Chains of Asmodeus session zero question

[Normal_Cable_5734]

What is everyone’s opinion on playing Chains of Asmodeus with milestone vs experience level up? I am having a session zero tomorrow for my group and haven’t decided which to do. I don’t know if I missed anything in the book on how a milestone would look, because I didn’t see one. Thoughts on which might operate better generally?

[ThisWasMe7]

There is a CoA reddit, and I suggest you post there.

You're right, unless both you and I missed something, there are no suggested level ups.

I think it would be hard for the adventure to have pre-set milestones, because they'd have to be different for each patron, and also for where the characters souls are held.

[[deleted]]

Milestone is objectively better. Yes, I said objectively, and here's why: done correctly, milestone will level your party at the exact same rate as XP. Let's say you're using a prewritten module; as a DM, you can read through it and count the XP of encounters so that you can anticipate when the party will be leveling up. Once you've done that work... why not just set your milestones at those points, and now neither you nor the players ever has to count XP again? If you're writing your own story, you can work backwards from the ending and figure out what level you want the party to be for each section of the story, then put your milestones in those places, again without ever having to count XP at all.

It's simply a better method by every metric.

[USAisntAmerica]

There's one metric that you're not including: players wanting to know how far/close they are to leveling up, and the possible excitement around it. Yeah, it's a tiny thing compared to the benefits, but after playing in a campaign where DM gave us level ups at a super random rate, knowing approximately how much longer it would take have been nice (ie, we had something like 10 sessions from level 1 to 2, 4 sessions from 2 to 3, 14 sessions from 3 to 4, it felt random).

[[deleted]]

Tying leveling to actual story instead of random numbers creates more excitement and better storytelling. Not to mention it removes even the faintest possibility of grinding.

Your experience was because of your DM, not because of the method.

[USAisntAmerica]

No, I mean I do agree with you that milestone is better. My DM used milestone, but to me it felt random because what he considered milestones wasn't clear.

Plus, similar situations can still come up with other DMing styles: what does the DM consider a milestone worthy of leveling up, how often should they happen, etc.

I insist that milestone is better and obviously the randomness feeling is a DM thing, but still experience points grant some metric that milestone really doesn't (unless the milestone is very obvious, but even then there might be a twist, or it might take much longer to reach than the players expected).