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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5660497" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, you did discuss the 'treadmill' etc so I think we're talking to some extent within the realm of games similar to 4e, which makes this very apparent, though in a sense all editions of D&D have had some degree of this. The greater power curve and rather unbridled power of spellcasters at higher levels in the past tended to mask it a bit.I'm not NECESSARILY talking about 4e either. In fact I would say that by the time you ran everything to ground and created a consistent game that focused on this type of design it would be quite different in many respects from 4e, though it could still share a good bit of basic mechanics.Yeah, I don't put ANY stock in the 'got the math wrong' nonsense. It is basic addition. Nobody got it wrong. They simply didn't consider it to be a matter of concern, and in fact most people I have played with that are knowledgeable about high paragon/epic play seem to agree that there was no reason to consider the 2 point slide in base to-hit to be an 'error' of any kind.The thing is, slightly changing parameters as levels increase actually HELPS your game. Things change a bit. Defenses are very important in heroic tier for instance, but far less so in epic tier where survival shifts more to damage reduction and effect avoidance/negation. Levels really have little to do with the combat system per-se. They contribute to the underlying math that defines how an encounter will be played out, but levels themselves are far more an aspect of game play in the longer term. In fact it is rather interesting that 4e both reduces the more obvious significance of levels and at the same time leverages them more effectively to progress the game. Within the context of encounter design however levels mean not a lot. Encounter design parameters DO change somewhat, but that has more to do with the way characters evolve than leveling math, which is as simple at 30th level as it is at 1st and is so utterly trivial overall as to be a non-issue. Well, this IMHO is exactly one of the benefits of levels. They provide a robust framework on which to build the evolution of the characters. Game mechanics don't do everything, but you certainly employ the mechanics to realize things, and it is mighty convenient that high level PCs are somewhat different from low level ones and playing through the levels provides a distinct sense of evolution. The pace and timing of that might be more under your control without levels, but that is more of an issue for people picking up the game in general than a feature. One of the main reasons D&D has been successful down the years is that a DM starting out with the game has a pretty clear idea of where he's at. His players are low level and there is a nice subset of the game they can instantly interact with while other parts are clearly left to later. Likewise the players have a clear idea of how the game will evolve, they will go up in level and different opportunities will open up for them as a natural consequence of that. A DM with the experience to frame up a good story arc will be able to play that out within the level structure as easily as not IME. Given how easy it is to relevel, reskin, and generate monsters and other game elements in 4e you really need not feel terribly constrained anyway. If you want to just run a gritty 6 level campaign that ends in killing 'Orcus' you can just make him a level 10 solo and go at it, no problem. I don't see this as a real problem though. I can so easily remake any monsters or other game elements at whatever level I need them to be that being locked into only certain content at certain levels is really not an issue. Your neophyte DM may not feel that way, but (s)he is also unlikely to have mastered the less obvious aspects of going outside the lines on the page yet that simply dropping them into a system with no power curve is not helping them. They may well follow the advice given closely and build things up, and they may not. At least in something like 4e it is QUITE clear how you can run a basic game within the standard parameters, just line up adversaries at an increasing level at a pace that the rule book quite clearly spells out. Well, I don't think I'm ASSUMING anything. I'm just passing on my experience, which is that level based games (games with a steeper and fairly obvious power progression in general, they don't HAVE to be using levels) is a far more consistent way to produce a game with a long-running story arc in which PCs progress through stages of development. It consistently produces a desire on the part of the players to push forward and evolve their character. This may all in some sense be smoke-and-mirrors, but human psychology seems to work with that kind of mechanic to produce that kind of game, at least in my experience. Likewise games without formal progression mechanics tend to spin. Players become more distracted by side issues, character buy-in tends to be less, etc. You can work against that tendency, but it is a lot easier to go with the flow and the results seem to me to be well worth whatever 'cost' there is (and I'm not convinced there is much). Well, OK. I obviously don't know how you would propose to work that. It certainly is possible. I just think you'll find that most players reactions are going to be that they enjoy the feel of progress that comes from numerical progression. It DOES have actual concrete effects too in that old adversaries become trivial annoyances over time, etc. As I say, running a long-term Traveller campaign fairly well convinced me (and talking to the players about it too) that long term the lack of mechanical character progression held things back. You can get all the wealth and contacts and options etc you want, but in some sense your character is still the same old guy you rolled up way back when. Beyond that all the options and gew gaws are ephemeral anyway, it is all just pretend. The mechanics are the most concrete part of the game and there is simply a type of satisfaction in advancing your character that doesn't exist in games without that. Sure, but there is a definite aspect of character identification and buy in. The AD&D characters I most clearly identify with are the ones that got to the highest levels. Heck, I can't even remember the names of the lower level ones off the top of my head, but the magic user that got to 15th level so he could make permanent items and cast some really gnarly magic? Yeah, I can write that character's stats down almost from memory. I couldn't tell you the name of a single character I ran back in the 80's in other games, not one. Some of them were cool and did cool things, but they didn't get to high levels and be able to kill an ogre with a careless wave of the hand. Yes, it just goes to prove how diverse people's definitions of what 'D&D' is actually are. I don't really know for sure what I would think of said game. I don't think it would TO ME feel a lot like D&D in key respects. It would remind me of D&D probably and I might enjoy it quite a bit, but I don't think I personally would consider it to be D&D. I also think you'd have to change more stuff than you imagine in order to make it a cohesive game, though of course the bar for that is a lot lower if you're doing homebrew than if it were a product.</blockquote>

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