Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5784461" data-attributes="member: 8461">It's hard to say, because both ways have advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of mechanics and in the assumptions that go along with them.3E had unlimited leveling, and 1E did as well provided that you were of the right race/class combination. This let you set your own end for when a campaign "should" stop (that is, you never had to cease playing because you hit the hard cap on levels). But as you leveled more, there were increasing assumptions about the relative power level in the campaign world. If you could reach level 40 in five years of in-game time, why weren't there level 100 mentors around? Why was a level 50 encounter considered a world-wide threat, etc.?2E, 4E, and BECM (notwithstanding the I) had a hard cap on the levels you could gain (though 2E's wasn't stated in the PHB, but came later on). This allowed for a clear end-point to the campaign, and let you design the game world based on a clear universal designation of power (the Immortals set did this too, but simply stacked on top of fixed levels). However, it also meant that you didn't have the freedom to explore themes that couldn't be adequately addressed in the set structure of the game (e.g. you're just fighting bigger demons at level 30, but not an undead planet, since that's beyond what level 30 is built to handle). Likewise, it shut you down if you wanted to keep the game going past the limit.Level caps, and their implications on world design and epic-level gaming, are like the rest of the game in that they don't have a "right answer." There are different play styles, and different gamers prefer different ones.</blockquote>

Verification