So, if you think about it, D&D advancement (of ANY incarnation) is basically a scaling / pacing mechanic. I think we've had that discussion before, but to do a basic recap, the advancement system serves to present the illusion of escalating adversity in the SiS while keeping the overall meta-level of challenge relatively static.

And yet, nearly every game since has included such an advancement system under the mistaken notion that what it actually does is model increasing character skill.

I can't see how this is good for any game.

Being able to do the *same thing* better, when everything else gets better right along with you is the same thing as *staying the same.* Staying the same is boring.

It ocurrs to me that what an advancement systme should do to actually *be* an advancement system is focus on being able to do *new* stuff - say, gaining feats in 3e, new skills in Diablo II, etc. Advancement should open up new layers of strategy. Each inrease should give you more options to work with, more combinations to try.

A lot of games have this type of "get new cool stuff" mechanics tacked on as an apparent afterthought. I'd like to see an advancement system where the whole point is to get new kewelness.

Any ideas what this kewelness could represent, and how this could be achieved mechanically? Frex, what player behavior should trigger an increase in "kewelness options?"

Well, I liked the L5R approach, in which the new stuff you could do were essentially special rules exemptions or applications. This mean they had wide applicability rather than just being on the same scale as the opposition. Sure this game still expects the opposition to climb in accordance with the players, but to a lesser extent. I still liked the rather more qualitatove than quantitative aspects of this development system.

But more broadly, I think this is one of the aspects of social advancement largely missing from RPG. Mostly in real life, you get access to more kewelness and a broader range of activity by achieving rank and social authority. IMO, the concentration on personal skills in advancement mechanics has distracted appropriate attention from this aspect.

I generally agree. Many advancement systems are largely illusory. However even in old D&D and AD&D there was exception... magic, especially wizards (or what is now called arcane magic). Like D&D 3's feats and contracycle's cited L5R approach, each spell basically acted as its own rule or rule exception. All the strategic options this opened up transformed the class from the least powerful at low levels to the most powerful at high. A fighter could fight better, a thief could thieve better, a high level magic user was a qualitatively different thing than a lower level one.

The cleric is a trickier case as much of its magic is simply a more powerful version of something that it could do at low levels... Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, etc... but on the other hand they had stuff like Miracle as well.

I will also note that Fighters and Thieves actually did have a huge area of rules exception based mechanics, it was the equipment, particularly magical equipment.

This is typically one area where minimalist (short, generic, vanilla) gamist games come up lacking. They usually have an advancement system like you describe where characters become better at what they do, but since a GM will typically advance the opposition as well, they are really no better than they were and there are no new strategic/tactical options like you would have with a robust feat or spell system there is really no new interest for a gamist player.

One way to possibly reward players with new options would be to scrap simple numerical advancement entirely and only have rules exception based advancement. Instead of going from a Thievery 1 to Theivery 5 over time you would gain the feats Quick Hands, Stealthy Movement, Hands Like Glue, etc. These feats would not simply be of the "add +4 to your roll" variety, but would actually change the way the mechanics are handled for those tasks.

This is probably all very highly gamist though, but I think it would appeal to a generation brought up on M:TG and its ilk. This is pretty much the way CCGs work.

Which makes me wonder why there haven't been more CCG/RPG crossovers attempted.

Regards,
Mark

Some problems:

- arent quite a lot of "kewl powers" going to cancel each other out? Powerful Character gets Super-Stealth-Attack...Powerful Bad Guy gets Super Alertness... = Stalemate.

- an issue with expanding the range of strategies/powers etc. is that its going to increase the GM's job exponentially. You the player only have to figure out good strategies for your character.: the GM has to think up good strategies for a panoply of opponents. Im not sure how satisfied my inner Gamist would be if I realised I hadnt beaten the BBEG through my cunning, but because the GM hadnt realised that BBEG's powers X,Y, and Z would nix my powers A,B and C.

Paganini wrote:
Being able to do the *same thing* better, when everything else gets better right along with you is the same thing as *staying the same.* Staying the same is boring.

NN wrote: - arent quite a lot of "kewl powers" going to cancel each other out? Powerful Character gets Super-Stealth-Attack...Powerful Bad Guy gets Super Alertness... = Stalemate.

Marco wrote:
I think this is the difference between theory and practice. Fighting a dragon and fighting 5 orks is "the same thing"--you roll dice, you lose hitpoints, you declare attacks. Maybe you move.

But a first level party can't (IIRC) take on a dragon (even a young one--and while the youngest dragon might be in reach of a lowish level party certainly killing a hatchling dragon isn't the same dramatically as taking on an adult one).

A high level party can--and that's, IME, extra drama.

Mark Johnson wrote:

My question is if it is such better drama (and I take that to mean better play in your estimation, I could be wrong), why not just start the game at a high level and be out dispatching marauding Dragons and holding back an army of Orcs singlehandedly.

This:

NN wrote:
- arent quite a lot of "kewl powers" going to cancel each other out? Powerful Character gets Super-Stealth-Attack...Powerful Bad Guy gets Super Alertness... = Stalemate.

- an issue with expanding the range of strategies/powers etc. is that its going to increase the GM's job exponentially. You the player only have to figure out good strategies for your character.: the GM has to think up good strategies for a panoply of opponents. Im not sure how satisfied my inner Gamist would be if I realised I hadnt beaten the BBEG through my cunning, but because the GM hadnt realised that BBEG's powers X,Y, and Z would nix my powers A,B and C.

Hi Nathan,

There's no question that a person might look a high-level battle where more damage was dealt and taken than "ever before" and declare it the most 'bad-ass battle EVAR'--even when, percentage wise, it's identical to the first low-level battle he faced.

But in a way he's right: the starting characters didn't throw around that magnitude of fire power (of course if he declares the high-level batte *tougher* then what you are saying is true, IMO--he's making a mistake or he needs to define his terms to be completely clear).

But I don't square this:

Yes. I'm talking purely from a game mechanis standpoint. The challenge for the players at the meta level is (about) the same for a high level party fighting a dangerous enemy as it is for a low level party fighting a wuss.

Paganini wrote:
If you step back and look at it objectively, the game is trying to sucker you into thinking you've accomplished something when, actually, everything is the same as it ever was.

Marco wrote:
But I don't square this:

Yes. I'm talking purely from a game mechanis standpoint. The challenge for the players at the meta level is (about) the same for a high level party fighting a dangerous enemy as it is for a low level party fighting a wuss.

(Emphasis added)

with this:

Paganini wrote:
If you step back and look at it objectively, the game is trying to sucker you into thinking you've accomplished something when, actually, everything is the same as it ever was.

(Emphasis added)

I think that's a disconnect somewhere: Game mechanics don't 'try to sucker' anyone, IME. I think your are shifting from meta-game to in-character without acknowledging it.

Player1 (IC): "Wow ... we just killed a DRAGON!" (accomplishment!)

-- context shifts to meta-game --

Player 2 (Meta-game): "Dude, that combat took just as long as the three orks we killed and did, percentage wise, exactly as much damage." (same as it ever was.)

But really, both players are right. No one is decieved.

White Wolf games have been doing this - modeling increased character ability with special rules instead of numerical smokescreen improvement - for years now. Just look at Vampire, or Mage, or for an extreme example, Exalted, where the numbers are essentially there only to pace your acquisition and use of exception-based powers (Charms), which abound.

Paganini wrote: A lot of games have this type of "get new cool stuff" mechanics tacked on as an apparent afterthought. I'd like to see an advancement system where the whole point is to get new kewelness.

Any ideas what this kewelness could represent, and how this could be achieved mechanically? Frex, what player behavior should trigger an increase in "kewelness options?"

While some of the D&D mechanics are scale-invariant, not all of them are. In fact, in my
experience, D&D strategy does change qualitatively as characters advance.

I play in three D&D 3.5 campaigns. The first uses house rules that slows advancement;
in approximately 50 sessions over 3 years (250 hours)
we've gone from 1'st to currently 5-8'th level. I play a wizard, who's recently decided to multiclass into cleric. (One reason for
the change is that with slow advancement, I did want to mess around with strategy a bit more. Fireballing at first sight had become my default. So I adopted a code vs. fireballs as part of my religious experience, and beefed up on non-lethal spells). The second campaign is a very light romp, I believe using standard rules but being generous with experience. In about 14 sessions (70 hours), we've gone from 1st to 9-10'th level. I
play a cleric. I also run a game, where in about 14 sessions (70 hours) over a year, the characters now range from 4th to 7th level. So I don't have experience with really high level games. Also, some of the strategy adjustment may be due to the switch from 3.0
to 3.5. However, I've certainly noticed differences in strategy as characters advance.

1. Increased specialization: In low-level games, the difference between character classes is less pronounced. My wizard would often run out of spells and take out his crossbow. Sure, he was about 20% less likely to hit than the fighter and did half as
much damage. But how many hit points does a goblin have, anyway? A cleric was almost as buff as a fighter. With heavy armor, he could get in the front ranks and hold off the foe for a while. Or the wizard could get a Shield on top of his Mage Armor, and be almost invulnerable for a few minutes. Now, we face foes with hundreds of hit points.
A single attack with +3 to hit doing a d4-1 is laughable,
when the fighter has two or three attacks doing twenty or more points per attack. And I
almost never run out of spells, anyway. And if I did, then I'd just go to my belt of wands.

2. Threat assessment. At low-levels, there are just two threat levels to consider:
All out fight, and run away. At mid levels, it is crucial to take an adversary's measure
exactly. Overestimate a foe, and you use your high-level spells up leaving you as the real boss's luncheon selection. Underestimate a foe, and you are just breakfast.

3. Movement and positioning: In low-level D&D, movement and positioning are the key strategic elements. The whole tide of battle is determined by flanking and attacks of opportunity. At mid-levels, there are enormous numbers of ways of repositioning yourself, and avoiding attacks of opportunity. For example, you almost never miss when
casting defensively, so even if you've got your spellcaster in a bad position, you rarely have a spell interrupted. At mid-levels, it matters much more WHAT elements are on the battlefield (spell effects, summoned creatures, etc.) than precisely where they are.

4. Offense vs. defense. In low-level D&D, defense is high relative to offense. As you increase level, offense increases much more than defense, with the exception of hit points and healing. At low levels, good armor and defensive spells mean you can avoid being hit at all. At mid-levels, you will be hit if you are within striking range; a high AC can help you avoid secondary attacks at best. (A cleric with good armor will often be at AC
19 at first level, whereas the creatures will be +1 or 2 to hit, so will only get hit 20%.
A shield of faith spell cuts that to 10%. At sixth level, the armor might be +2, the shield
of faith might give +3, and you might have one or two more AC from other spells,
but that means your AC is 26, while the creatures have two +14 to hit attacks, each hitting about half the time.)

5. Recovery time. At low-levels, it is easy to use up spells and healing. After even a minor battle, you might need to rest a full day before being fit for duty, which usually means a full-scale retreat. Ability drain or other magical attacks can cripple the whole group for days. After you've got a wand of CLW and know lesser restoration,
you rarely are at less than full hit points and ability scores except during a battle. (You can still run out of your tough spells.)

6. Options. Options increase exponentially as you go up level. At first level, you are
preparing three first level spells from a menu of 8 for wizards or 20 for clerics.
By sixth level, you prepare three third level spells from a list of 8, four second level
spells from a list of 12, and five first level spells from a list of maybe 30. You also
are making/buying magic items. I've found I have to do most of the spell choices out of game, and have standard lists of spells for different occasions (travelling spells, city spells, exploring ruins spells, etc.) or get totally bogged down. This may be especially true for wizards, but fighters also get a huge number of feats, any subset of which might apply to any particular attack. Fighters seem to need to be adept accountants to fight
strategically (or just to figure out their current attack bonuses.)

Russell

Paganini wrote: Any ideas what this kewelness could represent, and how this could be achieved mechanically? Frex, what player behavior should trigger an increase in "kewelness options?"

Paganini wrote:
So, basically, I don't disagree with you. You're just talking about *how people feel about the SiS,* whereas I'm only talking about *how the mechanics operate.*

Mouse,

Yeah, that sounds exactly like what I'm talking about. I haven't played X-2, so it was a little hard to follow your description of the actual system. How different are the various abilities? Like, do a lot of the different jobs have the same 16 abilities just with different names, and different visual effects in engine? Or does every ability serve a unique and useful purpose, so you really do want to switch around between them?

Russel,

Yeah, I understand that D&D 3e doesn't have such a severe case of this as I described. My description was more of a hypothetical "pure" version of a D&D -esque advancement system. I know that individual feats, spells, and so on add scope for character change. I'd like a system, though, where change / acquisition is the whole *point* of the system, not just secondary feature to amassing XP and leveling up.

I think the interest comes from recurring conflicts.

When you fight old conflicts (orcs), when your equal capacity is something higher (owlbears), it means you can use different tactics against the old foe because your just more capable and have more resources to do fancy stuff with.

If the rules force you to never face the old conflicts and only equal ones, you can never discover the changes to tactics your new resources would result in against that conflict.

Thus D&D has a -/+2 party level random table for choosing the CR of an opponent.

But you run into (potential) below level conflicts all the time in any D&D game. It's called town! Haggling with merchants and innkeepers becomes a lot easier as your character racks up ranks in Diplomacy or whatever. Likewise a lot of wilderness challenges are just not an issue as you level up.

Of course, the old "High Level Campaigns" sourcebook and a lot of other DM advice out there warned against straight power escalation as the way to deal with high level PCs for pretty much exactly the reasons under discussion: if all that the characters get for achieving high levels is ever bigger monsters they're really going to think twice about adventuring anymore. Why go out there and get killed off now that you've finally made it to 18th level?

Either way, it must have been a problem that the designers recognized because about two chapters of the HLC dealt with it and I believe there are sections in the various DMGs as well about changing the challenges you face as characters reach higher levels.

This is a pretty common issue but I don't see it as a real problem.

There are examples in all sorts of games and I've thought about it a lot.

First, I'd like to tackle the idea that new 'kewlness' abilities vs. bigger numbers issue. I don't see the difference that you do Paganini. Special abilities just let you interact with things in a better way, same as better skills.

I think that what you're seeing is the difference in rapid development. Let's call this skills vs. feats. Skills increase on a curve and feats are spontanious abilities that your character can now use. However, there really isn't that much of a difference. If a player can choose 'Cleave' (letting her/him attack someone new once (s)he drops someone) or 'get +3 to my attack' they'll almost certainly go with the second one. Both of them increase their effectiveness in combat and I don't see how the first one really is better than the second one.

I can see your point however. If AC and attack increase proportionatly with your level it's just dumb:

Two apprentices to the same fighter start at level one. The first one has an attack of +1 and a Defence of 15. The second one has an attack of +2 and a defence of 14. They both get to level 20 where their attacks and defences are +20/45 and +21/44.

Same exact fight. In fact, in both situations it's just a rollfest. Neither have an advantige.

However, sometimes skills and such can be used to interact with the game in different ways: Now that my Alchemy score has increased to +20, I can start brewing some freakin' awesome potions that a short time ago would have been impossible.

In Star Wars D6 (my current game) it isn't a problem. It would seem like it might be but it isn't. Even without a diversity of items or powers I can keep the game interesting. Sometimes my players will be happy to try out some of their new skills but most of the time they're just happy to use their old skills in a new situation, hacking the newest database or facing down a reoccuring villain again.

In conclusion, I think that I understand what you're saying, but I think we need to figure out what stats are used for in the game before you make any strong assertions.

Unless you're just looking on building a game or finding a game with what you said in your initial post. For the former, you could get inspuration from the current Video game market and with the latter, there have already been a mass of refferences in this thread.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

Hey Eric,

Try this analogy on.

You may have seen those mini chess games that you play on a 5 x 5 board; you have 5 pawns, and one of each other piece. The idea is that, without the extra pieces the game is simpler, easier for kids to learn.

Now imagine that D&D is a chess game played on an infinite board. You've got three pieces, a bishop, a knight, and a rook. So, you have three men; three different styles of movement - jumping, diagonal, and straight - to form your strategies with. Three separate, specific abilities to use your imagination to combine in ways to outwith and outplay your opposition.

Each one of your three men has a percent chance of capturing an enemy piece if he lands on it. Every time one of your men captures an enemy piece you get an experience point. When you get enough experience points, you can slightly increase the precentage chance for all three of your men. But you never get to have more men than your starting three.

What I'm proposing is this:

Your percent chance never changes. In fact, you might not even *have* a percent chance. Instead, each man just has a unique ability that you can call on at will - never all the time though, you only get to pick one per turn, so you have to be carefull about when you use each ability, have your men set up in the right combination on the board, and so on.

In this game, at first level you have just one pawn. That pawn doesn't chance ever. For as long as you play the game, it's the same pawn you start with, and can do the same stuff it always could, with no increase in success chance. Every time you level up you get to put another piece on the board. A knight, a bishop, a rook, a queen, etc.

What happens is that leveling up does not make you *better* in the sense that your numbers just keep going up. Instead, leveling up gives you *more* options to choose from.

Precious Villain wrote: But you run into (potential) below level conflicts all the time in any D&D game. It's called town! Haggling with merchants and innkeepers becomes a lot easier as your character racks up ranks in Diplomacy or whatever. Likewise a lot of wilderness challenges are just not an issue as you level up.
*snip*

Paganini wrote: So, if you think about it, D&D advancement (of ANY incarnation) is basically a scaling / pacing mechanic. I think we've had that discussion before, but to do a basic recap, the advancement system serves to present the illusion of escalating adversity in the SiS while keeping the overall meta-level of challenge relatively static.

Another interesting thing about the numbers, I thought I'd add in.

I think in D&D 3.x the DC for disarming traps keeps increasing as the party level increases.

But it does not do so at a dramatic rate...it increases at about one point per level. So the player can sink skill points into disable device and keep well ahead of it quite easily.

But he wont be able to do that for all skills. The slow rising DC's for other things stop a completist 'Ah, now I'm a master trap disarmer, I'll become a master lock picker and so on, until really I don't have to gamist plan ahead for failure, since I wont ever fail.'

Also in D6 Star Wars (a good example because it's a good system that uses few special abilities) the difficulty doesn't exactly increase that much. The difficulty is always chosen from one of the catergories.

Very Easy
Easy
Moderate
Difficult
Very difficult
Heroic

Your dice increases without limit, though. It an get up to 12+ which yields an average of 42. So an increase in skill lets you perform tasks in much worse situations (Flying through an asteroid belt) or perform multiple actions at once (Firing 5 times at 7D each, taking out 5 high level guards) or beat harder opponents (Boba fett only has a dodge of 9D so you can hit him pretty well with an attack of 10D).

As you can see only one of those really escalates at a rate that matches the players', and that's the last one. And even then, it really doesn't because beating Boba fett is more than beating a stormie in a different color armor. You just beat BOBA FEAKING FETT! The guy, who's head has been a mug! He even has a jet pack! I mean, come on. You just beat Boba freaking Fett!

It also might be worth mentioning that special abilities can aslo be supplanted by items (The new armor your D&D fighter got gave him fire resistance 100%).

I also totally agree that specials function just like skills in terms of scaling. What's the difference between having a shield that gives you +25% miss chance verssus ogres and having your AC increase by 5?

I do agree that having specials can make the game more interesting, though. The question then becomes: How do we use this for a practical game?

I don't like how D&D does this, actually. You gain one of these every 3 levels (or what your class directs). This is pretty lame and it's problem becomes even more prevelant in the Epic Handbook.

The Epic handbook is very worthy of mentioning in this thread because 99% of it is based on your idea. Most of what's in the handbook talks about new feats that you can get. However, at epic levels (20 to 30) only the feats really matter. It's about letting your characters do really cool things (like cast epic spells 'n stuff) and just generally be cool. Aditional attack bonus's just don't cut it so it's stupid to limit feats to once every 3 levels (21, 24, 27 and 30). If you want to cast spells past level 9 you have to take a feat, just like everything else.

So, I'd suggest that feats are gained as more've an ingame mechanic versus an out'a game mechanic (which D&D is built upon. Please replace what I just said with forge terminology if it exists). You gain experience by killing monsters and you spend it by buying different abilities (since that's what the game's about). You could do a dual-system. One type of experience (which comes from killing things) results in increased levels 'n things (HP, Saving throws, etc.) and tech points (which comes from acomplishing your objective; saving the king, getting the supercrystal orb of light and glitter, etc.) and it functions that way.

That's just one way. You could also do it like Star Wars Galaxies where you use a skill tree to buy different abilities and the manual bonuses (HP, Defence bonus, saves, etc.) at the same time.

So I guess you'd just have to make the system. The benefit would really be that combat would probably be more interesting than normal, which reminds me of a thread I need to start.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

Hey Eric,

I don't have much to add to your post right now, except that this:

Eric J. wrote: The guy, who's head has been a mug!

Hmm... I've been thinking about his stuff lately myself. So let me try restate things, while throwing in a few ideas of my own...

So what you want is for heroes to advance horizontally, while enemies advance vertically. In other words, the heroes gain options, but never (or rarely) increase their numbers. While (I assume) the enemies are constantly increasing their numbers.

I don't think it would be very hard to create such a system, though it might take a shift in thinking from traditional "advancement" systems. For example, in the Mountain Witch, I specifically say that abilities NEVER modify a roll, NEVER grant automatic success, and NEVER grant rerolls. Abilities allow characters to do more stuff, but they use the same resolution system for everything. It's worth mentioning, however, that MW wasn't design for heavy tactics, but I'm sure something simliar could be used in another system for a better effect.