Homebrew Solo Leveling meets D&D

If you're not familiar with Solo Leveling, there's a wikipedia article and actual wiki on it. The basic premise being there are two warring factions of divine beings one of which wants to aid humanity and the other which wishes to destroy it. The ones that want to aid humanity create Dungeons that allow mana to be released on Earth and give humans a fighting chance.

For a Dungeons and Dragons setting, magic is usually well-established and Humans are generally far from the only sapient species on them. However, groups of deities have been known to war with different results coming from it.

Other thoughts:
1) The Divine Factions are likely Deities vs Primordials. A truce and marriage resulted in the Deity(s) of Agriculture who straddle between the urban and the wild. They are the ones who keep the balance and who may have suggested the Dungeons in the first place as a sort of compromise.

2) The various Player Species were chosen or created by each side to represent them. Their exact origins could vary from some simple creation to some natural species altered in different ways (as per the Greystone, Pristine Tower, or what World of Warcraft does) to them being snatched from different worlds and their memories of their old world erased ala Urban Arcana. The Agricultural Deity(s) insisted they be uninfluenced by any of the factions to show whether or not they could get along. There have, thus, been times of war and peace but, overall, more cooperation than not.

3) The creation of the largest metropolitan city caused the Dungeons. Only the Agriculture side was pleased with the creation of a large metropolis that all the species helped create and made a combination of both urbane and wild features. The two sides, being petty, created the Dungeons as tests to see if this sort of unity could hold under pressure. That it did has only infuriated some of them further, though the saner heads on both sides joined with the Agriculturalists and tried to mitigate the issue by making sure there were folks capable of handling them. They're also responsible for ensuring groups are adequately rewarded.

4) An alternative is that the Dungeons aren't from the sides at all, but are a result of how reality itself was created. When the first demiplanes occurred, it caused a sort of 'malfunction' that allowed direct links to areas the Deities had tested before the Prime was built. Some of this could even be a Backrooms-like area that people have found themselves clipping into. In both cases, groups were needed both to deal with the dangers of the Dungeons and to help rescue those lost in the Backrooms. This latter scenario would have the deities be more like computer programmers, with the Prime being the Stable Release and the Backrooms/Dungeons being Beta or Alpha versions of reality or actual test realms for the deities to play around with ideas before introducing them to the Prime. The deities might find how the species interact interesting and allow continued access, with the folks of the Prime being aware of the consequences.

5) Clerics and Druids might be types of Wizards who deal with healing magic and nature-themed magic. In this case, Magic A is Magic A. Other features would have to be worked out.
 

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Although it isn't obvious, it appears Solo Leveling is actually a Science Fiction setting, and the magical beasts are just aliens who have been previously conquered by the "mana" givers. I don't think the "gift" of mana to humanity is in fact anything but a trap, as it's the means by which the aliens end up subjugating species by taking over their economy and culture. They seem to want to push the culture to be eventually led by the most vicious, most violence loving members of their own species to whom they give the most power, then use the species in their games where they pit them against other species. The Dungeons aren't Dungeons at all, but just places in other worlds where one or both sides are trapped. The Ants and High Orcs are just as much victims of this as we are.

Humans seem to be particularly powerful mana wielders and so attracted the attention of some dissident within the alien culture who is gifting one of the humans with his own power via the "leveling up" process.

The problem with it is the problem with any "Chosen One" setting, in that RPGs are inherently social ensemble games, and "Solo Levelling" right to its very name is not about that. We have one character who matters a whole lot more than everyone else. In order to have parity where everyone matters equally, you'd need to have the players all as members of the species that naturally "levels up" or something of that sort.
 

Although it isn't obvious, it appears Solo Leveling is actually a Science Fiction setting, and the magical beasts are just aliens who have been previously conquered by the "mana" givers. I don't think the "gift" of mana to humanity is in fact anything but a trap, as it's the means by which the aliens end up subjugating species by taking over their economy and culture. They seem to want to push the culture to be eventually led by the most vicious, most violence loving members of their own species to whom they give the most power, then use the species in their games where they pit them against other species. The Dungeons aren't Dungeons at all, but just places in other worlds where one or both sides are trapped. The Ants and High Orcs are just as much victims of this as we are.

Humans seem to be particularly powerful mana wielders and so attracted the attention of some dissident within the alien culture who is gifting one of the humans with his own power via the "leveling up" process.

The problem with it is the problem with any "Chosen One" setting, in that RPGs are inherently social ensemble games, and "Solo Levelling" right to its very name is not about that. We have one character who matters a whole lot more than everyone else. In order to have parity where everyone matters equally, you'd need to have the players all as members of the species that naturally "levels up" or something of that sort.
I guess my question would be: how to fix this for a setting that has some of the trappings of Solo Leveling (I find the Dungeons fascinating) while avoiding as many pitfalls as possible (especially the "Chosen One" stuff)?
 

It is similar to chosen one syndrome, but I would say in response to @Celebrim , that humans with power are the ones that caught the "dissident" entity's attention, and humans that dont represent some quality important to the entity dont.

Thus, you can have as many "adventurers" as you want, and even villains or monsters.
 

I guess my question would be: how to fix this for a setting that has some of the trappings of Solo Leveling (I find the Dungeons fascinating) while avoiding as many pitfalls as possible (especially the "Chosen One" stuff)?

Without the Chosen One aspect, it's basically just "What if World of Warcraft (or insert your favorite MMORPG) was in the real world?"

Which is kind of just D&D where the setting is taking the gamist tropes of an RPG and making them simulationist within the setting, which is something that in their own way both The Order of the Stick (spells are cast by saying their name and people know their class and level) and Frieren (hit points are meat and high level fighters really can tank hits by battle axes) are doing to different purposes.
 

I suspect that Solo Leveling: Ragnarok might make for a slightly better twist on this idea, as it seems to be (a bit) more conducive to the idea of having a team of heroes rather than a single character that's a one-man army.
 

Although it isn't obvious, it appears Solo Leveling is actually a Science Fiction setting
I think it's more Science Fantasy than Science Fiction. ;) The Rulers are more like Celestials while the Monarchs are Fiends. The Rulers allowed magic into the Earth of this setting and awakened the potential of some humans to wield it.
 

I think it's more Science Fantasy than Science Fiction. ;) The Rulers are more like Celestials while the Monarchs are Fiends. The Rulers allowed magic into the Earth of this setting and awakened the potential of some humans to wield it.
Of course, some others can't handle the preponderance of mana, and so since into a coma (which is impossible to awaken from, without a very specific magical formula that can cure them).

Given that the major trope of Solo Leveling is the "Chosen One" aspect, and that doesn't work in a game with multiple main characters, the easiest way to port this over to D&D is to simply have there be multiple "Chosen Ones" that happen to be the PCs.

Everyone else in the game world is static, in terms of their level. If you need a mechanic for an "awakened" individual, roll 2d10, and that's their character level ("unawakened" characters are always level 1).

As far as ranks go, assign them like so:

E Rank: levels 2-3
D Rank: levels 4-6
C Rank: levels 7-9
B Rank: levels 10-12
A Rank: levels 13-15
S Rank: levels 16-18
National Rank: levels 19-20

Monsters have a corresponding rank as per their CR, and the average CR of the monsters in a dungeon determines the dungeon's rank.

Norma Selner can grant a hunter a permanent +2 level boost a number of times per year equal to her Charisma modifier. No hunter can benefit from this more than once.
 

As far as ranks go, assign them like so:

E Rank: levels 2-3
D Rank: levels 4-6
C Rank: levels 7-9
B Rank: levels 10-12
A Rank: levels 13-15
S Rank: levels 16-18
National Rank: levels 19-20

Monsters have a corresponding rank as per their CR, and the average CR of the monsters in a dungeon determines the dungeon's rank.

Very close to what I imagined except that I imagined the ranks extending up 1 higher level than you, so E Rank was 2-4, and D rank 5-7. However, I have no idea what the exact scale is, I only choose that because I was in my mind highlighting just how useless the weakest possible E rank was for any possible task. Also, it's implied that Jinwoo was still under leveled for an S Rank hunter until he was over 50th level (in his system terms), so I think things scale out over wider and wider terms as you go to higher power. That is there is more difference between a low A and a high A than between a low D and a high D, and that a low S and a high S have even wider divergence in power.

I'm hardly an expert though (and honestly, not even a huge fan).

It's an important part of the lore that there are no E rank gates, so monsters in general are never much weaker than the lowest D rank hunter. Although this could be because like the humans, they don't generally bother to send their E ranks into dungeons. :D
 

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