capping D&D at 5th level?

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Thought provoking article but I just don't buy the argument that 4th or 5th level fighters are a once in a generation event. Weapon Focus at 4th level? The weapon masters that I've met in real life (and lost fights to) are much better than a +7 Attack (BAB +4, +1 Weapon Focus, +2 Str) at 1 attack per six seconds.

I think 10th level is a better comparison rather than 4th or 5th.

I think the 1 attack per 6 seconds in 3.5 is an abstraction that shows the effectiveness of everything that the character is doing during the six seconds. There's lots of parries and feints and close calls.

If you look back to AD&D, a round was one minute and low level fighters only got one EFFECTIVE attack during that time. But, that didn't mean it was the only thing that they did during the round.

One attack per six seconds is an abstraction. It would be very cumbersome to have to roll for every motion the character made during every 1/100th of a second during a duel. Let alone when there are multiple combatants on a side.

So, Aragorn, Conan, Gandalf, etc... all being 6th level or less is no problem for me.

 

[Darklone]

Even a 1st-level character is superhuman.

Especially the spellcasters. And the warlocks. And the dragonfireadepts. And ...

E6 sounds nice yet I usually limited my campaigns to level 10-12 ... not a problem at all.

Level 1 chars are teenagers or poor commoners IMC. Level 2: standard grown up. Level 3-5 standard NPC/soldier.

Sure, you can hardly kill someone with one knife attack in my games, but that's never been a problem. Somehow my players like their chars to stab more than once.

 

[Warren Okuma]

To be fair... nobody would take Skill Focus: Jump.

(say it isn't so!)

Hell yeah. High Jumpers and jumping athletes.

 

[Warren Okuma]

There's probably some better way of doing it. Housecats can't kill a person but the larger breeds of dogs can and do kill people. I have no problem with a bear having 25x my hit points. A bear can pretty much kill any non-gun-toting human it wants to and the human will basically be doing subdual damage to the bear.

I agree, there is always a better way of doing it. But I like RAW. But how do you feel about a 20 lb dog having three times the hit points of you, when you were at first level?

The hint about Minion rules makes me think that lots of small animals will be relegated to Minion status and their entire stat block will be something like Housecat: Minion lvl 0 or Raven: Minion level 1, with the level being covered by a genric rule for that style of minion.

Me, I like the fact that housecats, and ravens can kill commoners and twenty pound dogs are death to commoners. That says weird, fun, irrational, DnD to me.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I read the article mentioned by the OP before. Its very good, and convinced me to try out an E6 style game as the current campaign I'm running, pretty good so far.

D&D is not designed to accuratley simulate reality (as you all know) which is why the house cat problem crops up, as well as a 100 foot fall only dealing 35 damage on average (survivable even as low as 3rd or 4th level) and why waving your arms while holding bat apparently creates a large flaming sphere to appear out of thin air.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I've never been able to make D&D work particularly well with the "Most people are NPC Classes or First level" paradigm in play.

SHARK really opened my eyes way back when he said that he just did away with it all and started running a really high-powered campaign.

So...you know who's 1stlevel? Children.

Average Schmoe in the world? 3rd level.

City Guardsmen? 5th level fighters.

PC's? Start at 6th level.

It worked pretty well all things considered.

I'm still not sure why I was clinging so closely to the 1E/2E low-level standards when they didn't work for setting verisimilitude (which is important to me)

 

[Imp]

Meh, the house cat problem is really about granularity of hit points... add an extra 1d6 hp per size category over tiny if it really really bothers you, or do the subdual thing. The only time it's ever really going to come up is if a wizard sics his familiar on somebody, and a familiar should be able to take an average shmoe down. Bumping everybody's levels just exaggerates other problems with animals as written (their skills and sometimes attributes should generally be higher, as is.)

 

[Victim]

I've never been able to make D&D work particularly well with the "Most people are NPC Classes or First level" paradigm in play.

SHARK really opened my eyes way back when he said that he just did away with it all and started running a really high-powered campaign.

So...you know who's 1stlevel? Children.

Average Schmoe in the world? 3rd level.

City Guardsmen? 5th level fighters.

PC's? Start at 6th level.

It worked pretty well all things considered.

I'm still not sure why I was clinging so closely to the 1E/2E low-level standards when they didn't work for setting verisimilitude (which is important to me)

I think considering the high end is just as important as the low. If you're going to super epic on everything, then there's no problem with higher base levels. On the other hand, if levels are capped at 20 then higher base levels tend to compress things quite a bit.

 

[GlassJaw]

Cool article Geoffrey - thanks for the link. Good thread too.

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Regarding the modeling of skilled NPC's:

Modeling "normal" NPC's (by game terms) that would be considered "experts" in their field is difficult for most game systems, not just D&D.

Since advancement in most systems is largely based on gaining experience by killing stuff in combat, it's often not realistic to give NPC's levels just to boost their ability in a particular skill since they would never be able to gain enough experience.

In most games, especially the "standard" power level of D&D, this isn't that big of an issue because it's not as important to have that level of detail with NPC's. But in systems where the power level range is reduced significantly (like E6 or even a system like Grim Tales), and where the level of magic "technology" is reduced, it becomes much more important to distinguish between the heroes and NPC experts. One of the biggest problems is that levels are predominantly a reflection of increased combat prowess.

Assuming the system is level-based, the easiest way is to accomplish this is cap NPC's at some level, depending on their profession, amount of training, etc. This isn't ideal since it still doesn't model someone like Einstein who would have a lot of skill ranks but almost no combat training. One level or three is essentially irrelevant in modeling his abilities.

Another option is to change the Commoner and Expert NPC classes so they don't increase things like saves, BAB, or hp's. Now you can have an NPC with a lot of levels, a lot of skill ranks, but the combat ability of a 1st level commoner. Or you could just leave the classes alone but treat them like "mooks", so that any hit kills them or they have to make increasingly difficult saves to stay alive, etc.

As Morrus noted above, the other dilemma is to "justify" how they gained additional levels if they are not adventurers (and therefore won't be getting any XP from combat). Since they are NPC's, this is easy to hand wave - just assign levels and skill ranks based on how skilled you want them to be. You could "explain" this behind the scenes by assuming there is some kind of NPC experience chart that allows them to gain XP over time, from study, training, natural talent, etc.

 

[Warren Okuma]

I've never been able to make D&D work particularly well with the "Most people are NPC Classes or First level" paradigm in play.

SHARK really opened my eyes way back when he said that he just did away with it all and started running a really high-powered campaign.

So...you know who's 1stlevel? Children.

Average Schmoe in the world? 3rd level.

City Guardsmen? 5th level fighters.

PC's? Start at 6th level.

It worked pretty well all things considered.

I'm still not sure why I was clinging so closely to the 1E/2E low-level standards when they didn't work for setting verisimilitude (which is important to me)

Genius!

Meh, the house cat problem is really about granularity of hit points... add an extra 1d6 hp per size category over tiny if it really really bothers you or do the subdual thing.

It doesn't bother me. I like cats and ravens terrorizing my peasants. I almost had a TPK using a house cat I threw at the party. A raven dropped the Wizard and tried to drag him off. Quite amusing these ravens...

The only time it's ever really going to come up is if a wizard sics his familiar on somebody, and a familiar should be able to take an average shmoe down.

Or an evil DM such as me...

And when you have charm animal and need a distraction...
PC1: The Cat's just dynamite. Holy smoke the cat bagged the guards!
PC2: Ah. Charm animal, mage armor, and magic fang...
PC3: Snicker.

Bumping everybody's levels just exaggerates other problems with animals as written (their skills and sometimes attributes should generally be higher, as is.)

No it doesn't. It's part of the house cat/raven scale. I think that people ought to be able to kick the ass of ravens, house cats and small 20 lb. dogs and not having to change the rules to do so.