Experience Levels by Age variant

[RadiantMan]

Unearthed Arcana presented a variant for giving characters backgrounds, suggesting 1d6 months per level in the background.
That got me to thinking about how quickly characters level up. However, in lower magic campaigns, characters tend to level up slower, at least in the literature that inspires them. So I wondered if I could not develop a system for this.
I decided to use Conan as a basis. Conan's adventuring career spanned approximately thirty years and twenty levels (I'm using stats from Mongoose's Conan RPG, which the King Conan stats are freely available for download from the Mongoose website).
I believe this system could prove useful for the creation of PCs and NPCs, especially where a character is age-specific. Standard d20 assumes adolescence for a starting PC age. However, during the Middle Ages, people actually began training for careers at age 10. So, a much lower starting age is possible.

Below, I have listed the time to complete levels. This should be modified by the character's Will save, using the following formula: 100% - (Will x 5). For example, a normal human (all stats 10) 1st-level commoner (Will +0) takes the full amount of time to complete a level. Conan (statistics derived from King Conan stats provided on website) at 1st level possessed a Wis 15 and a Will Save +5. So Conan took only 75% (100 - [5 x 5]) of the time to complete 1st level.

Note: All times are for that specific level and do not reflect accumulated time for all previous levels.

Level Time to Complete
1 7 mos
2 9 mos
3 11 mos
4 1 yr, 1 mos
5 1 yr, 3 mos
6 1 yr, 8 mos
7 1 yr, 10 mos
8 2 yrs
9 2 yrs, 5 mos
10 2 yrs, 7 mos
11 2 yrs, 10 mos
12 3 yrs, 4 mos
13 3 yrs, 7 mos
14 4 yrs, 3 mos
15 5 yrs
16 5 yrs, 4 mos
17 5 yrs, 7 mos
18 6 yrs, 8 mos
19 7 yrs
20 7 yrs, 4 mos

In the previous example, the human commoner will take a total of 66 1/2 years to reach 20th level. Conan in less than half that time. A PC or NPC with a greater Will save could reach 20th level in even less time, reflecting the determination of a strong will.

NPC application: If you wanted a middle-aged commoner to enter the campaign, you would see that he should be 13th or 14th level. His eighteen-year-old son, following in his father's footsteps, would be about 4th level. (Based on starting age of 15).

I look forward to your feedback.

Thanks

 

[General Barron]

Yeesh... basically all you are doing is greatly increasing the power of humans and other such races. So by the same token, you are making monsters relatively less powerful. If the average middle aged commoner is 13th or 14th level, then a mob of them could easily take down all sorts of powerful monsters.

Why should everybody advance in levels?

Remember: level is directly tied to how powerful someone is in combat (even for NPC classes). A standard human shouldn't be able to take down a giant; only a very exceptional and rare human can.

If skill ranks are the reason you want NPCs to have levels, then just give most commoners skill-focus feats. But also bear in mind that the craft/profession skills are already built on the assumption that the standard commoner has about 4-5 in his skill.

The vast majority of NPCs should be 1st level, meaning they are as powerful as a standard human/elf/whatever. A well-trained guard might be a 2nd level warrior. A seasoned war veteran might be a 3rd level warrior. An exeptional blacksmith might be a 3rd level commoner. IMC I say that about 5th level is the highest any NPCs reach (for non-adventurers). The duke might be a 5th level aristocrat; the city's best blacksmith might be a 5th level commoner; etc.

 

[Li Shenron]

I like the idea of making (long) time a requirement for gaining levels, because I don't usually like to see characters which start at 20 years and in a few months reach level 10th. But I have a lot of caveats about your system....

First, I think that your "level by time/age" table could work as a maximum, but should never substitute XP entirely, however I'm not sure if you wanted to keep XP or not. I would gladly try having a table (or better, different tables for different races) which says the MINIMUM time between levels, effectively putting a minimum age for a certain character level. But then I would try to require characters to still earn their XP to level up (eventually, XP could be gained also in non-adventuring ways).

With such a system, a full-time adventurer would level up as fast as his race could, but not just 20 levels in 6 months because the DM never gives downtime between adventures. Over-adventuring would not bring more XP, but it may still bring more treasure.

Having a strictly level-by-age system isn't good because it doesn't encourage player to play well and "win" adventures, if they level up in any case. Furthermore, I don't like haveing high-level commoners, so I'd prefer that a commoner would simply not get better with age if he's only ploughing his corn field.

Another problem with your system is, why Will score? Getting a discount to levelling time would be huge (something that I would not give lightly), but tying it to the Will score alone makes not much sense. For instance, all spellcasters will level up much faster than other classes. Plus, the discount gets bigger with level, so that your progression is always faster than it looks.

 

[Cheiromancer]

If anything it should be rogues, fighters and barbarians who level up quickly, while clerics and wizards require lots of training.

Maybe make a high will save increase the time to get to a higher level? i.e. 100% + (Will x 5%) Even so, it wouldn't match the progression in the book, which says that starting ages for a human fighter can be as low as 16; for a human wizard they can be as high as 27. Does that mean the fighter starts at 2nd level and the wizard at 9th? (Oops- didn't count the wizard's will save- higher than 9th, then).

One difficulty with your formula (100% - [Will x 5%]) is that a high level paladin/cleric with a few prestige classes, iron will and so on, could easily have a will save of +20, and thus would be able to advance an infinite number of levels in no time. Is this where gods come from?

 

[RadiantMan]

This is some great feedback and I really appreciate it.
Okay... average commoner was a very bad example. I really wasn't looking at this as a way to generate "high level" commoners, experts, adepts, etc. However, if you were using the village/town generation system in the DMG, you do have circumstances in larger villages where higher level commoners, experts, warriors, etc. do exist. So they are not unheard of.
Rare, yes; non-existent, no.
Also, I really was not intending this to replace XP while playing. As I stated in my first post, "this system could prove useful for the creation of PCs and NPCs." And that's as far as I intended for it to be used.
If you knew you needed a middle-aged wizard NPC, though, here's a system for determining his level. Or if you were interested in all the players starting at a more mature age, instead of adolescents. Or, if you wanted to use it backwards, you can find out how old that 14th-level NPC should be. It might be very useful that way in detailing NPCs encounters.
Some of the process was based on a system presented in one of the Rolemaster Companions. In that system, a Self-Discipline (a stat in RM, if you're not familiar) roll was made to determine how much activity was performed in a day. A certain amount of XP were awarded on a day-to-day basis. That number was then modified by the Self-Discipline and Memory (another stat) of the character. If you wanted a straight translation, Wisdom seems to answer for both SD & Me. However, the concept behind the system seemed to fit a Will save better, at least in my mind. Because it was a measure of how determined a character would be to act, perform, adventure, etc. on a daily or weekly basis. So I saw that a character with a stronger will would push himself for more XP.
On another note, SD worked really well in the RM system, since races such as Elves were penalized in their SD (they live so long, they could care less about ever getting around to doing anything).
I do disagree that XP reflects combat prowess. Yes, D&D mostly awards XP for combat, but not every adventure is a dungeon hack and many DMs, (even the DMG encourages this) reward XP for story contribution, problem solving, etc. If a silver-tongued thief talks his way out of a fight with an encounter, does he deserve less XP than the fighter that bashes its head in? Both characters overcame their encounter, but in different ways. I think XP rewards should reflect character concepts. Otherwise its all roll-playing instead of roleplaying. If a player really hams up his bard, shouldn't there be some XP reward whenever he performs before a crowd? His character is definitely gaining in Experience, if not combat experience.
So I do think that everyone has an opportunity to gain experience. My grandfather is a farmer. My dad is a programmer. My grandfather, in game terms, should be far more experienced as a farmer than my dad is as a programmer. I thought that's how all the classes were presented. A high level thief's not a better fighter than a high level fighter. But he is a better thief. So a high level commoner's not going to go toe-to-toe with a high level fighter. But a fighter hasn't got a chance of pulling up a bigger turnip.
But please don't take any of this as my being defensive over my little system. I wanted to write it up and present to you guys and see what came of it. And I also hope that you might help me tweak it and make it something that could work very well.
It appears that you do have some interest and I wanted to clear up some of the misconceptions.
So, how could something like this be made to work, not as a system for XP in game, but for creating characters with realistic levels.

 

[General Barron]

I really was not intending this to replace XP while playing. As I stated in my first post, "this system could prove useful for the creation of PCs and NPCs." And that's as far as I intended for it to be used.

Okay, this makes more sense. Although, in actual play, the DM would have to be careful to make sure his PC's don't advance levels much faster than this timetable. A simple method to do this might be to cut the XP given out by a fixed number (1/2, 1/4, etc). If the PCs still manage to make 20th level in 1 year of game time, then it wouldn't make sense to require NPCs to have 30 years of adventuring behind them to reach the same goal.

I do disagree that XP reflects combat prowess. Yes, D&D mostly awards XP for combat, but not every adventure is a dungeon hack and many DMs, (even the DMG encourages this) reward XP for story contribution, problem solving, etc. If a silver-tongued thief talks his way out of a fight with an encounter, does he deserve less XP than the fighter that bashes its head in? Both characters overcame their encounter, but in different ways. I think XP rewards should reflect character concepts. Otherwise its all roll-playing instead of roleplaying. If a player really hams up his bard, shouldn't there be some XP reward whenever he performs before a crowd? His character is definitely gaining in Experience, if not combat experience.

I think you are misinterpreting what I meant by this. Whenever a character, in any class, gains a level, a whole bunch of various statistics increase all at once. A major portion of these statistics are combat-related: HP, BaB, and Saves being the most important.

So let's say a bard does nothing but perform wonderfully in front of a crowd, day after day after day. According to you, he is gaining in Experience. Certainly he is gaining experience as a performer. But when he gains a level due to this performing experience, he gains not only a point of perform skill, but he also gains in combat prowess (HP, BaB, Saves, etc); not to mention gaining in other skills, magic, etc.

I'm not saying that combat should be the only thing that rewards experience. I tend to give out more storyline XP than combat XP. But the undeniable fact of the matter is: the higher a character's level, the better they are in combat. Like it or not, this is just the way character advancement is set up in DnD (level/class based, as opposed to skill based).

So my point was, it makes no sense to have commoners advancing in levels (beyond maybe 3rd or so), because it makes no sense having commoners being more powerful in combat than, well, a 1st level commoner. It certainly makes little sense having commoners who are more powerful in combat than a 1st level fighter.

I then went on to point out that the skills currently are set up so that having 4 in a craft or profession skill makes one a skilled professional. The majority of commoners won't even have that (many would be laborers with no profession or craft skill at all). Therefore, there is little need to make above 1st level commoners in terms of 'skills making sense', since you can get even higher skill ratings (for those rare and exceptional professionals) by using feats and exceptional ability scores.

My main beef with this system was just with giving levels to common people. Not just some, but an absurd amount of levels. For commoners, a better system would be one that gives them fractions of levels over time (one skill point at manhood, another every 5 years, for example. HPs gain in similar manner), reaching a maximum level of 1-3.