New Level-less RPG

[Staffan]

For the particular style you seem to be looking for, I think Earthdawn could be worth a look. It's not level-less, but it sort of reverses the way levels work.

Each character has a Discipline, which is basically the equivalent of a class (it is possible but expensive to have multiple Disciplines). The main benefit to a Discipline is having access to a number of Talents, which both cover bread-and-butter abilities like Melee Weapons or Spellcasting and more interesting special abilities like Taunt, Acrobatic Strike, or Fireblood. As you adventure, you gain Legend Points (XP), which you spend on increasing your Talents (and possibly your stats). Once you have increased them enough, you qualify for the next Circle (level), and once you train you will get access to two new talents: one fixed and one chosen from a list.

This means you can still use level (circle) as a rough guide to how powerful a character is, but there's quite a lot of flexibility in how you develop your character.

Outside of that, there are many, many different level-less games. Generally speaking, few of them allow characters to become as world-shaking as high-level D&D characters, but that's not inherently a feature of level-less games, just a common trait.

 

[ThorinTeague]

I'll vouch that it works and you should try it out.

As for being level-less, that really depends on how you mean that. If PCs continue to "advance," you're still using levels; they're just flexible. To me, no levels means (mostly) no progression - just change. Which could be cool - maybe a PC has to make initial choices and appreciate or resent them as he/she plays. Or at certain points the PC can change character features to others. For example, up to the change-point, your character was mechanically-focused. But after so many social encounters, your character attains a social-focus instead. Maybe the character concept doesn't change, but it's a new way to think about that character if he/she is now "social."

You are correct. There would be, in this hypothetical system, a sizable list of milestones that a character could hit which would earn them "an experience point," or whatever you want to call it. Then the character would "purchase" class and species features a la carte. Which makes game balance a definite issue. Thank you for responding.

 

[ThorinTeague]

How experienced are you with different kinds of RPGs? I ask because what you are asking is a methodology that has been around for a long time. If you are new to.RPGs, especially those outside of D&D, I suggest looking at games like GURPS, Savage Worlds, Hero System and anything else that uses incremental advancement.

I'm looking up GURPS and Hero System now. I haven't looked at GURPS in a long time. Savage Worlds is a game my group may be playing pretty soon after a couple of Pathfinder adventures. Thank you for responding.

 

[ThorinTeague]

Levels as a mechanism is in the minority for published RPGs, you may want to take a look around. The RPG industry has advanced a great deal over the past several decades and only some of those concepts and ideas are a good fit with the expectations (and sacred cows) of D&D.

There are even level-less Fantasy Heartbreakers. Fantasy Heartbreakers are "It's like D&D - but Better!".

I'd suggest looking around for some other game systems, maybe watch a few games or actual play videos of games that differ greatly from D&D, and see the ideas already out there. Then you can either adopt a game that fits your wants, or you can bring in ideas from all over and make your own.

Are you directing me to an RPG called "Fantasy Heartbreakers," or are you saying that there is a genre of RPG's called "Fantasy Heartbreakers?" What should I look up to read into what you're suggesting? Thank you for responding.

 

[Tonguez]

I've been monkeying around with some ideas. One thing I'm toying with is what an RPG without levels would look like. I'm trying to see if it's feasable to take the idea of a "level" and sort of divide it up into its constituent components that a player can "buy." Like if you thought of a traditional level as a "package" of advancements, it might (depending on system) come with any of:

Increased Hit points
Better Chance to Hit
More Chances to Attack
Ability Score Increase(s)
New Proficiencies/Skills, or increased expertise in them
New/More/Higher level Spells
New/Better Class Abilities
Etc. Etc... you get the idea.

This would work (or not) from a system of milestones. You hit x milestone, get an xp and you can spend your milestone on any of the aforementioned and probably more. A running XP total should provide an approximate idea of power level for terms of balancing encounters and/or writing adventures.

It may be that some degree of requirement barriers should be baked in to prevent a player from, say, buying into nothing but increased chance to hit at the expense of being a complete glass cannon. Or whatever the case may be. But to some degree, the idea would be that Players should be allowed to make this decision and be a glass cannon if they wish.

The primary detriment that I am seeing right now is that it require long lists of milestones. Probably some would be recurring and some would not. Some would be specific to classes and species. This would probably be several pages of tables. I think in my completely hypothetical system I want negative experiences to advance the character as well, e.g. "failing a quest," "surrendering," "fleeing," "getting robbed," etc. would be on the list along with what you'd expect: defeating enemies, finding treasures, completing quests, etc. etc. so forth.

I open the floor to any thoughts, input, constructive criticism, and/or suggestions you may have.

treat Melee and Ranged Att as skills and make a Toughness Feat chain to increase HP. Everything else including class abilities can be made into feats, then use CP cost to balance them.
its a slower progression but still eventually levelling up as you gain new class abilities

 

[Staffan]

Are you directing me to an RPG called "Fantasy Heartbreakers," or are you saying that there is a genre of RPG's called "Fantasy Heartbreakers?" What should I look up to read into what you're suggesting? Thank you for responding.

"Fantasy Heartbreaker" is a somewhat derogatory term used for games that are mild variations of D&D, usually with changed rules for That One Thing which really bugs the game designer.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

OG Traveller had no advancement system for characters. You just collected credits and bought more/better stuff. Oh yeah, and also tried to pay off your starship loan without the sharks finding you and killing you...

 

[Blue]

Are you directing me to an RPG called "Fantasy Heartbreakers," or are you saying that there is a genre of RPG's called "Fantasy Heartbreakers?" What should I look up to read into what you're suggesting? Thank you for responding.

Fantasy Heartbreaker is just a term for people making D&D-like games, but "better". With "better" actually defined as some mix of "I have cool ideas I want to use" and "this fits the particulars of how my table plays".

Most FH are definitely amatuer, though some have greaduated to published games, or at least Pay-what-you-want. I'm sure you can find the term on plenty of websites, but it's not to my knowledge the name of an actual game unless someone was having some tongue-in-cheek fun.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Another level less system to check out .. Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium.

It uses a D100 system where your skill score is also your base chance of success. If you have Sword 43 as your skill then a roll of 43 or less on a d100 is a success.

Each time you use a skill it gets a checkmark. After some amount of time you can get a chance to level up skill you have checkmarks in. The chance to level up the skill is the inverse of your chance to succeed. This a low value skill is easy to increase but a very high skill has a small chance of getting better.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Are you directing me to an RPG called "Fantasy Heartbreakers," or are you saying that there is a genre of RPG's called "Fantasy Heartbreakers?" What should I look up to read into what you're suggesting? Thank you for responding.

If you are willing to read through this...

The Forge :: Fantasy Heartbreakers