The world outside the dungeon
- Thread starter MerricB
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Garnfellow
Explorer
So do you level faster the older you get, or slower? (One would be very gamist, and the other very simulationist.)
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
Neither. In one variation, Elves level slower than Dwarves and they slower than Humans (age being the governor on leveling of nonhumans, similar to level limits for nonhumans from early editions).
This is always hard to work into a game as it makes advancement hard for long lived races (*cough* elves *cough*) or it means old elves are very, very powerful.
I like Pathfinder's approach of doubling XP required every level after 20; add in diminishing challenges and high level elves with a lifetime of advancement end up 3-4 levels higher than humans. Or level caps -- were more elves than humans eventually reach maximum potential.
I'd like this approach more in an "all human" sort of setting.
Hussar
Legend
There's another point of view as well. If you are like me, and campaigns don't last more than about 18 months tops, then, with a very slow advancement rate, you never get to see most of the rules. I've got all these books, all these monsters and I can never use them because the PC's are too low level for me to ever get these things into play.
Or, take the 3e prestige classes. Presume a 4 sessions/level advancement rate. That's 20-24 sessions, or just about six months of play before prestige classes come into play. Or, to put it another way, my campaign's half over before I even get to play what I want to play. And, if it's a 10 level prestige class, odds are, I'll only see about half of those levels.
I think there's a real impulse among players and DM's to actually want to use all the rules in the game. Which, in turn, I think, tends to lend a fair bit of pressure to speedier advancement.
Or, take the 3e prestige classes. Presume a 4 sessions/level advancement rate. That's 20-24 sessions, or just about six months of play before prestige classes come into play. Or, to put it another way, my campaign's half over before I even get to play what I want to play. And, if it's a 10 level prestige class, odds are, I'll only see about half of those levels.
I think there's a real impulse among players and DM's to actually want to use all the rules in the game. Which, in turn, I think, tends to lend a fair bit of pressure to speedier advancement.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
I just add up the ExP the monsters (or whatever) are worth and divide by the number of people who participated in the battle (or whatever). And I don't use ExP-for-treasure.
I've never really worried about "level of challenge" as the system kinda takes care of that for me by j-curving the amount needed to bump as the levels get higher. If a party of 4th-levels takes out a major demon very much against the odds (as happened in my last session, in fact) just the straight ExP the thing is worth puts a nice dent in the amount they all need to gain a level. Conversely, if a powerful party of 9th level types want to take down a few Kobolds, I'll still give 'em the same 25 ExP each they'd have got at 1st level; the difference being that instead of being a tiny drop in a small bucket it's now a molecule in a really big bucket.
The only part of this that takes any time at all is figuring out what a given monster is worth if it's not already written in the module or guide; a long time ago I took the table in the 1e DMG (p. 85) and expanded it somewhat, and with lots and lots of practice I've become reasonably proficient at using it.
The part about the 3e calculations I could never grasp - or even see the point of, come to that - is where a 5th level character gets less actual ExP than a 3rd level character for participating in the same battle. (our party in 3e was never a nice uniform level) Wouldn't it have been simpler on all 3e DMs to just have it divide evenly, and j-curve out the levelling points a bit to compensate?
Lanefan
As far as OD&D is concerned, this isn't actually true.
OD&D's third rulebook was entitled, notably, The Undeworld & Wilderness Adventures (emphasis added). It had 9 pages of rules for handling the "dungeon experience" and 20 pages of rules for non-dungeon experiences.
Similarly, the class descriptions of both the Fighting-Man and the Cleric were split evenly between dungeon-type abilities and post-dungeon type abilities (when they would be establishing strongholds, etc.).
Knock-on effects.
Adjusting level advancement in 3e has at least one very serious knock-on effect: unless the DM is really stingy with the treasure (and where's the fun in that?) the wealth-by-level guidelines go right out the window. I know because I've seen it: I was in that 3e game I mentioned for its first 6 years, and the wealth we'd accumulated by 10th-ish level threw the CR-EL calculations all to hell. Made the DM work harder, that's for sure!
So you're claiming that pre-3E there wasn't any treasure being rewarded?
Of course there was. And of course there was still a knock-on effect. The Iron Man Principle can't be escaped. You just didn't have a baseline to compare it to and throw yourself into a tizzy because you were "playing wrong".
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Fair enough; I can understand this view.
That said, and truth be told, this isn't something that's ever bothered me all that much. Different strokes, I suppose; but if the story's good and the game is fun I can happily play/DM at low level for years. It's like my computer. There's lots and lots of things it *can* do, most of which I will never use, but as long as it does the relatively few things I want it to and doesn't complain, I'm happy.
How on earth does this work within a normal adventuring milieu, where much of the story takes place within a few years, or a decade at most? Do the non-humans never level up, or do ExP earned while adventuring trump the age rule?Mark said:
Lan-"the high level rules are there for the opponents"-efan
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
Remove the assumption of such a limiting defintion of "normal" and it works as well as any other paradigm. Experience and leveling rules have always dictated the in-game pace of character arcs but they also dictate the focus of what becomes important to the characters within the game. If the characters become stronger by killing things and gathering their treasure, then players have their characters do so and purchase or gather some items that can help them do that along the way. If characters become more powerful by killing things and acruing items specifically slotted toward increasing character power in particular formulaic ways, then that is what players pursue. If the rules support play that require characters to survive over time while achieving certain goals and increase character power through not only wealth and accumulation of possessions but also in areas such as character reputation then that becomes the focus of the game for the players. At the table, all of these games can be very similar but the shift in the focus of what advances the characters promotes an immersive rpg exprience that can often seem antithetical to the less nuanced paradigms.
My experience doesn't tally with Hussar's. I've been running my main campaign world Ea since 1986, with lots of different groups of players. I've experimented with using new worlds/settings too, and that can work well for a particular mood/theme, but from player feedback I'd say that the campaigns set on Ea have been pretty consistently the most popular. Many players really seem to enjoy the richness of the milieu, the sense of depth. There are the tales of old heroes from long ago (prior campaigns) and a realisation that their PCs too can have a lasting impact, that the game-world is not ephemeral, that future heroes in future campaigns may one day hear of *their* exploits as tales of the great days of long-ago...
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