By Jason Campbell

I’ve been running a weekly 5e campaign in Monte Cook’s Ptolus setting since January 2022, the player characters are currently 16th level. It can be difficult to run a 5e game with higher level characters while keeping the game challenging and the players engaged. This campaign diary series features notes from my players and I about the challenges of playing high level 5e.

Levelling Up: As We Have Been Doing It

When we began this campaign the group decided that when the PCs were ready to advance a level (we’re using non-XP levelling) we would require some training. I settled on 4-5 days of training. At lower levels each PC trained with a master and as they advanced to double digit levels they would train individually.

My assumption is that training doesn’t take 16 hours per day, so the players have a bit of downtime for low key events over the 5 days. The players would do things like talk to NPCs they knew around town, shop, or make new contacts. This usually takes place at the beginning of a session (we play weekly and the players advance their PCs in between sessions when appropriate.) We’d role play through any minor actions the players declared over their training day, then proceed from the end of their training on their next adventure.

This Session: An Issue?

This week I began by asking each player to declare one thing they wanted to do over 4 days. Four of the five players chose an action, the 5th said they only wanted to train. For each player’s action, I asked if this was a solo action or did they bring anyone along. They each chose solo actions, not because they were keeping anything secret, but just because the action fell into their PC’s area of expertise or interest).

We’re all conscious of not monopolizing session time, and I tried to narrate through the actions when possible, but these four actions still took about an hour in total. Also the 5th player had no interaction during this time. These are all experienced players so they made their own choices and the resulting slow beginning was no one’s fault, but in looking back, I think we’ll do things a different way.

Going Forward: A New Method

As mentioned we play weekly online over Discord, and we have a group text channe; to discuss anything or chat between sessions. Going forward I’ll announce that the PCs can advance a level before the next session. At the of the next session we’ll begun after a time jump of 4 days, and I’ll narrate anything that’s happened in the city during that time. If any player want to do any downtime activity we’ll do that through text in our discord channel. That way we won’t waste anyone’s time during a play session. I’m confident we can play through anything in text, whether it’s a solo action or something involving mutliple characters.

What do you think? How does your group do level advancement? Let us know in the comments.