D&D 5E Story Rewards instead of level rewards?

[jmartkdr2]

Or an all the same or similar class group

To a point - even if they're all wizards, you still wouldn't want them all learning exactly the same spells. You'd want the be differentiate their magic.

 

[Blue]

13th Age (a d20 very similar in philosophy to 5e) breaks up levels with Incremental Advances, where you get something from your next level. It give more a granular growth experience, needed for a 10 level game (though in practice it's 10 levels that gets played, while the higher D&D levels have a smaller audience than the first 10).

That would really easily slot into this type of story-driven acquisition of abilities. Link unlocking specific advances to the story works very well.

13th Age gives out more per level though, like a feat every level, so there are more options. 5e gives out less per level and it varies more based on class, so it's would take a little bit of work to make it fit.

Running the Game – 13th Age SRD

www.13thagesrd.com

 

[Umbran]

You could do a combination of traditional and learned / trained / found advancement that might mitigate some of these concerns.

Sure. But now it is complicated, right? Is the learned/found advancement like a magic item drop? are you sure you are giving the character the advancement the player wants? If you are just handing out the advancement they want... how is that really different from milestone leveling?

How much effort do you want spent just on figuring out how a character advances, as opposed to playing the game?

Also, if the home base is a sizable city or town it might make sense for a lot of the items they need to be available in the city / town.

So, now for a system which was intended to make advancement an effort... we have to remove the effort to make it work out?

At that point, you are perhaps better off just saying that most leveling is milestone, but that a small number of select, high value items (like, say, feats, Ability score increases, or one major class feature every few levels) require training.

 

[dave2008]

How much effort do you want spent just on figuring out how a character advances, as opposed to playing the game?

That is the big reason I haven't pursued something like this. I am not sure it is worth the effort. That is also why I was asking for people who have experience in this type of system.

So, now for a system which was intended to make advancement an effort... we have to remove the effort to make it work out?

That is not how I thought of it. It is just the rewards are more story based. Not necessarily more effort.

At that point, you are perhaps better off just saying that most leveling is milestone, but that a small number of select, high value items (like, say, feats, Ability score increases, or one major class feature every few levels) require training.

Yes, I think a hybrid approach might make the most sense.

 

[dave2008]

13th Age (a d20 very similar in philosophy to 5e) breaks up levels with Incremental Advances, where you get something from your next level. It give more a granular growth experience, needed for a 10 level game (though in practice it's 10 levels that gets played, while the higher D&D levels have a smaller audience than the first 10).

That would really easily slot into this type of story-driven acquisition of abilities. Link unlocking specific advances to the story works very well.

13th Age gives out more per level though, like a feat every level, so there are more options. 5e gives out less per level and it varies more based on class, so it's would take a little bit of work to make it fit.

Running the Game – 13th Age SRD

www.13thagesrd.com

I could see spreading out lvl 1 in 5e with this approach. Give the class features incrementally. Not sure how to spread that out to more levels, but could work.

How does it play in 13th age?

 

[Blue]

I could see spreading out lvl 1 in 5e with this approach. Give the class features incrementally. Not sure how to spread that out to more levels, but could work.

How does it play in 13th age?

13th Age has 10 levels covering the same range of 1-20 in D&D 5e, so it has more regular modifiers per level. It gives a feat every level. So basically at the end of every session with some meaningful advancement, the player gets to pick one of the following, translated into 5e terms. These aren't all of what you get at levels, but everyone gets these. You can only pick each one once except "Power or spell".

• ASI at appropriate levels.
• Feat
• Hit Points
• Attunement: 13th Age effectively had attunement rules prior to 5e, but it was one item per level. So you could act as a level higher and attune an extra item.
• Skills - 13th Age gives +1 per level instead of slowly advancing proficiency, so you can get that bonus to yout skills earlier.
• Power or Spell - get a class feature or a new spell.
• Talent - this is bigger class feature. most classes pick 3 talents from a list at 1st to define them, sort of how 5e has subclasses. (And they advance through feats.) A few of the classes also get additional talents at some levels.
• Icon Relationship Points - this is specific to 13th Age, a tying the character into the setting, that has no equivalent in 5e.

How I would do it with your idea is that many (but not all) of them would require story-based unlocks. Then when story milestones say to get one, I'd give players choice of one. So just because you've found a mentor for X doesn't mean you've been spending all of your focus there and mastered it quite yet. So everyone is still advancing at the same rate, but the options of what they pick is expanding based on their in-world actions.

 

[dave2008]

13th Age has 10 levels covering the same range of 1-20 in D&D 5e, so it has more regular modifiers per level. It gives a feat every level. So basically at the end of every session with some meaningful advancement, the player gets to pick one of the following, translated into 5e terms. These aren't all of what you get at levels, but everyone gets these. You can only pick each one once except "Power or spell".

• ASI at appropriate levels.
• Feat
• Hit Points
• Attunement: 13th Age effectively had attunement rules prior to 5e, but it was one item per level. So you could act as a level higher and attune an extra item.
• Skills - 13th Age gives +1 per level instead of slowly advancing proficiency, so you can get that bonus to yout skills earlier.
• Power or Spell - get a class feature or a new spell.
• Talent - this is bigger class feature. most classes pick 3 talents from a list at 1st to define them, sort of how 5e has subclasses. (And they advance through feats.) A few of the classes also get additional talents at some levels.
• Icon Relationship Points - this is specific to 13th Age, a tying the character into the setting, that has no equivalent in 5e.

How I would do it with your idea is that many (but not all) of them would require story-based unlocks. Then when story milestones say to get one, I'd give players choice of one. So just because you've found a mentor for X doesn't mean you've been spending all of your focus there and mastered it quite yet. So everyone is still advancing at the same rate, but the options of what they pick is expanding based on their in-world actions.

I think that could work well, thank you for elaborating. I have the 13th age books, but haven't been able to get into them. Someday I will spend some real time with it.

 

[Blue]

I think that could work well, thank you for elaborating. I have the 13th age books, but haven't been able to get into them. Someday I will spend some real time with it.

13th Age is actually my favorite D&D-type RPG, as much as I love and play a lot of 5e. But that has the caveat that it can feel very light on supporting other pillars of play without a DM tuned into it - for example there are limited out-of-combat spells, but rules for converting them via ritual to anything else. So you could make your fireball into a fireworks show - or into a cleansing fire to destroy an evil item. But the DM needs to feel comfortable adjudicating things like that so it's an RPG I'd recommend for starting DMs.

That said, if 5e was out when it was being developed, there are a number of advancements, like Advantage/Disadvantage, that I feel it would have taken. They really do have a similar philosophy of design, but that doesn't mean that their respective journeys from earlier editions took them to the same place.