Meek to mighty... in a month

[Carnivorous_Bean]

I think a few of you are mistaking my interest in the topic as a discussion.

I'm not terribly concerned about it, and I can think of many many ways to get around it if I care to.

Just curious as to what you all think.

Fitz

Considering that I gave up on awarding experience points back with 1st edition, and that ever since then, the PCs in my games have leveled up when they've completed five quests, this is a real non-issue to me.

The whole idea of experience points has always seemed incredibly stupid to me -- especially since if you award them unevenly, some people level up faster than others, and the "others" end up being a drag on the whole party as they fall behind the power curve, so to speak. And if you use experience as written, you have to continually fiddle with the number and power of encounters, and make the internal logic of the storyline conform to the rate of experience rate progression .... ugh.

 

[Celebrim]

Why would the party do this?...Once the players realize that this will inevitably happen any time they try to finesse the rules like this, the impulse to "power level" will hopefully dissipate.

Because it isn't an impulse to power level. It's an impulse to excercise your free will.

Even amongst a group that is perfectly happy to be railroaded by the DM's plot, the announcement of plot down time can be a welcome change in which the player's want to excercise thier own ideas of story creation and character advancement outside the necessities imposed by the DM's next 'save the innocent/village/city/nation/world' scenario.

It can be a chance for some solo adventuring, for having your character go players the other characters in the party have no particular interest in going (a cleric to a famous shrine, a wizard to a famous library or college, a rogue to do 'a little job', a fighter to find a famous swordmaker, or even 'go see my family'). It can be a chance to further your character's interests in the campaign world - start up a business, bump off a rival thieves guild, build a stronghold, pursue a romantic attachment to a well liked NPC, even start a family. Not all of these things necessarily lead to adventures and leveling up, but if the player is interested in playing it out (and that's often what the player's of this sort want), very often it does.

 

[Celebrim]

Considering that I gave up on awarding experience points back with 1st edition, and that ever since then, the PCs in my games have leveled up when they've completed five quests, this is a real non-issue to me.

The whole idea of experience points has always seemed incredibly stupid to me -- especially since if you award them unevenly, some people level up faster than others, and the "others" end up being a drag on the whole party as they fall behind the power curve, so to speak. And if you use experience as written, you have to continually fiddle with the number and power of encounters, and make the internal logic of the storyline conform to the rate of experience rate progression .... ugh.

It works alot better for people who lean toward 'sandbox' play than it does for those that lean toward fixed storylines. If you lean toward sandbox play, the players get to move past that obstacle when they are qualified to do so and the exact sequence of the story line isn't really fixed.

The experience progression conforming to the predetermined logic of the storyline .... ugh.

 

[Holy Bovine]

For me going from 1-20/30 in a short space of time strains credulity, though it isn't a major issue. It's a problem with every rpg I've ever heard of with the single exception of Pendragon. I like 1-max in 20 years but that creates its own problems not least of which is I have to think up a bunch of political events. Also, players aren't used to that sort of pace, it would weird them out. In the end maybe the best solution is to say, 'To hell with believability'.

See I think of all of the adventure stories and fantasy novels I've read and think most of them have the main characters achieving high levels of power and fame in a very short amount of time. Conan may be the only one who takes longer but he goes from slave to king of the most powerful land in Hyboria in about 20 years. That's a pretty huge jump for a barbarian savage!
Most other books I've read have people either starting out ridiculously powerful (Wheel of Time) or grow into their power over the course of a single year (Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson is a good example of this).

I guess what i am saying is that, to me, it is no more or less believable that a hero takes 20 years or 20 weeks to achieve their goals and gain the power that comes with them. I have played both kinds of these games and they both have merits and drawbacks.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

It works alot better for people who lean toward 'sandbox' play than it does for those that lean toward fixed storylines. If you lean toward sandbox play, the players get to move past that obstacle when they are qualified to do so and the exact sequence of the story line isn't really fixed.

The experience progression conforming to the predetermined logic of the storyline .... ugh.

Oddly enough, the exact sequence of my story lines isn't fixed, either. Which is precisely why I did away with experience awards -- so the players choose to do one thing and it lands them in 8 fights. If they'd chosen another, it would have landed them in none. Adjudicating xp in these circumstances is a nightmare -- especially since it involves having so much material made up ahead of time, most of which will never be used. I'd rather not have to worry at all about xp when I'm more or less making up what the PCs are seeing as I go along, based on a loose framework of notes.

Perhaps I should have said, "when the PCs complete 5 goals, they level up."

 

[Nymrohd]

With 4E experience seemingly used only to level and not as currency for spellcasting and item creation, it seems to me that a DM can easily multiply the advancement tables by any number he wants. I also think it would be fairly easy to just cap heroes at a certain tier and after that allow them to buy additional powers/feats etc. for a set XP price as long as they qualify. So 4E seems very modular in this way.

As for an adventuring party that rests for 6 hours after two hours of combat, I consider that bad DMing. When do they set up camp or eat? Setting up camp is hardly a leisurely activity. Are they moving out of danger every 2 hours so they can rest? If not, why on earth does the local fauna (or flora, or whatever rocks your boat) make them into dinner, or at least attempt to?

 

[Insight]

I think this is best taken care of in the DM's campaign design. There's no reason that each adventure in a campaign has to follow immediately on the heels of the previous. That's certainly one way to do it, but if so, the DM shouldn't be surprised at the rapid pace of advancement. I would suggest significant downtime between not only adventures, but even between encounters within an adventure. Exploration, research, social interactions, training, vocations and many other things can happen at the table that aren't level-appropriate challenges that need to be considered for advancement.

This is pretty much my response to the OP. Why do we have to assume that each adventure comes right on the heels of the previous? In fact, it seems borderline illogical to assume that adventuring opportunities crop up every week to ten days. It might take time to find these opportunities, talk to NPCs, train, etc.

 

[FourthBear]

If players insist on constantly seeking out adventures and minimizing all non-adventuring time gaps, then there may be two issues. One: the players *want* to advance in levels as quickly as possible. In which case, there would be a possible conflict between the players' expectations of the campaign and the DM's expectations. Two: the players aren't interested in non-adventuring activities and simply want to get to the next adventuring challenge. In this case, the DM could probably simply change the XP-level awards, since the problem isn't a lack of level advancement.

As to how many level-appropriate challenges a PC can find, that depends quite a bit on world building and campaign style. In many cases I could see that the PC may simply not be *able* find level appropriate challenges. Especially in a points of light setting, the PC could go looking for such, but be disappointed. If the player goes searching for lost ruins, there's no obligation that any such be found filled with challenges at whatever arbitrary moment chosen. If the players want to fight a local crime syndicate, they could spend almost all of their time working their way through low-level criminals that provide little challenge. As the players increase in level, it may become harder and harder to find appropriate challenges. This would seem to be quite appropriate for many campaigns simulating some types of fantasy fiction, where characters are often complaining about the lack of real challenges and wishing that something would come along to liven things up (and then regretting it completely three chapters later.)

 

[Mallus]

See, you don't have this problem if your group handles time passage and character leveling by pure DM Fiat. (Okay, not pure DM Fiat... more like mutual agreement, with me-as-DM being slightly more mutual).

 

[dm4hire]

With the mentioning of the Points of Light aspect (I keep thinking of George Bush Sr and the SNL skit "Thousand Points of Light" when I read it) I just had an interesting thought concerning that aspect. Eternal Champions. Taking a page from Mr. Moorcock make the characters Eternal Champions if they don't want to roleplay the time between modules/adventures; each one would be the same character in essence but for the given story a different aspect which doesn't need any background story beyond what the player wants to bring to the table. They could even play the characters differently every game to make it more interesting. The overall concept is that the character overall is advancing between the different worlds he/she lives in. If they play in a module related to one that they already played in it would just be a continuation of that worlds aspect of their champion.