Season 8 will switch to the Organized Play rules presented in XGTE

[lonelynoose]

I have a story. Last summer I attended a Con and on the last day ended up at a Tier II table for a 4+ hour module. It was mostly RP'ing and at the end our table was awarded 800xp per person. Everyone felt a little 'jipped'. It was fun but I attend Cons for the atmosphere, leveling up, or dying in a glorious fashion. RP'ing, for me, is done weekly at my local store.

I think this new system would solve problems like this one. It would be nice to know that I spent 4 hours on a game and am closer to leveling up. Whether it's battling or RP'ing.

 

[Nutation]

In theory, a time-based XP system could also remove an incentive for optimization and power-gaming, by divorcing a character's XP awards from its ability to deal damage or defeat monsters in combat. Only time will tell if this actually happens, though -- PFS has had an adventure-based XP system for some time, and optimization is still rampant in that organized play structure.

In theory, somewhat. Two of the reasons that I identify for this exist in AL as well as PFS. First, the pickup nature of the game means that you never know whom you'll be sitting with. You might have to pull more than your own weight because of weak characters, inexperienced players, or bad party makeup. Second, faster combats give you more time for RP or just doing something else at the convention.

A reason for optimization in PF that is much less present in 5E is the "rocket tag" nature of PF and D&D3. There are some deadly takeout threats in encounters. See the thread on reproducing Blasphemy in 5E for a reminder of this.

I worry about how the different reward structure may change player motivations in a bad way, but I agree that the incentive to optimize will likely be less.

 

[Stalker0]

MOD Action: Corrected the thread name's spelling, as requested

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I'm not entirely a fan of Checkpoints if it means players are leveling too quickly. I know Mearls is a big fan of hurrying PCs along but if a level flashes by so quickly players barely have a chance to inhabit them, that seems like a loss. As a DM I've had to do a bit of work to make sure my players weren't leveling beyond the challenge level of Omu and the ToA. We've played nearly 50hrs of ToA thus far and the group is closing in on 7th level. Just a little bit above where I want them but manageable. Using the Checkpoint system they'd all be 9th level and the game thus far would of been much more rushed.

That said, I can see where it would be good to have players get xp for time spent in-game over primarily combat encounters. The RP/Trap Avoidance 'per-diem' for ToA (50/250/1000/2500 per 2 hrs) is lowly compared to combat xp, for example.

 

[Pauper]

I know Mearls is a big fan of hurrying PCs along but if a level flashes by so quickly players barely have a chance to inhabit them, that seems like a loss.

Yeah, it's funny -- my initial reaction to the pace of leveling is that the designers figured out that Tier 2 is the 'sweet spot' for the game where challenge and fun are best balanced, and the relatively accelerated pace of play in the other tiers was a way of trying to keep players playing in the sweet spot for a longer period of time, and then hurrying them out of the current character and into a new character to play in the 'sweet spot' some more.

Now I'm not so sure. I get the 'feeling cheated' reaction when you spend a long time at the table but get few character rewards, but the solution shouldn't be "we only expect you'll be playing for a year, so we'll make sure you can get at least one character maxed out in that time so you don't feel like you wasted your time". I can't help but feel that an accelerated advancement system is the wrong answer -- an easy answer to avoid doing the hard work of finding out how to reward players for playing even when they don't level up at the end of the module.

--
Pauper

 

[Cascade]

That said, I can see where it would be good to have players get xp for time spent in-game over primarily combat encounters. The RP/Trap Avoidance 'per-diem' for ToA (50/250/1000/2500 per 2 hrs) is lowly compared to combat xp, for example.

I personally feel leveling is simply fast. I work hard to make interesting back histories and role play aspects and especially at T3, you scream through levels, in some cases barely 1.5 adventures to gain a level. I'd vote for a slow track option as in PFS.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

All organized play seems to level too fast, as most of the systems are made to do that, so that you are "forced" to make new characters and try new concepts. I miss my 1st Ed days where, after playing the same character every weekend for nearly two years, everyone was only 13-14th level. lol

 

[CapnZapp]

All organized play seems to level too fast, as most of the systems are made to do that, so that you are "forced" to make new characters and try new concepts.

That view is too harsh for me.

I'm content noting how home and organized campaigns are different and serve different needs and must cater to different wants.

Player retention in a home campaign is high, and slow levelling makes sense.

In organized play focus must necessarily lie on the here and now, since you never know when you'll play with that player again.

Mostly I think y'all are trying to make organized play into something it isn't, can't be, and doesn't want to be.

Maybe you're better off recruiting some of your newfound AL friends to a home campaign?

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[pedr]

On the benefits relative to XP and milestones, for organised play: since at least some AL groups have significantly fluctuating groups from session to session, milestones cause problems unless they are very small. If AL were to use the milestone suggestions in some Hardcovers, players who missed one session out of a chapter could miss the milestone (or, if the rule were that you had to attend for the whole chapter to get the milestone, would be bound to miss it). Checkpoints give equal character rewards for every time a player plays a character. This is also a benefit vs XP. Again, if a player attends session 1, with lots of interaction and exploration of the adventure set-up, but little combat, and misses session 2 when the group does all the fighting, their character could currently be well behind the rest of the party. So on balance I think this is the best advancement system for an OP campaign where players are likely to drop in and drop out.

I think it’s good we’re discussing this as it may be that identifying things which may or may not work well can help the Admins and Chris L implement a system which works. No-one is going to find a speed of advancement which works for every player as that’s a matter of preference (the PFS slow advancement option might be worth considering, but the structure of AL Adventures is different from PFS, I think, particularly now there’s more focus on the Hardcovers, and running a HC for a mixed group of slow and standard advancement characters would be a pain, I think).

Other things I like about the system are the de-prioritising of combat XP and the simplification of advancement which removes the need to calculate XP and reduces book keeping.

My preference would probably be for level 1 to be shorter than the others - I might even say that at Tier 1 you need as many Checkpoints as your current (or perhaps next) level to level up. Level 1 D&D characters are fragile, which doesn’t make for a great new player experience. (Pie in the sky preference: allow players to start characters at level 2, perhaps once they’ve had one AL character reach level 2, and allow new players to level up after their first session.)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[nswanson27]

Overall i really like the idea. There's a whole lot to the game that isn't encapsulated by the current system, and makes things much simpler. Now if only they could do something like this for magic items trading rules...