D&D General How important is leveling to the play experience (lvls 2-8)?

[Cadence]

If I'm working on a detailed campaign world, one of the things I struggle with is how it all fits together reasonably in a world that goes from the 1st level zeros to the 20th level super heroes. So I really like the e6 idea (in 3.5, say, you advance to 6th level as usual and then only get feats after that - gradually moving up the equivalent of a couple of levels in power as you plateau). This gives a world where the standard "medieval" feel still makes vague sense and fits with some of the inspirational fiction that starts after the main character has some experience and where the main point isn't them advancing in prowess.

And so, I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering about how to craft the ideal e6 (and then the project is put on pause, and then 5e comes out and...)

Anyway, I reread Gamma World 1e the other night for the first time in several decades and had forgotten its advancent doesn't really have levels. You just rolled a die to get randomly accrued bonuses one at a time as you got the xp that would level you in DnD. [Edit: the big idea for me here is the one at a time,.and not the random]. And then I remember how the advancement in WoD 2e went, where you can use the xp to improve individual attributes, abilities, and powers that you chose.

And so finally I get to the question:

If you're doing a "Journeyman to Hero" campaign (as opposed to "Zero to Superhero"), how important is the actual leveling to the feel of playing D&D?

Would it still feel like DnD to you if you started at 2nd or 3rd level (whatever it takes to have the archetype and not be totally squishy) and made everything after that buying new improvements? Say, gradually moving you up to say 6th level plateauing, where what's available to buy with xp depends on your initial class and what you've bought before (like feat chains).

If you really like the starting at 0, imagine the rules for that have slightly slower advancement than now to get you to the 2/3 journeyman stage and then what I sketch above kicks in.

 

[Scott Christian]

Anecdotally, from my experience, most players need levelling. It is a reward for surviving, even when there has been very little cause for concern. Secondly, it is also how the player wants their character to grow versus randomization. You may have a table that is open to this idea, but again, from my experience, those players are limited.

But good luck trying it. Curious to see how it turns out.

 

[Dausuul]

New mechanical options are important to me, but raw power is not. I would certainly be up for an E6-style 5E game. (Though in another thread on the subject I was mostly persuaded that 7 is the place to stop.)

 

[Yora]

I dare spewing my controversial opinion that an increased importance of leveling up comes from the campaign itself being unrewarding. When gaining levels and ability becomes the center of playing the game, it's a substitute for lackluster events and stakes.

 

[Cadence]

Anecdotally, from my experience, most players need levelling. It is a reward for surviving, even when there has been very little cause for concern. Secondly, it is also how the player wants their character to grow versus randomization. You may have a table that is open to this idea, but again, from my experience, those players are limited.

But good luck trying it. Curious to see how it turns out.

I think the randomization would feel bad to me too. I'm thinking more.like the feel we had in our VtM 2e game where you picked.what you wanted to apply the XP too, but the effective advancement was slower than what you get in D&D.

 

[Lyxen]

THe first thing, I think is that it really depends on which version of the game you are playing. For me, 4e has the most restricted evolution from level 1 to level 30, whereas AD&D has the lowest start and 3e the highest finish. 5e is somewhere in the middle, but a level 20 5e character is not a superhero. He has powerful abilities, but he is far from invincible and there are certainly foes who will challenge him. For me, the only difficulty comes in when you want to imagine his foes. Yes, in that paradigm, it has to be something on the level of the ruler of a plane or at least a powerful being, certainly not evil joe from around the corner. Now, it does not mean that the BBEG needs to confront the characters from level 1, there will be a whole pyramid of foes.

Now, if you have trouble with this concept, I understand your perspective, but I'm not even sure it's the case. Anyhow, the thing is that just progressing by random percentages would certainly feel very boring to me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Leveling is a part of D&D... but I think it is also one of the least realistic parts of it. Because the more you level and the more power you acquire, the greater the unrealistic disparity between supposedly the same kinds of people. One "commoner" gets killed by an arrow to the chest... a 10-level "fighter" can take 20 arrows to the chest and walk away without any issue (until you start having to "reword" all the rules by suggesting things like "nicks and scratches", "loss of energy", "failed luck" and all the other euphemisms we use to try and justify hit points in any sort of consistent manner.)

That's why so many other games forgo the leveling process and instead XP is spent just incrementally increasing skills or abilities one point at a time session after session. It still shows characters improving, but there isn't these grand leaps in logic-less extravagant ability that D&D levels can bring. Especially between the leveled haves and have-nots.

Which is why I've always thought about the idea of using E6 to try and "solve" these issues in the D&D space... but inevitably I always comes back to "Why am I bothering to try and jerry-rig D&D into something its not, when there are plenty of other RPGs out there that actually do what E6 is trying to get across?" And at that point I just accept that D&D is what it is, and let it be. Yeah, I might come up with the occasional house rule for certain things just to play the game a little differently... but any grand mechanical changes? I design them on my off-time thinking they might be this new breakthrough in how I run my game, but then once I'm finished I realize that D&D just doesn't lend itself to it. If I want grand mechanical changes? Just play a different RPG.

 

[Lyxen]

Leveling is a part of D&D... but I think it is also one of the least realistic parts of it. Because the more you level and the more power you acquire, the greater the unrealistic disparity between supposedly the same kinds of people. One "commoner" gets killed by an arrow to the chest... a 10-level "fighter" can take 20 arrows to the chest and walk away without any issue (until you start having to "reword" all the rules by suggesting things like "nicks and scratches", "loss of energy", "failed luck" and all the other euphemisms we use to try and justify hit points in any sort of consistent manner.)

And yet, they happen all the time in the genre, whether movies, books, tv shows. And no one complains, and people find them awesome.

That's why so many other games forgo the leveling process and instead XP is spent just incrementally increasing skills or abilities one point at a time session after session. It still shows characters improving, but there isn't these grand leaps in logic-less extravagant ability that D&D levels can bring. Especially between the leveled haves and have-nots.

And this is why these more gritty games do not model what's happening in the fantasy genre, in particular the high fantasy one. After that, it's merely a matter of taste.

Which is why I've always thought about the idea of using E6 to try and "solve" these issues in the D&D space... but inevitably I always comes back to "Why am I bothering to try and jerry-rig D&D into something its not, when there are plenty of other RPGs out there that actually do what E6 is trying to get across?" And at that point I just accept that D&D is what it is, and let it be. Yeah, I might come up with the occasional house rule for certain things just to play the game a little differently... but any grand mechanical changes? I design them on my off-time thinking they might be this new breakthrough in how I run my game, but then once I'm finished I realize that D&D just doesn't lend itself to it. If I want grand mechanical changes? Just play a different RPG.

My perspective as well. When I want gritty and dangerous, I play Runequest for example.

 

[Li Shenron]

Would it still feel like DnD to you if you started at 2nd or 3rd level (whatever it takes to have the archetype and not be totally squishy) and made everything after that buying new improvements? Say, gradually moving you up to say 6th level plateauing, where what's available to buy with xp depends on your initial class and what you've bought before (like feat chains).

Sure, I don't see why it shouldn't feel like DnD.

I think it's quite important to generally have some advancement opportunities ahead, whether in form of levels or something else, otherwise the risk for the players is getting a feeling that the game is almost over. I guess most people would rather always have an open end just in case, even if eventually the game stops anyway. That's why most editions had a sort of open-ended epic levels system, even if they are largely unutilized, the fact that they exist delivers at least the feeling that there is always a future for a character.

Speed of advancement is another matter. IMXP levelling up too fast makes players a lot more concerned with character management than playing the adventure. It also creates a lot more pressure to the DM to pace adventures in a specific way. I prefer a level advancement with decreasing speed: earning the first levels quickly hooks players into the game, but making each next level harder to earn than the previous gives overall a feeling that you must in fact get better as a player.

 

[clearstream]

Starting with goals of the design: what job do you want randomisation to do? Is it to prevent minimaxing? To challenge players with unpredictable combinations? To build tension around level-ups? To say something about the game world? To say something about the characters.

It would take a bit if design work, but were you going this route you might draw from designs of boardgames like Mage Knight. Each class has a pool (cards maybe). Draw N from pool and return N-1 to float. In later levels, take from float or draw N more from pool. Etc.

BUT You stated a goal as - make the world fit together. How does randomisation achieve your goal? Is the real issue character power? If it is character power, what are the dimensions of power that most matter? Is it number of feature? Hit Dice? Proficiency Bonus? Ability Scores?