Are xp/levels/advancement necessary?

[Nifft]

how much could he actually learn in so short a time that experts who have spent their whole lives could not?)

He has the Protagonist template.

but how are they supposed to know whether the old hermit NPC is a crazy 1st level commoner or a 12th level sorcerer?)

Detect magic and arcane sight. Especially the latter.

- 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?)

They see a lot of use. Every berk who just hit 6th level wants to try his new skills out in a bar fight. That's a lot of CR10 encounters.

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?

They'd get bored and their attention would wander to a different game.

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?

IMC, the average NPC level is 10th. There are no commoners. There are very few people compared to Medieval Europe, and there are a lot of wide open spaces where people are considered tasty snacks by the land's owners.

Yes, it's possible.

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?

His fighting skills will RELATIVELY deteriorate, relative to a the CR he's facing next level.


Cheers, -- N

 

[Lanefan]

Why's it important how the skill goes? when the PCs meet the barkeeper, he's already in a deteriorated state. Just think "Gee, he's now level X, but back in the day he was level X+3. I'm a genius!" How's it matter how he went from X+3 to X .. just decide how good he was back then, and how good he's now.

It's important because I'd like to come up with a system where particular skills disappear at different rates. In 1e, for example, where you have specific weapon proficiencies, I don't see you losing your skill with all weapons equally (as in, slowly losing levels); instead, I see you quickly forgetting how to use your secondary weapons but retaining for a much longer time your skill with your trusty blade (or hammer or bow, whatever) that was your usual weapon during your career.

With spellcasters, I'd like to see a system where instead of just losing levels, they forget how to cast some spells but still remember others...leading perhaps to a once-decent wizard remembering in her old age how to cast Teleport but having forgotten everything else higher than 1st. She's not 9th level any more, but she remembers how to cast a 5th-level spell and can still do it a few times a day.

Tie in the various 3e add-ons like feats, skills, etc. and decaying a character could quickly become far more complicated than generating one.

But I remain convinced there's a simple system floating around out there...somewhere...that my brain hasn't found yet, that can do this without having to wing it every single time.

Lanefan

 

[Rothe]

....
One way to do this would be to cap advancement rate in months equal to the next level.

Therefore it would take 1 month to get to 1st, a further 2 to get to 2nd, 3 to get to 3rd etc.

Another way is to set one adventure per season and/or make things players want to do between adventures, e.g., make scrolls, have items made, take a lot longer; especially at low leels where they may not have the cash to expedite things.

But this can seriously mess with certain adventure ideas where one needs to quickly follow another.

There needs to be an incentive. One possibility would be to make each level mean less overall (but I think that would feel unsatisfactory). Yet another is to make the starting character far tougher* (se the Hit Dice rules below for starters)...

In my experience these ideas work very well, it may just be hard to retrofit D&D to implement them. A little more at first level, but slow down the progression curve by having many smaller advances more frequently. If designed well, the overall advancement rate may slower be but the game reward for the player may be just as much. Basically, it is the theory that smaller rewards more often can provide greater incentive than a bigger reward less often.

Off the top of my head, one retrofit would be to have advance a level seperately in each weapon/spell (or number of spells). The players would choose which they advance first. When they get everything up to the next level, they get their other level perks, like feats, skills, etc. So that fighter may be singing that sword at level 3 sooner, but he'll be a complete level 3 fighter much later. How much sooner is a question of how you want to balance things.


Just some ideas.

 

[Li Shenron]

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".

What about playing one-shot adventures at a convention, would you not call it D&D because there's no time to level up?

 

[molonel]

Of course it's possible to roleplay with levels and XP. Someone has already mentioned GURPS. There is White Wolf, too, and numerous other systems. How well does D&D work without those mechanics? I don't know. If you can make it work, and your players are happy, then good on ya.

For myself, while I don't expect to become the greatest warrior in the realm in a month's time - and unless you're doing combat 24/7, I really don't see how that's possible, unless the DM is extremely unimaginative - I do expect to experience all levels of the game in a longterm campaign. I've done crawl through the lovely filth campaigns, and I've done Joe Blow: The Generic where the DMs characters were the most interesting, colorful and powerful characters in the game. Thanks, but I'd rather watch a movie and order pizza, instead.

 

[RFisher]

Wimp.

(^_^)

1.) Treasure goes from mostly important to ALL IMPORTANT. Since Bob the fighter is never raising his attack bonus via level, the only way he can improve his "to hit" is to find the next highest plus sword.

But you don't have to raise your attack bonus to enjoy the game.

2.) Encounters go out of Whack. Sure, orcs or ogres would be an appropriate challenge early, but either the Pcs would always face similar foes (never moving on to beholders, devils, giants or dragons) or die quickly against the more powerful forces.

The flip side is that its easier to gauge challenges because how dangerous an adventure is no longer varies by PC level. Facing a single dragon, giant, or beholder is still very different to facing an equivalent number of orcs or ogres.

he gains nothing from the personal experience (levels) nor is he gaining monetary reward (treasure), so he's risking his neck for no personal gain.

If you're getting nothing from the personal experience of playing the game than XP, I have to wonder why you're playing at all.

Think of it this way. As you advance in levels, you go up against similarly higher HD monsters. So, in a sense, you aren't advancing at all. Now, in practice, there are a number of details that do vary as you advance. e.g. As Umbran pointed out, you get more options.

While most of us might want to gain options over time, most of us will also have very nearly just as much fun if we didn't start with so few & end with so many. Many of us will have very nearly as much fun even if there is no advancement at all. The chess example is just one good one. Classic Traveller is the canonical RPG example.

Although, admittedly, for a few people the glacial advancement of classic Traveller is the thing that turns them off about it. Still, the majority of gamers I've known haven't seen that as a significant stumbling block to enjoying a Traveller game.

Of course, I'm not saying that advancement in RPGs is evil or wrong. I'm just saying that there is so much more to the experience that if you lost advancement it might not be "D&D", but it would still be fun. When you're telling stories about games you've been in, how often does how much XP/levels you earned play the staring part?

 

[hong]

Although, admittedly, for a few people the glacial advancement of classic Traveller is the thing that turns them off about it. Still, the majority of gamers I've known haven't seen that as a significant stumbling block to enjoying a Traveller game.

In Traveller you don't need to buy fireballs with XP, because you can buy FGMPs with cash.

 

[RFisher]

In Traveller you don't need to buy fireballs with XP, because you can buy FGMPs with cash.

^_^ Good point!

 

[mmadsen]

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.

Ostensibly, experience points represent useful experience, from facing real challenges, the kind of experience real people learn from. Levels, of course, diverge quite a bit from how real people learn and improve in real life, not so much because they tie many separate skills together, but because they involve all the oddness of hit points and magical powers.

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 haven't seen anything so extreme, but real-life soldiers become dramatically more effective after a few weeks in combat:

Certainly some of it is selection rather than experience, but fighter pilots who survive their first engagement are dramatically more likely to survive their second.

In fantasy, we have the canonical example of the hobbits returning to the shire ready and able to take on Sharky's men -- they've gone up a few levels, and without even beating 13 EL-appropriate foes...

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?)

I guess that might be a practical problem, but I don't see it as a verisimilitude problem. Lancelot looks like any other knight. When the knight wearing no coat-of-arms at the tournament keeps knocking everyone around, you start to wonder, Is that Lancelot?

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?)

Do we need the game system to spell that out? At any rate, plenty of stories have the retired hero shake of the rust and demonstrate just what a hero he used to be.

Is it possible to imagine D&D without advancement?

Sure, but I think something like a level cap or slower advancement at higher levels makes more sense than no advancement at all. We don't notice Aragorn getting any better at anything, even if the hobbits grow (sometimes literally) throughout the epic.

What would happen if your group simply decided on the level at which they wanted to play, and just started playing, without tracking xp?

If they started out at a high enough level, I think it would be fine. If they never reached the point where they could take on a half-dozen hobgoblins, it wouldn't be.

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?

I don't think it would be realistic without the disparities in skill. In real life a master swordsman is much, much better than a novice.

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?

Adventuring isn't a union job, and real-life people grow and improve only with challenging experiences. A young, motivated learner can gain enough skill to surpass an old, unmotivated worker, even though they are at the same job.

 

[mmadsen]

This issue came up a few years back in The Genius of D&D, where we discussed Monte Cook's argument that levels are one of D&D's strengths.

Here are a few thought on providing "carrots" beyond levels:

Are they as easy though? As well codified? A group of 10-year-olds can set up adventures that (more-or-less) follow the rules with leveling up and gathering treasure as rewards.

What are some good alternatives? We know people like big enough power-ups that they feel important (the gambling analogy). I think Feats and Spells achieve that. A +1 to a few skills doesn't feel like much. An extra Hit Die is quite a bit.

People also like power-ups in the form of magic items. We definitely know that.

Codifying fame and reputation into a Glory score wouldn't be too hard. Guidelines for NPCs treating heroes with respect, giving them free meals, calling them by superlative epithets, etc. could go a long way toward players' wish fulfillment.

Simple rules for moving up in social power would also work well. After all, a great warrior in real life is usually a guy who's won a few battles and now leads a great army. A natural progression into positions of power would make a great "carrot".

Part of that could be acquiring important friends and allies. If your character is an official Friend of the Elves (complete with elven leaf talisman) or of the Great Eagles and can call in their aid, that's not a typical D&D power-up, but it works.

Everyone loves magic mounts and animal allies. Getting a Griphon, or Talking Tiger, or Winged Horse, or Unicorn -- c'mon, everyone loves that.

Pendragon offers some unconventional progressions (for gaming, not for real life); characters marry, have kids, run the manor, and pass the adventuring mantle onto the next generation.​