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D&D Older Editions
Throwing ideas, seeing what sticks (and what stinks)
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6796522" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>TECHNICALLY AD&D and OD&D have no absolute limit. However you don't really gain anything except a trivial amount of hit points beyond 20th level. Magic Users/Wizards, and Cleric/Druid/Priest will get some additional spells, but in any practical sense you're topped out, and there's nothing out there that's going to present a challenge that you'd need to go higher up to overcome. I mean, some people played these 'super high level' games, but it usually turned into either a homebrew version of Immortals, or just off-the-wall Monty Haul like play. In any practical sense the game was over at 20, and Gygax himself gave out a free pizza to any player achieving level 20, and then retired the character (I understand only a couple of people ever got there). So, yes, in effect Gygax was calling the game 'over' at level 20, without saying "you can't continue, it absolutely ends here." </p><p></p><p>So, yes, 3.0 is the first edition where 20 is a hard limit, but even there I believe they then produced some sort of Epic Level Handbook, correct? 4e is the first time that the game effectively stated outright "there is no level beyond 30, just godlike beings and they don't really have level progression, we just rate them for challenge purposes." </p><p></p><p>I think putting that at level 20 and simply rescaling things such that level 21+ are 'godlike' is simply a minor redesign intended to reduce the need for added levels of 'filler'. While there are certainly interesting things available in 4e at all levels, for any one character, there are always a goodly number of those levels that aren't all that interesting. Often you find that 2-3 different levels provide encounter or daily powers that are largely just slight variations and scaling that exist mainly to fill out the choices at that level. Pruning back doesn't reduce options in any practical sense, but it insures they're less redundant and each level has some real solid payoff. Cutting out an extra 5 points of bonus growth is just icing on the cake.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6796522, member: 82106"] TECHNICALLY AD&D and OD&D have no absolute limit. However you don't really gain anything except a trivial amount of hit points beyond 20th level. Magic Users/Wizards, and Cleric/Druid/Priest will get some additional spells, but in any practical sense you're topped out, and there's nothing out there that's going to present a challenge that you'd need to go higher up to overcome. I mean, some people played these 'super high level' games, but it usually turned into either a homebrew version of Immortals, or just off-the-wall Monty Haul like play. In any practical sense the game was over at 20, and Gygax himself gave out a free pizza to any player achieving level 20, and then retired the character (I understand only a couple of people ever got there). So, yes, in effect Gygax was calling the game 'over' at level 20, without saying "you can't continue, it absolutely ends here." So, yes, 3.0 is the first edition where 20 is a hard limit, but even there I believe they then produced some sort of Epic Level Handbook, correct? 4e is the first time that the game effectively stated outright "there is no level beyond 30, just godlike beings and they don't really have level progression, we just rate them for challenge purposes." I think putting that at level 20 and simply rescaling things such that level 21+ are 'godlike' is simply a minor redesign intended to reduce the need for added levels of 'filler'. While there are certainly interesting things available in 4e at all levels, for any one character, there are always a goodly number of those levels that aren't all that interesting. Often you find that 2-3 different levels provide encounter or daily powers that are largely just slight variations and scaling that exist mainly to fill out the choices at that level. Pruning back doesn't reduce options in any practical sense, but it insures they're less redundant and each level has some real solid payoff. Cutting out an extra 5 points of bonus growth is just icing on the cake. [/QUOTE]
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