NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 3301554" data-attributes="member: 3649">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. 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.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. 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. 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. Not really unless you're planning a multigenerational game where you're skipping through months and years each couple of sessions.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.</blockquote>

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