring everywhere with ludicrous care, and re-loading to try different things. I also spent a long time in the character creator.

I think this should depend on the classes since spellcasters are the ones that get the world ending stuff on specific levels.

OK, 2 more encounters (2 ID & 1 ID) and adding Shadowheart and exp is 300 for level 1. That seems right, one adventure to get to 2nd level.

Leveling and the encounters we face feel crap. Honestly the under dark is a most dangerous and deadly place in the mortal planes and they send us there as level 3 down. Sry but this is crap. That would be area for level 5-8 at minimum. It cheapens the experience. Beholders and other monoesters that are at home down there feel like cheap knock offs not even worth the fuzz made around them. I think the priority's of encounters and places where chosen poorly.
Not to mention that the "stakes" of our adventure from Tee start are astronomical something you send half gods to deal with.

It feels wrong and bad.

So I did 7 encounters to go from level 2 to 3

prone mindflayer
meet Gail
goblin pack at the grove gate.
2 NPC with Brother & Tadpole
4 NPC outside ruins
5 entombed scribes
other 4 NPC inside ruins

Leveling needs to be fast, the first few levels suck in D&D. The time it takes to get from level 3 to 4 is fine, I cant really guage the time it takes to get to 5 because the meter stops even adding it up. Would be nice if the game loced you at level 4 but let you still add to the bar so I could guage it. I have zero problems with them tuning the game so that level 4 can be achieved after about 12-15 hours

Yes, I think 1-3 is fine. I'll continue tracking what it takes to get me to 4.

It was intentional, you just didn't bring your wagon filled with throwables to permeate the whole Underdark with fiery layers of dmg that can't be avoided.

I had a pretty easy time with it @@. Not by environment cheesing, either. Play with spells and abilities and magic weapons a bit more, theres some really solid fighting potential your group can have just in a face to face.

Can't get to level 5 fast enough IMO. Caster classes are just boring at low levels. Leveling can slow down after 5th. It doesn't need to be linear.

You can't even get to level 5 and yet you complain about leveling pace. I'd say give me lvl 4 right after creating character, so I can explore feats.

So Out of the Abyss is wrong, too? Also there is no Beholder in the game, these are Spectators, which you do also face off in early levels in official modules.

I'm probably in the minority, but I too feel that leveling is too fast, I usually hit level 4 around the Blighted Village. In the full game, I expect I would be level 6 or so after completing the EA areas.
Considering that isn't even the entirety of Chapter 1, reaching the game's level cap would probably happen before Chapter 4.

Leveling definitely felt too fast for me, I hit level 3 by the time I got to Nettie in the Druid Grove and I more or less went straight for her, after the ruins and the crash site (where I killed everything that moved naturally)

+1. In my first playthrough I took at most one long rest between levels 2 and 3. I felt like I had leveled up just minutes ago and now leveled up again!?!??

The fast time to reach level 2 is fine. But I think they need to increase the time to go from level 2 to 3 by 50% if not more.

I did one long rest per level. A level per day seems fast, yes.

Quick to level 3 and then slow from then on seems just fine. Most classes only "come online" at third level. I expect it to slow down from then on out though.

I'm going to reiderate the point that the first few levels are suppposed to go by quickly. It is very boring at level one, some classes don't even get their kits until level 3. When I'm running a game I rarely start my group at level one unless there is some story purpose for it. I however felt the progression was just about perfect, but I also spend a lot of time exploring and talking to people so I spent a lot of time between levels 2-3 (whereas if you went to the temple first you would probably get to 3 faster) It is all about what you choose to do. You could of course ignore all conversations and not explore and level really fast, but I just reached level 4 yesterday and I've spent 30+ hours playing.

If we re close to lv 5 at the end of act1 , its means you only have 5 more level till the end of the game. Its going to be very long to get it imo. Long like going from lv 13 druid to lv14 druid in baldurs gate (took half the game to take one level up).

I don't think level 10 cap is finalized? I for one would be disappointed with only 10 levels in the whole game... that is not very much progression.

It's not. We know for a fact it's not level 10 anymore in fact.
We don't know what the NEW expected cap is supposed to be, on the other hand.
Larian simply said that they turned out to have too much content on their hand to stick to that cap, so the new one could be anything between 11 and 14 for all we know.
Above that sounds a bit unlikely, I would say."Ops, we made six levels worthy of extra content" would be quite the miscalculation.

Hitting level 2 should be within the first 2-4 hours
Level 3 within another 6-8 hours

I’d say finishing up Chapter 1 could put the player closer to level 5 (possibly fringe 6 if you did close go evrything.

Chapter 2 levels 5-10ish
Chapter 3 finishing up the game around 14
Future DLC taking us up to 17
Would be interesting additional DLC taking up to 20 but that makes for playing god-like characters and id imagine terribly difficult for a computer to properly balance and manage.

I’d really love for this engine to be incorporated in official modules as well such as LMoP, etc.

Don't forget that they have to "overdeliver" on XP because diplomatic/stealthy playstyles kill much,much less enemies and therefore get less xp. Killing everything in the first few areas and finishing some easy sidequests puts you at level4 pretty fast in EA atm.
I have no problems with reaching higher levels fast and then having no progression later because I "powergamed" the start of the adventure. I think they have to tune the progression curve to players that won't murder everyone.

One possible issue is that the Companions all auto scale on pickup so you get that free XP just for recruiting or delaying recruitment. BG1 and 2 worked the same way, but it definitely gets you to a lvl 4 cap sooner.

And again, with a party of just 4 members its obviously going to scale up much faster to lvl 4. That point should probably have been made in the party size thread too if it hasn't already.

I enjoy the first 3 levels of character progression, but 5e is all like 'here take an adderall, hurry up!' Its cool, I get it. I like new spells and unlocks as much as the rest. But the scale and length of a session in a computer game is a little different than PnP. Sans cutscenes you can get to lvl3 in what feels like 30 minutes of actual play.

I think the level progression here is a little fast for my tastes. It would be nice to see other types of progression substituted for pure XP, since rewards are always at the DMs discretion. Gear/Aesthetics can be equally effective at giving the party a sense of accomplishment. But here everyone starts out looking pretty cool and there aren't a whole lot of money sinks for stuff like darts and arrows, or a new pair of comfortable shoes

My FAVORITE feature is that the companions auto-scale and have the same XP no matter what. It eliminates pointless grinding if you want to try out different companions, and it makes it so the team composition can constantly change without any issues. Also it satiates my OCD. I hate having to plan to keep a party's XP as close as possible per character.

It might be the best feature of the entire game.

Larian has already commented on this pre EA. Their itnention was that players would be level 10 by the end of the full game, but after feedback that progression felt too slow (because levelling up is about the most exciting thing that can happen in an RPG) they have latered their plans and now they aim to have the cap around lvl 11-12. ***But this is all subject to change***.