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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1424219" data-attributes="member: 537">And all of the things you mention can be done by 10th level or even 5th level characters. It doesn't require a +20 BAB to be a general of an army -- heck, some generals could even be 1st level, and got there because they're the king's nephew or something. It doesn't require 23 ranks in Hide and Move Silently to sneak into a castle, if everyone there has 4 or 5 ranks -- which they would, if a campaign's implicit power level was reduced. A giant might be a problem if you're a tank fighter (melee brutes typically have lots of HD for their CR) but if you have the advantage of range, you don't need 20 levels for that either.A 20th level character, by the book, can do more than whack giants. He can fly, teleport, see or go invisible, and do all sorts of other funky things that are literally beyond the ability of lower-level characters. It's the ability to do these things, just as much as the numbers, that defines high level play. If you take out these abilities, then you're just left with bigger numbers, and as you say yourself, what's the point? After a while, there's not much more to gain.Being able to wade through 100 orcs isn't really that much more interesting, in real life terms, than wading through 20 orcs or 50 orcs. You can believe me on this; I've run battles featuring 50 orcs, and the spectacle you might hope to achieve quickly becomes forgotten in the tediousness of it all. It's easier to run it all in purely descriptive terms ("you fight your way through the horde of warriors, taking a few hits but slaying them by the dozens..."), and for this, you don't really need stats and levels.Saying you need 20 levels to represent a hypercompetent character is absurd. The only reason I can see that people want to go to 20 levels, is because that's the historical ceiling in D&D. This is like saying that because GURPS lets you play 500-point characters, you must therefore have a 500-point character to be that good. A game's power ceiling is dependent far more on genre than on any inherent game-mechanical features.</blockquote>

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