Zero to Hero: When to Level Up
11/1/20263 min read
Leveling up is a lot of fun. It's a reward for all the hard work your character does in-game, and a good opportunity for you as the player to decide the path your character goes on. Besides, rolling for additional hit points, choosing new class abilities, and picking new spells is just fun. Generally speaking, leveling up in a role-playing game involves your character growing to new heights. When you level, you become stronger, smarter, more powerful, and just better at what it is you do. Fighters get more combat options, wizards get new spells…you get the idea.
Leveling up is a reward as much to the players as it is to their characters.A player and their character gets to feel a sense of progression as they grow, and the threats they face become more powerful. A major threat at level 1 much less of a threat at level 2, and almost beneath the notice of a level 10 character! As you grow, a hero finds themselves facing off against greater and more powerful threats.
The question becomes when to move to the next level, and how to keep the progression exciting and satisfying for the players. Level up too quickly and it feels artificial, but level up too slowly, and players will feel like they're not growing with the threats around them and the campaign becomes stale. A DM cannot (or shouldn't, anyway!) drastically increase the power of the threats they face without giving players at least a fighting chance to defeat them*.
I'll use Dungeons & Dragons as an example, but feel free to substitute any alternate leveling system for the game of your choice. I'm sure this is covered by more than D&D Beyond, but they have an excellent article about tiers of play. The idea behind this is roughly every five levels players gain, they should enter a new tier of play.
At levels 1-4, players fighting against local threats, such as their town or village.
At levels 5-10, players should face threats to the region, and gain some of their more powerful abilities they will rely on later.
At levels 11-16, they should be facing threats against the world and powerful adversaries from beyond it.
At levels 17 and beyond, they should be legendary heroes, facing off against threats to the cosmos and beyond!
So, when to level up? If you're running a prewritten module, it should tell you when to level up players. There's no need to reinvent the wheel; I would use those guidelines. But if you're writing your own campaign, in general, leveling up should occur at a pivotal moment in the story, or after the defeat of a powerful enemy. Think of pivotal enemies as "gatekeepers" to a higher tier of play. Once they defeat the Bandit King threatening the village at level 4, then maybe they're ready to fight against the forces of the evil baron that hired him at level 5. After all, there's always a bigger fish to fry. Look at leveling up as a reward for completing a significant portion of the story: if your players completed a major task or overcame a particularly difficult obstacle, it's generally time to level them up.
But what if you're not running a heroic fantasy game? If you're running a gritty, investigative game, then maybe leveling up should occur when they find a particular clue or lead. Characters in that setting likely wouldn't fight dragons, but there's still a sense of progression and character growth when they gain new skills and abilities.
- Tanner Adams
Links:
D&D Beyond: "Don't Tier Your Hair Out: How to DM at Higher Levels"
*Unless you're playing Call of Cthulhu.