For the first time, I don't just get a feeling of "Meh" from Legends & Lore - Monte is absolutely and fundamentally wrong, IMO. From the top....
In every single edition, when you start talking about high-level play, someone invariably says that the game breaks down after about 12th level. (Sometimes they say 10th, sometimes 8th, sometimes 15th, and so on—the point is the same.)
Actually, I've never heard this said about 1st or 2nd Edition, and barely ever about 4e.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
In 1st and 2nd Edition, the maths of the game fundamentally changes at 'name' level - most characters stop gaining many hit points, non-spellcasters have more or less topped out in power, and monster ACs have maxed out at -10. It's only the spellcasters who continue to see big boosts in power, and while this leads to a "spellcasters rule!" mentality, they're rare enough that I haven't seen this translate into "the game breaks". (Although, maybe it should have.)
In 4e the designers, to their immense credit, went through the game and "fixed the math". And they genuinely did a good job of it. So, aside from the errata that they had to apply and then re-apply, the game holds up surprisingly well. In fact, quite different from "the game breaks", the great criticism of 4e is that there is too little difference - at 1st level you fight Orcs and at 30th you fight Orcus, but you're doing fundamentally the same stuff each time. (And, yes, that's an exaggeration. I just like the Orcs/Orcus parallel.)
As a fan of high-level play across the editions, I've never agreed fully with the idea that the game breaks down. I think, however, there's some validity to it, but only if you look at it a certain way. What people are recognizing is that, at a certain level, play changes. As I see it, there are three such break points in the game—low level, mid level, and high level.
He's right that the game changes.
But, in 3e at least, he's wrong to assert that the game doesn't break. The problem is that 3e starts off as a hugely complex game (even Core Rules only), and with every supplement you add, and every level you go up, that complexity increases hugely. After a while, you get to a "sweet spot", where characters are nicely robust, where they have plenty of options, but where the complexity isn't overwhelming.
But then, scant few levels later, the complexity
really starts to bite. Polymorph kills you, summoned monsters can mean the Druids turn alone takes an hour, and woe betide you if someone drops a
greater dispel!
At the same time, the game purposefully negates the hard-won survivability of the characters as save-or-die effects proliferate. And so we get so-called "rocket tag", in which the spellcasters bounce magical effects back and forwards and the only real consideration is "who fails a save first?"
And, of course, if it is your PC who dies, you're out of action for hours while the rest of the party completes the encounter, and then you return through the revolving door of death. Madness, on both counts.
Fourth Edition does a nice job of recognizing these changes, I think, and the changes don't focus on how the characters become more powerful and how the challenges they face grow more difficult. Instead, the very game changes. The three tiers of the game, along with the commensurate change in character power, influence, and potential foes, makes a lot of sense.
Agreed.
(The people who say that the game breaks down at such-and-such a level are self-defining themselves as people who don't care for that style of high-level play, which is fine, of course!)
Nope, wrong. I
like high level play. It's just that it's easier to do in Savage Worlds or Exalted than D&D. 4e was a step forward in this regard, but it loses me for other regards. With 3e, having done high-level once, I'll not be doing it again... and that's my current edition of choice.
Some players like low-level, gritty, "where am I going to get two more silver pieces to afford to eat today" kinds of games. Others want to fight basilisks and save the whole town from an invasion of troglodytes. And still others want to create their own plane of existence and lay waste to planets. (And plenty want to do two or all three of these things.) Recognizing these different desires and needs allows game designers to tailor gameplay to suit them.
This means that, perhaps, certain activities, conditions, and effects could and should be level-based. Perhaps teleportation of any kind should be a mid- or high-level effect. Energy drain or ability damaging effects could be medium. Planar travel should be high-level. And so on.
Yes. Gosh, I wish the 4e designers had considered that... /sarcasm
What I am really getting at here is that the level of the game affects the complexity both of the story and the mechanics.
NO. This is absolutely and completely wrong.
For a first-time player, the model of "start simple, then increase complexity" is a good thing. Fair enough.
But...
A given player only plays that first campaign
once, and most of us don't want to then revert back to "Dwarf Fighter" as the full extent of our customisation the second and subsequent time we play. Additionally, most of us reach of point at which the level of complexity is right for us, and don't want to go beyond that point.
So, what that
actually suggests is that the core game should be a nice, simple introduction to the game, with minimal complexity at the start, gradually increasing to a moderate level
and then staying at that level for the rest of the level range. Then, add supplements that add complexity (but
not power) at those low levels, and further supplements that allow groups to increase the level of complexity
across the level range up to their preferred level (and no further).
Remember that it is trivial for a supplement to
add complexity; it is nigh-impossible for one to remove it. So, keep the core to the minimum complexity you require to make the game work.
It's almost as if what's needed is some sort of, I don't know, modular system...
