Mercurius
Legend
This is forked from the thread How Many Levels Does D&D Need?
I was thinking: What are the "real world" degrees of capacity in a given skill or skill set? And can they tell us anything about the power levels of D&D and whether or not levels should be open-ended or closed?
As an exercise, take something that you're somewhat familiar with in the real-world and describe levels or degrees of ability. In that thread, I used the example of baseball, so I'll explicate that a bit. In baseball you have a relatively clear path of development:
Amateur ("Apprentice"):
1. Tee ball
2. Little league
3. Pony league
4. High School
5. College
Professional ("Journeyman"):
6. Rookie league
7. Low A
8. High A
9. AA
10. AAA
Professional ("Master"):
11. Major league bench player
12. Major league average regular
13. Major league quality veteran
14. Major league star
15. Major league superstar
You could stretch that out in any way you want, with more levels in the major leagues. This scheme conveniently has three tiers of five levels each. However, I would say that 4E's tier structure equates more with Heroic as major leaguers, Paragon as all-stars, and Epic as Hall of Fame caliber, but I'm more interested in the levels of skill development from first starting to swing a bat (a five-year old tee-baller) to high mastery (Albert Pujols).
Roleplaying games are much more egalitarian than baseball in that any old shmuck can conceivably reach the equivalent of epic tier and be a bad-ass, whereas advancement in baseball is limited by natural talent. In other words, if we were to use the "real life" principles of baseball, each character would be pre-made with a level limit based upon their natural talent with a specific skill set. To some degree D&D already accounts for this with ability scores so that, for example, a low level character with a high Dexterity is about as good a shot with a bow as a character a few levels higher with a lower Dexterity. But I think the point in D&D is that the default assumption is that every PC is basically a "superstar" in the making (although a low fantasy game might max out in, say, veteran status).
So where am I going with this? Well, I'm interested in the question of open versus closed level advancement and skill development, and what makes sense given how capacities develop in the real world. Do skills potentially advance endlessly or do they have a limit? Is open-ended level advancement in any way "realistic"? If we look at real-life specific skills and skill-sets, do they max out no matter how talented one is? Furthermore, could D&D be restructured to more accurately reflect the way skills develop in real life? Specifically, it seems fairly universal that capacities slow in their development; for example, the most common trajectory with, say, learning an instrument is that the development slows each year you play (assuming equal amount of time playing). We could represent this like so:
Novice - just starting - 0 rank
Apprentice - development of skills - 1-5 ranks
Journeyman - finetuning of skills - 6-10 ranks
Mastery - 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc.
In other words, the difference between a "low" master and a "high master" is much less than an advanced journeyman and an apprentice.
Runequest has an interesting mechanic for advancement that simulates this quite well: When you use a skill, which are percentile based, you put a check by it on your character sheet and have the opportunity of advancing it at the end of the session. When the session is over, you roll percentile dice and, in order to advance the skill, you have to roll below it. In other words, the higher the skill the harder it is to advance it.
Another quick note: Even though advancement slows down, it still occurs in leaps and bounds, sort of like evolution (as far as we know it). Artists and musicians, or athletes for that matter, often experience this when they put down their discipline for a day or two and come back seemingly better ("leveled up after an extended rest").
I was thinking: What are the "real world" degrees of capacity in a given skill or skill set? And can they tell us anything about the power levels of D&D and whether or not levels should be open-ended or closed?
As an exercise, take something that you're somewhat familiar with in the real-world and describe levels or degrees of ability. In that thread, I used the example of baseball, so I'll explicate that a bit. In baseball you have a relatively clear path of development:
Amateur ("Apprentice"):
1. Tee ball
2. Little league
3. Pony league
4. High School
5. College
Professional ("Journeyman"):
6. Rookie league
7. Low A
8. High A
9. AA
10. AAA
Professional ("Master"):
11. Major league bench player
12. Major league average regular
13. Major league quality veteran
14. Major league star
15. Major league superstar
You could stretch that out in any way you want, with more levels in the major leagues. This scheme conveniently has three tiers of five levels each. However, I would say that 4E's tier structure equates more with Heroic as major leaguers, Paragon as all-stars, and Epic as Hall of Fame caliber, but I'm more interested in the levels of skill development from first starting to swing a bat (a five-year old tee-baller) to high mastery (Albert Pujols).
Roleplaying games are much more egalitarian than baseball in that any old shmuck can conceivably reach the equivalent of epic tier and be a bad-ass, whereas advancement in baseball is limited by natural talent. In other words, if we were to use the "real life" principles of baseball, each character would be pre-made with a level limit based upon their natural talent with a specific skill set. To some degree D&D already accounts for this with ability scores so that, for example, a low level character with a high Dexterity is about as good a shot with a bow as a character a few levels higher with a lower Dexterity. But I think the point in D&D is that the default assumption is that every PC is basically a "superstar" in the making (although a low fantasy game might max out in, say, veteran status).
So where am I going with this? Well, I'm interested in the question of open versus closed level advancement and skill development, and what makes sense given how capacities develop in the real world. Do skills potentially advance endlessly or do they have a limit? Is open-ended level advancement in any way "realistic"? If we look at real-life specific skills and skill-sets, do they max out no matter how talented one is? Furthermore, could D&D be restructured to more accurately reflect the way skills develop in real life? Specifically, it seems fairly universal that capacities slow in their development; for example, the most common trajectory with, say, learning an instrument is that the development slows each year you play (assuming equal amount of time playing). We could represent this like so:
Novice - just starting - 0 rank
Apprentice - development of skills - 1-5 ranks
Journeyman - finetuning of skills - 6-10 ranks
Mastery - 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc.
In other words, the difference between a "low" master and a "high master" is much less than an advanced journeyman and an apprentice.
Runequest has an interesting mechanic for advancement that simulates this quite well: When you use a skill, which are percentile based, you put a check by it on your character sheet and have the opportunity of advancing it at the end of the session. When the session is over, you roll percentile dice and, in order to advance the skill, you have to roll below it. In other words, the higher the skill the harder it is to advance it.
Another quick note: Even though advancement slows down, it still occurs in leaps and bounds, sort of like evolution (as far as we know it). Artists and musicians, or athletes for that matter, often experience this when they put down their discipline for a day or two and come back seemingly better ("leveled up after an extended rest").
