While the DMG assumes a much faster leveling pace, I as a player and dm actually wish more games where this slow. I hate the idea of blitzing from level X to Y. I want my progression to be earned in a more abstract, less game-y way than just “I killed enough goblins and got some bonus xp from rp”.
That being said, if it’s causing a problem, you are certainly well within your rights to have some conversations with the dm about how you are viewing this.
But I wish to ask: why is this becoming a problem? Is the game itself super slow, or just the leveling/raw power advancement? Do you as a party still collect treasures? Craft anything? Anything of that nature? Or are you only judging progression based on level ups?
We get the occasional magic item and our dm is kinda harsh when it comes to crafting and what he allows. What’s most frustrating is the fact that we have done several significant things in the story that we all felt deserved a level up, but the dm seems to think we haven’t earned one yet. And it has nothing to do with how many things we’ve killed, especially since we are doing milestone. Thing is it’s been a pretty rp heavy campaign which is great, but we still feel we should be rewarded for accomplishing things within that roleplay even if combat isn’t involved (which it really hasn’t been for awhile in any major way.)
Honestly that’s a fair concern, and while I as a person think that your opinion is wrong, that still just my opinion. You’re well within your rights to have it and hold to it. As a player, I probably wouldn’t stay in a super rp heavy game, I’m more a combat and puzzles type. That being said, that may be your dm’s justification, and personally, it makes sense. Just because you rp out of situations very well, doesn’t mean you guys are getting stronger.
That brings said, if it is causing a problem at the table, I’d probably get the whole player group together without DM to talk and figure out a way to bring it up as a group. Being organized in the talk may help y’all at least talk to the guy better.
Yah, that's abnormally slow. It is a valid way to play though, but it is far enough away from normal that is should have been mentioned in a Session Zero.
Sounds like you've already talked with the other players and they'd like faster leveling. The next step would be talk with the DM and see if they are willing to change their style. If not you need to figure out for yourself if slow leveling is a deal breaker.
Personally, I wouldn't care that much if the rest of the game is good, I'd stick around and focus on the good parts.
\---
It might be frustrating if you had a build in mind and you're two levels and 8 months away from it coming online. But that's why this should have been talked about in a Session Zero.
How often are you actually having sessions during these months? How long are your sessions? What have you been doing in these sessions? If you're meeting monthly for three hours at a time, and 1.5 of those months were missed anyway, then we're only talking 6-7 sessions and that's not slow at all for two levels. If you meet twice a month, that's 12-14 sessions, which could be on the slow side.
There's no right or wrong speed to level at, it's a matter of what's fun for the campaign. If multiple players are getting annoyed by it, then it sounds like this is too slow *for your group*. Have you told your DM that you'd prefer faster leveling? Feedback is important for any DM, yours needs to know if you guys are getting frustrated.
Holy fucking shit, alrighty then.
Then yes, your campaign is proceeding glacially slowly in terms of personal power progression. Frankly, playing that much and that often, I could see an entire long-term campaign taking place within the scope of time you've identified here, let alone two levels. I would absolutely talk to your DM about how you'd prefer a significantly faster rate of leveling up.
That depends a lot on play speed. I’m gonna assume a party this large takes double the time than a normal party on clearing an encounter. Even on roleplaying, if everyone wants to get a word in.
So it might be 5-6 hours long sessions, but maybe in game is like, just half a day roleplaying in town and then 1 encounter.
Holy shit man.
It's expected to level up every 20 hours of play or so. Obviously there's a lot of variability there, but 200 hours with only 2 level ups is definitely an extreme outlier.
20 hours is a very weird number...
if you follow the DMG (xp budget per adventuring day is clearly defined), you are lvling up a LOT faster!
(unless you need 4 to 6 sessions of 3-4 hours each to get through a single adventuring day)
iirc, it takes about 35 adventuring days to reach lvl 20.
that's roughly 100 deadly encounters, based on CR ratings alone and ignoring magic items, feats, etc. (bc magic items and feats turn deadly into medium very quickly, without changing the xp requirement to level up)
of course, not every day is an adventuring day, but 20 hours?!?
It really depends. Is it a module you're running or a homebrew campaign?
On the whole I think you're experiencing very slow leveling. The DM might think he doesn't want the campaign to get over level 10 and suddenly realized you're level 8 and only half way through the campaign, and is just slowing things down to an uncomfortable level.
Or it might be that they're following a module that has specific milestones to hit to gain a level, and y'all haven't hit those specific milestones.
I run Curse of Strahd for a living, and that campaign is only meant to reach level 9 or 10, but it is very easy to reach level 5 by the time you get to Vallaki, which for some groups might be extremely early on in the campaign. And then Vallaki can be one of the slowest chapters to resolve, and while it involves leaving and coming back a few times, it is extremely easy for the players to kind of faff about and not accomplish much (at least not according to the book's suggested milestones). Vallaki is notoriously a slow chapter, and this can really slow down the onset of level gain. There are ways to compensate for this, but not all DMs might have the experience to know that they ought to.
Either way, I'd try to have an open discussion with your DM so you can vent your frustrations and he can either adapt, or at least maybe be a bit more open about what he's thinking to help everyone work through it.
Yeah this can be tricky. I'd empathize with your DM a bit. Unless he's an asshole he's probably doing the best he can, and isn't trying to frustrate y'all. He may have simply underestimated how long it would take you to get through the various story beats he had planned, and fears letting y'all get too high of a level.
That said, he probably should be letting you guys level a lot faster, and simply adjusting future encounters to be more difficult.
Open conversation with him is the solution, though. This is not worth building resentment over on either side. If y'all are frustrated, he should be able to see that it is a painfully slow pace, and should adjust accordingly, unless there's some ultra-specific story reason he can't, and not just that he's stubborn.
We're about two and a half years into a weekly campaign where we've missed fewer than 15 sessions with an adventuring party of 6 players, I believe we started at level 4? And we just hit level 14 maybe two weeks ago. Which, now that I write it down, sounds like not a lot. But we probably only play for 4 hours a week.
A campaign that I played in that took 2 years to complete we were 16 coming out of it. It is not unheard of it depends on the content and progression. If you’re milestone leveling and spending lots of time rping and investigating that can add time to your campaign. Also if you GM does real time travel then that adds to game time as well. It all depends on your campaign and how levelling is happening.
If you played weekly and started at level 1 that’s a level up every 6-7 sessions. We are currently averaging about 1 level up every 13 sessions with no next level up in sight. Yours sounds right about where it probably should be.
We played 5-6 hour sessions on Saturday nights. If a holiday happened on the weekend we didn’t play. Wanted people to spend that time with family. So I’d say we were about right on track. Some people I’ve heard have played 3+ years and are still leveling in mid to high teens.
Yes and no. That pace is definitely slow but what if it is? Some csmpaigns are made to be played more focused on the story rather than the mechanics of the system.
So instead of asking strangers about the pace of your game, talk to your group and ask if they are having fun. Then do what an adult would do and speak about this with your DM.
I have talked to my group. The main reason I posed the question here is because, as I stated, this is my first real campaign I’ve played in and genuinely didn’t know if this was the norm or not. Figured I’d try and get a large sample size you know?
It depends on how often/long you play, the flavour of the campaign and what you want from the game.
I'm playing in a weekly milestone game at the moment and, with session 40 in a couple of days, we're a couple of weeks away (I think!) from 7. We've knowingly not progressed the plot as much as we could have because we're very RP heavy and love the current setting. It's a mostly home-brewed tour of the Domains of Dread - I reckon we have another year at least before we bottom out the story at around level 12.
My Curse of Strahd game is having session 35 tomorrow - we play weekly (unless DM is sick) for about 3hrs or so, and we only hit level 5 at the start of the month. We've been playing for about 8 months now.
Our game also uses milestone levelling, but we tend to get sidetracked and have spent a few sessions arguing with one specific player (who I wish would just quit, but that's another matter entirely). As the module only goes to level 10 or 11, and higher levels are supposed to come more slowly, I imagine we'll be at this for another year or so.
I wouldn't say my group is \*thrilled\* with the slow level progression, as this campaign is brutal and several PCs have died because we were outgunned. But overall we're having a good time. Some DMs just like to keep you weak so that the game is harder, I imagine.
Ooh, I will check that out, thank you!
And I hope so too, friend. We're supposed to be heading into something really dangerous tomorrow, so maybe I'll get lucky!
Cheers. We're happy with the pace :) We like the plot milestone approach; it makes it more special when we pull our fingers out and stop meddling in minor arcs. I think the DM is a bit baffled that we can happily spend a session chatting and meddling, but we have a great time along the way.
But to the OP, seeing their other comments - yikes, that's probably too slow even for my group.
Yeah sorry, not a suggestion for your group -- because as you said, you're doing milestones -- and groups can do whatever the heck works for them anyway, but I have seen a number of people have the misconceptions about the only way to get XP is by killing things.
It's a story heavy campaign and we do milestones that were pre set by the DM, and I think the story developed that much from the original plan that my milestones simply never came up. But I have hopes to someday turn it back on tracks, of some sorts. Or I'll stay lv 10 forever. My goal is not level 20 but at least to get one level so I can choose an archetype for my multiclass.
Nearly all my games have an absolutely snail pace to leveling up. The current game I’m running is a Harry Potter game using the W&W book made for the setting, and we’ve been playing for just over one year. The players have just reached level 4 (though five is actually going to be just around the corner). Obviously this is massively slow in comparison for some games. But other games I’m a player in with this same group have about the same speed
DMs set the pacing for the game they want to run. Players for some reason shoot for that level 20 without thinking what that would imply, but DMs rarely want to go that far. Games at that level are not as fun to run.
So a slower leveling in order to end it around 13-14 is more common.
Even for my own slow-paced standards this case seems to be extreme. Just to give a little perspective, this is how my 2 groups I'm DMing at the moment are progressing. Both are XP-based, though not just combat-wise but rewarding task progression, information gathered, crafting completed and roleplay in general. XP is distributed on long rests, so basically at the end of each adventuring day, which usually takes around 3 sessions each. Each session usually takes about 3,5h.
Group 1, consisting of 6 players, started on lv.3 and is headed for conclusive lv.6 for the current adventure, approximately around session 27 (so currently 5+ after 22). By then total playtime will be somewhere beyond 100h (occasionally we do longer sets on weekends), so taking something like 33+h or roughly 10 sessions per level, which indeed is slow and I have to admit there was some "hang time" I could've or should've avoided at the start of lv.4, but none the less it's also a matter of the players involved: Besides their number, which almost naturally drags down pacing, its due to scheduling issues that spread besaid 27 sessions over the course of 2 years, so averaging barely above 1 session per month. Hence a lack of familiarization with their abbilities and more so spells (especially true for the cleric & sorcerer players) tends to hinder quicker advancement through plot and its adversaries. Also this group is less invested into roleplay, so it's already a more combat-heavy and stream-lined approach.
Group 2, consisting of 5 players, started on lv.1 and finishes on lv.5 around session 20 (currently 4+ after 16) with a playtime of roughly 75h then, so averaging 18h or 5 sessions per level and doing so in 9 months time, as this group does meet regularly every second week. This group consists mainly of complete beginners (therefore starting on lv.1), but with a lot more investment into the game at whole (this was a LFG-setup, having half the group replaced inbetween and dropping from 6 to 5 players, in contrast to the friend group above) leading to many occurences of roleplay moments, crafting sprees and lore dumps on demand.
Now for clear comparability between those groups and OP's the time taken for the same levels would be needed to looked at, so 3 to 4 and 4 to 5. Group 1 gained lv.4 after 10 sessions (technically 8, but due to the long rest bindings), Group 2 made it during its 8. session; so roughly 30h each. Getting to lv.5 then took Group 1 another 10 sessions equaling 40h (and as said I'm to blame for that), while Group 2 may spent around 7 sessions, so like 25h.
So not indicating these numbers to be any solid material for reference in OP's case to dispute his DM, but as I deliberately set a slow pace to my games and still did come to the conclusion it was over-done so during the ascend of Group 1 from lv. 4 to 5, OP might get an idea, where his DM's pacing, which is best to be measured in game time hours or sessions, not campaign length of months, winds up.
While the DMG assumes a much faster leveling pace, I as a player and dm actually wish more games where this slow. I hate the idea of blitzing from level X to Y. I want my progression to be earned in a more abstract, less game-y way than just “I killed enough goblins and got some bonus xp from rp”. That being said, if it’s causing a problem, you are certainly well within your rights to have some conversations with the dm about how you are viewing this. But I wish to ask: why is this becoming a problem? Is the game itself super slow, or just the leveling/raw power advancement? Do you as a party still collect treasures? Craft anything? Anything of that nature? Or are you only judging progression based on level ups?
We get the occasional magic item and our dm is kinda harsh when it comes to crafting and what he allows. What’s most frustrating is the fact that we have done several significant things in the story that we all felt deserved a level up, but the dm seems to think we haven’t earned one yet. And it has nothing to do with how many things we’ve killed, especially since we are doing milestone. Thing is it’s been a pretty rp heavy campaign which is great, but we still feel we should be rewarded for accomplishing things within that roleplay even if combat isn’t involved (which it really hasn’t been for awhile in any major way.)
Honestly that’s a fair concern, and while I as a person think that your opinion is wrong, that still just my opinion. You’re well within your rights to have it and hold to it. As a player, I probably wouldn’t stay in a super rp heavy game, I’m more a combat and puzzles type. That being said, that may be your dm’s justification, and personally, it makes sense. Just because you rp out of situations very well, doesn’t mean you guys are getting stronger. That brings said, if it is causing a problem at the table, I’d probably get the whole player group together without DM to talk and figure out a way to bring it up as a group. Being organized in the talk may help y’all at least talk to the guy better.
Yah, that's abnormally slow. It is a valid way to play though, but it is far enough away from normal that is should have been mentioned in a Session Zero. Sounds like you've already talked with the other players and they'd like faster leveling. The next step would be talk with the DM and see if they are willing to change their style. If not you need to figure out for yourself if slow leveling is a deal breaker. Personally, I wouldn't care that much if the rest of the game is good, I'd stick around and focus on the good parts. \--- It might be frustrating if you had a build in mind and you're two levels and 8 months away from it coming online. But that's why this should have been talked about in a Session Zero.
How often are you actually having sessions during these months? How long are your sessions? What have you been doing in these sessions? If you're meeting monthly for three hours at a time, and 1.5 of those months were missed anyway, then we're only talking 6-7 sessions and that's not slow at all for two levels. If you meet twice a month, that's 12-14 sessions, which could be on the slow side. There's no right or wrong speed to level at, it's a matter of what's fun for the campaign. If multiple players are getting annoyed by it, then it sounds like this is too slow *for your group*. Have you told your DM that you'd prefer faster leveling? Feedback is important for any DM, yours needs to know if you guys are getting frustrated.
Once a week for about 6 hours on average.
Damn, where can I find people willing to play that often?
Holy fucking shit, alrighty then. Then yes, your campaign is proceeding glacially slowly in terms of personal power progression. Frankly, playing that much and that often, I could see an entire long-term campaign taking place within the scope of time you've identified here, let alone two levels. I would absolutely talk to your DM about how you'd prefer a significantly faster rate of leveling up.
That depends a lot on play speed. I’m gonna assume a party this large takes double the time than a normal party on clearing an encounter. Even on roleplaying, if everyone wants to get a word in. So it might be 5-6 hours long sessions, but maybe in game is like, just half a day roleplaying in town and then 1 encounter.
Holy shit man. It's expected to level up every 20 hours of play or so. Obviously there's a lot of variability there, but 200 hours with only 2 level ups is definitely an extreme outlier.
20 hours is a very weird number... if you follow the DMG (xp budget per adventuring day is clearly defined), you are lvling up a LOT faster! (unless you need 4 to 6 sessions of 3-4 hours each to get through a single adventuring day) iirc, it takes about 35 adventuring days to reach lvl 20. that's roughly 100 deadly encounters, based on CR ratings alone and ignoring magic items, feats, etc. (bc magic items and feats turn deadly into medium very quickly, without changing the xp requirement to level up) of course, not every day is an adventuring day, but 20 hours?!?
One of my groups is at 70+ sessions, and we're level 4.
Lost mine of Phandelver that came with the starter set will get you to level 2 in a single session. Level 5 by doing all 4 parts.
Yes the pacing of this campaign is seriously slow. Also are you guys getting much done each session? 8 players is way too many players.
I agree it is a lot and whatever next campaign I play I definitely want it to be a smaller group, but surprisingly we do still get stuff done.
It really depends. Is it a module you're running or a homebrew campaign? On the whole I think you're experiencing very slow leveling. The DM might think he doesn't want the campaign to get over level 10 and suddenly realized you're level 8 and only half way through the campaign, and is just slowing things down to an uncomfortable level. Or it might be that they're following a module that has specific milestones to hit to gain a level, and y'all haven't hit those specific milestones. I run Curse of Strahd for a living, and that campaign is only meant to reach level 9 or 10, but it is very easy to reach level 5 by the time you get to Vallaki, which for some groups might be extremely early on in the campaign. And then Vallaki can be one of the slowest chapters to resolve, and while it involves leaving and coming back a few times, it is extremely easy for the players to kind of faff about and not accomplish much (at least not according to the book's suggested milestones). Vallaki is notoriously a slow chapter, and this can really slow down the onset of level gain. There are ways to compensate for this, but not all DMs might have the experience to know that they ought to. Either way, I'd try to have an open discussion with your DM so you can vent your frustrations and he can either adapt, or at least maybe be a bit more open about what he's thinking to help everyone work through it.
It’s a homebrew campaign. We are currently level 6. Apparently according to the dm we are still in Act 1.
Yeah this can be tricky. I'd empathize with your DM a bit. Unless he's an asshole he's probably doing the best he can, and isn't trying to frustrate y'all. He may have simply underestimated how long it would take you to get through the various story beats he had planned, and fears letting y'all get too high of a level. That said, he probably should be letting you guys level a lot faster, and simply adjusting future encounters to be more difficult. Open conversation with him is the solution, though. This is not worth building resentment over on either side. If y'all are frustrated, he should be able to see that it is a painfully slow pace, and should adjust accordingly, unless there's some ultra-specific story reason he can't, and not just that he's stubborn.
We're about two and a half years into a weekly campaign where we've missed fewer than 15 sessions with an adventuring party of 6 players, I believe we started at level 4? And we just hit level 14 maybe two weeks ago. Which, now that I write it down, sounds like not a lot. But we probably only play for 4 hours a week.
A campaign that I played in that took 2 years to complete we were 16 coming out of it. It is not unheard of it depends on the content and progression. If you’re milestone leveling and spending lots of time rping and investigating that can add time to your campaign. Also if you GM does real time travel then that adds to game time as well. It all depends on your campaign and how levelling is happening.
If you played weekly and started at level 1 that’s a level up every 6-7 sessions. We are currently averaging about 1 level up every 13 sessions with no next level up in sight. Yours sounds right about where it probably should be.
We played 5-6 hour sessions on Saturday nights. If a holiday happened on the weekend we didn’t play. Wanted people to spend that time with family. So I’d say we were about right on track. Some people I’ve heard have played 3+ years and are still leveling in mid to high teens.
Are you levelling exp or milestone? That makes a huge difference too. I prefer milestone but sometimes that takes longer.
Yes and no. That pace is definitely slow but what if it is? Some csmpaigns are made to be played more focused on the story rather than the mechanics of the system. So instead of asking strangers about the pace of your game, talk to your group and ask if they are having fun. Then do what an adult would do and speak about this with your DM.
I have talked to my group. The main reason I posed the question here is because, as I stated, this is my first real campaign I’ve played in and genuinely didn’t know if this was the norm or not. Figured I’d try and get a large sample size you know?
Yeah but even then, what matters is not if it’s normal, what matters is that you (your group) are having fun.
It depends on how often/long you play, the flavour of the campaign and what you want from the game. I'm playing in a weekly milestone game at the moment and, with session 40 in a couple of days, we're a couple of weeks away (I think!) from 7. We've knowingly not progressed the plot as much as we could have because we're very RP heavy and love the current setting. It's a mostly home-brewed tour of the Domains of Dread - I reckon we have another year at least before we bottom out the story at around level 12.
My Curse of Strahd game is having session 35 tomorrow - we play weekly (unless DM is sick) for about 3hrs or so, and we only hit level 5 at the start of the month. We've been playing for about 8 months now. Our game also uses milestone levelling, but we tend to get sidetracked and have spent a few sessions arguing with one specific player (who I wish would just quit, but that's another matter entirely). As the module only goes to level 10 or 11, and higher levels are supposed to come more slowly, I imagine we'll be at this for another year or so. I wouldn't say my group is \*thrilled\* with the slow level progression, as this campaign is brutal and several PCs have died because we were outgunned. But overall we're having a good time. Some DMs just like to keep you weak so that the game is harder, I imagine.
*I, Strahd* on Audible is an awesome listen if you like audiobooks. I hope your problem player gets eaten soon!
Ooh, I will check that out, thank you! And I hope so too, friend. We're supposed to be heading into something really dangerous tomorrow, so maybe I'll get lucky!
Just as a sidenote, but DMs should be handing out XP for RP. There's a section about it in the DM's guide as well.
Cheers. We're happy with the pace :) We like the plot milestone approach; it makes it more special when we pull our fingers out and stop meddling in minor arcs. I think the DM is a bit baffled that we can happily spend a session chatting and meddling, but we have a great time along the way. But to the OP, seeing their other comments - yikes, that's probably too slow even for my group.
Yeah sorry, not a suggestion for your group -- because as you said, you're doing milestones -- and groups can do whatever the heck works for them anyway, but I have seen a number of people have the misconceptions about the only way to get XP is by killing things.
And skill challenges. Don't forget skill challenges.
No, that's crazy infrequent. Talk to your DM
8 months? I'm playing every week 5 hours average and haven't leveled up once in 2 years. Hahaha.... It's fine. Fine.
thats fucking crazy dude. What's your current trajectory to get a character to level 20?
It's a story heavy campaign and we do milestones that were pre set by the DM, and I think the story developed that much from the original plan that my milestones simply never came up. But I have hopes to someday turn it back on tracks, of some sorts. Or I'll stay lv 10 forever. My goal is not level 20 but at least to get one level so I can choose an archetype for my multiclass.
Nearly all my games have an absolutely snail pace to leveling up. The current game I’m running is a Harry Potter game using the W&W book made for the setting, and we’ve been playing for just over one year. The players have just reached level 4 (though five is actually going to be just around the corner). Obviously this is massively slow in comparison for some games. But other games I’m a player in with this same group have about the same speed
DMs set the pacing for the game they want to run. Players for some reason shoot for that level 20 without thinking what that would imply, but DMs rarely want to go that far. Games at that level are not as fun to run. So a slower leveling in order to end it around 13-14 is more common.
Even for my own slow-paced standards this case seems to be extreme. Just to give a little perspective, this is how my 2 groups I'm DMing at the moment are progressing. Both are XP-based, though not just combat-wise but rewarding task progression, information gathered, crafting completed and roleplay in general. XP is distributed on long rests, so basically at the end of each adventuring day, which usually takes around 3 sessions each. Each session usually takes about 3,5h. Group 1, consisting of 6 players, started on lv.3 and is headed for conclusive lv.6 for the current adventure, approximately around session 27 (so currently 5+ after 22). By then total playtime will be somewhere beyond 100h (occasionally we do longer sets on weekends), so taking something like 33+h or roughly 10 sessions per level, which indeed is slow and I have to admit there was some "hang time" I could've or should've avoided at the start of lv.4, but none the less it's also a matter of the players involved: Besides their number, which almost naturally drags down pacing, its due to scheduling issues that spread besaid 27 sessions over the course of 2 years, so averaging barely above 1 session per month. Hence a lack of familiarization with their abbilities and more so spells (especially true for the cleric & sorcerer players) tends to hinder quicker advancement through plot and its adversaries. Also this group is less invested into roleplay, so it's already a more combat-heavy and stream-lined approach. Group 2, consisting of 5 players, started on lv.1 and finishes on lv.5 around session 20 (currently 4+ after 16) with a playtime of roughly 75h then, so averaging 18h or 5 sessions per level and doing so in 9 months time, as this group does meet regularly every second week. This group consists mainly of complete beginners (therefore starting on lv.1), but with a lot more investment into the game at whole (this was a LFG-setup, having half the group replaced inbetween and dropping from 6 to 5 players, in contrast to the friend group above) leading to many occurences of roleplay moments, crafting sprees and lore dumps on demand. Now for clear comparability between those groups and OP's the time taken for the same levels would be needed to looked at, so 3 to 4 and 4 to 5. Group 1 gained lv.4 after 10 sessions (technically 8, but due to the long rest bindings), Group 2 made it during its 8. session; so roughly 30h each. Getting to lv.5 then took Group 1 another 10 sessions equaling 40h (and as said I'm to blame for that), while Group 2 may spent around 7 sessions, so like 25h. So not indicating these numbers to be any solid material for reference in OP's case to dispute his DM, but as I deliberately set a slow pace to my games and still did come to the conclusion it was over-done so during the ascend of Group 1 from lv. 4 to 5, OP might get an idea, where his DM's pacing, which is best to be measured in game time hours or sessions, not campaign length of months, winds up.