Author Topic: Leveling Up.  (Read 7020 times)

Offline kurashu

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 294
  • Tinker Mechanic Programmer Player
    • View Profile
Leveling Up.
« on: November 16, 2011, 11:12:12 AM »
What is your favorite system of leveling up? D&D3.5 class system where you always receive a feat at fighter 1, 3rd level spells at wizard 5, and become an outsider at monk 20 (easily the best capstone ever)? Or is is it Mutants & Masterminds where you get a handful of points and can choose what to change about your character? Or D&D4e where you get a selection of powers over levels (but always in the same progression)?

Or branching into video games, Dark Souls where you level one stat per level (for increasingly huge amounts of souls...)? Or Borderlands' and Dragon Age's linear skill trees? Or Skyrim's and Dragon Age II's skill trees? Or old school RPG where you receive a random increase to HP/Mana/Attack/Defense and either learn skills when you level or from items?

Offline veekie

  • Spinner of Fortunes
  • Epic Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 5423
  • Chaos Dice
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2011, 02:11:06 PM »
Leveled definitely, it has distinct advantages game wise where characters are dynamic, by ensuring availability of certain thresholds are clear. However, for abilities gained FROM leveling, I like branching skill trees over plug and play components(like spells/feats), mixed with a number of static abilities to round it out.
Everything is edible. Just that there are things only edible once per lifetime.
It's a god-eat-god world.

Procrastination is the thief of time; Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves; The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

Offline archangel.arcanis

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 316
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2011, 02:20:32 PM »
I like skill trees. Though I'm liking a bit of a hybrid system i'm in now. It essentially has 2 numbers for level Tier and Rank. Each rank represents a level and you have a list of choices that you can take, some are limited to once a tier and others have higher limits. After so many ranks you go up a tier which re-opens those you had maxed out on previously. Obviously some things require you be a certain tier to get but that is independent of the leveling system.

Offline SneeR

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1531
  • Sneering
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2011, 06:09:36 PM »
Dark Souls' leveling system is downright disappointing. For pen-an-paper RPGs, leveling up needs to have oomf in my eyes. Getting +2 damage, 10 more hp, or 2 more stamina is not a satisfying reward, more of an afterthought for when you just happen to have enough souls...

I like leveled systems, to be sure, because nonleveled systems are staticly dynamic. Basically, you add points ad infinitum until nothing can match you unless it is designed to. Best to just get a chunk of points at the same time and call it a "level" so you can have level-appropriate encounters.

I like to have a list of abilities available at each level, not necessarily linked to each other, but definitely building off of simliar abilities from earlier levels.
A smile from ear to ear
3.5 is disappointingly flawed.

Offline Bozwevial

  • Epic Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3052
  • Developing a relaxed attitude toward danger
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2011, 02:15:23 PM »
I'm not a huge fan of skill trees where you have to pick up abilities early in the tree before you can take the upper-level ones unless:

1) The abilities scale with level, so that you can start over in a new tree or go down a new path and still get something that's appropriate for your level.

2) You get multiple tree advancements at once, so you can continue advancing in your primary tree while starting down a secondary/tertiary tree.
Homebrew Compendiums: D&D 3.5 4e/PF
IRC: #mmxgeneral on Rizon

Offline wotmaniac

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1586
  • Procrastinator in Chief
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2012, 07:28:33 PM »
[casts thread necromancy]

"Leveling up" definitely has its uses.  It gives a readily-recognizable landmark for judging advancement.  It's a lot easier reference point to say "level 12" than to say "143 character points"; and a lot more consistent for discerning power levels.

I, however, generally prefer a buy-as-you-go system (usually seen in skill-based systems).  The problem I have with leveling-up is that it gives you what I like to call "epiphany-based advancement" -- it just doesn't make any sense to me that you all of a sudden have all kinds of new/improved things all at once .... it just simply doesn't model RL development; whereas buy-as-you-go systems do this much better.

/2cp
« Last Edit: January 16, 2012, 07:30:46 PM by wotmaniac »

Offline SneeR

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1531
  • Sneering
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2012, 07:42:10 PM »
What if one leveled up more frequently yet had more levels overall? What if you leveled up every 5 fights rather than every 13? Would that remove some of the "epiphany" aspect? It would still allow power to be precisely gauged, certainly.
A smile from ear to ear
3.5 is disappointingly flawed.

Offline wotmaniac

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1586
  • Procrastinator in Chief
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2012, 08:15:55 PM »
Well .... while, yes, it does more finely granulate advancement; however, to me it seems like it would just be more tedious.

Take D&D for example:  let's say that you take the basic 20-level power structure and spread it out over 40 levels --
- BAB:
  -- "full" = +1 every other level
  -- "medium" = +1 every 3rd level (roughly)
  -- "poor" = +1 every 4th level
- Skill points: 1/2 normal per level (e.g., rogue = 4 ; fighter = 1 ; etc.)
- Spells:
  -- wizards = access new spell levels every 4th level, get only 1 new spell each level, etc.
    --- alternatively, you could have 18-20 spell levels .... have fun codifying that.
      ---- realistically, what you'd really need to do here is to take a whole new approach to casting -- anything that comes remotely close to resembling "spell levels" just wouldn't cut it.
- etc.
- etc.

So, sure, the finer granulation is closer to RL advancement .... however, breaking things out this far makes things much more complicated to track for the user; as such, it's probably better to leave this level of granularity to a computer to track.  Otherwise, if you're going to go through that much trouble to remove epiphany, going to a buy-as-you-go is easier to manage than more+smaller levels.


Note: I'm not necessarily saying that level-based is "bad".  Sure, it leaves me with a little itch to scratch; but I'm content to just accept it as a basic game conceit (in games that use it), and I move on.  (btw, my game-of-choice is D&D .... which goes to show that advancement schematic isn't everything)


Offline SneeR

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1531
  • Sneering
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2012, 08:40:15 PM »
what about a buy-as-you-go system that is level based? YOu get an allotted amount of points when you reach certain xp amounts, but it would be often enough that it would feel organic. While it might lend itself to almost MMORPG numbers of levels (hundreds even?) each level would have only mild difference from the next to allow more organic growth. Minor epiphanies. This wouldn't work for systems like D&D obviously, because you might leave the RNG way before cool stuff starts happening...

Needs work...
A smile from ear to ear
3.5 is disappointingly flawed.

Offline wotmaniac

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1586
  • Procrastinator in Chief
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2012, 11:49:03 PM »
level-based pay-as-you-go? 
As close to this as I have seen is with the book Buy the Numbers.  It took all the elements of characters (feats, skills, saves, class features, etc.) and assigns everything individual XP values, so that you can buy everything a la carte. 
It's sorta level-based in that you're capped by your # of HD as far as how much of a given thing you can have -- e.g., stuff like BAB, CL, etc., cannot exceed your HD, and so forth (btw, even HD are purchased like this).
Oh, and it's done under the 3.x OGL.

It really does function much like a skill-based buy-as-you-go system, but still maintains the "level" feature.

I do own the book; but I haven't had a chance to use it yet, nor have I had the chance to tear everything apart to see how well everything is priced (as far as balance issues go) -- I do happen to know, however, that it costs more to build a PHB caster than it does a PHB martial class.
The biggest downside that I noticed right off the bat was that it really only had Core material covered; however, it does give some guidelines for pricing new abilities (such as from PrCs, etc.).

I'm considering using this for my next game .... I'll see.  It's gonna be an E6 game, so I'm a little concerned about variety.
(I was just going to use Generic Classes from UA; but I've gotten a special request for Buy the Numbers from one of my players, so it's up for consideration).

Offline kurashu

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 294
  • Tinker Mechanic Programmer Player
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2012, 12:48:00 AM »
Sounds like Mutants & Masterminds in terms of leveling.

As for skill trees, I was toying with making a leveling system that used Skyrim-styled skill trees -- essentially voiding classes -- and mixing that with DAII's skill trees (some skills are new abilities, some are passive abilities and some are essentially Bo9S stances). But then I realized how much work creating a leveling system is -- let alone a game system for it to exist in.

Offline SolEiji

  • Epic Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3041
  • I am 120% Eiji.
    • View Profile
    • D&D Wiki.org, not .com
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2012, 12:55:47 AM »
Since I'm actually building a system... this sounds kind of what I have.  I don't have classes per se, but I do have archetypes which determine the system's equal to BAB, saves, and HD.  They're otherwise blank templates though, and you buy the rest of your powers from Skyrim-esque skill trees.  This way you could be leveling in "Fighter", but choose to sink points into Healing Magic, Melee weapons, and Diplomacy, maybe a sort of paladin without actually having a paladin class.
Mudada.

Offline brainpiercing

  • PbP Game Master
  • ***
  • Posts: 281
  • Thread Killer
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2012, 12:03:36 PM »
What I would wish for is a systematic way to decrease number climb but still measurably increase effectiveness and versatility. The problem with number climb is the relation to the RNG, and also effect that adding many small boosts can add up to an unbeatable combination. A levelled system can only supply this if not all values are always increased each level.

Now the only way I can think of is XP-buy systems with drastically increasing costs for more points, or rather, a curve that starts slow but then increases in slope. There is a German game that does at least this fairly well, except it fails in so many other areas it's really not funny. In that game you have to look up the cost for a certain value or increase of a skill or attribute in a table. There are various such tables that range from cheap and flat increase to really steeply sloping cost increases. The game then mucked up and added lots of quirks to change which table you pick your skill or attribute from, with an end result of absolute loss of comparability. (Well, you could build a character with the exact same stats, numbers wise, and use double the starting points on one.)

And while the system theoretically encourages branching out, it did produce quite similar characters in the end, if you kept wanting to buy efficiently, while on the other hand penalizing this kind of efficient buying with a drastic drop of effectiveness once harder opposition came around. Or the other way around - if you sucked up the cost increase and kept increasing your main ability then in the end you usually still had a possible game breaker.

What I would love is to encourage broadening with a wide array of abilities, while also taking a few step-wise increases at intervals, in order to gain a "real" boost in (numerical, or statistical) power, and not just in versatility.  This means that you have to introduce more non-numerical abilities, but only "magical" abilities can really do this.

Offline X-Codes

  • DnD Handbook Writer
  • ****
  • Posts: 2001
  • White, Fuzzy, Sniper Rifle.
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2012, 09:16:16 PM »
Since I'm actually building a system... this sounds kind of what I have.  I don't have classes per se, but I do have archetypes which determine the system's equal to BAB, saves, and HD.  They're otherwise blank templates though, and you buy the rest of your powers from Skyrim-esque skill trees.  This way you could be leveling in "Fighter", but choose to sink points into Healing Magic, Melee weapons, and Diplomacy, maybe a sort of paladin without actually having a paladin class.
If you can pull it off such that the paperwork is either minimal or front-ended (you do it all while leveling, but not so much while playing), then I like this.  The more games I play, the more I see that paperwork at the gaming table, during the game, should absolutely be kept to a minimum.  This is handled pretty well in 4e (there's not a lot of paperwork involved at all in this game, sure, but what paperwork there is happens almost only at level-up), but only decently in 3.5e (there's a lot of paperwork inherent to vanican spellcasters, and even more mundane characters can have a lot to keep track of if they take certain feats).

As for computer games, I wouldn't mind if levels are minimalist (Skyrim) or eliminated altogether (Ultima Online is the only example I can think of that did it well at all).  Balance between skills/abilities becomes important in these games, especially considering that you need to make it such that characters can't abuse the advancement system.  In PnP, this would be a lot of paperwork, but it can all be handled on the back end in a computer game.

Offline Amechra

  • Epic Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4560
  • Thread Necromancy a specialty
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #14 on: February 11, 2012, 03:16:27 PM »
I, personally, for reasons unknown to myself, hate point-based systems.

This is pretty much the only reason I never got into Incarnum and Psionics, why skills annoy me greatly, and why I don't ever want to play M&M.

I've actually been working on a "leveling" system in my head (i.e., nothing is definite so far), where instead of leveling, you instead swap class features.

So, at game start, you might have a fighter with "Bonus HP", "Bonus HP", "Bonus Damage with Swords", and "Bonus to Shields"; then, at some determined point, you could swap off one of those "Bonus HP" abilities for something that improves saves, or that increases damage, or that lets you wear better armor, or even that lets you access the weakest tier of class features from another class (so you could trade "Bonus HP" or "Bonus to Shields" with "Sneak Attack" or "Cantrips")

You could also increase the frequency of use/power of a class feature with one of these swaps, instead; so you could make one of that "Bonus Damage with Swords" into "Even More Bonus Damage with Swords."

Then, every 3 swaps, you would get a Perk, which would be roughly the equivalent of a feat or a skill in DnD.

It really hasn't been fleshed out at all, but eh.
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

"Now that everyone's so happy, this is probably a good time to tell you I ate your parents."

Offline M16AMachinegun

  • Lurker
  • *
  • Posts: 24
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #15 on: February 23, 2012, 12:17:53 AM »
wotmaniac mentioned a system that pushes back class scaling to level 40 rather than 20. I think i might have to toy around with that idea, that sounds awesome.

So, what, BAB and Spells/psionic power scaling gets pushed, back, in exchange, more skill points and HP?

Offline wotmaniac

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1586
  • Procrastinator in Chief
    • View Profile
Re: Leveling Up.
« Reply #16 on: February 23, 2012, 09:11:59 AM »
The idea would be to scale everything back, and just level faster.  The idea being that your gains aren't quite so epiphanous.
Naturally, you would have to be scale back encounters as well.

Skill points would get cut in half, and I haven't put much thought in to what you'd have to do to everything else. ....
 - HP -- use a die that is 2-steps smaller, halving CON bonuses ;
 - caster levels and spell variables would have to be re-worked ;
 - level-adjusted monsters (and associated HD) would now be quite viable for PCs ;

It really was just an off-the-cuff idea.