NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="d20Dwarf" data-source="post: 2908683" data-attributes="member: 314">I realize I'm coming late to the discussion, but it's interesting that y'all bring up the fact that D&D was morphed to cater to a 1-20 game in a year of constant play. It may or may not be true that campaigns typically last a year or less (probably true), but where did the imperative to "just get through all the levels" come from? That's certainly a huge departure from the gaming style of older editions, and speaks directly to the OP's point. The game designers clearly made the assumption that rushing through all 20 levels was a good goal in and of itself, presumably because it would offer players a range of experiences. Unfortunately, the experiences offered by high-level D&D aren't really all that satisfying.Pogre cited an interesting survey that said most people found levels 5-8 a sweet spot that they enjoyed playing in. I agree with that, but then I realized that it was based off a nostalgic assumption. Levels 5-8 *used* to be a sweet spot, and while I carried that over into 3e for a while, now I realize it no longer applies. All levels are the same in D&D now, 1-20. An "appropriate" monster will take 20% of my resources whether I'm 2nd level or 18th. Sure, the tools change, but the baseline assumptions never do. Levels 5-8 were special back in the day because you spent more time there, accumulated more stories there, and reached a point where you had some cool abilities and toward the end of that range probably some phat loot (or at least that one character-defining piece of equipment).Magic, too, has lost that luster. The system itself assumes that your character will have X,Y, and Z items to boost his stats and defenses up to a certain level so you can take on that "appropriate" monster with 20% of your pre-defined resources. It's an incredibly boring exercise. That's why you have the magic shop assumptions, because if you don't let PCs customize their loot, then they're going to be dying left and right because of the game's assumptions. Faster levelling also makes special, personalized magic items obsolete, because you're whisking so fast through levels that almost as soon as you get a cool item, it's no longer strong enough to take on those "appropriate" monsters. So, you have to keep trading up at the local thorpe's magic emporium. There *are* assumptions in the d20 system that affect gameplay in significant ways, always have been, always will be. But the forced levelling mechanic and CR/wealth systems have clearly impacted how D&D is supposed to be played, and have blown a lot of what people liked about the game for 25 years out of the water.Oh, and there are good things too, blah blah...<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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