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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8690155" data-attributes="member: 72555">I'd start with gritty rests.  So 1 week in safety for a long rest, a night's sleep for a short rest.Usual patches[spoiler]1. Magical healing requires expending a HD, and the HD is added to the healing.2. You roll HD you had expended before the short rest to recover them.  Any even roll 4 or greater is recovered.3. You can expend 1 HD to recover a level of exhaustion, or roll it to recover max HP (does not recover HP) in a short rest.4. Spells with a duration of 1 hour or more last 5x as long.5. Repeated spellcasting must be done 1/week for a year, and the last casting uses 300x components.6. You can do downtime activities during long rests, include casting a spell/day.  You only recover resources missing at the start of the long rest, however.[/spoiler]That, by itself, extends L 1 to 20 to about 2 years.Next, some real downtime rules, because you want it to be fun.  It has to support week/month/year/decade scales somehow.Next, plot-based leveling.  Not encounter-XP based.  While you might be able to reach level 5 by practice, you don't become a demigod by practice.  I mean, maybe elves can do it over 1000+ years, but even they need to cheat.So you have "milestone" based leveling, and those milestones are objective facts about the world that justify a power increase.  Like, there are demons showing up, and being there when a demon dies infuses you with power.  And maybe also your descendants.What happens "between adventures" now becomes about downtime mechanics, because you ain't gaining levels.  The adventures come to the PCs.  PCs can research how to find a milestone MacGuffin, but that could take decades.This places a bunch of pacing control tools into the hands of the DM.The downtime rules have to be, as noted, beefy.  Like, you have to be able to handle as a downtime mechanic "I rule a nation, and try to expand its empire", without pulling out the 5e combat rules or whatever.  Interesting things and failures can happen in downtime.Aging rules are gonna be needed.  You'll want next generation rules after the 20 year old barbarian hero PC becomes a 40 year old king, without making the elf (who is still in the prime of their life) boring or overpowered.  These next generation heros need a way to justify being at some reasonable power level, without making old heroes feel disposable.I might want a character building game to justify gaining levels?  Like, explicit power sources?  And those power sources cap the level the character can reach (and maybe act like attuned magic items).  So new PCs introduced have power sources pre-attached to them; they are things that justify with the PC is a level 10 character (story-wise) that isn't "I spent a bunch of time killing goblins in caves.  What have you been up to you lazy bones?" (see above; downtime can't generate XP, so gaining levels requires milestones; if we abstract that to power sources, then level = access to power source for potential, plus XP to refine it.)This rotates back to stuff like Warlocks and Clerics.  You could imagine a Warlock being granted a level 5 power source pact to start with.  In order to pass level 5, they need another power source; possibly the patron would offer one for ... additional services.  Or maybe the warlock seeks a seperate power source (kill a demon lord?  Everyone get a 1 level power source!) and not be obligated further to their master.Classes without built-in masters would have to find their own power sources in adventuring or their background.  And "child of a demon slayer" is a decent power source.</blockquote>

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