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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 8576508" data-attributes="member: 8863">Interesting you guys should mention that....Classic D&D had a 36 level spread, primarily in Mentzer and also RC, but the Cook/Marsh Expert set originally promised the Companion set to take things to level 36.  The Mentzer sets broke things down by these level ranges:Basic 1-3Expert 4-14Companion 15-25Master 26-36Now, one could just try porting those levels straight over to AD&D, and maybe later editions too, but by early 2e, it seems like the guys writing the D&D stuff realized that straight D&D to AD&D conversions weren't quite right. There were some conversion to 2e guidelines in the later Gazetteers I think starting with Ethengar as well as at least one of the Creature Crucibles, but the most comprehensive was probably in the RC.  The RC suggests treating levels 1-12 on a 1:1 basis and then 1 AD&D level for every three D&D level afterwards.  When you run the levels for the Mentzer sets through that you get these level ranges:Basic 1-3Expert 4-13Companion 13-17Master 17-20Isn't that interesting?Now I'd bump Companion down to about 10 -- I feel that the domain game should have started around name level all along and that the levels are an artifact of the B/X Expert going up to 14 -- and you'll note the levels for the Mentzer sets match 5e's tiers pretty closely.The main problem is that Master's isn't really a great set IMO.  It mostly locks the PCs into seeking godhood and I feel that there should be more varied goals at this stage.  Companion did touch on PCs becoming wandering heroes instead of ruling a dominion after all.  Plus the Paths of Immortality were all locked into specific classes.  Maybe the Masters modules gave a good example of showcasing typical play like CM1 does but I've never bothered to look at them.Immortals as I understand was mostly Frank just finishing up the BECMI stuff before leaving TSR to work with Gary, and there's a lot of weird esoteric material in there that just does its own thing.  WotI might have cleaned some of that up, but unfortunately its adventures suck as they have nothing to do with the PCs becoming Immortals and focus on blowing up parts of Mystara instead.</blockquote>

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