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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5523260" data-attributes="member: 82106">So, the only way the game can provide any simulation of power gain is by PC-style level advancement through adventuring and all other possibilities can't exist? Sorry, I don't buy that at all. Adventuring and killing stuff is clearly A way to become powerful, that doesn't mean it is the only way. It is the heroic way that is modeled for PCs since studying in a tower all day would probably not make a very exciting game.Nonsense. 200 minions don't all have to attack at once to win. Nor is allowing for situations that the rules (designed for PC combat vs small numbers of opponents) 'conceding' anything at all. NPC vs NPC has nothing to do with the mechanics anyway, it is purely fluff and the DM can apply any reasoning he wants. I'd also point out there are plenty of mechanics available in the game for modeling different things, page 42, swarms, etc. Who says he's the power behind anything? He's the crotchety old guy that lives in the tower on the edge of town. Watch out, he's rumored to be able to turn you into a toad if you look at him cross-eyed. Just as in the real world most people aren't that interested in power. They have plenty of other interests. Nothing indicates to me that higher level NPCs would be any more or less interested in running things than any other random person.Sure, and in your pseudo-medieval society where 100 peasants can grow enough food for 103 people (real world average for manual labor agriculture) there are going to be a lot of opportunities for people to do that.... I don't think it is a problem. Nor is it implied that 'just anyone' could become a high level NPC by those kinds of means. Talent is rare. Opportunity is rarer. It really isn't an issue. As for your 'wizard king' you're the one that insists that every high level NPC is bound and determined to keep everyone else under his booted heel. If you want such a dark and merciless world you can have it, but don't complain that it is impossible for anything else to exist. Why should your NPC wizard give a rat's arse what other people are up to as long as they aren't bothering him? He's got studying to do...Except it is trivially easy for people to go off and have adventures in a PoL world and there's no reasonable way that anyone is going to monopolize that, it just isn't feasible. Nor does every NPC care to do so. Heck, many of them could be perfectly happy to train others. If you are extra talented and spend the 20 years of hard study, you too might make 10th level. Or you can go loot a dungeon and do it in 3 months...Levels are simply an abstraction of expertise, favor of the gods, access to power, etc. There's no requirement that there be one way only to get them. PCs have one way because that's the way that drives the game forward for the players and gives them a framework for advancement. OTOH if the players say wanted to jump ahead 20 years in the story there's nothing stopping the DM from leveling them up some arbitrary amount and just describing how they spend 20 years honing their skills.I think the reason we were all having this little conversation was your insistence that only one kind of world would make sense and work. It wasn't about preferences, it was about a statement you made that the D&D society would be totally different and consist of some kind of tyranny of high level guys that nobody could resist and would kill off all competition. We don't agree that that is the inevitable consequence of levels existing. It is all just wool-gathering anyway.</blockquote>

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