Quote from: Baulderstone;843350That's true, but one thing I always found was that more mechanically-inclined players were drawn to those classes and casual players wanted nothing to do with them. Adding new shinies at every level of every class is providing no space in your game for casual players. Those casual players are less likely to be chatting in game forums, so its easy for them to be completely forgotten, even though they have made up a decent percentage of people in my game groups over the years.

I'm sure it's possible to set up your level progression so that you get something at every level and still get those new things at the same rate that you already do in something like OD&D or T&T. You wouldn't gain as many levels, and you'd have to adjust the HP gains and attack bonus/thac0(or whatever) gains to account for that, but every level would represent an actual milestone in your career.

There are also a variety of "shinies" that you can grant players that don't add much, if anything, to the overall mechanical complexity of the class if you keep the level progression the same and just want to fill in the "dead" levels. Worrying about overwhelming "casuals" before you've seen what specifically the game designer has chosen to add is simply unwarranted.

Also, in certain versions of D&D, the mechanical complexity gap between fighter/rogue and cleric/magic-user is pretty huge. You could add a bit of complexity to the former without coming anywhere near the complexity of the latter. So even if some of the additions do add a little mechanical complexity to the classes, they'd still be pretty darn simple. I doubt anyone here who's in favor of filling in the "dead" levels has any desire to make those classes more difficult to pick up and play.

That's not to mention the whole "gotta keep it simple for the 'casuals'" thing is just condescending as hell.

Quote from: jibbajibba;843328Been that way since Ranger and Paladin, Assassin and Druid

This is why they should just make char-gen a process of picking a series of background templates (like Warhammer, Talislanta, etc.) that create your character. "Leveling" just gives you XP to buy template granted skills/abilities cheaper.

It could be done in D&D. But people don't wanna kill any precious holy-dairy-beasts.

Quote from: tenbones;843372This is why they should just make char-gen a process of picking a series of background templates (like Warhammer, Talislanta, etc.) that create your character. "Leveling" just gives you XP to buy template granted skills/abilities cheaper.

It could be done in D&D. But people don't wanna kill any precious holy-dairy-beasts.

Or maybe we actually like the game.

.....naaaaaaaaaah

Quote from: tenbones;843372This is why they should just make char-gen a process of picking a series of background templates (like Warhammer, Talislanta, etc.) that create your character. "Leveling" just gives you XP to buy template granted skills/abilities cheaper.

It could be done in D&D. But people don't wanna kill any precious holy-dairy-beasts.

So basically we would get XP in order to gain levels which would then allow us to spend XP on freeform skills and abilities.  

Isn't this just gating the Vampire skill system with the D&D level model?  What's good about this?

Quote from: GreyICE;843389So basically we would get XP in order to gain levels which would then allow us to spend XP on freeform skills and abilities.  

Isn't this just gating the Vampire skill system with the D&D level model?  What's good about this?

I'll take the Pepsi-challenge!

Mind you - this is all just me white-room shit talking. I've never actually done this with D&D, so no one get their panties in a knot about me molesting your magical bovines, because they happen to be partially my bovines as well. I just treat them shabbier.

So comparing D&D to Vampire...

Generally speaking - both games have a magic system, gated by experience gain and expenditures. Both games have skill systems, Vampire is gated, 1e/2e are not. The idea behind XP is that you essentially spend it to accrue a package of character upgrades.

In Vampire, where the only real constraints on you are your clan disciplines. Everything is pretty much uniform in expenditures, barring roleplaying requirements that we'll stipulate at each table is highly dependant on the GM and therefore irrelevant for the purposes of comparing these two systems. You purchase whatever upgrades you need based on the availability of the currency - XP. You can purchase stats, skills, powers, etc. As a player you have very fine control over how your PC will interact with the vissicitudes of the game<---hah! pun intended!

In D&D you have a couple of templates (for the sake of debate - I'm going to use 5e as an example, where it differs from previous editions, it should be moot, theoretically). So you have your racial template, and your class template. Your class template gives you basic skills/abilities that you're effectively purchasing with XP points to "level up".

The only functional difference is you have less control on how you can control what these points are spent on. Sure you can multi-class, but then you're still looking at having a proscribed set of values that are pre-purchased for you by the template itself.

What harm comes from revaluing each class's special abilities? (and you can have pre-reqs just like Vampire does. - you can't learn Celerity 5 without knowing the ranks below it. Or stats? or Spells? Or Saves? Or Defense?

It's not more arbitrary in protecting the conceits of your game by limiting what classes are available to limiting what *specific* abilities are/are not available, as a GM. So what's the problem? More choices for PC's is not, in my experience, a bad thing.

Because it subverts the entire point of a level system.  The point of a level system is so that you could graduate into bigger and better challenges - greater dangers, more grandiose traps, larger monsters, more epic treasure.  

To do that, Gygax gave us a series of general progressions.  There weren't too many, you weren't intended to get super high (none of this level 20/30 nonsense), you were just intended to grow and expand over your career and go to more dangerous and cooler places.  They were even individually titled, to map your growth.  

There was an expectation that things would be generally... proportionate.  Fair isn't the right word, nor is balanced (neither is a concept that is overly worth pursuing) but there was an idea that you'd be expected to handle certain things at certain levels, and run screaming at lower levels.  That was part of the point - shit, we're level 8, time to go kill that Giant that killed Rob and made us all run away at level 3.  

This is good.  In fact this is the only thing good about the level system.  But it is a very good thing.  

Now, lets examine Vampire (mostly because it gives me less of a headache than GURPS).  Vampire does not expect minimal competence at any task from anyone.  Nor does it expect its challenges to be proportionate.  You may have to go intimidate/silence/kill some humans to preserve the Masquerade, where the greatest challenge is "how to do this while destroying their credibility or making it look like natural causes?"  Or the Prince might send you to go kill a sixth generation Sabbat Bishop from the 8th century, because haha fuck you.  A big challenge might come in the form of a corporate takeover, an FBI investigation into the city's police force, or an abomination smashing through a wall.

Customization allows PCs to play to their strengths in a brutally unfair world.  No one wants a fair fight in Vampire.  The very concept is literally repugnant to any sensible vampire.  

So, if I have the customization options for everything about my PC in a level system, I'm no longer expecting to fight Giants at level 8.  It becomes variable, it becomes about planning and ambush, it becomes about playing to your strengths and preparing.  

One of the mainstays of any D&D-like is walking into a dungeon with only a vague idea of what's in there.  That's actual suicide in Vampire - for fucks sake, just staying too long in there is actual suicide, the worst trap possible is the sun.

Quote from: GreyICE;843432Because it subverts the entire point of a level system.  The point of a level system is so that you could graduate into bigger and better challenges - greater dangers, more grandiose traps, larger monsters, more epic treasure.

Granted. Let me clear up a few things that might actually address some of these concerns below. When you say "Level system" - I'm fully understanding what you're talking about. My assumptions are that whatever pile of abilities you get from a "D&D Level" as represented by whatever pile of abilties you get in a given class-levelup, is commensurate to the same XP-ability purchases you'd buy in a Vampire-like system.

That said... I'll try to explore this with you point by point <-inadvertant pun! woo!

Quote from: GreyICE;843432To do that, Gygax gave us a series of general progressions.  There weren't too many, you weren't intended to get super high (none of this level 20/30 nonsense), you were just intended to grow and expand over your career and go to more dangerous and cooler places.  They were even individually titled, to map your growth.

/agreed. It wasn't a big deal or even necessary pre-3e. So I have no qualms about this observation. In fact it probably serves a demarcation of import when talking about the differences between D&D editions.

Quote from: GreyICE;843432There was an expectation that things would be generally... proportionate.  Fair isn't the right word, nor is balanced (neither is a concept that is overly worth pursuing) but there was an idea that you'd be expected to handle certain things at certain levels, and run screaming at lower levels.  That was part of the point - shit, we're level 8, time to go kill that Giant that killed Rob and made us all run away at level 3.

This is good.  In fact this is the only thing good about the level system.  But it is a very good thing.  

Okay. Here's where we get into the good stuff. My first immediate reaction is to say: It depends on what kinda game you run. I manage my games a little organically. I use "levels" only as a demarcation of what the powerlevel of the creature is and fit it organically into my campaign world (you and many many others may not necessarily do this). So my monsters aren't necessarily static either.

Using your example... if a Giant is at location X when you and your party were 3rd level and scared you off, and now you're 8th... and you go there, in my games he may/may not even be there. Or he might have accrued his own minions by then. Or maybe he's found a mate. OR it might just be the same ol' Giant. The issue for me as a GM is to figure out what the Giant has been doing this entire time while the PC's have been 'leveling up' other than waiting around to be slaughtered by them at 8th level, heh. More to the point - I try to make my games seem like they're living and breathing places. Levels to me are just the abstraction of the PC's skill/powerlevel.

There are definite advantages to using the Level mechanic - as you pointed out. You can have CR challenges etc. It's worth noting I didn't require any of these derived metasystems in 1e/2e (Ironically I think D&D does a shitty job of this, because it doesn't weight Feats, Spells, skills, and class abilities against one another, in 3.x/PF. See Fantasycraft for a REALLY well done representation of this). If D&D actually did balance their class abilites/spells/feats against one another I suspect you and I could have both of our ideas without a problem at all. Both systems could exist in the same book.

Quote from: GreyICE;843432Now, lets examine Vampire (mostly because it gives me less of a headache than GURPS).  Vampire does not expect minimal competence at any task from anyone.  Nor does it expect its challenges to be proportionate.  You may have to go intimidate/silence/kill some humans to preserve the Masquerade, where the greatest challenge is "how to do this while destroying their credibility or making it look like natural causes?"  Or the Prince might send you to go kill a sixth generation Sabbat Bishop from the 8th century, because haha fuck you.  A big challenge might come in the form of a corporate takeover, an FBI investigation into the city's police force, or an abomination smashing through a wall.

I'm going to disagree here on a point. Vampire works like this - yes. But this is also how I run my D&D games - like a sandbox. NPC's of varying power-levels exists where they need/can exist. If they have enemies - there must be, in the gameworld, a reason this status-quo exists. In Vampire it's explicit. In D&D it's that way only if you run your games like a sandbox. If the sign says - "Here be Dragons" and your 3rd level character hex-crawled your asses beyond that sign... there damn well might be a dragon.

If you run your D&D games like a module where everything is pre-determined or prescribed... then yeah, this is a problem. I bypass this issue because I prefer the sandbox, and larger scope campaign-style.

Quote from: GreyICE;843432Customization allows PCs to play to their strengths in a brutally unfair world.  No one wants a fair fight in Vampire.  The very concept is literally repugnant to any sensible vampire.  

So, if I have the customization options for everything about my PC in a level system, I'm no longer expecting to fight Giants at level 8.  It becomes variable, it becomes about planning and ambush, it becomes about playing to your strengths and preparing.

Yep. Perhaps that's the only real difference here. Using a Level-based mechanics is a bit more meta-gamey. You're a 10th-level fighter? As a GM you generally immediately know what that PC is capable of. Same with the rest of the classes. The downside is they're kept in those respective templates unless they're highly multi-classed but let's face it, it makes less sense to do that unless you're running a very light-handed game.

I'm curious what some of the OSR-folks around here feel about this, in particular.

Quote from: GreyICE;843432One of the mainstays of any D&D-like is walking into a dungeon with only a vague idea of what's in there.  That's actual suicide in Vampire - for fucks sake, just staying too long in there is actual suicide, the worst trap possible is the sun.

LOL definitely true on the Vampire part. But I'm less sure about that with D&D. It's definitely part of everyone's experience to a point. But I think after some years, most of my D&D games have become just that. Not sure if that's true across the board here, or it's just me. I'm a die-hard sandbox GM. But I like to flesh out my sandbox and pack as much stuff for my PC's to play with as possible. I don't think this *requires* a Level-based system at all.

Whew! Hope that wasn't too much to read.

Massive shifts in expectations and how the game is played.

I no longer remember where I've said what, but tough shit.

"At least one referee and from four to fifty players"  D&D volume 1 page 5

Many people have stated online that they thought this meant Gary had 50 people in one room.  Now you know why I think the vast majority of gamers are too stupid to shit unassisted, especially since Volume 3 page 35 says "As the campaign goes into full swing it is probable that there will be various
groups going every which way and all at different time periods."

But there I go expecting to people to read.

So.  In Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Tekumel, and most of the early games, there was a pool of players who would play at various times in various combinations.  In all the time I played in Greyhawk, I NEVER played with the same people twice, and certainly never with the same PCs twice.

Gary was running different groups in various combinations several times a week.  I usually played Thursday nights... but I never knew what other players, or PCs, I would be playing with.

Furthermore, Gary had the nerve to run the game for OTHER people on days other than Thursday.  WHICH MEANS SOME OTHER SON OF A BITCH PLAYER CHARACTER IS GOING TO FIND MY TREASURE AND GET MY XP!

My point (and I do have one) is that this paradigm changes everything in many ways, especially since Gary refused to say "Hup ho you get to the third level."   You had to declare every move every time... only logical in the face of continually changing dungeon maps, shifting corridors, teleporters, and wandering monsters.  You had to crawl your way in, and crawl your way out.

This had several effects.  First of all, it meant that you wanted to stay down in the dungeon as long as you could; there was NO guarantee that some other player character wouldn't steal a treasure if you left it down there.  Some PCs even carved their initials in the walls just so you'd know who'd looted that trunk.

Since you wanted to stay down as long as possible, ANY increase in hit points was seen as a blessing.  Our response to the whole "dead level" pants-pissing would have been "if you don't want those hit points I'll take them."

Furthermore, since you never knew who you'd be playing with, it was an ADVANTAGE that a 4th level fighter was virtually identical to a 6th level fighter except for a few hit points.  For that matter, crossing a "level group" usually meant only a +1 to hit probability and saving throws.  The net effect of this was that a 4th level fighter was an ENTIRELY VIABLE member of a party of 7-9th level characters.

Since every time you hit a dead end you got a wandering monster check, and if you were surprised you got hit from the rear (hurr hurr) it meant that your back rank had better be fighters or clerics in plate armor.  You wouldn't necessarily expect them to be as heavy as your front line, but even a 3rd or 4th level character has enough HP to last a few rounds until the heavy hitters can step up.

Of course, since you wanted to stay down as long as possible, and you had to map your way down and back, it also meant that the whole "fifteen minute workday" simply does not exist.  Nobody wanted to spend thirty real time minutes of mapping and wandering monster checks to fight one combat and then spend another thirty minutes of real time getting back to the surface.... if your map was accurate.  ("Have we been teleported or does the map suck?"  "Maybe both!")

Which meant that the fighters did most of the kiling.  That's important enough that I'm going to say that again.  THE FIGHTERS DID MOST OF THE KILLING.  "Save your spells, we can handle this" was the usual battle cry.  The longer the magic users kept their spells, the longer we could stay down in the dungeon and get treasure for XP, because if we left something behind SOME OTHER SON OF A BITCH PC WOULD GET IT.

So "dead levels" just were never an issue.  Period.

OG, or GOS now, thank you.  I appreciate getting to feel young again, and every time I read your posts, I'm transported backwards in time.  I get this wonderful vision of frolicking through the green grass as behind me I see a waving cane and a cry of "get off my lawn you filthy children!"

I don't know if humor is the point, or a wonderful side effect, but you're one of my favorite posters regardless.

Quote from: GreyICE;843486OG, or GOS now, thank you.  I appreciate getting to feel young again, and every time I read your posts, I'm transported backwards in time.  I get this wonderful vision of frolicking through the green grass as behind me I see a waving cane and a cry of "get off my lawn you filthy children!"

I don't know if humor is the point, or a wonderful side effect, but you're one of my favorite posters regardless.

Well, thanks!

I try to make a point (different people playing at different times was one reason we loved every HP) but do it in an entertaining way.

For me the big advantage of levels is they bundle things together. When you get a level you get additional magical ability (maybe), skills (maybe), better fighting ability, better saves and better hit points.

A lot of systems without classes and levels let you just choose one of those things and dump all of your points into it. Especially in systems that make you play flat costs for ranks of skills at chargen and escalating costs for ranks of skills it's generally a good idea power-wise to make a one trick pony and absolutely dominate in one area, i.e. make a combat god who can't tie his shoes.

Class based systems don't allow you to overspecialize to that degree. Every magic-user advances in hand to hand combat ability at least a bit. Every fighter gets better at dodging dragon's breath.

Even fighters get better at FIGHTING not whatever narrow skill a non class-based game has chopped fighting into while still being incompetent at the rest.

Which is why I really like the FATE pyramid. Let's me play a swashbuckler who's good with his sword but can also talk, ride a horse and swing from chandeliers who isn't going to get overshadowed in combat by Fighty McFighterson. Although some versions allow stunts or what have let the one tricky ponyism in the back door. FATE has a lot of other annoying stuff but the pyramid is as ingenious as it is simple.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;843464Which meant that the fighters did most of the kiling.  That's important enough that I'm going to say that again.  THE FIGHTERS DID MOST OF THE KILLING.  "Save your spells, we can handle this" was the usual battle cry.

I started gaming with red box D&D. We played it exclusively for many years before trying out other systems. In all those years nobody, NOBODY I knew of played a magic-user (later known as wizard) because the rules were not in their favor at low levels. Why play a weakling wizard, when you could play an awesome fighting-man?!

How did the wizards contribute in your gaming experiences? Were they there just for identifying arcane traps and items?

Edit - Coz if so, wouldn't it be the most sensible thing to do to hire a 1st level NPC wizard for the job?

Quote from: Moracai;843561How did the wizards contribute in your gaming experiences? Were they there just for identifying arcane traps and items?

Edit - Coz if so, wouldn't it be the most sensible thing to do to hire a 1st level NPC wizard for the job?

For me, who played magic users a-lot. At the early levels it was holding a spell for a crucial moment. Sleep spell if we thought we would encounter a group, Identify, Knock, especially Detect magic if I was in a more utility mode. I tossed darts most of the time and in BX those were 1d6 damage darts, usually trying to tag anything that looked down to its last few HP. My other contribution was as the "knows languages, negotiates, and can map person."

Once made it to level 3 Continual Light was a godsend spell to the group. Later Wizard Eye, Remove Curse, and so on.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;843464snip

Oh, wow. It sounds like you really enjoyed that, and I'm glad for that. I really, really am. But I'm also really glad that there was a lot more to choose from -- genres, playstyles, rule sets, etc. -- by the time I got into gaming in 2000(though I'd read some books such as GURPS 3E and been interested since at least 1995). If my first experience with tabletop RPGs resembled what you just described, I honestly think I'd have left and never looked back.

It kind of reminded me of that old story I once heard about Gygax running a dungeon at a convention, I think fairly early on in the life of D&D, and finding out that even at that point a lot of people didn't play the way his own group did. If memory serves, all but one of the groups died in the first trap -- a pit on the other side of an illusory wall. The one group that actually managed to get past that by making use of their 10-foot poles died on the second trap. I forget what the second trap was; I saw the story quite a while ago. And according to Gygax, these are things his own group at home would have had no trouble with because of the way they approached dungeon crawling, and it actually surprised him that literally everyone he played with that day succumbed to the dungeon so fast.

Old stories are neat, but yeah -- I'm so happy to be gaming now instead of then.

Quote from: Daztur;843542A lot of systems without classes and levels let you just choose one of those things and dump all of your points into it.

This is an attribute of the system.

Quote...it's generally a good idea power-wise to make a one trick pony and absolutely dominate in one area, i.e. make a combat god who can't tie his shoes.

The system doesn't make that a good way to develop your character, it only makes it a possible way to develop your character.

If Mr. One-trick-pony never needs to go anywhere without his hand forged twin katanas and never has to do anything in the game except cut things up with his twin katanas that is not an attribute of the system. That is an attribute of the play style.

If your character is too overspecialized in any game I run, then be prepared to trip over your untied shoelaces while balancing on a roof beam over the giant vat of molten lead as you sneak your way into the villain's chateau. Broiled pony...mmmmm. And good luck cutting your way out of the vat of molten led with your hand forged twin katanas.