D&D 5E How many adventurers are in your world?

[Tony Vargas]

To be fair, none of the ways in which they attempted to restrict level gaining beyond experience points made any sense whatsoever.

The Fighter or Rogue had to determine if they had slaughtered enough people and picked up enough gold pieces to ...

To be completely fair, gaining experience to level up never made any sense either. Your 1st level magic-user stabbed 400 kobolds, now he's better at casting spells. You fighter wandered into a dungeon, survived setting off half a dozen traps, and walked out with a chest full of jewels, now he can swing more often per minute. ;P

 

[S'mon]

Since it's 1e, and therefore Gygaxian, it has to be lust for buttkicking. In any other setting, it's all about the good and the evil, with Switzerland sitting it out.

But in the world of Gygax, Neutral is always around, chewing gum and kicking posterior*. So in a weird way, it almost makes sense. Except that it doesn't. IIRC, the only other class that required battle and/or death for level advancement was the assassin. Because druids and assassins have so much in common.
.

Also Monks.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

And neither has been in my kitchen.

How would you know?

 

[Lanefan]

To be fair, none of the ways in which they attempted to restrict level gaining beyond experience points made any sense whatsoever.

The Fighter or Rogue had to determine if they had slaughtered enough people and picked up enough gold pieces to qualify for additional training? Since when do you give veterans additional training in the things they have been practicing in the field? Haven't all these fights they have been in and locks they have picked been in and of themselves opportunities in order to refine their skills and techniques? What exactly is that trainer going to be showing them in 1d6 weeks time that is going to be more relevant for honing these skills more than field experience was? And if these techniques existed, why weren't they part of the initial training instead of requiring someone to go out and stab lots of living things and pick up lots of gold before going over them?

Here's a few weeks of theory training, now go out and put it into practice. When you've got that mastered, come back and we'll teach you the next bits. And if you've got beyond what we can teach you'll have to spend the time and teach yourself (i.e. self-training at higher levels).

Seems simple enough, for all classes.

Yes, the additional Druid and Assassin requirements were all the more goofy, no doubt.

The mistake perhaps was really writing these things into the book as standard required systems for play rather than examples of optional systems that DMs could implement if they felt the players were gaining levels too easily and too arbitrarily. But, I think the initial concept was that there would be a strict standardized ruleset and all characters people generated existed as population of a single world and could be ported from game to game with assurances that nothing too wonky was happening in any particular one much akin to Adventurer's League... it was probably only later that the idea that every group should be encouraged to throw out as much of the rules as are interfering with fun and really do whatever they want with only their imagination limiting them came more into favor.

I might be wrong, but looking through the rulebooks of the various editions that is the impression I got. Less and less "these are the rules, FOLLOW THEM" and more "yeah, here is how we do it-- the DM should do whatever he likes" going from edition to edition.

Up until 5e I'd have almost said the opposite: there seemed to be more and more "follow the rules" as the editions went along. Sure, the 1e DMG has lots of "this is how it's to be done", but once it became common knowledge that EGG didn't even run his home game by those rules...well, anything goes.

5e is a nice departure that way, specifically intended as a framework for DMs to tweak to suit.

One really useful point EGG was getting at in the DMG was to note that if you and one or more other DMs want to combine your worlds somehow then it makes sense to have the rule-set consistent (or close) across those worlds.

Lan-"that said, I rather like the idea of every D&D character ever created as existing all in the same universe somewhere"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

I don't setup campaigns to have the party as destined for greatness, or uniquely special. There are many adventures in my worlds. Adventurers face challenges and seize opportunities; that is what makes them special.

I suppose that It be more accurate to say that the party is not an adventuring party, but a venturing party. Anticlimatic I know; I've always had a pension for High Fantasy with a mundane scope.

I'm not quite that harsh...sometimes parties or individuals do have or develop some sort of destiny about them (which they may or may not ever know about, never mind end up fulfilling)...but there's certainly always a sense in my games of "if you don't do it, someone else probably will".

Lan-"they're not the only fish in the pond, and there's always a bigger one"-efan

 

[sleypy]

I'm not quite that harsh...sometimes parties or individuals do have or develop some sort of destiny about them (which they may or may not ever know about, never mind end up fulfilling)...but there's certainly always a sense in my games of "if you don't do it, someone else probably will".

Lan-"they're not the only fish in the pond, and there's always a bigger one"-efan

I'll Steal a classic to clarify my point, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." I say destiny only in reference to the former and later. In any world I create, heroes will be self made not pre-made.

 

[PnPgamer]

in my world, there are as enough adventurers as there are hookers and blow.
which is a lot.

 

[delericho]

Here's a few weeks of theory training, now go out and put it into practice. When you've got that mastered, come back and we'll teach you the next bits.

Yep.

Amongst other things, I teach kids to play the bagpipes. And one of the things I've learned over the years is that you can teach someone a tune, they can 'know' the tune, and be able to play it on both the practice chanter and the bagpipes in the practice hall... but they don't really know the tune until they go out there and play it "for real".

Sometimes, there really is no substitute for experience.

 

[Maxperson]

To be completely fair, gaining experience to level up never made any sense either. Your 1st level magic-user stabbed 400 kobolds, now he's better at casting spells. You fighter wandered into a dungeon, survived setting off half a dozen traps, and walked out with a chest full of jewels, now he can swing more often per minute. ;P

I agree. I've always looked at exp like hit points. Exp is an abstraction that is used to determine when characters improve. A lot more goes into such improvement than we can see, but such a system spelled out would be extremely complicated and most likely boring, so we get the system we have with D&D and other RPGs.

 

[Kabouter Games]

I agree. I've always looked at exp like hit points. Exp is an abstraction that is used to determine when characters improve. A lot more goes into such improvement than we can see, but such a system spelled out would be extremely complicated and most likely boring, so we get the system we have with D&D and other RPGs.

I used to play Twilight 2000, which had, IIRC, a much more sensible "getting better at things" system. It was a "put pips behind a skill" sort of mechanic, and periodically you'd get pips to add. So you got a little bit better at things every day in-game. That's a lot more often than, say, D&D, where you'd have the same skills and powers for what could be weeks in-game before you suddenly gained a pile o' cool stuff out of the blue.

To be fair, when EGG et al. gave us the XP system, they were the first. AFAIK the only reason we stick with it is Tradition. That's one reason I like the "DM says you level" approach. That's what the game I'm playing in now is doing, and it's working very well indeed.