Power of Level X Characters in the 4th Edition Relative to Prior Editions

[Roman]

I saw a blog post by one of the designers that profused being mystified by the question whether characters in 4E of a given level will be less or more powerful than in 3.XE. He stated that characters will be balanced relative to monsters at all CR levels and the range of numbers will stay approximately the same to maintain the D&D feel.

That is certainly one way to tackle the question, but I feel that is not the issue most of us had in mind when the question was asked. Rather, I think the question is generally meant from two other angles:

1) The power of the characters as measured by when they gain certain landmark abilities, such as the possibility of flight, or teleportation, or multiple attacks, etcetera rather than mere numerical increases in various bonuses

2) The power of the characters relative to the power of landmark monsters, such as a great wyrm red dragon, or a balor, or a pitfiend, etcetera

It is the above two factors that have a greater impact on the feel of the power-level of a game than raw numbers. So, to clarigy the question: Esing the above-mentioned measures, are 30th level characters in 4E at about the same power scale as 20th level characters in 3.XE?

 

[Lanefan]

By the same token, some idea of where their power lies in relation to 'x'-level characters from 1e and-or 2e would be handy, mainly for conversion purposes so a module for one edition can be converted and used in another without it being vastly over- or under-powered.

Lanefan

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Assuming the folks who are designing D&D understand and can talk about D&D in a fashion other than telling you about their character, they know precisely how to answer that question. It's not hard - Where does a 4e character get wish, or equivalent? When can I track down and beat up a balor that looked at me funny? At what point does "We'll just move the lake" become a viable solution to a problem?

My only conclusion is that they're intentionally obfuscating this information. Why I can't say, and I wouldn't presume to tell them it's not their right to do so.

EDIT: Barring, of course, that the character are actually built THAT differently, in which case I'm willing to concede the not D&D anymore argument.

 

[Khuxan]

1) The power of the characters as measured by when they gain certain landmark abilities, such as the possibility of flight, or teleportation, or multiple attacks, etcetera rather than mere numerical increases in various bonuses

2) The power of the characters relative to the power of landmark monsters, such as a great wyrm red dragon, or a balor, or a pitfiend, etcetera

Also:

3) The power of the characters relative to the power of NPCs. The game world changes radically depending on whether there is an exponential or linear growth in power by level.

 

[Roman]

Also:

3) The power of the characters relative to the power of NPCs. The game world changes radically depending on whether there is an exponential or linear growth in power by level.

Agreed! I think that essentially boils down to measuring the rate of increase of power between levels and the type of function on which it is based.

I would also add another useful measure:

4) The power of the PCs relative to the general population (read commoners and the like)

Basing an answer on these four measure would be more illuminating than on the advancement of numbers out of context.

 

[Roman]

small bump

 

[Doug McCrae]

James Wyatt says "low-level characters will be more powerful and high-level characters will be less so" and "low-level characters will look better, and high-level characters will look worse".

We can be pretty sure that a 4e 1st-level PC will be more capable than a 3e 1st-level PC in terms of the number of orcs they can kill. But is 4e level 30 equivalent to 3e level 20? After all 21-30 is described as epic. So I don't know if a 4e 30 will be weaker than a 3e 20, or if 4e 20 < 3e 20.

 

[hong]

This is the one part that I'm finding frustrating. I can live without knowing how multiclassing works, or whether there's a divine striker class, or whatnot. I really would like to know exactly how the wackiness level at the top end plays out, though.

 

[Patlin]

This is the one part that I'm finding frustrating. I can live without knowing how multiclassing works, or whether there's a divine striker class, or whatnot. I really would like to know exactly how the wackiness level at the top end plays out, though.

Putting spells like Anticipate Teleportation in the PHB would cut down on some of the high level wackiness. I'd also like to see Dispell Magic work a bit more reliably.

 

[Roman]

I think some wackiness at top levels is desirable. For example, it would be a poorer D&D world without the likes of say teleport and the game-breaking potential can be counterbalanced by limiting the spells through very long casting durations (even hours) and other such limitations.