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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6848089" data-attributes="member: 996">Sure, that's part of the issue, really...  ... but it's the angle you have to squint at the treadmill from to see it that way. Not from first through 20th level, certainly, not in the context of any edition, even 5th would 'strain credulity' a bit if you found enough kobolds to get enough exp to get to 20th level just walking back and forth between two towns.  But, if you did happen to drop by your old stomping grounds 10 or 20 levels later... what would you find?  If you're able to see the treadmill as a travesty of a mockery of a sham, you probably found a Githyank invasion or 11th level kobolds 10 levels later, and Epic-level Kobolds ("just how many Sons did Kurtulmak father in the Nentir Vale, anyway?") or a clan of Titans trying to bring back a Primordial 20 levels later.  Sure.  I mean, unless they're meeting the Buddha on the road or something. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  But that'd be Fate.No, of course not... but if you did happen to decide to go slumming and wipe out a kobold tribe back in the Nentir Vale on your home dimension, you wouldn't expect Titans to have displaced them or the Kobolds to have all gained levels at the same pace you had.  Maybe the DM would have you fight 'swarms' of kobolds - the whole tribe at once - to make a playable encounter of it, or maybe he'd just hand-wave it and give you no experience, but the expectation that if you take a break from cruising the Elemental Chaos and beating down uppity Titans, you've come a long way from fighting for you lives against kobolds led by a berserk goblin, and it'll show.  That is, unless you were playing the game a certain way... and if you were playing it that certain way, from that PoV you'd see the 'advancement' of the treadmill as a hollow thing, since you couldn't ever seem to /find/ anything significantly weaker than yourselves.  Or, for that matter, to take it from the other direction, anything all that much more powerful than you (a solo a few levels above you, sure, would be much more powerful than any one of you, individually).  It's implied in levels, really.  Back in the olden days, you started out a magician's apprentice or a veteran of one battle, and ended a Feudal Lord in his castle or reclusive Wizard in his tower - and, if you didn't end it there, could go dungeon-crawling in the Abyss and kill Orcus, instead of dungeon-crawling in a dungeon and kill orcs.  Once monsters got a clear 1:1 corresponding CR/EL, it was inevitable that someone would fall into the trap of just matching the party against same-level monsters all the time.  The futility of that might be masked if you had increasing imbalances within the party as you leveled (though there's some obvious futility in that, too), but when you're all neatly balanced, you can more easily 'see the wires.'You could keep things 'prosaic' by just ending the campaign sooner.  Just play to name level.  Just play E6.  Just play through Heroic Tier.</blockquote>

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