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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5038937" data-attributes="member: 59082">Note: I posted this over at RPG.Net to get a "non-D&D-centric" perspective and mainly go the response: "You shouldn't be playing D&D." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> So I thought I'd post it here to get a more D&D-centric viewpoint. I don't disagree with that view, that D&D is not best suited for what I am asking for, but I'm also curious as to how it may be applied to the game, particularly 4ed, but it could be any edition.Realistic Advancement in RPGs (and is it possible in D&D?)One thing I've always found annoying about D&D is the vast difference between a low and high level character, where a hundred 1st level characters wouldn't be able to take down one 20th level one, probably not even one 10th level one. I am all for heroism and fantasy, but I'm also interested in some degree of "realism"--I guess what Ron Edwards called simulationism.A particularly irksome aspect of this quality is how the PCs always seem to run into similar level monsters and NPCs, as if any monsters or NPCs more than three levels difference seem to fade away into the background of the campaign world. I know some DMs, including myself, try to take a more naturalistic approach, even warning the players "I might throw anything at you, so know when it run away." But even though this is conscious in me I find it tempting to stick only to appropriate encounter levels.The vast difference in levels and the way advancement is handled creates a weird kind of dissonance in the campaign world, where you have the PCs going on a mega-adventure lasting a few months in the game world but taking a year of weekly sessions and making it to 20th level, and then you have NPCs in published products like Paizo's excellent Seekers of Secrets that are supposed to represent seasoned veterans in positions of power that have gone on dozens of quests over a decade or more of adventuring, but are "only" 10th level. In D&D advancement seems pretty consistent across the levels, so that a 5th level character is about five times as powerful as they were at 1st level, or if it can't be that quantified, "a lot more powerful" suffices. 4E evened this out a bit in that 1st level characters are about the equivalent of 3rd-5th in earlier editions, and there is less of a difference between 1st and 5th, although still a significant one (as there should be).While I like this aspect of 4E, I still find it somewhat disconcerting that with the default rule system a PC can go from 1st level to near-godlike status in a matter of a year of adventuring. A good DM can space this out somewhat, but there is no getting around the fact that if you follow the rules as written, you can advance a character from being fresh out of apprenticeship to one of the greatest archmages in the world in a matter of months (game time), or weeks if you tried hard enough.Now if I were to imagine a "realistic" fantasy world--that is one that follows similar basic laws as our own plus magic, dragons, and all that good stuff--I would think advancement would occur in smaller increments, and would diminish over time. So in terms of power increase you might get something like this:1-----2----3---4--5--6--7--8--9--10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20.21.22.23...etcIn the above scheme, the difference between each level in terms of power gradually diminishes, and then evens out during the "paragon" tier (11-20th), slows down a bit more at 21st level and evens out to an even smaller increase. If a short adventure represents approximately one level, the idea being that after your first adventure would be your largest jump in terms of skill and power level. You are no longer "wet behind the ears"; you have bloodied your sword, cast spells in strenuous circumstances, channeled your god's power against evil, etc. After that, advancement would still occur but it would gradually decrease. I am basing this sense of "realism" on how we develop skills in our own world; if you practice a musical instrument or other artistic discipline diligently, you can achieve a basic degree of mastery within a few years; but deeper levels take much longer. In other words, the difference in a musician's technical ability between just starting and a year is much greater than between 4 and 5 years. Advancement does come in leaps and bounds, so that the concept of levels actually is somewhat realistic, but my sense is that the increases aren't necessarily less frequent, just less monumental.Now you could do what older editions of D&D did and make level advancement slow to a crawl. In recent editions, however--4E certainly and probably 3E--the game is structured so that advancement continues at a similar pace throughout, so that the power increase between 16th and 17th level is similar to 4th and 5th (for example).So my question is two-fold:1) What are examples of some games in which advancement is more "realistic," that it slows down so that the difference between (the equivalent of) a 10th and 11th level character is less than between a 2nd and 3rd? 2) Any suggestions on how to tailor D&D 4E to make advancement more gradual and realistic? To start answering my own questions, this is what comes to mind:1) I've never played Runequest and only played Call of Cthulhu once, but my impression is that their shared system has a gradual and diminishing approach to advancement which, in some ways, exemplifies the type of "realistic" approach I'm lookfor.2) The whole "E6" or "E8" concept seems to fit, although it is a bit more extreme than I would want. The obvious solution would be to simply slow advancement down, but I don't want to take away the satisfaction of "leveling up" every few sessions. Perhaps there is some way to apply the basic principles found in Runequest/Call of Cthulhu to D&D?END NOTE: In lieu of some of the responses I got at RPG.Net, and by way of clarification, I wanted to emphasize that I don't as much want to negate or slow down leveling up, but am interested in exploring ways in which gaining a level could still be significant but quite as significant, especially cumulatively over many levels, as the current 4E rules. I am in particular trying to get at the discrepancy in both the vast difference in power between lower and higher levels (or even low and middle), but also the awkwardness of supposedly powerful NPCs "only" being of a level (say, Paragon tier, 11th+ level) that can be reached by PCs after just a few adventures and as little as a few weeks within the game.One possible solution I've thought of would be to have a maximum of, say, one level gained for one month of game time. Levels gained within a longer adventure could be made up for after the adventure is over; e.g. let's say a party goes from from 1st to 4th level in the course of one adventure. After the adventure was over, the DM would say "four months pass when a hooded figure approaches you in the Happy Harpy Inn..."This doesn't entirely solve the "problem," but it at least takes care of the most ridiculous aspect of it, that is that one could go from apprenticeship to demigodhood in a matter of months. At least now it would take a couple years!</blockquote>

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