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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 7558518" data-attributes="member: 50987">It's not a problem I've had in my games, but it's an interesting way to look at the game.In your Peter Jackson's LotR example, Gandalf probably only gained one level throughout the entire story (and even then, only after taking out a friggin' balrog and nearly dying in the process).  It was a little different for Sam: he never gained any levels at all, from what we can tell from the story...he started out as Frodo's gardener, and he was always Frodo's gardener...albeit he was a gardener with The Light of Eärendil, a magical Elven Cloak to hide him from unfriendly eyes, and a magical sword named Sting.  Frodo's path was the inverse of typical D&D progression: he left the Shire as a brave hero with a world-ending artifact in his care...but toward the end he was so powerless he couldn't even walk.It's a very interesting way of looking at D&D, for sure.  I mean, what is a hero really made of?It wouldn't be difficult to remove leveling altogether and still have both an enjoyable game AND story.  Experience points are just one way to add power to a character gradually over time, or as a reward for completing missions.  You could go the Samwise route, and just award magic items at key points in the story, items that will be pivotal to their success.  You could do something like Frodo, where the party starts out powerful and gets gradually weaker (pretty good motivator, if you ask me).So many ideas...must go write some of this down...</blockquote>

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