Levels, what do they mean?

[jdrakeh]

I dispute your arguments. The personally powerful, can exhert no authority further than their own finger tips. It takes some form of recognition by a higher authority, to actually convince another to concur, and transfer allegiance. Personally powerful characters can be pariahs, exiled, and excommunicated.

You argument on Gilgamesh is circular: You say "He was King because he was powerful. He was powerful, therefore he was King" It neither proves nor disproves your theory.

You refer to historical-mythological figures like Gilagamesh, yet disregard the examples I have given of other historical figures. What you are refering to may be valid in a simple society of barbarians and uncouthed louts, yet would not be accepted a civilised nation of reasonable men.

Consider the fate of the Greek Hercules (not the tv show). Where was his Kingdom? The strongest man on Earth. By your reckoning, such a man should've owned the world, in a manner akin to Gilgamesh.

I chose my examples from post-renaissance merely for their easy recognition from modern literature. Once you have established the Right of Kings to rule through Divinity (all of Europe through the middle ages, in what is generally regarded as the "temporal flavour" of DnD), then you have a firm reason to assume usurping power will not be regarded as trivial.

Do you not find it interesting that all the great civilisations of eras past, had families inheriting leadership based on some form of "Divine Right"? That includes Babylon, and Maya which is far, far prior to "post renaissance". That they obviously felt the need to secure their positions of power with such intricacies?

In a DnD world, such rulers would take note of rising adventurers, and use them as well. Gaining their influence and friendship. Ensuring their aid when a crisis may arrive.

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[kaomera]

A King, long on the throne and having fought in several wars, might be a 10th level Aristocrat or Fighter/Aristocrat, but if he died and his son ascended the throne, the son would still be King, even if he was only 1st level.

However, if you assume that Titles can only be earned, not awarded as a political favor or inherited, than the 1e conventions can be thought of as a Rule of Thumb that says: "On average, people who'd done enough to deserve being a Duke are this level. Ipso facto, if you aren't that level, you haven't done enough to deserve the title of Duke."

I agree about inherited position not resulting in an instant level boost; I hadn't really meant that all Barons had to be 9th level, so much as that the political power inherent in that position was (roughly, only) similar to the physical (personal) powers of a 9th level Fighter. Does that make any sense? That's sort of what I was looking for in regards to 3e, if such a thing is even possible...

I'll admit that in 1e I did have the average NPC (specifically those who had no specific in-game reason not to follow this guideline) tend twords such levels personally; so that the 9-year old (0 level) son of the King described above would tend to advance twords 10th level himself as he matured (and if he survived). In 3e terms he would be facing ~CR13 (actually, I think this is one place where simply doubling 1e levels breaks down rather badly...) challenges, mostly of a social / political / roleplaying sort. Therefore, without someone backing him up (a Regent, his father's trusted retainers, the church if Divine Right is in play, the general populace who may see him as a national father-figure, etc...) even the significant circumstance bonuses I would grant to the kingdom's legitimate heir he's going to fall flat on his face...

So I guess I'm wondering if this really only holds up if you assume "that Titles can only be earned, not awarded as a political favor or inherited"... I think it's significant that if the heir is not a young child but instead a seasoned adventurer who's been away looting dungeons and such (and assuming that the player in question has invested in appropriate skills) he will be significantly better prepared to deal with the position and rank he now finds himself in. If he's not 10th level then he still hasn't done enough to deserve the title of King, but he still deserves that position due to his birthright. And likewise, a different character who is, say, 12th level isn't automatically a King, but he certainly could (again given the right skills) be qualified to carve out a Kingdom, he can meet the challenges that would pose, probably in many cases by himself.

Another possible example: a party of ~13th level characters decides that they should free a region under the oppression of a Necromantic cabal and set up shop there, but none of them are particularly suited to diplomacy, politics, or civic leadership. If one of them picks up an Aristocrat as a cohort (cohort in game terms, the relationship is liable to be somewhat more complex than that implies, I'd think), isn't that NPC going to have a much easier time setting up a workable government with four such PCs working with him, let alone the four who saved the local populace from Undead horrors?

In 1e my players often got the urge to play at politics at some point in their characters' careers. However, they really where just playing at it, they didn't crown themselves King (or even, typically, mess much at all with inherited titles at all). Mostly they would co-opt some of the powers of appointed leaders like Mayors and such, and they usually did so far more via political maneuvering, offering favors, and the subtle (well, mostly) threat of some very un-subtle acts of violence... (See also: Urban Renewal, the Fireball Spell, and You.) They usually started this fairly early (4th thru 6th levels, IIRC), then got tired of it and went on to other stuff. This is part of where my 1:2 conversion of 1e:3e levels comes from, in that I think that expecting 3e characters (and players) to get involved in such stuff at that early a level might be a bit off...

 

[kaomera]

I guess to the OP I would say that if the party wants to "settle down" for a while at a certain level and still keep the campaign going, you could hand wave a period of peace and prosperity for them ( say 30 years or more, apply some age bonuses and penalties) and then yank it all out from under their feet. That way when they complain about you taking it all away from them you can say, "But you ran that pub for 30+ years!"

That is a wonderful idea! I'm just sorry I hadn't thought of it at the time...

I think that (possibly) my players might object to their PCs being idle for so long (and I would certainly try and spend at least a few sessions roleplaying / hashing out what interesting developments might have gone on while the PCs where "out of the game", especially since such could serve to set up / foreshadow their sudden and unexpected return!). I was kind of getting mixed signals, but now that you mention it / I think about it I guess they really possibly just wanted me to give their characters a good reason not to settle down... (And if so they didn't really communicate it well to me, because I really thought from the way they where playing that they actually wanted their characters to settle down, and then they would say things out of character that would contradict that...)

Unfortunately part of my problem is that I just can't come up with as much to do for higher-level characters as I can for lower-level ones. But maybe stretching out the in-game time-frame between adventures could deal with part or all of this problem. I do still have to deal with the expectations of fairly consistent (in real-time) level gains, but I could possibly deal with that in part by running more challenging adventures. (Is it bad that I immediately thought: "And if they achieve an unrecoverable TPK, then I can start a new game at lower levels!"??? )

 

[kaomera]

Or you could assume that in order to maintain their political power an individual would need the personal power to back it up cause if not a higher level threat would TAKE their position from them by force swiftly and inevitably.

This is similar to my thoughts, excepting the "swiftly and inevitably" part. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that a higher-level individual ought to be able to hold such a position. I think there would tend to be a leaning in that direction, that most people simply would not oppose such a personally powerful usurper without some other incentive. However, you don't need many to oppose you for your coup to be overthrown; if the other local rulers rely on a tradition of succession of rulership within a family line they may well band together to remove such a threat to that system as you represent (or they might not).

 

[kaomera]

My approach to levels and scaling.

Wow, nice... That page is so bookmarked

 

[I'm A Banana]

They mean you've been on ADVENTURES!

 

[Felix]

Precisely he was king because he was BETTER. His deeds were exploits of legend and he was descended of gods his arete was enormous and it would have been impossible for him to do anything but lead because others would know his greatness and naturally seek to follow him.

Because of his parents he would have been king even if he had sat around all day picking bellybutton lint and eating cheetos. He was next in line for the crown; his exploits or lack thereof would not have changed that.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Wow, nice... That page is so bookmarked

Thanks. I'll be adding some additional "musings," soon.

 

[kaomera]

Philotomy ~ you're more than welcome, and I'll be looking forward to it!

So, I got to chat with some of my players today (well, largely I vented to one of them in particular, rather than having a real discussion with all of them, but I still feel it helped). We've decided that the main issue I'm having may well be pacing, both in-game and out-of-game. Everyone's going to make second, higher-level characters; simpler characters with less background. I can run these characters through pretty much random adventures (rather than trying to maintain some real semblance of a campaign) on weeks when I just need to do a bit more work on the main campaign, or when the players get antsy about the speed at which their characters are advancing (so, hopefully not more than one session, or possibly two back-to-back, every two or three months). I was actually kind of worried about taking this kind of "time off" creating even more of a problems in terms of how long it might take the main-game characters to level, but my players are saying that getting to play higher-level dudes would solve that for them, so I guess it's cool!

One or two of the players might even be willing to take the reigns for a short while and give me a break from GMing at some point, but there was some concern about being able to pull something sufficiently short off. Another good thing about this system is that we can hopefully avoid some problems we've had in the past where we had to cancel a game one week and then the next week (or few weeks) it was really hard to get the group together and get the game started...

The jury appears to still be out on both using Affiliations / working some more political / leadership stuff into the higher levels of play, as well as the possibility of adding some significant in-game breaks. I still don't feel completely comfortable threatening the world week in and week out, even if the PCs are higher level. We did decide (several of the players had made some fairly sage comments that led to me having a brainstorm) that it might be a good idea if I planned out (at least loosely) a kind of "adventure path", working backwards by deciding what the end of the campaign is "supposed to be" and then building up stuff that will lead that way. I'm not sure I'm convinced that such a plan can survive contact with the players (one reason I haven't actually broken down and tried to run a published Adventure Path so far... The other being that I'm sure it wouldn't survive contact with my "hyperactive 3-year-old" GMing style... ), but they suggested that if they knew that there was something definite planned out, that they would (at least as players) have a strong urge to see what the next "step" along the "path" was...

I'm thinking that if high-level D&D is like superheroes, well the JLA (for instance) is pretty much always fighting off world-beaters, right? (And there's plenty of "supervillains" in the average D&D campaign to keep this going for a while...) But a story arc in the comics tends to be between 4 and 12 issues, and a similar amount of time can be assumed to take place between the start of one and the next... But most of these stories don't take months to play out, but days or weeks. So there really is a bunch of "down time" in between, right? Besides trying to sell this to my players, I'm also thinking that if I can maintain a "path" up to these levels then it's likely that there really is only one "story", just in multiple parts...

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Too much here to address in one post now that I'm back online butI'll try to hit the highpoints and better explain the Why of what I was figuring.

Gilgamesh angle-Gilgamesh was as the epic says the son of a goddess and three parts divine to one part man. In game terms a massive template, something like a paragon, simply as a result of being more god than man for all that he may be doomed to die. So even if he doesn't go off and do great things (adventuring in D&D terms parts of his epic certainly count as such) he's already inherently BETTER and no lesser individual can claim rulership while he is there because who will follow a lesser man when the greater is already present?

This doesn't mean that hereditary rulership is impossible. What it does mean is that the royal brats are going to be sent out to Prove the greatness which is a prerequisite of leadership while still young by adventuring which results in them gaining levels. In fact they are going to be in competition to prove that they are the greatest of the claimants to the throne to cement their position as next in line. Because in such a threatening world the lesser man simply isn't going to be acceptable the peasantry aren't looking for and won't accept a high bureaucrat they are looking for and need a protector.

On Usurpation The assumption that Usurpation is difficult is correct, it's not easy. However even a cursory glance at history shows just how common it actually is. Let's use the assumed period of the middle ages as a guideline. Can anyone tell me how many times medieval ruling dynasties changed? I can already tell you its big. For example lets take a look a England, Between 1066 and 1603 there are five and this is in the real world without the addition of people like high level characters. While difficult it can be done, and when leveling is added into the setting this only makes it more possible. In order to maintain that usurpation will require work but a high level character is also in precisely the right place to do it because his renown and deeds are already well-known.

Divine right is a great tool for a ruler but only really extends as far as his ability to back it with force. The usurper needs only manage to create a plausible sense that he possesses a divine right of his own and largely maintain the status quo in most things to hold down uprisings. The downfall of usurpation in Europe was not the concept of Divine Right but the rise of the Nation-State. Before the nation and nationalism land changed rulers rather frequently during the middle ages in many places and for the most part the peasantry could care less so long as things went on they way they always had. More than anything it was the nobility fearful of loosing their position that caused uprisings. If care was taken to ensure both a core of loyal followers and a continuity of custom under the new ruler this lessened significantly.

Further Thoughts on Levels and Leadership
Overall many of the things I take for granted are probably due to the fact that I prefer a more mythological and ancient than medieval feel in both games I DM and games I play. In the face of a great many very good posts I will say they are not universal, especially when the overall feel being aimed for is more settled and modern in historical context. But the idea that the children of rulers are sent out adventuring in order to prove their worthiness to take up the mantle of leadership is a traditional trope well mingled with the idea of the quest. And provides a good reason for rulers to be more than low-level figures. Of course this leads to the question of why do these high-level NPCs need low-level PCs. The key is that threat thresholds change as level increases, the typical fodder of low level PCs is still viable as High Level NPCs aren't going to waste time on such minor things when they have much bigger problems to deal with.

As the Pcs increase in level this is where they should come into their own and it can be dealt with by emphasizing that this is the time when they should carve out their own domain and take a place among the well-known hero/leaders who came before. Basically FR has become too crowded for such things, great heroes need lots of elbow room and big empty spots on the maps. This plus a certain insularity which frowns on other such NPCs meddling in the affairs of their peers' territories can cover the "Why hasn't someone else done anything/" angle. And for the higher levels yes these leaders should be going off to the planes and doing great things, there's room for it. The planes are after all infinite and these great heroes should thematically be taking their legions off to crusade against the fiends or have a lark fighting the aesir (who doesn't love a fight where even the bodies wake up the next morning?). Didn't the leaders of the Achaeans basically do just this when they launched the Trojan War? These sort of things are great fodder for high level campaigns.