The dead level concept is tied directly to games that focus on what the PCs CAN do mechanically instead of what the PCs ARE doing in the campaign.

Part of this issue isn't strictly mechanically related. It has more to do with games that feature passive spoon-fed players who wait for a mission to come to them like a cow being milked instead of proactively taking action on behalf of their characters. Being herded from encounter to encounter, the players have little agency in the game world, and, as a consequence, they often don't even give so much as a single fuck about it.

What they DO have agency over is their build and mechanical gadgets, so that is where their care and concerns lie. The real game being played is one of "what do I get next?" Getting stuff is the one thing to be cared about because the supposed meat of the game (aka the adventure) offers no opportunities for control.

Quote from: Bren;842799Yeah pretty much this. I don't recall anyone caring about dead levels in OD&D or early AD&D. And people did not usually level on a weekly basis. It seems more a function of newer games with balanced encounters, adversaries whose skill and hits are tagged to party level, white room theorizing, with maybe just a tinge of player ennui in those people who are used to getting a new smart phone every 4-6 months with a new app every day and twice on Sundays.

Well said.

To a degree, I don't get to bitch too much about the syndrome (at least in tabletop, where with playing GURPS, there's a teensy potential incremental increase each session).  But I'll do it anyway: the object of the game is to have fun playing the game.  I could have great good fun roleplaying if my character never improved again.  This really was the case in LARPing, where I mentioned in a current thread that I'd reached the maximum the system allowed a full decade before I stopped playing the character ... and somehow managed to have fun anyway.

I've had a couple players, over the decades, whine to me about their rate of advancement.  My milder response was a cool "Step up your play, then."  The more extreme one was an invitation to find some other game more to his liking.

I ran a 3rd edition game for players that ranged from noob to casual. The constant leveling in that system became an aggravation to them. As non-ruleheads, they just wanted to play their characters, not have to comb through hundreds of feats and learn new class powers every other week.

The campaign just felt jarring to us all as well, with the characters abilities changing so rapidly it was hard to maintain any level of belief.

You have two main approaches to leveling. You have games like BRP where characters go up every week by a small amount. Then you have D&D leveling, where you go a number of weeks without anything, then get a level all at once. Both methods can work fine.

With D&D 3.x, they made two changes to the system. They added class powers, feats, and skills to the leveling process. That made it a far more dramatic process. On top of that, they spread up progression significantly. Either of these might have been okay, but taken together it meant you were basically playing a new build every few sessions, which was tiring to my players.

It reminded me a bit of playing Civilization on one of the faster speeds. I'd get a new technological advance, just start rolling out new units and using them, then suddenly the next advance would be along before I got to appreciate the last one.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;842903There is something to that--if there's no functional difference between a 13 and a 14, or a 14 and a 15, why maintain the difference? This is a non-issue in pre-3E versions of D&D, of course--ability checks as 'roll under on 1d20', and the various little bits in the AD&D tables, or mapping the bonuses to the bell curve in BECMI, make the 3-18 scale valuable. But in 3E and beyond, with the unified system and the purely linear curve, the 3-18 scale is more or less vestigial.

When I first read the Dragon articles leading up to the release of 3rd Edition, I had the impression that they would drop the 3-18 completely in other D20 games. I was surprised to see it in their first Star Wars game. Just moving to -5 to +5 as the actual stat, like in Ars Magica (also by Jonathan Tweet), seemed to make more sense.

The whole thing of figuring out your 3-18 score, then converting it to numbers that the system actually engaged with was a speed bump for every new player I taught the system.

Quote from: Orphan81;842752What's your experience? Dead Levels really just a perception I shouldn't bitch about? Dead Levels completely okay as getting more HP should be reward enough? Or Dead Levels suck and PC's should always get something, even if it's just a +1 to an existing power/ability of some kind, and not just an HP boost?

I think it mostly comes down to the rate of advancement.

If you expect to reach a new level every couple sessions, then dead levels aren't much of an issue. When I first got to play D&D 3e back in 2000, the guys I played with had AD&D experience, and their reaction to seeing how much XP we got in a session compared to how much we needed to level up led to them dubbing it "Dragonball D&D." And playing things by the book, we really did level up pretty fast.

That said, I still don't think dead levels are a good thing. If a level-up doesn't give you something significant, then I honestly wonder why you would have the character leveling up at that point at all. For more hit points? As for the "I win button" comment in post 2, I see a very large excluded middle. Yes, some abilities are going to(and should) directly boost a characters ability at their schtick and/or their damage output(which in the fighter's case is its schtick), but there are abilities that you can give characters that are both class-appropriate and which build the character more horizontally. Something significant, but not overpowering, and certainly not an "I win button."

If you expect level advancement to be pretty rare, as was the case in many older editions of D&D, then I think you should worry more about dead levels. Just because people played and enjoyed games that had both infrequent level ups and dead levels doesn't mean it was a good design decision. In this case, since leveling would be rare, it should really mean something. Otherwise, again, why is the level-up even happening? For rarer advancement, there should probably be a vertical and horizontal gain at every level. Or a vertical gain every level and a horizontal gain every other level.

If you absolutely can't avoid dead levels, though, which I admit might be the case if you want your game to fit firmly within the OSR(I'm a bit fuzzy on the rules and just how much tinkering is allowed before your game is deemed "not OSR" anymore), then at the very least you can do a little work to make the various classes equally dead. But personally I'd consider this option the last resort, only to be used if necessary to keep your OSR status.

Quote from: Ravenswing;842922I could have great good fun roleplaying if my character never improved again.

In a Shadowrun Game I played two characters at once. They were called Team ZeroKarma (one's streetname was Zero, the other one was Karma), and I refused to note down any Karma (Shadowrun equivalent of XP) on character sheets. I didn't feel like they had to improve mechanically.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;842800This is something I never heard of until five years ago.  I don't know when it became a concern, but it certainly was not one 1972-1985.

Maybe not in your circles, but I've been hearing variations on the theme for a VERY long time, since about '84, although I wasn't playing D&D at the time (I started about 3-5 years later), I had friends who did and would talk about it round me.  Most of the time, though, I think people were happy if they level and got some sort of Magical Reward, new weapon, armour, accessory, they equated that with a level increase, when they didn't get one, and were playing like a Fighter and sometimes Ranger, there was a lot of grumbling (Always good natured in my experience, mind you) about how they got 'nothing' that level, even if they rolled max HP on the die.

And let's face, sometimes, when you roll a 1 on a D10 (as a Fighter type) it doesn't really feel like much of a gain.

One more thing, about HP not feeling like a gain, it might be because every one gets more HP per level, so it doesn't have the Special Snowflakeness that one gets when you choose a new spell, get a new Die or multiplier for your Backstab/Sneak Attack rolls.

The concept and belief in "Dead Levels" are the result of viewing the progress of a character through the game as an isolated series of mechanics.

There are many ways to treat reward and a character who is more than numbers on a page has goals.  A level is only "Dead" if the player sees no value in the change.
 
Since the previous level, how much money has the character obtained?  Can they afford better armor, weapons or other gear?  
Have they made alliances that gives them access to the resources of the powers that be in their area?  
Has their reputation increased so they can reap the many benefits available in their setting?  
Did they acquire magic, which could give them abilities beyond any level reward?

If your answer to that is "Yeah all that is great, but mechanically I'm exactly the same except a few HPs." then then issue isn't the system, it's your GM or your perception.

Quote from: slayride35;842885Dead levels are not good game design.

Horseshit.

You may not like them, but I think they work just fine.

Your opinion is not objective truth.  Mine, of course, is.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;842960Horseshit.

You may not like them, but I think they work just fine.

Your opinion is not objective truth.  Mine, of course, is.

Of course it is!  All HAIL GRONAN!  

Quote from: Christopher Brady;842966Of course it is!  All HAIL GRONAN!  

NOW you get it!

Never heard of a dead level before. Sounds like a problem with player expectations rather than the game.

Quote from: Matt;842972Never heard of a dead level before. Sounds like a problem with player expectations rather than the game.

Ding!  Winner.

Quote from: Matt;842972Never heard of a dead level before. Sounds like a problem with player expectations rather than the game.

It's a shift among players in general, WoTC noted it during the 2e to 3.x days, actually.  They claimed according to one of the 4e preview books that the 3.x Monk was one of the best designed classes in terms of giving players goodies.  There was always something to look forward to, after hit points or BAB.  (They did acknowledge that most of the 'goodies' were kinda useless in a game, however.)

Back in the 70's and early 80's, people accepted it because no one thought otherwise, when games decided to give things at a regular interval, that's when players realized that they don't have to accept the status quo.

Is it right?  Is it wrong?  I dunno, and frankly, it's not up to me to decide or even care.  I just want to roll the dice and have fun make-believe adventure.

It's right if you like it and wrong if you don't.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;842936If you absolutely can't avoid dead levels, though, which I admit might be the case if you want your game to fit firmly within the OSR(I'm a bit fuzzy on the rules and just how much tinkering is allowed before your game is deemed "not OSR" anymore), then at the very least you can do a little work to make the various classes equally dead. But personally I'd consider this option the last resort, only to be used if necessary to keep your OSR status.

The problem for OSR games is that to give every class some new ability every level, for many classes you either have to create a bunch of new abilities that are something that only someone with that ability could have any chance of success with or you have to take abilities that realistically anyone should be able to try with some chance of success and declare them impossible unless you have the special ability. Both are against the sensibilities of most players and GMs interested in OSR style games. Fortunately, most people interested in OSR games don't seem to notice, let alone care about dead levels.