Continuing my question series involving the finer aspects of OSR/Dungeons and Dragons style gaming, we come to the Question of Levels...

Just how High should they go? Is the 1-20 of the modern day the preferred and best method to go with? About 4th editions 1-30 model?

Or is the older models of Levels not going up as far better?

Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?

Do you see a "sweet spot" in terms of Level rank and the best gaming in your campaign?

I'll say, at least in terms of non-fantasy OSR gaming, I prefer the level system only going up to about 10 or 11. Sine Nomine's games for example, or DCC based games like "Transylvania Adventures".

A more squeezed down level system for me...means you can give more goodies per level (Without necessarily making PC's Overpowered) and get to higher challenges in shorter running campaigns.

As I rarely run anyone campaign for over a year (Most being about 6-8 months of weekly play, switching entire game systems many times afterward..I dunno, blame being the Tail end of Gen X and starting with Whitewolf games), I've never ran a game from 1 to max level...Though I kinda want to..

What are your thoughts?

In 35 years of play I've only been involved in campaigns that reached 10th level a couple times. In old-school D&D, levels 10-12 were typically the end game.

Personally, levels 3-8 are the sweet spot for me.

Quote from: Orphan81;845274Has anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20? If so, how long did it take in real life, and was it worth it?

Do you see a "sweet spot" in terms of Level rank and the best gaming in your campaign?

In all my years of play and DMing, only one campaign reached level 12-14, and another level 10-11, and both times it was after two years playing it to the exception of anything else. What I have seen is that most of the time campaign stayed under 8th level.

In my OSR game FH&W (see sig below), all classes descriptions propose but 13 levels, with an optional rule to go beyond that, which is explicitly for legendary characters and sorcerers (those able to cast 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells).

Quote from: Orphan81;845274Is the 1-20 of the modern day the preferred and best method to go with? About 4th editions 1-30 model?
Or is the older models of Levels not going up as far better?

I prefer level 1-10 or 1-12.
20 or 30 levels suggest that you must get lots of increases in capability, stuff that clutters the character sheet and has to be remembered/considered during the game.

QuoteHas anyone here actually played, or ran a campaign that went from 1 to 20?

All (A)D&D campaigns (or games that were closely following the D&D mold) ended around level 6-8, after about 5 years of bi-weekly play.

QuoteDo you see a "sweet spot" in terms of Level rank

The sweet spot in all campaigns was level 3-7.

For AD&D, 14th was the highest I've ever seen at the table.  For BECMI we had some demi humans that had letter grades or something.

For my houseruled version of M74, I'm thinking 5 will be maximum for a normal person.  Then if they do or get something to become a mythic hero they can go to 9 (and then after that they can quest for immortality/godhood).

I actually think levels 1 and 2 are the sweet spot.  Everything is deadly and you have to really think about things in terms of real problem solving rather than relying on game resources like high HP.  3-5 is a good heroic middle ground and then 6+ can get out of hand once spells and magic items start accumulating.

I favor the lower levels as well. I've only played in one game that came close to 10 and I was glad when we hit reset and started up new PCs.

Not sure what the highest level I've personally had a character go from 1st on up- maybe 10th give or take.

10 or twelve levels is fine by me.

Like some others I rather like either around level 5, or the mid levels of 9-12. Seems around here that things get interesting. You have some good HP and equipment by then and you are starting to get into the more elaborate adventures around these stages. Getting any given magic-user I played past level 1 was the first hurdle. Then making it to level 5. If I could make it that far my goal then was to try for level 10. Past that I always had an eye on making it high enough to get at least one 9th level spell.

The rest of the group not sure on. Kefra seems the most laid back on it, the levels and powers arent so important as it is the adventure and how she can use what she has now. Being a mostly bow user, I suspect Jan doesnt care what level she is long as she can pincushion someone. As for the group I GM for. No clue really. James, like myself is an AD&D and BX player before so we are both more used to the open levels of yore. The others seem fine with a cap of 20.

I can only speak for D&D 3.0 and its relatives. For me the sweet spot is exactly level 6. I have played in campaigns that have went well above that to levels 12-14. Once I played in a shortish campaign that went from level 17 or 18 to level 20. That was a complete clusterfuck and the DM was way beyond his skill, trying to houserule/limit flying. Flying, for fucks sake! At the level, where wizards turn pebbles to dragons and back!

For a homebrew system, I think 10 levels is a nice round number.

For DnD and it's derivatives, I don't really like running it for characters above 11th level.
for my tastes, it get way too overpowered from then onwards.

Dark Albion generally assumes levels 1-20, but there's essentially no one in the world higher than about level 17 at the time of the campaign, and even being 9th level means you're a superstar.


Arrows of Indra is made for level 1-25 or thereabouts, and high-level play is where things only just start to make you a contender compared to the demigods wandering around.

When I was wrapping up my last D&Dish campaign (it was actually ACKS, but close enough), I told the players that, if I were to run something similar in the future, I'd make sure that characters never got above level 3 or so because, for the kind of gaming I enjoy, the system starts to break down after that point.

Level 3-7 = Sweet spot, generally.

I like levels 3 to 6, or a bit higher, myself.

Levels 0 and 1 are fun to play horror stories, "funnels", etc. If the characters start out as heroes, they should be level 3 at least... like Gygax did (allegedly).

Beyond level 9, I think you must know what you want. Do the characters become lords with castles, etc? Are you going to switch to domain management, wilderness exploration, travelling the planes, demi-gods, or what?

So I guess it depends on the edition.

Conceptually, there is a smaller difference between 3rd level characters in different editions than, say, 1st level or 15th level characters IMO.

In OD&D, the increasing experience curve takes care of it.

To become a Wizard, 11th level, requires a total of 300,000 experience points.

To advance beyond name level, each level requires the total it took to reach name level.  So, an 8th level Patriarch needs 100,000 XP to go from 8th to 9th, and a 9th level Patriarch needs 100,000 to go from 9th to 10th.

An 11th level Wizard needs 300,000 XP to go from 11th to 12th level, and 300,000 to go from 12th to 13th.

A 9th level Lord needs 240,000 XP to go from 9th to 10th level, and another 240,000 to go from 10th to 11th.

Et cetera.

Plus, it's 1 XP per gold * (monster level/your level).  So if your 10th level Lord just killed some ogres, the gold is worth 4/10 XP per gold piece.

At some point there just isn't enough gold, and there are more interesting things for your character to do.