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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 4821298" data-attributes="member: 3586">There's no contradiction: "Name" (8 or 9th) level should take about a year (or slightly more than that; say 40-60 sessions) to achieve. The levels above that come at a crawl: 2-3 levels per year, according to Gygax's early writing.For a five-year campaign, that gives:The first year to reach 9th level.The following four years to reach 21st level (3 levels/year).So, it's possible to reach 20th level in Blackmoor/Greyhawk... although no-one had done so when Gary wrote that article.The demi-human limits are built very heavily around an assumed retirement level for PCs - once Name level is reached, your PC is probably more concerned with territory building than normal adventuring. Thus, in a campaign that ends at about 10th level, having a elf fighter 5/magic-user 8 isn't really far off the pace.Of course, these limits were also imposed in the very early days of the game, before Gary really got to see how long certain PCs would be active. When you have the high-level magic-users that later appeared, that elf is looking a lot less interesting. Thus it was - and I don't really know how much Gary had to do with it, but I assume at least some - the levels were increased in Unearthed Arcana for high ability scores, and then, a little later, they were much increased in 2nd edition by the new team.Unfortunately, the 2nd edition increases totally ignored how the XP charts work and the effect of "Name" level. Territory development had basically gone from the game by that time, but the plateau effect of the Name levels meant that while an multiclass character wasn't far behind the curve in AD&D for the levels they were active (a fighter/magic-user could expect to be only one or two levels behind a single-class character), by the time the 2e F/MU was wandering about at levels 10+, they were slipping behind more and more and more!Not so much of a problem with the fighter-types, but a huge problem for the magic-using types.Cheers!</blockquote>

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