Are xp/levels/advancement necessary?

[Coplen]

Anyone play the Dying Earth RPG?

Not yet. I"ve had the game for a while, but finding a player isn't easy. None of my players seem to want to play the game.

 

[Li Shenron]

Thoughts and opinions anyone?

Everything is possible in your RPG

Level advancement is not completely necessary to play, but usually it is one of the biggest fun for 90%+ of the gamers, so it would be hard to find a group that chooses to play a campaign without advancing at least now and then.

 

[WayneLigon]

- Campaigns that span a few weeks of game time and result in PCs with levels higher than their age... (Does it strain credulity for someone to leave his village an inept peon and return a month later as the most skilled warrior in the kingdom? So what if he went through the whole Age of Worms adventure path; how much could he actually learn in so short a time that experts who have spent their whole lives could not?)

I've never seen 'weeks' of game time pass and someone be that high level. If so, the GM probably isn't paying much attention to the world the PC's inhabit and is just throwing encounters at them by checking every hour for monsters during the daytime and three times at night. Now, a couple years or so of game time and yes, you're going to see PC's better than most people in the world. What can I say? D&D, like many fantasy novels, assumes that the heroes, the PC's, are better than the common run of humanity around them. They have a streak of greatness about them that transcends normality and when put to the test, that's when that greatness comes out.

I temper that somewhat, but still assume that a first level PC is not some peon to begin with. He's already had some considerable experience, even though he may not be aware of it himself.

- Wide disparity in the power level of NPCs with no outward way to judge... (sure, smart PCs can tell low-HD monsters from high-HD ones, but how are they supposed to know whether the old hermit NPC is a crazy 1st level commoner or a 12th level sorcerer?)

Why would there be? Sans clothing or other signs of wealth, can you look at two men and tell which is a stockbroker worth millions and which one is a fry cook? Usually not.

- High-level retired adventurers who are barkeeps but are just as sharp and skilled as they were decades ago... (How come their skills don't deteriorate from non-use?)

Usually you just put that down to something the game rules don't bother to cover. The game covers people who adventure for a living, not the stay-at-homes. That's why there are no 'rid field of insects' spells. Sure there would be, but virtually nothing deals with the normal everyday livelihood.

Is it possible to imagine D&D without advancement? What would happen if your group simply decided on the level at which they wanted to play, and just started playing, without tracking xp?

Sure. Blue Rose and True20 do this. There are no XP; you level when the GM says you level. Let me tell you: without the carrot of XP continually in front of them, PC behavior becomes vastly different. The entire dynamic of the game changes, as do character motivations.

Is it possible to imagine D&D without levels... or more to the point, without large disparities in skill between anyone and anyone else? Would this still be considered a heroic game or would you classify this as gritty/realistic?

Not really. Without levels and the power disparity, you're playing a differnt game at that point. Sure, you could probably do it.. but it would be simpler at that point to play GURPS. You never get substantially better in a lot of things, ever, and the GM sets the point level of the campaign.

Is it possible to link advancement with age? What would happen if it were impossible for someone to have more class levels than twice their age? I picked that ratio at random, but it could be any formula you like... What effect would this have on running a campaign?

Not really unless you're planning a multigenerational game where you're skipping through months and years each couple of sessions.

Obviously people can always learn new things, but is there a point at which personal improvement is maxed out until you are simply becoming more specialized in one (or more) professions at the cost of neglecting everything else?

I see the power discrepancy in D&D differently. PCs share certain common traits: they are highly motivated and they are highly competant individuals. The stupid, weak, lazy and foolish don't survive long as adventurers without astounding luck or a lot of protection from their friends. They don't have 9-5 jobs or schedules to interfere with their practicing the skills they need.

This kinda goes back to the exceptional individual thing above, but it's somewhat different.

If you go to the gym and take a karate class for an hour three times a week and two hours on the weekend.. in two or three years you'll be a fairly competent martial artist, usually in a limited scope. Now imagine if you worked eight hours a day at that with a personal trainer, and probably also had a very high motivation to do well and learn advance things. You work a dedicated and motivated individual like that, and you can hand them a black belt in a few weeks and feel good about it. A couple months more to hone his skills and give him the muscle memory and reaction time... He's now a first level monk.

PC's are like that one guy in high school. You know the one I'm talking about: the one that's better than almost everyone else at everything.

 

[shilsen]

D&D has levels for the same reason pinball machines have points.

*beats Hong with a ...

Oh, wait! Darn!

*puts away stick*

What the Hongmeister said.

Or, more verbosely, I've always figured XP, levels and advancement exist in D&D because players like their PCs to improve over time and gain more cool abilities. Every in-game explanation for it is effectively a justification to that end. I think a D&D game without XP and advancement could work just fine, but since it's a significant factor in most players' appreciation of the game, I've never tried to remove it in my campaign.

Personally, in my Eberron campaign, I play up the idea that people have varying degrees of potential, which can often be actualized through arbitrary events. Which serves to explain why you can have a war veteran who's a 4th lvl Fighter and who will never be more than a 4th lvl Fighter, whereas you can have a relative novice adventurer who's at a higher level, and if not, who will achieve a higher level much more quickly. It also sets the PCs apart as exceptional people due to both their high levels of expertise and their potential for improvement, which the vast majority of others around them do not possess. People in the campaign world are aware of this situation and act accordingly.

 

[DJCupboard]

I've played games where you don't get 'levels' with corresponding new abilities, but still improve from adventuring (WoD, to a degree, as well as TSR's non-SAGA Marvel rules), and they can still be fun, but I like toiling for my new feat and stat bonuses. It's one of the things I like about DnD.

In terms of the inherent un-realism of such a set up, let us remember that they aren't more powerful (or advance out of whack from the rest of their society) because they are the PCs. Rather they are the PCs, because they advance out of whack from the rest of their society. And this goes for movies, video games, and novels, too. We only pay attention to their story (or in this case, play out their story), because they are the interesting cases within their societal framework. To put it a (slightly) different way, they don't advance like that because of the DnD rules, or because they are being played by your friends, rather, your friends play them and the rules represent them, because they advance like that.

Most people just don't bother playing the games about guys who wake up, commute to work, go home for dinner, feed the dogs, and then get hit with divorce litigation.

Stats do down with age in the RAW, so adventurers who have been retired for decades, will see their abilities slip, by virtue of not being as fit as they had been.

Also, if the players can tell the level of two similarly dressed locals without knowing anything about them, then verisimilitude is being broken and it has nothing to do with the advancement rules.

DJC

 

[Ry]

Characters must grow and change over time, and players need to have a sense of control over their own characters. So some kind of mechanics for development are necessary. Levelling is necessary for D&D in particular because of how the game's structured, and what challenges are supposed to mean - but that's not to say levelling is essential to rpgs.

 

[rgard]

For some time I have had nagging doubts about what the heck xp and levels represent, and what the effect on the game would be if PCs didn't advance so... obviously. Related to this are a lot of unrealistic and yet all-too common situations in D&D games:

- Campaigns that span a few weeks of game time and result in PCs with levels higher than their age... (Does it strain credulity for someone to leave his village an inept peon and return a month later as the most skilled warrior in the kingdom? So what if he went through the whole Age of Worms adventure path; how much could he actually learn in so short a time that experts who have spent their whole lives could not?)

- Wide disparity in the power level of NPCs with no outward way to judge... (sure, smart PCs can tell low-HD monsters from high-HD ones, but how are they supposed to know whether the old hermit NPC is a crazy 1st level commoner or a 12th level sorcerer?)

- High-level retired adventurers who are barkeeps but are just as sharp and skilled as they were decades ago... (How come their skills don't deteriorate from non-use?)

Is it possible to imagine D&D without advancement? What would happen if your group simply decided on the level at which they wanted to play, and just started playing, without tracking xp?

Is it possible to imagine D&D without levels... or more to the point, without large disparities in skill between anyone and anyone else? Would this still be considered a heroic game or would you classify this as gritty/realistic?

Is it possible to link advancement with age? What would happen if it were impossible for someone to have more class levels than twice their age? I picked that ratio at random, but it could be any formula you like... What effect would this have on running a campaign?

Obviously people can always learn new things, but is there a point at which personal improvement is maxed out until you are simply becoming more specialized in one (or more) professions at the cost of neglecting everything else?

Perhaps more to the point, is it possible to replace the current advancement rules with something that better emulates diminishing returns on finite resources... that is, if a fighter all of a sudden starts spending his time studying magic, wouldn't his fighting skills deteriorate while his magic skills correspondingly improve?

To give a crude example, what if the maximum potential of a person is, say, 20 levels of ability, and barring divine intervention, it's simply not physically possible to possess more raw skill than that. When a multiclassed Fighter 16 / Wizard 4 wants to gain a level in Wizard, it comes at the expense of a Fighter level. (This is a generous example, but what if the cap was 5 levels of ability?)

To a lesser extent, the thoughts above apply to monsters with hit dice as well. Hypothetically speaking, there's nothing in the rules saying a DM couldn't design a normal-looking bunny with 24 HD and a +35 base attack bonus, right? That's an extreme example, but reduce it to 2 HD and it's still arbitrary.

Thoughts and opinions anyone?

Play GURPS. That'll address most of the above. That said, I'd rather D&D with levels and xp any day over GURPS.

 

[RFisher]

No. Advancement--whether it be XP/levels, character points, rolling to improve skills, whatever--isn't necessary. You could use fate/drama points as a reward instead. Or the rewards could all be in-game: Treasure, magic items, influence, &c.

Although, for many people, I suspect levels may be the biggest sacred cow of all. Take away levels & leave everything else the same & they'll have a hard time calling it "D&D".

With D&D, I also like the idea of just leveling at arbitrary points. It'd be nice sometime to remain at some levels long enough to really get the feel for them instead of blazing on to the next level as fast as possible.

 

[hong]

With D&D, I also like the idea of just leveling at arbitrary points. It'd be nice sometime to remain at some levels long enough to really get the feel for them instead of blazing on to the next level as fast as possible.

Wimp.

 

[prosfilaes]

Characters must grow and change over time,

Why must they change and grow in a way measured by the rules over time? If we take a lot of TV shows, the main characters don't change and grow a whole lot over time. Static characters can have a lot of adventures, and change in lots of ways, without ever involving rules for advancement.

players need to have a sense of control over their own characters.

They can get that without constantly changing the character in play.