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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How important is leveling to the play experience (lvls 2-8)?
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8505759" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>Leveling is a part of D&D... but I think it is also one of the least realistic parts of it. Because the more you level and the more power you acquire, the greater the unrealistic disparity between supposedly the same kinds of people. One "commoner" gets killed by an arrow to the chest... a 10-level "fighter" can take 20 arrows to the chest and walk away without any issue (until you start having to "reword" all the rules by suggesting things like "nicks and scratches", "loss of energy", "failed luck" and all the other euphemisms we use to try and justify hit points in any sort of consistent manner.)</p><p></p><p>That's why so many other games forgo the leveling process and instead XP is spent just incrementally increasing skills or abilities one point at a time session after session. It still shows characters improving, but there isn't these grand leaps in logic-less extravagant ability that D&D levels can bring. Especially between the leveled haves and have-nots.</p><p></p><p>Which is why I've always thought about the idea of using E6 to try and "solve" these issues in the D&D space... but inevitably I always comes back to "Why am I bothering to try and jerry-rig D&D into something its not, when there are plenty of other RPGs out there that actually do what E6 is trying to get across?" And at that point I just accept that D&D is what it is, and let it be. Yeah, I might come up with the occasional house rule for certain things just to play the game a little differently... but any grand mechanical changes? I design them on my off-time thinking they might be this new breakthrough in how I run my game, but then once I'm finished I realize that D&D just doesn't lend itself to it. If I want grand mechanical changes? Just play a different RPG.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 8505759, member: 7006"] Leveling is a part of D&D... but I think it is also one of the least realistic parts of it. Because the more you level and the more power you acquire, the greater the unrealistic disparity between supposedly the same kinds of people. One "commoner" gets killed by an arrow to the chest... a 10-level "fighter" can take 20 arrows to the chest and walk away without any issue (until you start having to "reword" all the rules by suggesting things like "nicks and scratches", "loss of energy", "failed luck" and all the other euphemisms we use to try and justify hit points in any sort of consistent manner.) That's why so many other games forgo the leveling process and instead XP is spent just incrementally increasing skills or abilities one point at a time session after session. It still shows characters improving, but there isn't these grand leaps in logic-less extravagant ability that D&D levels can bring. Especially between the leveled haves and have-nots. Which is why I've always thought about the idea of using E6 to try and "solve" these issues in the D&D space... but inevitably I always comes back to "Why am I bothering to try and jerry-rig D&D into something its not, when there are plenty of other RPGs out there that actually do what E6 is trying to get across?" And at that point I just accept that D&D is what it is, and let it be. Yeah, I might come up with the occasional house rule for certain things just to play the game a little differently... but any grand mechanical changes? I design them on my off-time thinking they might be this new breakthrough in how I run my game, but then once I'm finished I realize that D&D just doesn't lend itself to it. If I want grand mechanical changes? Just play a different RPG. [/QUOTE]
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How important is leveling to the play experience (lvls 2-8)?
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