It's No Longer A Joke

[Leatherhead]

So everyone had the epic level handbook in 3.x?

There are epic level rules in the 3.5 DMG.

 

[Grabuto138]

Each and every campaign I ever played in.

We'd hit about 12th level or so, 1e, 2e, Basic/Expert, didn't matter and the campaign would end. Going beyond that was just pointless. When the fighter is single handedly destroying Ancient Huge Red dragons, there just wasn't much to do beyond name level.

You got your keep, you got your followers and started over.

And, I highly, highly doubt I'm the only one who played like this.

Especially 1st edition. Once you reached "Lord" you could earn 250,000 Xp for +3 HP and not much else or start over. Magic Users, on the other hand, got spells. Invariably we would resolve some important plot thread and establish an interesting end story and then start over. Often, the DM would encorporate hints and rumors about retired characters in the new campaign. One particularly long lived campaign with some very chaotic (though not evil) characters from 2nd edition exists in our current campaign as a semi-mythical long ago epoc known as the "Time of Lamentations" full of half-remembered rumors of the antics of great heroes who happened to be our prior characters. It is very fun to learn what my character was up to after I retired him years ago.

 

[Lanefan]

So...in 4e what happens if you want to go to 31? Or 32? Or 50?

At least the other editions were essentially open-ended (or could easily be made so) for those who wanted to carry on.

That said, our 1e games tend to crash around 10th mostly because the DM (me, sometimes) either runs out of ideas for that campaign or gets bored of it, or both. This seems to tend to happen around the 10-year mark.

Lanefan

 

[Plane Sailing]

Each and every campaign I ever played in.

We'd hit about 12th level or so, 1e, 2e, Basic/Expert, didn't matter and the campaign would end. Going beyond that was just pointless. When the fighter is single handedly destroying Ancient Huge Red dragons, there just wasn't much to do beyond name level.

You got your keep, you got your followers and started over.

It's funny how there are different play styles!

For us getting the keep and followers was the mid point of the campaign, as it then progressed into a new 'phase' which was more political and international in scope than our earlier dungeon bashing adventures. Level gain was slow enough in those days that 'getting the next level' was something that happened by the by while manouvering to gain rank in the kingdom, extending ones fief and planning for a kingdom of your own

This was all basically OD&D/1e, as we never played BECMI or 2e - we got into other RPGs at that time like Bushido and Runequest 2.

And, I highly, highly doubt I'm the only one who played like this.

Hey, sounds like a poll would be fun!

Cheers

 

[frankthedm]

So...in 4e what happens if you want to go to 31? Or 32? Or 50?

Then the DM has his work cut out for him of wotc does not come out with a godly powers book. Part of the whole idea behind 4e was to have a definite end for the campaign. Rather than have a point where past the math may stop working and no playtesting has occurred, this time wotc has run the math for all levels of play expected out of D&D.

Hopefully they don't bork that up with too much overpowered splat.

 

[Plane Sailing]

So...in 4e what happens if you want to go to 31? Or 32? Or 50?

Following on from my post to Hussar...

That is an interesting question, and I wonder whether it represents a change in the underlying philosophy of D&D over the years.

When I used to play in the 70's and very early 80's, we played the game for as long as someone wanted to run adventures/maintain a campaign and nobody ever considered potential "level maximums" as an issue. This is probably because level advancement was so slow that you only gained a level about once in every 20 sessions or so, after hundreds of encounters so character objectives were much more 'story based' if you will.

Since 3e, I suppose, "gaining a level" has come more to the forefront in terms of character objectives. It is much, much more attainable (by design) and as a result can easily become much more of a character objective (heck, I know that when I play 3e I'm much more focussed on the 'gaining a level' bit than ever before ).

So the question of "what if you want to want to go to 31st level" is an issue for the 'level driven' game, but perhaps not so much for the 'story driven game'.

Does that make sense?

Cheers

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

I thought you "won" D&D once you cleared a hex and built a castle/wizards tower?

 

[Maggan]

From the Epic Destinies article:


Yes, that's correct. As of the release of 4E, it will actually be possible to win D&D...

Nah. It will be possible to retire a character. The game is still there, the campaign world is still rolling on. There is no end-game.

The game remains the same.

Also, this is not new for 4e.

/M

 

[FourthBear]

So...in 4e what happens if you want to go to 31? Or 32? Or 50?

I think you could continue to extrapolate from previous levels to continue progression. Obviously, you'd either have to continue selecting from the pre-existing 1-30 level choices or come up with your own 30+ level powers, feats and class abilities. This would come eventually at *some* level in any case. Even with the 3e Epic Handbook, at some point you would have chosen every power available.

I think that encouraging the DM and players to think about acceptable endgame is a good idea. And, of course, parties of 30th level adventurers can still adventure and have fun without level advancement.

 

[Simon Marks]

All versions of D&D (except 3.x) had a point where you stopped gaining 'meaningful' levels.

Because +3 HP isn't meaningful compared to +1 HD.

So, just give people +1-3hp per level over 30 and you more or less have the 'open ended' system of 1e.