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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgoroth" data-source="post: 6077523" data-attributes="member: 6674889">Howandwhy...I played extensive 2e, with innumerable classes and a revolving door of players and campaign arcs over the years, and the best thing about 2e was the ability for a 10th level party to lose one PC, have him re-roll a level 1 character, and catch up to 5th level within a session or two (if he didn't die outright), due to the exponential XP allocation. That makes it a game of catch up, and with a non-linear XP chart, you CAN catch up to a large extent in power with the higher level guys, who will really start upping slower (or if the XP awarded also goes up proportionately, it just means that by the time a wizard is at 14th level a goofy / reckless fighter or rogue-focused player could have died 3-4x and be almost caught up). I really liked the disparity of XP progression. That's the most detestable thing they introduced in 4e. The idea that all professions are equally difficult to master. Not so in the real world, not so in fantasy. If you think so, you haven't lived enough to outgrow a career and move on to a greater one with vaster horizons. Wizardry should be utterly more difficult, and the way to achieve parity in levels should be to work that much harder than the fighter, in your spellcasting, to overcome obstacles in creative ways given various constraints such as you shouldn't cast fireball in a crowded town or be labelled an arsonist and enemy of the state, or even in the woods and brandished as an enemy of the woods when you start a massive forest fire and the druids put a price on your head. There is a cost to using all your spells, which was lost in 4e...because the effect of a spell is mutable and fluff, without out of combat mechanical repercussions. A fireball in 4e does not set the granary on fire. It's basically wimpier than a match === fail.What I'm trying to get at in XP awards is this : Reducing enemy HP for a wizard = 0 XP past, say, level 5. It is simply not a challenge to overcome that is worthy of increasing your aptitude. What I'd like to see is each class is awarded xp according to its own standards. A fighter might benefit for every orc he kills, and much more so for every dragon he kills, but a wizard pew-pewing fireballs at inconsequential enemies receives 0 xp. He must use his spells creatively to gain knowledge from their application, and new insights allowing him to grow intellectually. Bottom line is : if you play your wizard like a 12-year old, a DM should not award you enough XP to progress in levels beyond, say, 7th, to keep up with the rest of the group. You should have to play a wizard intellectually as a player to advance. XP should not be awarded to how many mooks you blasted with your nukes. This is NOT an MMO. And I write this as a former MMO developer with 17 videogames to his credit!!! (not to brag, hem hem). I see great things and terrible things in 2e, 3e, and 4e...and want the best parts elaborated on further. I simply cannot fathom why anyone thought it was "balanced" to have the same XP required to a fighter who can slaughter 8000 orcs without dying with one who can literally stop time. Does not compute. Make the wizard player, not the PC, earn his XP and levels. If you're not smart enough (in real life!!!) to overcome obstacles in creative ways, you do not deserve level 20 as a wizard, period. Brainiacs should gravitate to playing wizards and people who like smashing stuff or talking their way out should focus on those things, and act them out....trust me, a 10th level fighter PC is doing to deliberate whether to jump on that dragon's back, heroic or no there is a likelihood of success calculation that goes into people's heads (as PCs or in the character's minds), given their experience in-game or their knowledge of stats OOG.I say all this stuff, in another semi-drunk post...shoot me. I want DDN to be bloody, brutal, and unforgiving. If reality is harsh, D&D should be harsher. Can't deal with D&D death? Try living life instead, kids. Let's model our games more intricately and with more implications than a 2-dimensional set of MMO rules or a board game. The PCs are not meant to win. This is the credo of D&D. Or should be. They should be fodder. You survive, play smart, maybe you'll live...but you'll still probably die an agonizing, brutal death. That's what D&D means to me, from a young child, looking at those numbers for the XP charts of a wizard....I was like...wtf, this is crazy. you have to survive with so low HP AND get so much XP to get high enough to do really crazy things...for so long. The odds are really against you. Take the challenge : "never tell me the odds". Be brave, bold. To live life, taste death. Repeatedly. Not every 1st level PC should expect to live to 5th level, like 4e assumes. I'm sorry, but 4e killed D&D so bad. It assumes as a default that players will cry when their PCs die. No, you should fear that dungeon. You should buy that guard dog and 10-foot pole. Life is tough, dangerous, and brutal. Expect to die. Often.Mod Edit:  Folks, let's not go about questioning the intelligence of others, or suggesting that there's some moral value of "deserving" based upon that.  Being smart doesn't make you a better, more deserving person - some very bright people can be real jerks.  ~Umbran</blockquote>

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