D&D General Back to First Principles

[DND_Reborn]

Our advance rate is still maybe two levels a year for a PC that's consistently played; and as we cycle PCs and even whole parties in and out all the time the overall average goes up by less than a level a year.

That is a bit too slow even for my tastes. IIRC, a typical game I played in would reach level 5-7 (depending on class) after 1 year, another 2-3 levels the 2nd year, typically reaching "name level" by the end of year 2. After that, it would be 1 level, maybe 2, each year of play.

 

[Lanefan]

That is a bit too slow even for my tastes. IIRC, a typical game I played in would reach level 5-7 (depending on class) after 1 year, another 2-3 levels the 2nd year, typically reaching "name level" by the end of year 2. After that, it would be 1 level, maybe 2, each year of play.

Name level is about where the 1e system starts to rather seriously wobble on its chassis IME; get any distance beyond that and you're holding the whole thing together with duct tape and baling wire.

We've always found the sweet spot in 1e to be between about levels 3 and 9.

 

[Oofta]

LOL I guess you're just cursed. Does that mean half-elves you play only die half as often?

Oh no, they all die too. One half elf did get to 3rd level before they died, it set a record!

 

[Oofta]

The original idea was that it's up to the players if they want to spend more time exploring in areas with lesser threats where the rewards are smaller, or go ahead to blacker pastures where the monsters are meaner but have much greater rewards waiting for adventurers. And when the players encounter a threat, it is again up to them to decide if they want to charge in and be done with it, come up with some elaborate plan to tilt the scales in their favor, or rather back off and avoid engagement.
The GM wasn't supposed to decide what encounter the players would be facing, and how the encounters should play out. The GM was meant to be disinterested regarding the outcome of the players actions. How much that was practiced is written on another page, but it's how the rules are designed.

That's a completely different approach and very different game of the GM showing up with a story that has the scenes planned out and expects the players to figure out what they have to do to proceed to the next scene.

That doesn't seem to have much to do with edition. The PCs always decide what direction they're heading in my campaign, and some options will be high risk/reward. About all I expect is that they try to give me a heads up at the end of a session where they think they might be headed next session.

Maybe it's just because I've never liked using mods.

 

[Oofta]

The bolded, IME, runs rather hard aground in editions that have wealth-by-level as an integral part of their balancing mechanism*. The 3e game I was in was set to advance at a 1e-2e sort of pace, in order that the campaign/game would last longer; in the last-longer piece it was successful (it went for over ten years) but wealth-by-level went out the window pretty quickly, and this - plus our larger-than-designed-for party - meant the DM had no choice but to ignore the CR/EL system and make it all up on his own.

* - unless you want to be so stingy with treasure that all the fun gets drained away.

I stopped using XP towards the end of 2E, it just wasn't worth the overhead to us. Different strokes for different folks and all.

 

[Oofta]

Yes it does, I think.

In 0e-1e by RAW you died at 0 h.p. and even if using the die-at--3 or -10 variant it took forever to recover if someone saved you, Resting was also a very slow way of recovering hit points even if you survived.

In 4e-5e you're merely down at 0 h.p., not dead until-unless you fail a series of rolls thereafter; cures get you fully functional right away, and by next morning you're at full pop ready to go in any case.

Which (elves excepted) tells me either you're fairly lucky overall, or you had more lenient DMs, or you're just really good at keeping PCs alive, or some combination of these.

Maybe other people followed the letter of the rules more than we did or maybe we just had a lot of magical healing. Other than any elf I ever try to run I can only think of 1 other PC of mine that permanently died not counting a killer DM that only ran 1 session.

 

[Oofta]

Another change: in 1e (and 2e?) revival wasn't guaranteed - you had to make your resurrection survival roll in order to return to life, and even if you did make it you'd come back permanently down a point of Con, which made that same roll incrementally more difficult next time around.

With 4e-5e, revival is guaranteed if attempted.

Chance of revival was probably another thing we ignored.

 

[Oofta]

Actually the 1 non-elf PC dying isn't quite true. I had a DM that was probably just getting tired of DMing and decided that every time an enemy crit that he would roll a D6 that had body parts. Whatever body part is what body part you lost. Did I mention that he loved to throw hordes of kobolds at us? Fortunately my PC had a ring of regen so the rest of the party would just pick up the pieces.

But that was just a DM being too immature to just tell us that they were tired of DMing and instead was just messing with us to see how long we'd put up with it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Name level is about where the 1e system starts to rather seriously wobble on its chassis IME; get any distance beyond that and you're holding the whole thing together with duct tape and baling wire.

We never have had much issue with the game wobbling after name level. I ran an "epic" adventure once in AD&D with characters levels 20-24, and it worked well. Of course, you have world-shaking magics and magical items at this point, along with an artifact or two.

We've always found the sweet spot in 1e to be between about levels 3 and 9.

Anything 5th - 12th was my favorite place to play in AD&D.

 

[cbwjm]

5th level+ was my favourite levels in earlier editions, PCs started to really feel like heroes. Warriors had a decent chance to hit their enemies and the hit points to survive being hit, spellcasters had plenty of spell slots, thieves were there... Good times.