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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8838874" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I’d say leveling has always been a goal of D&D since the beginning. I think with 3e, perhaps the focus sharpened a bit because leveling came to mean so much more. But D&D has always been about increasing personal power to then delve deeper and face more dangerous threats… which in turn yield greater rewards, and so on. How XP is awarded is a game saying “this is what the game is about”. I like that clarity… it lets me know what’s expected and how to play well. But having that goal as a player need not limit the goals my character can have. They can work in conjunction. I think when that synchronicity is absent, you potentially run into problems. I’d say that this is why 5e’s default XP system isn’t great and gets largely ignored in favor of milestone leveling, even in their published material. But then the question, to me at least, is what does milestone leveling tell us about the game? What’s the game about? How can I play it well? The answers are far less clear with milestone leveling.</blockquote>