Thoughts On Level Limits?

[Herobizkit]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFd5Cci_pE4]YouTube - 2 Unlimited - No limit[/ame]

 

[Umbran]

To my thinking, level limits had two basic functions:

1) Some notion of long-term game balance - as you got benefits for being non-human, there had to be some detriment.

2) To enforce some sensibility to world demographics. If you have dwarves that live for multiple centuries, and elves that can live over a thousand years hale and hearty, and you look at how quickly PCs can rise in level in game-world-time, you have to figure out why there are not dwarves and elves so powerful as to be nigh gods walking around fairly frequently.

If you have other ways to handle those functions, then level limits are not necessary.

 

[Crothian]

Level limits were always fine for us. I do like the rules that had higher attributes allow for high limits as it gave the Pcs something to work for. Going into the characters the players knew what the limits were and that helped. It also encourage multi classing for demi humans in our games.

 

[Celebrim]

We never had a problem with level limits, and we always managed to have alot of players playing elves, occasional dwarves, and even a gnome or two even with level limits. They can't have been too busted if players were still willing to play demihumans, and if they were willing to play demihumans despite level limits then exactly why wouldn't they do so without them?

Personally, I think the level limits could be tweaked abit, especially level limits for demihuman fighters, but really, that's about it.

The best alternative suggestion I heard above was giving demihumans an experience penalty in a class once they hit their level limit. That seems reasonable, because the only real complaint I ever had against level limits was the fact that you still had to divide your XP with every class even after you could no longer progress in that class.

 

[Oni]

We never had a problem with level limits, and we always managed to have alot of players playing elves, occasional dwarves, and even a gnome or two even with level limits. They can't have been too busted if players were still willing to play demihumans, and if they were willing to play demihumans despite level limits then exactly why wouldn't they do so without them?

How often did the limits actually come up in play?

 

[Votan]

How often did the limits actually come up in play?

I had it happen with an Elf Fighter/Magic user in the G-series of modules for AD&D.

 

[Vartan]

Ditch them. Srsly.

It's the first change I made to older D&D, and there's no way I would put them back in any edition. Ugh.

They have to be among the. . . Worst. D&D rules. Evar.

Agreed. It always struck me as funny that level limits were imposed on non-humans to encourage people to play humans. Why didn't they just create an incentive to play a human?

A good houserule I've heard of (but never used in my 2e days) was to get rid of level limits, or to use a ceiling and then earn half XP (as I mentioned upthread)... and to add that humans get a +10% bonus on all XP earned, in addition to any bonus from a high prime requisite. This means that the humans in the group will usually be the first to "ding", which is a nice feeling, and makes being a human PC feel a little bit better.

That's one. If the lack of interest in humans had been a problem in my 2E games I might have also tried giving them +1 to an attribute of their choice or extra proficiency slots. I never encountered this problem because, while my 2E players were great min-maxers, they always made racial choices based on initial character concepts as opposed to mechanical advantages: if someone had said to one of my players "Hey, you want to play a thief, you should be a halfling" they would probably say "But my character is human."

 

[kenmarable]

Ditch them. Srsly.

It's the first change I made to older D&D, and there's no way I would put them back in any edition. Ugh.

They have to be among the. . . Worst. D&D rules. Evar.

Full agreement here.

We never, ever used the limits and never had a problem with balance or people still playing humans.

It always seemed like an arbitrary limit on PCs to explain NPC demographics. I loved all the old editions (played pretty much continuously from Red Box to now), and no level limits was the first and only house rule for decades. Removing it doesn't unbalance play at all in our experience and just opens up more possible fun.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Count me in the 'I hate level limits' bandwagon. We used the need more XP 'rule' that others have mentioned (don't remember how much). However, here's a thought no one else has mentioned: allow Humans to multiclass too. (Possibly with a tweek or two.) Something else we did was to expand the things you could multiclass in. Why no Druid/Rangers? In. Why no Cleric/MUs (for those dieties of magic)? In. &etc.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I hated Level Limits with an extreme passion.