D&D 5E What's the rush? Has the "here and now" been replaced by the "next level" attitude?

[Remathilis]

1. The game offers more stuff at levelup than in 1E/2E so people look forward to it.

Yes. Pre-2000 D&D had fewer decision points as the game progressed (class and race being fairly static choices made at char-gen). So while a magic-user may look forward to 3rd level spells or a paladin to his warhorse, most classes got their toys early, making build unimportant. Feats, multi-classing, power-suites, prestige classes, and especially "traps" (intentional bad choices, such as 3.0 toughness) made build important.

2. The time to level up has decreased so the next level is always a few more XP around.

Yes. the 10-13 encounters to a level has made them feel more anticipated.

3. Todays gamers are expecting more instant gratification. I blame video games for that one.

NO!

"Those darn kids" didn't ruin D&D for you, gramps. There were always players who built monstrosities (munchkin wasn't invented in 2000) and who cared only for XP-grinding. 100th level PCs existed in days of yore. Similarly, some games (early Final Fantasy, for example) where leveling didn't give you myiads of choices when you level; they felt much like D&D levels: some more hp and maybe a new spell.

The recent trend among all media has been for "total customization" so its no suprise D&D, like CRPGs, MMOs and other RPG games, opted for games where you can tweak your heart out. It makes sense; it gives players a more tethered feeling of ownership and allows the company to sell new "options" (splat books, DLC, whatever).

Watch before you generalize

 

[Sadrik]

We live in a vastly more mobile society than we used to. It's not unusual for people to move every 2-3 years. Therefore trying to sell a game that is based on extended campaigns that could run in the excess of 4 years does not match up with the overall market.

That is not true, Americans are moving less and less since the 70s.

 

[Sadrik]

The real key here is that in 5e there are certainly differing ideas on advancement and the 5e design team should provide some solid options to capture the feel people are looking for. Whether slow advancement or speedy advancement.

I also greatly appreciate the notion of decoupling requirements from abilities. Rather than saying you cannot do this because you are not level X it is better to say you are not good at level X (stat X or any other limiter) but you can still attempt/do it. Hard requirements are not how I would design the game.

 

[jodyjohnson]

My bad. Not the DMG but

Originally Posted by Gary Gygax, the Strategic Review Issue 2.2, page 23
"It is reasonable to calculate that if a fair player takes part in 50 to 75 games in the course of a year he should acquire sufficient experience points to make him about 9th to 11th level, assuming that he manages to survive all that play."

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthr...#ixzz2xFPzGld6

Interesting that it implies that Gary had players who might reasonably play up to 75 times a year.

I can easily squeeze a year of play like that into 2 or 3 years.

 

[Johnny Champion]

There seems to be this design philosophy that I suppose many adhere too; namely that are no 'dead' levels. I see this applied to in Next. Every level provides you with something important (other than a hit die). As a player, I never thought of leveling up in these terms. I thought leveling up allowed us to be noticed by higher level NPCs, kings, dukes, etc... Hell, I even enjoyed the new fancy name I received when leveling up.

I know spellcasters had gained spells each level so they gained more than a fighter or thief.

 

[Celebrim]

Really? In the 1e DMG it's noted that it takes about 50 sessions to hit name level. Around 4-6 sessions per level.

There are several problems with using Gygax's data to support the position that the rate of advancement has not changed.

1) Gygax was specifically making his estimates to inform other DMs that they were leveling too fast.
2) The thread you are quoting from was using the data to prove that as designed, 1e would level more slowly than 3e as designed.
3) Without a measurement of session length it would be meaningless to compare. My sessions as a teen (especially during the summer months) were often 5-8 hours, broken perhaps by a meal, with occasional marathons of much longer. In my current game sessions are generally 4 hours. I'm not aware of what length of play Gygax was assuming for a session.
4) Gygax notes the single biggest difference between 1e and 3e in terms of leveling speed, which is that by design levels after name level were intended to be slower. Gygax estimates 25-37 sessions per level after name level, and notes that despite 4 years of 50-70 sessions per year, no player in his game had gone above 14th level - which was also true of Blackmoor. This is certainly a difference in expectation even if nothing else is.
5) Even if as Gygax had intended 1e leveled at a particular rate, there very fact Gygax is giving this sort of talk suggests that the actual rate of advancement varied widely - just like with everything else in 1e.

How fast do your 3e or Pathfinder games level? Because that's identical to mine.

One character just obtained 7th level last night, after nearly 4 years of biweekly sessions roughly 4 hour sessions. I don't have an exact count but I estimate about 70 sessions, or 280 hours of play. That's roughly 40 hours of play per level obtained. Granted, I don't play by RAW and consciously have slowed leveling to about half the speed suggested by the design to more match my expectations from 1e.

It is interesting that Gary had player playing up to 70 times per year, and it suggests to me a fervor that might suggest session lengths longer than the 4 hours I manage now weren't uncommon.

 

[oxybe]

There seems to be this design philosophy that I suppose many adhere too; namely that are no 'dead' levels. I see this applied to in Next. Every level provides you with something important (other than a hit die). As a player, I never thought of leveling up in these terms. I thought leveling up allowed us to be noticed by higher level NPCs, kings, dukes, etc... Hell, I even enjoyed the new fancy name I received when leveling up.

I know spellcasters had gained spells each level so they gained more than a fighter or thief.

as an aside, i never understood the point of "named" levels as to me your class was entirely a metagame construct... people don't go around with the word "fighter" or a variation thereof over their head, unnaturally telling everyone that the guy in the battered old full plate is a superhero.

then again classes are weird in the D&D community... you're not really supposed to be able to tell what class or level any given PC/NPC is, as it's a entirely a metagame construct, yet we often force or assume certain flavor on the fact that the guy's a "ranger" or "mage".

 

[Remathilis]

as an aside, i never understood the point of "named" levels as to me your class was entirely a metagame construct... people don't go around with the word "fighter" or a variation thereof over their head, unnaturally telling everyone that the guy in the battered old full plate is a superhero.

then again classes are weird in the D&D community... you're not really supposed to be able to tell what class or level any given PC/NPC is, as it's a entirely a metagame construct, yet we often force or assume certain flavor on the fact that the guy's a "ranger" or "mage".

[Off-topic Rant in 3..2...]

This is a weird sticking point for D&D. Class has equally been considered archetypes (fighter, magic-user, or rogue are descriptive and can apply to a wide-range of professions and people) and a tangible occupation (cleric, thief, paladin, druid, ranger, and bard are all classes that define a certain job or role). Some straddle both (monk and barbarian, for example, are archetypes that border on profession, or at least very narrow archetypes). Even the Iconic Four (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief) straddle the line between being archetypal and professional. If you asked them all what they do, the wizard and thief would state their class as a profession, the fighter would give some background (knight, mercenary, soldier) and the cleric might go either way depending on the nature of religion in the setting.

For a long time during the "Next" playtest, debate kept raging over whether certain classes "deserved" to remain classes. My observation was that most people who argued FOR reducing the number of classes often wished to remove the Occupational (and narrow archetype) ones, while those who favored a larger number of classes didn't wish to see these classes get rolled into another. (A good example was the Sorcerer/Warlock/Wizard:Mage debate).

Oddly, I kinda wish the archetypal classes (fighter, rogue, kinda cleric, mage) were all replaced with more "professional" classes (knight, warrior, thief, assassin, priest, crusader, summoner, necromancer, evoker, etc) and D&D officially move to "your class IS your profession" mode, but I don't see that happening.

 

[jodyjohnson]

For levelling speed I'd rank them as:

1 (fastest). 1e - XP for GP and magic items, playing through published adventures meant several runs into the 7+ level area in 6 months of gaming as teenagers. Many times we'd level multiple times in a session. Of course each run ended in a TPK at some point.

2. 3.x - charop and scaled XP for fighting over-level meant we levelled quickly. Especially when you could end combats in a round or less.

3. 4e - most consistent levelling speed - hard fights take longer, easy fight go quicker, but XP/hour was very consistent.

4. 2e - No XP for gold or magic meant it was all about cleaving your way though huge numbers of creatures, the minuscule XP awards for class ability use, and story awards didn't amount to much when your XP needed was in the 10s or 100s of thousands.

As a DM I prefer faster levelling.

 

[Hussar]

JodyJ that mirrors my experience as well.