How fast (in game-time) would you go from level 1 to level 20 using the DMG encounter guidelines?

Question

The DMG does have guidance for encounters per day and XP per encounter, as well as for gold earned from treasure hoards by level.

There are already tables that calculate how much gold you would have at a given level, based on this guidance.

If you adventure every day and do not spend time on downtime activities, and the DM confronts you with encounters as advised in the DMG, how long would it take a typical group of 4 first level adventurers in game time to make it all the way to level 20?

I am not asking about play-time at the table (or screen) in real life, but about in-game days that the characters experience.

Answer 1

33 days

The basic rules give a list of XP per level. The DMG gives a list of XP per adventuring day per level. All you need to do is compare those numbers to figure out the number of days it takes for each level.

For example at 4th level you need 7500 to level up, and your daily xp budget is 3500 xp. 7500 / 3500 = 2.1, so it takes a little over 2 days to level up.

Then you can sum up all those numbers, which gives a total of 33.4 days.

Level	XP to Level Up1	XP per Day2	Days to Level Up3
1st	300	300	1
2nd	600	600	1
3rd	1800	1200	1.5
4th	3800	1700	2.2
5th	7500	3500	2.1
6th	9000	4000	2.3
7th	11000	5000	2.2
8th	14000	6000	2.3
9th	16000	7500	2.1
10th	21000	9000	2.3
11th	15000	10500	1.4
12th	20000	11500	1.7
13th	20000	13500	1.5
14th	25000	15000	1.7
15th	30000	18000	1.7
16th	30000	20000	1.5
17th	40000	25000	1.6
18th	40000	27000	1.5
19th	50000	30000	1.7

^{1. XP to level up is calculated from the Basic Rules Character Advancement table by subtracting the XP to reach a level from the XP to reach the previous level. 2. XP per day is lifted straight from the Dungeon Master's Guide Adventuring Day XP table. 3. Days to level up is calculated by dividing the XP to level up by XP per day.}

Level up during the day? Splitting XP budgets?

You will notice that a lot of days have a decimal portion. If you're willing to run half of a day using the 3rd level budget, level up, then run the remaining half of the day with the 4th level budget, then 33.4 days is the result you will get.

You could also end the day as soon as characters have enough XP to level up, in which case it would take 43 days. However I don't know of any rules saying you need to do this.

The choice that I would probably consider closest to RAW (and perhaps sanest) is to set the XP budget at the start of the day and not modify it even if the PC levels up. If you do so then you'll need 34.6 days to hit level 20.

How long in real life?

As a side note, I would estimate that most sessions I played only get through 2-3 encounters per 3-4 hour session. This may show I play relatively low combat games, but it's interesting to think that this means it would take approximately 160-340 sessions to play an entire 1-through-20 campaign. At 1 session per week, that's 3-6 years.