"RPG level progression" Topic

Why is it that most RPG's have you starting off as footstool second class and you have to wade through hordes of bugs, rats and baby kobolds before you are even vaguely competent enough to hit somebody who isn't even dodging standing three feet away from you about 25% of the time.

Many heroes in films and books start at a competent level, they don't have to go through all the hoops to earn their badge. And even if they have been on a few adventures, most have abilities that make most endeavours suicidal. A beginning adventurer may have something like 15% climbing or 7% swimming ability because he is forced to spread his tiny pool points over other abilities and get at least 30-40% in spear or dagger to hope to survive their first encounter.

Even the more epic-based games barely give you enough abilities to survive the odd bandit attack.

Granted, you are meant to earn those skills and abilities and the journey is the most important part yadda yadda … But very few games even give you the option of making a competently skilled character from the get go. The GM can arbitrarily give you a stat boost or start you off al level x, but I don't think I've ever seen an RPG that had a set of rules that said. "If you want to skip the early level stuff …"

So even if we assume that players go through the hoops and play a campaign, by the time things get interesting and you're looking forward to challenging giants and dragons, most campaigns are winding down. I suspect far more people spend their gaming careers chasing kobold runts rather than facing evil knights and dragons. I'm not saying low level play can't be fun, but does that automatically mean that playing at a competent level is boring ? And I mean competent with a 75%+ chance of hitting a stationary object three feet away, not power play with 387% attacks etc …

Is this one of the tropes we simply take for granted ? Do people consider starting at a higher level of ability cheating ? Is playing at a level of competence not challenging enough ?

It feels even sillier in video games like World Of Warcraft where you cross into a higher level area and suddenly the farmers and dogs and vagrants are unstoppable killing machines compared you your lowly PC… you can't even land a blow on them.

I never liked the whole 'level up' thing. It's one reason I prefer games like Runequest and Call of Cthulhu and Traveller. The 'level up' an illusory carrot on a stick to keep certain sorts of players happy I guess.
I want my PC to always have some chance to fight other mortals and never be so powerful that he can just shrug off mundane threats, such as a pack of wild dogs.

The thinking is that if you want to start at a middle level of competence, then you just roll up 7th level (or whatever) characters. They're providing the entire range.

What they're trying to simulate is the Hero's Journey. That involves them starting out in a wussy everyman state, where their main concern is getting out to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters.

It's also a conceit that most NPC noncombatants are 1st level. Sean K Reynolds (of D&D3 fame) once did an analysis to "prove" this, but then realized midway that most commoners should actually be 4-6th level. Which means they're not vulnerable to being killed by house cats and aggressive bowls of gruel.

To me, it's all just a general problem with level-based systems in general. Games like GURPS and others don't bother with levels (though you can retrofit them in). Instead, you just bump skills as required. That lets you build commoners with point totals that show a realistic range of competence.

The problem is that not every character has their Hero's Journey, like Conan, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Tintin, Han Solo, Aragorn … They start the game with the ability to swing a sword, shoot a gun and pilot a ship without running the chance of bumping into an asteroid 75% of the time.

And very few games actually seem to have explicit provisions for making a more skilled character from the get go, you either make up an absolute beginner or the GM has to allow this and tweak the creation rules to do so.

It seems that even if we do have many options we remain wedded to some concepts like everything has hit points, everything moves on hexes and RPG players are supposed to start at the bottom of the ladder.

In Warhammer Fantasy RPG you can actually create a "new" character on his second "career". This means, IIRC, you start with a full set of skills from your first career.

In Savage Worlds you can also start as an experienced character, which gives you more points for character reation. You can buy traits and skills that give you a suite that gives you a bonus.

Yes, I do think that it is a little silly to start everyone from level 1, so these days I prefer to start my players at level 3 or 4, so they can build a character with some established skills.

I don't think I've ever played a game where this was a problem. In D&D we played a high level adventure once where we all started with some number of experience points which we could divide among classes or use as a single class.

I think it was enough to make us about 18th level.

"It seems that even if we do have many options we remain wedded to some concepts like everything has hit points, everything moves on hexes and RPG players are supposed to start at the bottom of the ladder."

I don't think this is true at all. I don't think I've ever played an RPG where things moved on hexes. Half the time we didn't use minis at all.

Also we usually started our D&D characters at 3rd level.

Of course tweaking is required, it is an RPG. RPGs are just guidelines, the GM has to do most of the heavy lifting. In other words it is not only allowed for the GM to "cheat" it is his responsibility if it will make things more interesting.

This is why I play GURPS. You want high-fantasy uber characters? Start with 1000 points, you want gritty ones then start with 100 (or even 50) point characters. The best part is that even the 1000 point characters will be killed by a single hit from a sword (if they are a normal human), getting that hit in will NOT be easy though.

I think a lot of it comes down to roll playing vs Role playing. People want that carrot to show that they are getting better and kicking ass. Others want to have the story.

My last campaign I played in showed that to the extreme. A young min/maxer played a Warforged Paladin and I was playing a half-orc thief. I couldn't pick a lock or a pocket but I was good at smashing someone in the back of the head with a club to rob them.

As the campaign rolled on he became a fallen Paladin and got a powerful magic sword coupled with different skills made it he was killing things with almost every swing.

After being possessed by a demon found bound in a green gemstone I chose to progress as a sorcerer for 2 levels. I was locked against poor stats to not increase in power beyond the two levels, but I took them as I felt it was an "awakening" of his locked in powers. I continued on as a thief but became more rounded one later one based on my change.

The other two players in the party were more middle ground than us and the DM didn't mind and worked for both ideas of game play when he could.

If the Warforged player had more skills right from the beginning he would have found it boring that he couldn't get ever better.

I preferring the growth opportunity would have not enjoyed the foes we would have had to fight to keep the power levels even.

Who kills the kobolds when you start at the power to fight orcs?

Heh. It's TRADITION!

Though, seriously: there are RPGs out there that aren't so tied to level. My favorites are Legend of the Five Rings and Classic DeadLands — both of which are skills-driven. (L5R sort-of has levels, where you "rank up" in your schools, but it's triggered by raising your skills enough.)

DeadLands was especially good if you're looking for a flatter power curve, and quick and easy NPC generation.

Even from the early days I thought it was silly that at first level you could almost die from any wild swing with a beer mug, but much later on somebody couldn't even kill you with a poisoned dagger in the back. I once fiddled with a system that assigned weapons a "chance to kill," modified by hit location and the skill of the user and defender (up or down in all these cases). It was too complex, really, but I still like the idea. The premise is that though to a defender, even an experienced combat warrior, a dagger may be "only" a dagger, but it's still a dagger. That goblin can still kill you… but you can also still kill a dragon. Experience became about increasing the odds of survival and not about becoming invulnerable to what still should be a potentially deadly attack.

Well hit points don't always have to increase with level.

In Stormbringer and other Chaosium games you had hit points that were based on your constitution but didn't really go up. If you got hacked by a two handed sword you were probably going to die no matter how experienced your character was.

The trouble with the D&D version is that it is supposed to take into account not only toughness but also physical vigor.

So when you are fighting at a higher level you have more experience and can use less of your energy in the fight or something like that.

This doesn't really work very well when falling off of a building or out of a flying pyramid.

There have been some game systems that allow players to use hero points or some bonuses to give themselves a heroic boost when they need it. That sort of system allows to have a player who can stand up to most moderate threats and can still take on the odd big bad if required.

There was a homebrewed game called the Song of Arda for playing in Middle Earth that used a variant of the Pendragon system and it's system of passions, if you passed your passion test you were granted a bonus to your abilities. Their example was that Boromir rolled a critical for his friendship with Merry and Pippin and got a massive boost to his abilities which explains the trail of dead orcs he left behind before they shot him to pieces.

I've been thinking about a system that allows a player to have some "editorial control" over his character, allowing him to pass difficult tests, and giving the GW an automatic failure or weakness to use against him later in the game, so that you could defeat some incredible odds, but at a cost. So this gives your character the ability to go Conan in an epic fight only to knock himself out while trying to get away later on (as happens in one of the stories)

There have been some game systems that allow players to use hero points or some bonuses to give themselves a heroic boost when they need it.

In my experience of 'hero points' so far, unless they are held to a premium they tend to turn into a secondary batch of hitpoints… and remove a lot of trepidation from PCs entering dangerous situations.
Deadlands has them and our group thought nothing of kicking open doors and going in blasting… which is fine if that's the sort of game you want. But I was thinking it was more of a horror game… and hero points seem to work against any potential for scaring the players.

But I was thinking it was more of a horror game… and hero points seem to work against any potential for scaring the players.

As written, DeadLands was camp horror. Think "Army of Darkness."

For the game I ran, I pared down the back story until the outward reality was fairly normal — which meant that the PCs faced mere mortals more often than not, which made the supernatural happenings properly creepy.

I haven't RPGed in years, tho I'm thinking of trying out some of the interesting new systems like Dungeon World. A few random thoughts tho:

Hit Points were never meant to provide a method to shrug off actual wounds. From the earliest days of DnD, they were meant to represent skill, luck and experience: the ability to turn blades, dodge out of the way of a dragon's breath, sense the backstabber and grab his/her wrist, etc. Not Superman style invulnerability! I suppose this is mostly a matter of in-game story-telling.

I believe the 1st edition DMG had a system for producing higher level PCs, even including magic item generation. But it seems to me that leveling up doesn't seem to be much of a trope any more; as mentioned a more gradual improvement of skills seems to be the preferred system these days.

I'm sure lots of folks remember the old 'Monty Hall' debate. If characters are not only high level, but have so many artifacts, magic items and other bonuses that nothing can conceivably defeat them, obviously the fun disappears! Usually this was attributed to inexperienced DMs and greedy players; some theorized that game systems simply broke down around 20th level.

I recently purchased The One Ring and found it to be a near complete reversal of this style of play. Wealth and possessions exist, but are abstracted and secondary to the goal of defeating the Shadow. They are a means to an end, not an end in themselves – which was the real problem with a lot of early RPGs, it was all about loot, not story! Each character in TOR has a background, culture and a good selection of skills, definitely not novices. Combat is somewhat simplified but always hazardous.

In short, RPGs have matured to the point where I may reenter the arena!

In my experiences, at 1st level, Players need to rely almost entirely upon their wits, and their ability to think fast, on their feet. Once they gain skills and abilities, it becomes less wits, and more dice rolling.

A classic example, is the AD&D module, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Players start out with 1st level characters. They have to do a lot of detective work, initially, to figure out what is really going on, and who they can trust (time is against them, as villagers are being forcibly 'recruited' into the cult every few days). After a healthy dose of detective work, they find a dungeon in a swamp, and it becomes a combat-oriented, search and destroy game, with a 5th level(?) NPC mage to assist them in their battle against the boss leader monster.

I've played that module with four different groups, all playing 1st level characters. Everybody had a blast, in each separate group -- I was the only person to go through it more than once, only because I was the DM running it. Every player came up with different tactics, ideas, and methods of detective work, and combat approaches. It was fun and exciting every time I ran it, and because of the different players' approaches, each run-through was unique, and different.

All of the players, from all four groups, fondly remembered that adventure. They all found it particularly challenging: all they had to work with, was their own insights, and ideas; they did not have much in the way of skills, to solve the mysteries. It was some of the very finest role-playing I've ever experienced, and I have been actively playing since 1980… YMMV. Cheers!

In my experiences, at 1st level, Players need to rely almost entirely upon their wits, and their ability to think fast, on their feet. Once they gain skills and abilities, it becomes less wits, and more dice rolling.

This is generally why I prefer simpler, lower-powered games. I want to solve problems in terms of the in-game environment, not my character sheet.
As soon as a roleplayer starts yammering on about his 'character build' my eyes glaze over and I start looking for an exit.

I've had fun GM the same group of players in a low-level game (historical Anglo-Saxon England with real "ettins and elves and orcneas"), and also in a high-level game (Lone Wolf universe).

The trick is to pitch the challenge to the abilities of the characters and the mood of the universe. In the first it was "Cadfael, with more violence and monsters", and the players never knowing whether the cause of the mystery they were investigating was natural or supernatural.

In the second, I told the players "think Star Wars and you are jedis", and then had them embroiled in political intrigue, battle rebellion and hunt down villains, and they behaved suitably heroically.

I ran Traveller, Runequest, Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu games and it was always more about the story telling and the journey then leveling.

In Traveller it was so easy to make a new charcter that I never hesitated to kill a player if it advanced the story. The funny thing was that players got attached to those characters because of the story and wanting to be part of the story and would go out of their way to avoid scenes that might kill them. Do we charge the tech level 12 killerdroids or can someone hack them. We are in trouble with the local mob, what can we do to get out of trouble. So that when someone died it was a major part of the story.

I used to set the scene for call of cthulhu by just using candles, oil lanterns and flashlights for light. Mode is half the story in that game. The funny thing was at the end of a game noone minded if they had died or gone insane or even stopped the evil. They had fun just trying their best to prevent it.

Games that depend on leveling just seem to put that before the story telling. What would you rather remember? At 1st level I killed a 100 rats or we started a journey to find the lost Princess and my knight gave his life to save her in the last battle.

Some games like Rolemaster or MERP have a critical hit and fumble system that allow even beginning characters to land a telling blow or experienced veterans to make foolish mistakes. Granted, it's all based on how well you roll, but I've had a few high level characters get killed instantly because they got hit with a really nasty critical strike.

yeah, treasured characters that you love and have played for many sessions getting killed by a random dice roll… Yup, that really sucks and blows. And sucks the life out of RPG's for me. It should be about the story, not the dice roll. In my games characters only die if it moves the story along AND the player is happy with it.

And back to the main point, levels – yuck, that's an intrusive mechanic that poorly simulates experience and training. Especially when random benefits appear for no 'in game reason' only because the character is now 'level 10'. and I agree with Doug, I've seen players focuss on the gaining of levels rather than the story. Makes it more like a competitive and soulless computer game rather than an interactive story telling game between friends. Our group tends to play games that don't have levelling mechanic in them.

Ian

Yeah, it sucks when a character you've played for years gets killed by a random dice roll, but it happens. The other day I dusted off my old MERP characters and played them for old times' sake. This was meant to be a one-shot deal, and not part of the characters' official history. I even brought back a dead character, a dwarf warrior (later retconned to be his brother). So whatever happened didn't count.

In the game, my main character, a half-elf bard, was killed in the final battle. Again, this wasn't considered "canon" so no harm, no foul. But it seemed like a good way to officially end the campaign, which had died out suddenly. So I decided to make it official, hence the retconning of the other deceased character. It seemed like the right thing to do.

As for games without levels, I have played my share of those and enjoyed them. I tried to get my current group interested in them, but to no avail.

Here is an idea i'll toss out there. Levels can apply to many things differently, and are not tied directly to hitpoints or wounds.
To illustrate – You would not want a first level Lawyer to defend you in a criminal trial. You hire the 9th level lawyer, who also happens to be a 9th level politician, and a 7th level liar, but only a 1st level swimmer.
-Catch the drift?
So when your character starts an adventure they may have some sword practice, so they roll with on level 3 skill to use the thing. But they may only have 1st level bartering skills and wind up paying way too much for their equipment.
So beginning with a number of skill points to spend, possibly random generated, might make for the basis of a new system?