Feature or Bug: D&D's Power and Complexity Curve

[Guest 6801328]

It's not a problem I've had in my games, but it's an interesting way to look at the game.

In your Peter Jackson's LotR example, Gandalf probably only gained one level throughout the entire story (and even then, only after taking out a friggin' balrog and nearly dying in the process). It was a little different for Sam: he never gained any levels at all, from what we can tell from the story...he started out as Frodo's gardener, and he was always Frodo's gardener...albeit he was a gardener with The Light of Eärendil, a magical Elven Cloak to hide him from unfriendly eyes, and a magical sword named Sting. Frodo's path was the inverse of typical D&D progression: he left the Shire as a brave hero with a world-ending artifact in his care...but toward the end he was so powerless he couldn't even walk.

It's a very interesting way of looking at D&D, for sure. I mean, what is a hero really made of?

It wouldn't be difficult to remove leveling altogether and still have both an enjoyable game AND story. Experience points are just one way to add power to a character gradually over time, or as a reward for completing missions. You could go the Samwise route, and just award magic items at key points in the story, items that will be pivotal to their success. You could do something like Frodo, where the party starts out powerful and gets gradually weaker (pretty good motivator, if you ask me).

So many ideas...must go write some of this down...

Again, play The One Ring. It is able to model the story in LotR better than D&D does.

 

[5ekyu]

I will try and present an example that explains my point of view on the subject:

The player characters hail from a village on the edge of the frontier. Goblins lurk in the dark forest making trouble for locals. As neophytes, the PCs must trek through the forest to get to the Lost Shine of XP and Gold. Their travel through the forest is tense and full of danger. After all, it is a dangerous world out there. While at the Shrine of XP and Gold, the PCs rise to 3rd level (not an unusual amount of XP gain for a 1st level adventure). The way back through the forest, just a week perhaps later, is not so tense. And encounter with 1d4+1 goblins with a 25% chance of a wolf is not nearly as frightening. All the fear and tension that was part of the world is now gone. Was it a lie all along?

There are some solutions, but they require the DM to either change the game rules or build the world around the zero-to-hero progression. Maybe the forest was full of orcs and wargs instead of goblins and wolves. That will certainly extend the "life" of the danger of the dark forest, but the consequences for surrounding world design elements are real. Or maybe the forest does not have set inhabitants and instead CR based encounters (random or otherwise). Now the world is a place of fuzzy boundaries and uncertain reality.

Does that make my position clearer, or at least illustrate what I say when I mean immersion breaking?

How does an example of a world you find immersion breaking tie it to the zero to hero?

You choose a "immersive" requirement then design a set of mechanics scenes and world combos that violates it.

The flaw there is the combo of choices not reaching your goals.

By a contrast, consider the vast array of stories where the plotline and story is basically the same thing.

Hero journeys.
Hero meets dangerous foes.
Hero gets arse kicked
Hero journeys to temple
Hero gets training.hero learns new tricks. Often personal growth along the way.
Hero encounters some bad guys and finally
Hero defests the previously truly now beatable foe.

In addition to being the core of Karate Kid it's a pretty classic trope from not only a large number of kung-fu stories and movies but also more than a few myths from more classic sources. Insert picking up shield and sandal at the temple and you get my point.

Or if you want a more traditional D&D structure, after learning new tricks and dispatching the riff raff they learn that they were working for bigger bad over yonder and... not unlike many seasonal series where the threat and big bad get bigger season to season.

The thing is you can take any of them and build a combo of scenes, stories etc thst eorld together and make eense... or a combo that wont and break your immersion.

Thst is true regardless of whether its flat progression or zero to hero or the many degrees in between.

Trying to make it appear that zero to hero is the problrm is off the mark.

Pick the components that meet your goals- works with either if you want it to. Pick the components that dont meet your goals, not honnaxeork with either.

 

[5ekyu]

I thought I did.

Leveling happens in 5e st the pace the GM sets. There are options presented.

Dont take the options you wont like.

"You can do away with experience points entirely and control the rate of character advancement."

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I actively dislike the expected campaign (more or less 1-20) level advancement of D&D, particularly in 5e for many of the same reasons as the OP, but it's very much a feature.

The designers have opted for lots of levels to make players feel like they're progressing and to give them new abilities to play with as the game goes on. At the same time, it allows the game to support local villagers exploring a nearby ruins at level 1, epic heroes fighting demons and demigods at level 20 and everything in between. Cutting down the progression would alienate a portion of the audience in a mass-market RPG. Those that want a narrower slice of the pie are expected to adapt. You literally cannot make a game that will please all players all the time right out of the box. Choices have to be made.

I think the problem is even more evident in a game like Beyond the Wall, which I quite like, but it attempts to marry Hearth Fantasy tropes (more or less kitchen boys and blacksmith apprentices trying to save their town from evil) with a leveling system that makes them overpowered for such things by the time they hit 3rd or 4th level (out of 10 levels in the game).

Remember in early D&D, a 4th level fighter was a HERO and an 8th level fighter was a SUPERHERO. That's like Conan right there--capable of making 8 attacks per round vs. normal soldiers. A literally unstoppable killing machine. They're less powerful in 5e, but still far stronger than a common CR1/4 soldier.

All my campaigns now are severely level-restricted to maybe 5 levels, which might take a year of play to get through. I have a heavily-modded Eternal Champion-type campaign that's locked at level 11 and will never go any higher (based on my belief that level 11 in 5e offers just about everything a party needs to beat just about anything). So, while I understand the complaint, I do think there are more than enough tools to do something about it.

 

[Blue]

There are two design patterns that crop up again and again in successful RPGs. One, often called "Zero to Hero" is the one that D&D follows. It takes everythign youa re saying as a positive. A table can focus on any particular part of the experience or the whole thing, and characters go from neophytes to able to deal with world- (or larger!) shaking issues.

The other is what you'll often see in superhero games, maybe Shadowrun, and some others where you start off as quite competent, and have small mechanical improvements. This seems to fit some of the examples your gave.

Which is used really depends on what the designers are trying to model, with some genres more usually portrayed more commonly one way or the other when it comes to table-top RPGs.

It's perfectly fine to want one or the other. But it's a major design point that has layers of repercussions. For changes that deep, it's probably best to find a system that caters to what your table wants. Sure, you could do a D&D game starting at level X with very slow/no advancement - the system supports it. But the infrastructure around it doesn't give the depth for any particular small level range such that you may run out of enemies, be short of certain spells that you want your players to have access to, etc. While a system with the other design pattern might give you all the tools you need upfront.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Leveling isn't a bug but I find that I need to switch systems occasionally to get a refreshed perspective on things.

I find that, if you limit levels of NPCs to 10th and spells to 5th(at least when I played 3rd ed), you can have a really good, immersive story where the world isn't overly dangerous for commoners. Often times, the world has to change to challenge the power of the PCs and you wonder, 'how does the average person even survive?'

Once the PCs get beyond 10th, you can move your story to other worlds or remote places where commoners don't frequent. I played a game where any spells above 5th were super-rare. An 'Archmage' was considered 9th level. Getting access to higher level spells required you to find them or some kind of in-game justification. It was fun and worked well.

***

Gary Gygax created a game system called Dangerous Journeys and, in true Gygax fashion, it was full of tables and charts. It was a skill-based system with lots of granularity. Your HPs were based on your 6 Physical stats (18 stats in total: mental, spiritual, physical).

So, your Hit Points were static you never got tougher unless you invested lots of 'xp' but that increase was minuscule. How did you become heroic? You used 'xp' to increased a variety of skills. I think there was 30 or 40 skills. So, you could become an expert swordsman by investing in the One Hand Weapon skill but it meant your other skills suffered because of lack of investment. You survived by being able to parry and not 'soak' damage.

The game world didn't have to change/adapt based on scale of the PCs advancement. Instead, The players could invest in whatever skills they wanted/needed to deal with the challenges in the game-world. Which is much more realistic.

But sometimes it's fun to play a leveling game too and do all the cool things 20th level Super-heroes do. I like to do both. Different systems offer different types of candy.