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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 5259496" data-attributes="member: 467">I think as the game has developed, more and more things have happened upon level gain. Remember the hulabaloo over "dead levels" at the (I think) outset of 3.5? Even the introduction of proficiencies/skills, weapon expertise/specialization and increased THAC0 and save improvements were all geared toward making leveling more immediately satisfying. One side effect of this, I think, was the steepening of the level curve. 3E in particular made it much more difficult to have characters only a couple levels apart adventure together. This, in turn, creates a cascade of "balance" issues and play assumptions. For example, if there's a steep level power curve, it makes having players start off with new PCs at first level, even in low level campaigns, impractical. So, lethality itself becomes and issue and new systems both of dealing with character death and mitigating it in the first place have to be introduced. Eventually you get to a place where death is either very unlikely or little more than a gold sink -- except now you have also tied character wealth to level and instead of pulling cash out the character's pocket, you are taking away perhaps a +2 on an ability score, as well as setting the character behind the expected wealth by level curve.I'm sorting of drifting off topic here, but this is where I think the problem really comes in and where I actually kind of agree with those calling for the slaughtering of sacred cows: holding on to certain D&D-isms actually impedes the design of the game, and thereby the play of the game, because in some cases the underpinning of a thing are removed while that thing itself is retained. Think of the +1 sword. Long ago in OD&D, B/X and (to a lesser extent) AD&D, a +1 sword was a worthwhile piece of equipment. Getting "pluses" to hit was pretty hard in those editions, and improvement was slow to happen, so that +1 bump matters, even for a mid level fighter. But more recent editions have vastly increased the bonuses to that d20 roll and the +1 sword has become trivial. The same goes for almost anything that offers a low bonus, like bless. Now, I don't want to see D&D cast aside the +1 sword or the bless spell; I'd rather see the game sort of circle back to where those things are important again. But, that's not likely to happen. Thankfully, the OGL let the retro-clone cat out of the bag and I *can* play D&D that way again, with new stuff and professionally published books and such./threadjack</blockquote>

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