Advancement even faster?

[Lonely Tylenol]

So I'm confused...

Is the whole point of RPGing to "level up?"

I've always been a DM who ran longer progression, even in 3.0, sometimes taking many, many sessions to get to level 5-7, let alone higher.

I must have missed something because it seemed like my group and I always had a good time, and the focus was so much on the adventure (story, events, encounters, the characters and their personalities) that leveling up was very secondary. Indeed, with 3rd edition it almost was a distraction during the campaign.

So is this just a philosophical difference on what the focus is or have a missed the boat somewhere that says playing D&D is "won" by who gets to 20th (or 30th) level 1st?

As many people have pointed out over the years, high-level play is different than low-level play. There's different strategies, different pacing, a different array of powers at your disposal, and the potential to do some really cool stuff. However, that's completely moot if you never actually get there. Who cares about epic? I'd be happy to clear level 14 once in a while without having to start there.

 

[Fobok]

30 levels / 52 weekly sessions = 1 level every session and a half or so.

Well, I take the 'year' average with a grain of salt. Using the estimate of 3 or 4 sessions to level up, the average would take the lower. 3 x 20 levels = 60 sessions. Weekly sessions would leave that 8 weeks over a year, close enough to say a year in a podcast. Now, for the new numbers, using 2 as the lower estimate, 2 x 30 = 60 sessions. *That* is where I see they meant the same amount of time.

Contrary to popular belief, XP isn't actually a measure of what a character has learned. it, like all the subsystems of D&D, is an abstraction designed to make the game fun. ANd just because you have to go on 3 or 4 adventures at any given level, who says those adventures have to be the same? one week you are fighting the lich king, the next you are trying to stop a Thief/Assassin guild war from ripping apart the city, and the one after that you're planning to kill the dragon and take his hoard.

No, but levelling up *is* representative of what the character's learned, since even noncombat stuff can't improve without levelling up. As for 3 or 4 adventures between levels, I'm fine with 3, I don't like 4 at all. 2 may be too fast, but as others have said, if I find it coming too quick, I'll probably adjust it. I may end up liking it that fast, with the epic game added on.

 

[Fobok]

I'd be happy to clear level 14 once in a while without having to start there.

Exactly.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

There is a lot of truth to that, but, less obviously, if the leveling is too fast, such growth is never seen either. The growth isn't defined by the mechanical differences in a comparison between the start and the end. The growth is defined by things that you do, and a certain amount of activity has to occur for the change to have meaningful points of reference. If you level up too quickly, you were never meaningfully just starting out, meaningfully maturing, meaningful coming into your own. It was just sort of dropped in your lap, and there it was.

My experience as a third edition player compared to a first edition player is not even having time to creatively use the toys I have, before getting new toys. I was looking forward not to leveling up, but with overcoming various challenges before levelling up. Part of the fun of Christmas or Birthdays or whatever is that it doesn't happen all the time. I got were I dreaded leveling up, because I didn't feel like I'd proven anything. Great, I just got third level spells. I might cast them five or six times, and then all the sudden I'm getting fourth level spells. I just got a feat, and it hasn't even made a significant difference, and now I'm selecting a new feat. I hated that.

I always thought that when you selected a feat, you got to keep it for the lifetime of your character. Even if your Blind-fighting feat didn't come in handy when you took it at 3rd level, when you got to 7th and fought some Drow, it did. I don't see how a certain amount of use of new abilities is a prerequisite of levelling. When I get 4th level spells, I don't stop casting my 3rd level spells. If anything, I'm still getting new 3rd level spells at that point.

Besides, I get the impression that a 4th edition character will have fewer abilities overall. It looks like each character will have a half dozen or so spells, fighting manoeuvres, feats, etc. ready to go at one time. This seems to be a design feature that is aimed at reducing the number of options available at any one time, so as to speed up combat and focus combat strategies. As you gain levels, you'll probably get new repertoire to choose from, but not a large increase in readied abilities (I also expect that for certain abilities, the abilities will increase mainly in magnitude, rather than repertoire size). I expect that this will remedy some of what you're talking about, since new abilities are likely to go into the "ready to use" slots immediately after being gained, so you're almost certain to use them within the next three sessions.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A thought... Are the advocates of slow levelling actually advocates of a level-less system in general? If you don't care about mechanical advancements, new abilities, etc., then why not just scrap the XP system and play at a predetermined level, worry only about story-based advancement, and let those of us who like incremental power gain do our thing?

Also, you could try E6.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Hmm...you have a good point here. I very much want to run Red Hand of Doom, but i have no idea how this would convert to 4th edition. It would be hard enough revising the stats, and even harder guessing what levels should roughly equal each other between editions.

if you start red hand now, you should get done around when 4e comes out.

 

[Lanefan]

A thought... Are the advocates of slow levelling actually advocates of a level-less system in general?

In my case, not at all. But I want the level-bump to mean something, I don't want my (not always experienced) players to be constantly trying to learn new stuff about their character at cost of paying attention to the game, *and* I want to design my campaign to last for 10+ years or as long as people are interested in playing it.

If you don't care about mechanical advancements, new abilities, etc., then why not just scrap the XP system and play at a predetermined level, worry only about story-based advancement, and let those of us who like incremental power gain do our thing?

I'll never scrap the ExP system without replacing it with a direct equivalent. I don't follow the 3e idea of giving everyone ExP for every encounter whether they participated or not, so I need some sort of granular way of breaking down who did what...individual ExP works fine for this.

Lanefan

 

[Stalker0]

I think you've taken it to extremes, here. The point, as far as I'm concerned, is to watch your character grow. To go from being the simple soldier to the mythical hero. Or to a simple magic student to near godhood. If levelling is too slow, such growth is never seen.

Thing is, there's character growth in other avenues as well, for example, developing your character's friends, contacts. Watching him develop from his mistakes and hardships. Watching him grow not in power, but developing and changing as a person.

If you look at most stories, the heroes don't "level up" that often, but they often change drastically throughout the adventure.

While I don't have a problem with leveling up, I love getting more powerful too, if you make character development too much about getting to the next level, people will forget about all the juicy stuff in between.

 

[Sun Knight]

I prefer slower pacing at leveling up and small gradual increases as well. I don't want each level give me super duper powers, nor do I want to sneeze at a critter then level.

 

[Reynard]

A thought... Are the advocates of slow levelling actually advocates of a level-less system in general?

No. I am not even sure how you get there from where you started.