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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4486526" data-attributes="member: 42582">Snoweel is not saying "do not bother with thinking." S/he (? - the tone of the posts suggests a man to me) is saying that the 4e rules probably won't produce an optimal RPGing experience if level is treated as a measure of something ingame. Rather, it is a character-building and encounter-building device.I don't think that Snoweel is questioning your gaming preferences. S/he is saying that it is wrong to say that it makes no sense for high-level PCs to face predominantly high-level NPCs. This only makes no sense under a certain assumption about the ingame meaning of levels, which 4e is not designed around.4e levels are intended as a meta-game device, for encounter and character building.m Treating them as measures of ingame prowess seems apt to produce a slighly wonky play experience.I think that 4e does have aspects of character/NPC build that are meant to correlate to ingame phenomena, namely, Heroic, Paragon and Epic tiers. It also gives a slight nod to the simulationist reading of levels, by suggesting (via the monsters listed in the MM) that PCs at different tiers should be facing different sorts of challenges (eg the Underdark monsters such as Drow, Mind Flayers and Grimlocks seem to be mostly paragon-level threats), thus meaning that no play group is forced to confront the non-simulationist understanding of levels.I think that the Heroic/Paragon/Epic distinction is intended to have some sort of ingame meaning (and Paragon PCs probably don't climb many ladders, so that particular issue can be dodged - just as the transition to the Underdark allows dodging the whole "what does level mean" issue to a certain extent).The problem with this is that it has the following implication: the reward for having your D&D character level successfully is to get to play a different game (a wargame rather than an RPG). That's not necessarily a recipe for a popular game. I certainly know that it wouldn't interest me.</blockquote>

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