Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Feature or Bug: D&D's Power and Complexity Curve
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 7557781" data-attributes="member: 12377"><p>This is a matter of game-play preference. There are plenty of RPGs where your character only improves incrementally throughout their carreer. In <em>Mutants & Masterminds</em>, for example, you start with all your major powers, and as you gain experience you just gain some minor tricks and tweaks. (Many superhero games are like that.) <em>GURPS Dungeon Fantasy</em> is another example. You start as like a 250-point character or something, which is pretty buff, but then you only gain a few CP each session. In this sort of game, the plots and challenges you face remain largely similar throughout a campaign.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I LIKE the fact that D&D changes as levels advance. <em>If the game didn't change, there would be no point to advancing.</em> As a counter-example, remember the 3E <em>Epic Level Handbook</em>? I absolutely hated the bestiary in that book, because all the monsters were just bigger, but not any different, and that's super boring. It was a quantitative change but not a qualitative change.</p><p></p><p>I recently DMed a campaign from 1st level to 20th level (a first for me) over the course of a year (also a first) and I really loved how the game changed throughout the campaign. Session 1, the PCs were nobodies who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They struggled for survival and bigger people pushed them around. By mid-level, they were making a name for themselves, and setting up elaborate magical ambushes -- playing a very dangerous game. By the end of the campaign, they had literally taken over a country, ended a war, thwarted a plan to destroy the multiverse, and killed a demi-demi-god. They had all kinds of strange capabilities, and so did their enemies; killing major foes was no longer enough, because they might come back via any number of magical techniques. You can't have those kind of shenanigans if you stay at low levels. But if you start at high levels you miss the part where PCs are struggling for survival. In one of the campaign's earliest encounters, they fought enemies on a bridge over water, and it was scary because the water was murky and you couldn't see what was in it. In one of the campaign's very last encounters, they fought above a <em>bottomless pit</em> (it's a fantasy world; that can happen) and it wasn't a big deal, it was just kinda an obstacle that they had to plan around.</p><p></p><p>So for me, the radical changes across levels is definitely a feature. It's like D&D is multiple games in one. You could "fix" this by keeping the campaign within a tight level range. And you could also do the opposite with <em>M&M</em> or <em>GURPS</em>, by starting with low-point characters and giving out way more points per session than the guidelines, so your characters grow in power by leaps and bounds. But those games aren't exactly designed to work that way, so there may be some friction trying to adapt them to the different play-style.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="77IM, post: 7557781, member: 12377"] This is a matter of game-play preference. There are plenty of RPGs where your character only improves incrementally throughout their carreer. In [I]Mutants & Masterminds[/I], for example, you start with all your major powers, and as you gain experience you just gain some minor tricks and tweaks. (Many superhero games are like that.) [I]GURPS Dungeon Fantasy[/I] is another example. You start as like a 250-point character or something, which is pretty buff, but then you only gain a few CP each session. In this sort of game, the plots and challenges you face remain largely similar throughout a campaign. Personally, I LIKE the fact that D&D changes as levels advance. [I]If the game didn't change, there would be no point to advancing.[/I] As a counter-example, remember the 3E [I]Epic Level Handbook[/I]? I absolutely hated the bestiary in that book, because all the monsters were just bigger, but not any different, and that's super boring. It was a quantitative change but not a qualitative change. I recently DMed a campaign from 1st level to 20th level (a first for me) over the course of a year (also a first) and I really loved how the game changed throughout the campaign. Session 1, the PCs were nobodies who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They struggled for survival and bigger people pushed them around. By mid-level, they were making a name for themselves, and setting up elaborate magical ambushes -- playing a very dangerous game. By the end of the campaign, they had literally taken over a country, ended a war, thwarted a plan to destroy the multiverse, and killed a demi-demi-god. They had all kinds of strange capabilities, and so did their enemies; killing major foes was no longer enough, because they might come back via any number of magical techniques. You can't have those kind of shenanigans if you stay at low levels. But if you start at high levels you miss the part where PCs are struggling for survival. In one of the campaign's earliest encounters, they fought enemies on a bridge over water, and it was scary because the water was murky and you couldn't see what was in it. In one of the campaign's very last encounters, they fought above a [I]bottomless pit[/I] (it's a fantasy world; that can happen) and it wasn't a big deal, it was just kinda an obstacle that they had to plan around. So for me, the radical changes across levels is definitely a feature. It's like D&D is multiple games in one. You could "fix" this by keeping the campaign within a tight level range. And you could also do the opposite with [I]M&M[/I] or [I]GURPS[/I], by starting with low-point characters and giving out way more points per session than the guidelines, so your characters grow in power by leaps and bounds. But those games aren't exactly designed to work that way, so there may be some friction trying to adapt them to the different play-style. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Feature or Bug: D&D's Power and Complexity Curve
Top