"4th Edition will assume roughly 10 encounters per level"

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If magic items are not so tied to power than wealth is not a problem anymore, in 3rd edition the problem with wealth was only that PCs could use it to buy powerful weapons and armour i.e. large bonus to AC, BAB and stats, but apparently in 4D! power don't come from magic items anymore, (not in such large quantity, at least) and I can't think to nothing else that PCs could buy to break the game balance (I mean what could they do? Buy lands? I wish. Hire an NPC army? Big deal, after a little every single PC allone would be much more powerful than that army).

this if they do it right, of course.

That's what I hope.

 

[Jhaelen]

"Ten encounters per level." Heh.

Not in my games.

Ten gaming sessions per level maybe.

I ran a game for two years during college, playing pretty much every other night, and when we finally wrapped it up, the PCs were somewhere around levels 10-12.

Well, I've been running a game for two and a half years now and the first PC has now reached level 10. I'd prefer it, if advancement was a bit quicker, but it's still okay.

But: We're playing only once every 3-4 weeks. So, obviously for our game we need a completely different rate of advancement to achieve a similar net effect. I think, it's more important how long it takes the pcs to advance in real time.

If we'd used your rate of advancement the pcs would barely have reached level 2 after two years! Not really appropriate, don't you think?

And if you'd used our rate of advancement, your pcs would now be about level 130... also not really appropriate, imho...

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If magic items are not so tied to power than wealth is not a problem anymore, in 3rd edition the problem with wealth was only that PCs could use it to buy powerful weapons and armour i.e. large bonus to AC, BAB and stats, but apparently in 4D! power don't come from magic items anymore, (not in such large quantity, at least) and I can't think to nothing else that PCs could buy to break the game balance

I hope this is true, but ... +6 wands scare me

 

[Gort]

I hope this is true, but ... +6 wands scare me

Yeah, I have to agree that I was disappointed when I heard that the "plus X" items were going to remain. I had hoped that they would dump the +5 AC armour or +5 to hit and damage swords in favour of classes that give you those bonuses and magic stuff that has specific effects (like a flaming sword).

It's a great shame, especially since there have been a number of rulesets (Conan, Iron Heroes for example) that did away with the boring generic magic items and were all the stronger for it.

I'm tired of players needing hundreds of thousands of gold pieces worth of magic gear in order to do their basic job!

 

[IanArgent]

I hope this is true, but ... +6 wands scare me

They scare me too - +6 is much too high a bonus for gear in a D20 system.

 

[KarinsDad]

I hope this is true, but ... +6 wands scare me

I do find it overly excessive on a D20 range myself.

+5 to Trained skills, +5 to Skill Focus is also excessive.

 

[IanArgent]

I do find it overly excessive on a D20 range myself.

+5 to Trained skills, +5 to Skill Focus is also excessive.

As long as there's no way to increase skills beyond that (which I haven't seen in SWSE), and stat mods don't go over +5, that's right at the limit of what I'd consider feasible.

I hope for D&D4 that we see something closer to +3/+3 to leave "room" for the higher stats, etc. And that skill-boosters give you rerolls rather than bonuses.

 

[Treebore]

While searching for posts by Chris Perkins, I found this quote on the Wizards boards:



While there have already been comments on faster leveling or two to three sessions per level, this is the first time I can recall anyone from Wizards mentioning the assumed number of encounters.

I much prefer 10xthe level. So level 29 will require 290 encounters to level to, and level 30 will require 300 encounters to achieve. That way you need 4,640 encounters to go from first to 30th.

 

[DandD]

Then do it in your own playgroup. As long as Wizards of the Coast haven't created the Roleplay Police Special Forces with special rights to break into your home, the advancement is absolutely still in your hand, and you could make it even roughly 1000000 encounters per level before leveling up, or only 1.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

I much prefer 10xthe level. So level 29 will require 290 encounters to level to, and level 30 will require 300 encounters to achieve. That way you need 4,640 encounters to go from first to 30th.

Assuming 4 encounters per play session, and 1 session per week, that's a 22 year campaign.