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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 7557711" data-attributes="member: 467">NOTE: Hopefully this can be a friendly discussion regarding the subject. I am going to express and opinion but I want to say right off the bat that it is true FOR ME and I am not suggesting it is an objective truth.The steep power and complexity curve in D&D (5E, yes, but also 3.x and PF) expressed through it's leveling system is a bug. it makes the game less fun for me, particularly as a GM. it breaks my sense of immersion in the world and it limits and constricts the kinds of adventures, campaigns and stories that I can tell through D&D. D&D would be better if leveling were divorced from the power and complexity curve.Alright, let me unpack some of that.By "power and complexity curve" I mean how PCs increase both in scale and scope as they gain levels. Early on, they are rat hunters and later the rats need to be REALLY BIG. Moreover, they have much broader capabilities (this is especially true of casters). The problem with this is that it necessitates a change in the kinds of opposition and adventure trappings that the PCs must encounter. It isn't merely incremental, either. At low level, a 20 foot sheer cliff wall is a reasonable barrier or challenge. Very shortly it becomes inconsequential. The same can be said for other kinds of opposition, both environmental hazards and enemies. As such, this means that the actual world in which the PCs inhabit has to change similarly in scale and scope as the PCs level up. And due to this, the nature of the "story" of the game world or campaign must change as well.By way of example (and yes I know it is not perfect) imagine the Lord of the Rings as a D&D campaign. Peter Jackson's tendency to up the ante with every new action sequence, there is not a lot of what would in D&D be recognized as leveling happening for anyone aside from the hobbits (and then arguably). The trappings of the story remain largely the same throughout the "campaign" and while the party moves ever closer to the end game, they don't change dramatically on their way. Aragorn isn't leaping Mordor's walls by the final battle, for example. Another example might be the Uncharted series of video games. Literally no mechanical advancement occurs over the course of those games, which comprise a connected series of adventures that certainly looks a lot like a "campaign."Now, I am not saying there should be NO mechanical advancement, just that specifically the power and complexity curve of D&D is a problem especially when taken over the course of a long campaign.Discuss.</blockquote>

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