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Community
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Unified Class Progression Table Yay Or Nay?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6203040" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I agree with this.</p><p></p><p>What is your view of Gygax's suggestion in his DMG that experienced players might begin at 2nd or 3rd level?</p><p></p><p>I don't know 3E well enough to have a strong view about it, but I think in 4e - at least played in accordance with the default expectations set out in the rulebook - makes PCs of different levels pointless. XP aren't a reward - the way the rules are set up, in effect you get XP just for turning up and playing the game (at the rate of around one level-equivalent encounter's worth per hour or so). And so, given that XP is not a reward, players aren't playing for XP: they're playing for motivations connected to the fiction itself, and the transition, within the gameworld, from heroic to epic scope. And once players aren't playing for XP, but are playing for motivations connected to the scope of the ingame situation, why muck that up by putting different players' PCs at different positions within that scope?</p><p></p><p>I agree with this. Unless the idea of "level" is meant to have some additional significance besides being a method of delivering packets of mechanical effectiveness, I don't see any special benefit in letting some classes gain levels more quickly than others by needing fewer XP to achieve them.</p><p></p><p>In my experience, all it tends to do is make CON more or less important in determining some classes' hit points, by changing the number of HD, and hence the extent of the CON bonus, as a contributing factor to total hit points. And I'm fairly confident that this effect was not deliberate; I'm pretty sure it was emergent. The first published discussion of it I'm aware of is Roger Moore in Dragon magazine 69. (Moore refers to Lewis Pulsipher's earlier article in White Dwarf making the point that it is XP, not levels, that should be the key determiners of mechanical effectiveness.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6203040, member: 42582"] I agree with this. What is your view of Gygax's suggestion in his DMG that experienced players might begin at 2nd or 3rd level? I don't know 3E well enough to have a strong view about it, but I think in 4e - at least played in accordance with the default expectations set out in the rulebook - makes PCs of different levels pointless. XP aren't a reward - the way the rules are set up, in effect you get XP just for turning up and playing the game (at the rate of around one level-equivalent encounter's worth per hour or so). And so, given that XP is not a reward, players aren't playing for XP: they're playing for motivations connected to the fiction itself, and the transition, within the gameworld, from heroic to epic scope. And once players aren't playing for XP, but are playing for motivations connected to the scope of the ingame situation, why muck that up by putting different players' PCs at different positions within that scope? I agree with this. Unless the idea of "level" is meant to have some additional significance besides being a method of delivering packets of mechanical effectiveness, I don't see any special benefit in letting some classes gain levels more quickly than others by needing fewer XP to achieve them. In my experience, all it tends to do is make CON more or less important in determining some classes' hit points, by changing the number of HD, and hence the extent of the CON bonus, as a contributing factor to total hit points. And I'm fairly confident that this effect was not deliberate; I'm pretty sure it was emergent. The first published discussion of it I'm aware of is Roger Moore in Dragon magazine 69. (Moore refers to Lewis Pulsipher's earlier article in White Dwarf making the point that it is XP, not levels, that should be the key determiners of mechanical effectiveness.) [/QUOTE]
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