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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5735248" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you've picked out two important issues for D&D.One is "what does level gain mean"? Is it a mechanical benefit, or a story benefit? Classic D&D tends to present it as a mechanical benefit first, a story benefit second (eg I get to build my stronghold). 3E tends to present it as a mechanical benefit, with the story elements being stripped out (as I understand the game), but with its CR rules in fact makes it a game of "running to stand still". In 4e, the absence of mechanical benefit from levelling becomes transparent - or, rather, the mechanical benefit consists simply in having a more complex/interesting PC, not a numerically more powerful one. So I think 4e has clearly returned to the idea of levelling as a story benefit - and when you look at the tier descriptions in the PHB this is signalled pretty clearly, although the adventures that WotC are publishing don't really bring this out.I'm sure there are other good ways to do story benefits without levels. Though - probably out of habit as much as anything - I have a certain fondness for levels as one way of doing it. I don't know that it's that inelegant.The second issue, about flattening the scaling, fits with the story perspective on levelling in this way: how quickly does the story change? In 4e, a monster of a given level remains viable as a foe across a range of 4 or more levels, and it is mathematically very simple to adjust a monster level by 1 or 2 on the fly (more than that and you might want to check the numbers in advance). This is closer to classic D&D than to 3E, I think. It also opens up the possibility of level gain counting as a mechanical benefit in the short term - the monsters I fought last level are still viable foes, so the GM is likely to keep using them, but I am noticeably mechanically stronger against them than I was. I had this exerience in my own game - my players fought Goblin Skullcleavers (a level 3 monster) at every level from 1st to 5th or so. At 1st level the Skullclearvers were dangerously strong. By 5th level they were dropping in a round or two. So the story that is progressing via the scaling also has a sub-story about the PCs getting stronger against fierce goblins.The one thing you say that I think I disagree with is that "scaling as story progression" makes sense only from a gamist perspective - though I'm not quite sure what you mean by "gamist" here (I don't think you mean it in the Forge sense of "playing the game to demonstrate skill/chutzpah"). Anyway, I think this sort of "story scaling" makes sense as long as you're prepared to decouple the numbers from the gameworld - ie they're not a model or a measure of anything, so much as a framework for working out who wins conflicts how often and how well. The fiction of the gameworld is to be settled by reference to the outcome of those mechanically-resolved conflicts (or, where appropriate, by free roleplaying), but won't just be read off the numbers. It's taking the same attitude towards bonuses and scalings as anyone who doesn't treat hit points as meat takes towards damage rolls (ie a damage roll of 8 means something different, in the fiction, against a skilled duelist compared to a first-level mage, and means something different against the duelist who was at full hit points, compared to the duelist when struck on 1 hp).</blockquote>

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