In today's Legends and Lore, Mike Mearls presents us with a draft copy of the "encounter building" XP chart. One thing about such charts is that, because they're designed to help the DM calibrate combat encounters to match the party, they're a great way to measure how PC combat prowess scales over the level range. I was looking over the chart to get a feel for the power curve, and something jumped out at me:
There is no curve. The power curve of 5E is a straight line.
Not exactly a straight line, of course. It jogs up and down some. But, to a first approximation, a challenging encounter XP budget (per PC) is equal to PC level times 100. This is an enormous change from 3E and 4E, both of which had exponential power curves. In 3E, your encounter budget* doubled roughly every two levels. In 4E, it doubled every four.
What does this mean? Instead of "zero to demigod," 5E follows a more E6-like model: Very rapid power gain at the low levels, followed by a semi-plateau in the higher ones. This is much more friendly to mixed-level parties. It also means a major rethink in how we envision high-level characters. In 3E, your combat prowess was expected to scale by a factor of 724 between the bottom of the level range and the top. In 4E, it scaled by a factor of 152**. In 5E, it scales by a factor of... 22. That's it. A 20th-level character is still a supreme badass, but not a slayer of armies. And two 10th-level characters have a decent chance to take that supreme badass down.
What do you think of this change?
[SIZE=-2]*3E didn't officially have "encounter budgets," but the CR system was a crude equivalent.
**Keeping in mind that the level range of 4E was 1 to 30, not 1 to 20.[/SIZE]
There is no curve. The power curve of 5E is a straight line.
Not exactly a straight line, of course. It jogs up and down some. But, to a first approximation, a challenging encounter XP budget (per PC) is equal to PC level times 100. This is an enormous change from 3E and 4E, both of which had exponential power curves. In 3E, your encounter budget* doubled roughly every two levels. In 4E, it doubled every four.
What does this mean? Instead of "zero to demigod," 5E follows a more E6-like model: Very rapid power gain at the low levels, followed by a semi-plateau in the higher ones. This is much more friendly to mixed-level parties. It also means a major rethink in how we envision high-level characters. In 3E, your combat prowess was expected to scale by a factor of 724 between the bottom of the level range and the top. In 4E, it scaled by a factor of 152**. In 5E, it scales by a factor of... 22. That's it. A 20th-level character is still a supreme badass, but not a slayer of armies. And two 10th-level characters have a decent chance to take that supreme badass down.
What do you think of this change?
[SIZE=-2]*3E didn't officially have "encounter budgets," but the CR system was a crude equivalent.
**Keeping in mind that the level range of 4E was 1 to 30, not 1 to 20.[/SIZE]
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