Let's talk about levels on the example of DnD

>trying to combine prescriptive and descriptive approach to levels
Isn't that enough, DnD?
Yes, we all know the common sins of DnD, like Ivory Tower, casters vs. martials etc. - hell, we have threads every day, but not a lot of people talk about this.
And it's a shame, because a lot of things (e.g., caster supremacy, broken CRs etc.) are direct symptoms of the broken level system.

Before we start, I'll elaborate on what I mean by "prescriptive" and "descriptive" approach.
In prescriptive approach, the levels define your power - you gain levels first, and your actual abilities come second. It's a very gamist approach to the levels, and one that is (in my opinion) an unneeded baggage that came from tactical skirmish games.
In descriptive approach, the situation is opposite - you gain abilities, and the sum of your abilities defines your powerlevel.

Pretty simple, right?
Except that DnD manages to fuck it up.
As an example, the level 20 wizard SHOULD be roughly equivalent to level 20 fighter, if you approach the levels descriptively.
The fact that he isn't only shows that DnD's approach isn't descriptive at all, despite that DnD explicitly mentions that it uses levels and, by proxy, CRs as a measuring stick.

So it seems that DnD's level system is purely prescriptive, and it outright lies to you.
Except that prescriptive approach to levels in tabletop RPGs that aren't tactical skirmishes makes no fucking sense.

Levels were initially created as a measuring stick for rough power equivalence between characters.
If levels are just a gaming mechanic for character progression without any basis in actual power of the character, then why even bother having them? Why not go levelless instead?
Experience points are already a nice way to gain abilities, why not directly pay with XP for abilities instead of having levels and classes and shit?
Why bother with the farce that is level system, if you can't measure and compare the powerlevels of the characters with levels alone?

bump for interest

>Levels were initially created as a measuring stick for rough power equivalence between characters.

Not really. Levels were the points on the XP track where you got new abilities or things. In early D&D, the weakest class, the Thief, leveled fastest, with the others leveling at different rates as they progressed, according to the general consensus of their power during the massive playtesting of those days.
The idea was that you compared PCs of different types by XP, and level could only be used to compare within a single class.

Also, while I'm on the topic, I might as well propose a solution to fixing levels, which in turn fixes common issues like caster supremacy, Ivory Tower design non-indicative CRs etc.

Less game-breaking abilities (swinging sword the right way and having skills like lockpicking, pickpocketing etc.)? Cheaper price XP-wise.
More game-breaking abilities (like magic and whatnot)? More expensive shit XP-wise.

Comparing the sum of total XP points spent on character will be a much more descriptive comparison between characters than the fucking levels.

It also fixes Ivory Tower design, because there are no trap options in character progression in this particular case - there are merely less expensive and more expensive ones.
The ones that confer less benefit are cheaper.
The ones that confer more benefit are more expensive.

And yes, I'm aware that other games do this, but, holy fucking shit, why does the biggest franchise of them all that is DnD, with tons of experience, blunder into the same fucking mistake every single edition?

Again, why have levels at all?

>Again, why have levels at all?

Because a la carte power selection is a nightmare to balance, due to combinatorial explosion. There are too many variables and synergies to accurately gauge the proper point cost of each component power.
Bundling everything up into classes and levels lets you work with a limited subset of powers and exclude the possibility of unexpected brokenness. It's pretty easy to eyeball this class at this level and say that it's about on par with that class at this level. If it's not, you bump the XP track up or down until it seems about right.

This is one of the reasons I like Shadowrun. It takes a bit longer to do, point buy and all, but it's a bit more balanced. It's not perfectly balanced by any means, but a mage, a hacker, and fighter built equally optimized with the same amount of karma (which also serves as your exp) should be able to inflict equal amounts of "damage".

>a la carte power selection is a nightmare to balance
It isn't. Removing levels doesn't necessarily remove classes, and therefore, class restriction on abilities.

>"But why bother removing levels, if you still have class restrictions, and the most broken shit is still limited to magic users?"
Firstly, that is a false dichotomy, and we have already discussed it numerous times - there is no need to give the best shit to one class and shit on anothers.

Secondly, it is better, in my opinion, than the arbitrary track progression.
What if I want one ability available to my class, but not another?

With track progression, there is no possibility of skipping the unneeded class features.
With "XP point-buy" progression, not only there is a possibility of doing this - it's also a sensible thing to do, because the XP points that would've went to an unneeded feature you would spend on the feature you actually want.

If you really want to keep the levels in-game, why not globally base them on the amount of total XP points spent? Why keep them arbitrary from class to class?

I find that a little hard to believe. In my limited experience, Hackers are pretty underpowered, and while mage vs fighter is somewhat on par, nobody says "geek the soldier first."

GURPS has been trying to balance point-buy for decades, and after many years and several revisions, you can still ask a GURPS guru and he'll tell you about some builds that have a reasonable point cost but an unreasonable power level.

>"But why bother removing levels, if you still have class restrictions, and the most broken shit is still limited to magic users?"

Why are you quoting things I didn't say?

>What if I want one ability available to my class, but not another?
>If you really want to keep the levels in-game, why not globally base them on the amount of total XP points spent? Why keep them arbitrary from class to class?

Because all that stuff is hard to balance. You're not coming up with revelatory new ideas here, people have been making stuff built like that since the late 70s, and it's really damned hard to make it work well, as evidence by the mountains of now forgotten games that did it poorly.
You're still welcome to try, though. Just don't expect me to get enthusiastic for yet another fantasy heartbreaker that looks to be going down the same old roads. I'll get hype if you build it and it works well, not while you're blue-skying shit on Veeky Forums.

>Levels were initially created as a measuring stick for rough power equivalence between characters.
But this not true. D&D derived from Chainmail, and levels were a shortcut to indicate the threshold for when heroic characters got nifty new abilities.

In the case of Fighting Men for example, they would gain abilities like "can hit dragons with normal weapons" (normally impervious to conventional attack) at level 4; they also received multiple attacks in melee rounds based on their level (the wording on this is a little nebulous though).

Levels always represented tiers that granted new abilities, never as a method to suggest rough parity between different types of characters.

Ivory Tower design also only happens when you have choices to select at level-ups, something that is definitely not present in older editions of D&D - you got the same basket of goods as any other fighter.

because running a game that consists purely of feats that can be bought for xp, like say Deathwatch. (or your favorite 40k rpg.) solves none of the "issues" of ivory tower design and or balance, and creates their own issues. (in death watch's case, the fun chore of having to audit a character every now and then to make sure they didn't fuck up/cheat.)

or having to choose between building for weapon skill and ballistics skill.

it's no less a farce than DnD.

again, 40krpg's do this, and it doesn't help one bit.

it's not unfun, but neither is the way dnd does things.

Well yeah, that's because the soldiers harder to kill. Mage is typically an easier target. It's a fun dynamic, the fighter is the wall for the mage. And hackers are a less immediately obvious. You might not be very efficient bricking guns left and right, but a good data steal and suddenly everyone knows "family values" Senator Ronald loves sniffing novacoke off of underage boys before he rails them, costing him a presidential campaign.

Think about this, user. To keep it simple, we'll go with the most mechanically simple class, the Fighter, and I'll use TSR editions where there were no feats or other complicated stuff.

The way the math works in most TSR editions, an AC improvement is not as good as a to-hit improvement. The former lets you hold out longer before you die, the latter lets you drop your enemy faster. Since enemies come in numbers, dropping an enemy faster is almost always preferable to holding out longer.
But there's nothing better than multiple attacks. Multiple attacks beat the crap out of AC and to-hit bonuses for value. Even if you price them high, they're so valuable that they're the first thing I'm going to buy. Spending points on other stuff just means delaying the point when I go murder-machine, and is equivalent to a trap option.
All my XP will be going into gaining more and more attacks, because that is mechanically the single strongest option I get. My Fighter will be broken compared to a stock Fighter, and will be the same as everyone else's, unless you price the multiple attacks to ridiculous levels, at which point I'll likely tip over into not taking them.


I suppose so. But at that point it's not so much that the Hacker is balanced as that he's playing a different game from everybody else.

Except, it is easier to balance things when using feat buy, even if the initial playtesting of the game is poor, and the game is therefore initially unbalanced.
Ability too powerful? Bump up the XP cost.
A combo of abilities too powerful? Bump up the sum of their XP costs, then spread the difference beween individual feats.

>fan art of Alice in Sexland

Huh. For some reason I'm glad.

Yeah. Same with a socialite or infiltrator.
They're all playing different games together to make a job happen. Each have different ways of getting the job done alone, or contributing to a group effort.

>unless you price the multiple attacks to ridiculous levels, at which point I'll likely tip over into not taking them.

That's exactly the point, though - balancing prices, so that you will have a hard time making a choice about what to buy, is easier than balancing actual mechanical abilities.
In your case, if you have two options of "to-hit bonus" and "multiple attacks", you should price them up to the point where you aren't automatically sure what is more useful to take for the prices there are.

>I suppose so. But at that point it's not so much that the Hacker is balanced as that he's playing a different game from everybody else.

That's sorta 'Shadowrun' as a basic concept. Everyone can play with one part of the game but not all of it.

But here's the thing, I'm hard pressed to think of a point where I COULD buy multiple attacks and wouldn't. If you offered me a choice between +10 to hit and another attack? I'd take the extra attack. +20? Nope. +30? Nope. To hit has a law of diminishing returns, so each extra point is worth less the higher you go, and it's never worth as much as doubling your attack output. The only way I'd say no to the extra attack is if I simply can't afford it because it's so ridiculously high that I don't expect the game to last long enough that I could even hope to buy it.

And how do you handle it when powers A+B are more valuable together than A or B alone? Or if A+B+C is ten times as strong as A+C or B+C? It's easy to price individual powers in a vacuum, but when those powers start interacting and synergies show up, the value gets difficult to boil down to a single number.

DnD is not even a real RPG system. It's a dungeon crawler. Just a bit more than a board game.

It's a game for shitty GM's and players with no expectations.

Maybe that's why it's so popular. It takes little work compared to real RPG systems. And any retard can GM DnD.

>But here's the thing, I'm hard pressed to think of a point where I COULD buy multiple attacks and wouldn't.
At the point where your to-hit is so low that your precious multiple attacks fail to hit any enemies at all?

>Experience points are already a nice way to gain abilities, why not directly pay with XP for abilities instead of having levels and classes and shit?
even this wouldn't be a good indicator

If I play a fighter and spend XP on animal handling should that increase the character's level? Another fighter of the same level may have spent that same XP on combat feats, obviously the two will not be equal.

We live in a world where a monk can attack 16 times a turn and still be garbage.

you can say that all you want, but such systems exist right now. and you're more than welcome to try them out and see how wrong you are.

>If I play a fighter and spend XP on animal handling should that increase the character's level?
Sure, why not? If animal handling is sufficiently cheaper compared to combat feats, then I don't see the problem.

>not going for a training system
>at the end of every session , the Dm distributes points to characters based on what they did , and what their natural talents are
>it is like a little christmas every time

my players are happy with this , and so am i since killing monsters shouldnt make you a better gambler, and Levels-> power is an unprecise system.

instead i assign levels based on power , like having 30 levels in physical based on combined stat values

I guess it depends on how balanced things are

you could also separate out "total level" from "combat level"

even this can have problems though. What if my dex fighter puts some XP into bows just to try it out, only to decide that sticking with a rapier is better? That XP spent is now a liability as it increases character level but provides no benefit.

Personally I'd like to see a system do away with levels. XP is purely as a estimate of power and not actually tied to power in any meaningful way. Feats, powers, spells, etc are gained other ways

such a system would probably also be better at letting a new character join the group. A tenth level fighter wouldn't have ten times the health as a first level fighter, they would just be more skilled and have better items.

But then you automatically know what to chose again, and since I can afford the incredibly more expensive addition attack (otherwise this isn't a choice at all), the cost of more to hit is trivial.

This isn't interesting option design, and it isn't a solution. I originally though that guy was being a bit hard on you, but you're clearly not thinking this through.

That will vary, though. Some groups won't be happy with it, whether from the GM side or the party side since not all GMs like more busywork and not all parties are super comfortable with their GMs judgement 100% of the time. Glad you found something that works for you though.

>tactical skirmishes

That's how it started. In some ways, that's what it is.

The level system is just another holy cow.

Consider the following:
DM keeps throwing low HP, high AC mooks at you.
In this particular case, it's more beneficial to have a higher to-hit than multiple attacks.

Consider the reverse situation:
DM keeps throwing high HP, low AC mooks.
In this particular case, it's more beneficial to have more attacks than a higher to-hit bonus.

There is no such thing as "automatically" knowing what to choose in the first place, because there are always fringe cases.

So let's consider the mainstream situation:
DM keeps throwing average HP, average AC mooks at you.
The feat price should be balanced against this particular situation.

You want to be Stabby McStab that deals a lot of damage in a single hit to a single enemy? Invest into to-hit and to-damage bonuses.

You want to be a one-man-army that can genocide an army of low-level mooks? Invest into multiple attacks.

You are again making an argument of one of the mechanics always being better than the other, when those two mechanics, while, indeed, somewhat overlap, but in the end, they are fundamentally different things.

tl;dr depends on the situation

Ceterus paribus, my friend. If the GM is just going to hard tune against whatever you are, then it doesn't matter what you choose or what the numbers are. If there's an expected range, or range of ranges, then there's some point at which something makes sense.

Then I don't see the problem in one option being more beneficial than the other in this particular than the other.

Like in the examples earlier like Shadowrun and whatnot, characters occupy a certain problem-solving niche. The point is that one niche on average shouldn't overshadow or be explicitly better than the other - and the keyword here is "on average".

You want to be optimal against standard enemies?
Fine, but you will be suboptimal against non-standard enemies.

You want to be good at physical combat?
Fine, but you will suck at mental and social combat.

The problem is that there isn't a universal solution, because depending on the prevalence of different issues and problems in the setting, different abilities become more valuable.

Just because everything can technically be rendered moot by GM fiat, doesn't mean that balance isn't a thing. Some mechanics are inherently unbalance-able within the confines of this hobby.