How easy do you find it to adjust the advancement rate in D&D?

[ThirdWizard]

What if you made some kind of weird 1E and 3E amalgomy of unholiness by making total gp value of gear determine the PCs' level? So when the PC's total wealth is within the range of, say, what a 10th level character should have, they're 10th level.

This has the added benefit of draining levels make magical swords dissapear and sundering making PCs delevel.

 

[3catcircus]

I kinda wish that D&D would just move towards a completely skilled-based system since it is already half-way there.

The *best* advancement system I've ever seen is Twilight:2000. You get anywhere between 1 and 7 (or so) experience points per session. You use them to upgrade skill ranks, with each additional rank costing more.

I've never played GURPS but I've heard they use a similar system.

 

[MerricB]

I kinda wish that D&D would just move towards a completely skilled-based system since it is already half-way there.

The *best* advancement system I've ever seen is Twilight:2000. You get anywhere between 1 and 7 (or so) experience points per session. You use them to upgrade skill ranks, with each additional rank costing more.

I've never played GURPS but I've heard they use a similar system.

Although it's a great advancement system - particularly from a "realism" and player point of view - it's utterly horrible for balancing encounters. One of the great strengths of D&D is that saying "I'm a 7th level fighter" has certain implications for how good you are in combat. Certainly, you can still make sub-optimal decisions with feats and the like, but the baseline is much easier to judge.

Cheers!

 

[ruleslawyer]

Word.

D&D has the great advantage of being able to separate the heroes from the wannabes from the mooks without having to run 1000 individual skill, attack, defense, and special ability calculations.

 

[genshou]

I voted 5 (hard) not from the work it takes to adjust (I would say a 2 in that regard), but from what you might encounter by having players whining that it is taking so long to level.

QFT. I voted 4 not because of any resistance from the system, but because of resistance from the players. I'll be gaming with grognards again starting next Friday, though, so maybe we'll be able to get back to slow advancement without whining.