Game spy interview with Christopher Perkins

[Intrope]

James Wyatt answers the question I had:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13745039&postcount=15



This doesn't actually answer what I mean when I ask about "power level" - which is will wizards still have earthshakingly powerful spells like Wish at 20th level, or will those be moved up to 30th level, but it does maybe give some insight into Chris Perkin's use of the phrase "power level" in his interview.

At a raw guess, given the description of the 21-30 bracket as Epic: The real earthshaker spells will move up into this range. They've also indicated that casters scale back at high levels, which would also indicate that the earthshaker-type spells would be in some way limited, probably by moving to higher levels.

It's hard to imagine that they'd ditch Wish (as an effect) after all; it's a pretty signature thing at high levels. On the other hand, I expect it won't work at all the same way. They've already said that XP is not a resource, so no more 5K chunks.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Just an example of how tastes differ. My group plays every TWO weeks (sometimes missing a month) and prefer the advancement I mentioned above.

In my last campaign, which last just one month shy of 5 years, the PCs leveled an average of every 9.3 sessions.

I'm Olgar, and I endorse this campaign.

 

[Uriens]

Christopher Perkins: We know that players enjoy the experience of "leveling up," provided it's not onerous, and so we've built a system that allows them to level up more often. We didn't want players to have to "level up" their characters every session because that would get onerous; doing so every two or three sessions seemed more appropriate and palatable, and that's how the new system is currently built.

I don't like this... at all :\
My group plays once a week, and in our last 4 years campaign, we leveled from 1 to 15.

I agree leveling is fun, but this way is getting too much like a videogame! When do wizards write new spell on their books? Right in the middle of a dungeon?

Btw, we used to halve the xp gained... it seems we'll need to take just a quarter in 4e

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'm torn on this. On a purely mechanical level, I have no real problem with it. On an in-game level, though, it encourages the "farm boy at age 18, demigod at age 19" phenomenon.

Obviously, one can alleviate that somewhat with downtime between adventures. But if one is playing, say, an adventure path, or otherwise running a single-plot (or at least plot arc-heavy) campaign, frequent downtime isn't often possible, or at least believable.

Still, I'm not terribly concerned. Advancement has always been one of the things most easily changed by the DM without substantial repercussion. So long as that continues to be the case, and I see no reason it shouldn't be, this isn't a big deal one way or the other.

 

[hong]

I'm torn on this. On a purely mechanical level, I have no real problem with it. On an in-game level, though, it encourages the "farm boy at age 18, demigod at age 19" phenomenon.

Obviously, one can alleviate that somewhat with downtime between adventures. But if one is playing, say, an adventure path, or otherwise running a single-plot (or at least plot arc-heavy) campaign, frequent downtime isn't often possible, or at least believable.

Conversely, I would say that the success of the Dungeon APs indicates that most people aren't terribly concerned about the farmboy-to-demigod issue. Yeah, it's wacky, but wackiness is pretty much part of the deal for D&D.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Conversely, I would say that the success of the Dungeon APs indicates that most people aren't terribly concerned about the farmboy-to-demigod issue. Yeah, it's wacky, but wackiness is pretty much part of the deal for D&D.

Oh, I'd agree it's not a concern for everyone. I was just saying it might be an issue for me, not that they shouldn't do it for that reason.

But again, I think that as long the system is easily slowed down or sped up from the baseline, this is one topic on which almost everyone can be easily made happy.

 

[MerricB]

Oh, I'd agree it's not a concern for everyone. I was just saying it might be an issue for me, not that they shouldn't do it for that reason.

But again, I think that as long the system is easily slowed down or sped up from the baseline, this is one topic on which almost everyone can be easily made happy.

Interestingly, the more magic items become non-essential - and thus gold isn't so important - the easier it is to tweak levelling.

Cheers!

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

I'm torn on this. On a purely mechanical level, I have no real problem with it. On an in-game level, though, it encourages the "farm boy at age 18, demigod at age 19" phenomenon.

Obviously, one can alleviate that somewhat with downtime between adventures. But if one is playing, say, an adventure path, or otherwise running a single-plot (or at least plot arc-heavy) campaign, frequent downtime isn't often possible, or at least believable.

Still, I'm not terribly concerned. Advancement has always been one of the things most easily changed by the DM without substantial repercussion. So long as that continues to be the case, and I see no reason it shouldn't be, this isn't a big deal one way or the other.

Interestingly, the more magic items become non-essential - and thus gold isn't so important - the easier it is to tweak levelling.

Cheers!

A double-whammy QFT!