LogFAQs > #901156440

shadowsword87 posted...

I don't know if that it's actually a good way to keep up with a flow of the game. Also because I, as the GM, just hand players gold and tell them to figure it out, it's basically me leveling them up anyway, and who cares. It wouldn't be really be a big enough deal.

I have no idea whether or not it would be really detrimental to game flow, and I can definitely see it not really being all that innovative or interesting to players since it probably would still feel like the DM is trickle-feeding them gold rewards at precisely the rate the DM wants them to level at (meaning you might as well do away with "gold XP" or even straight XP and just do milestone-based leveling). But your players might be into it, especially if you can come up with an innovative and effective way to run it.

The only way I can think of to remove the mechanic entirely from DM fiat is to pull a Final Fantasy VIII (and it hurts me so much to suggest this, considering how much I loathe FFVIII), and have players able to choose to level up whenever they want, but every time they level up they're empowering the enemies in some way, making leveling up somewhat counter-intuitive, where they have motivation to try and hoard leveling for future use rather than just taking it the moment its available.

The downside there is that a game where leveling is more punished than rewarded can annoy the fuck out of players (see also, one of the 437 reasons why I hate FFVIII as much as I do). Especially since it kind of shits all over the power fantasy, and removes a lot of the tactical benefits of leveling up (and thus the joy of getting new powers and abilities).

Conversely, have players automatically gain 1 "XP" per game session (or some other set value), and have every aspect of leveling up reduced to a point-buy system - so, say, players can spend 1 XP whenever they want to buy a new ability point, or 2 XP to buy a new spell, or 3 XP to buy a new class ability, and so on (but that would require a LOT of prep-work on your part).



shadowsword87 posted...

The other problem being a more base thing: what the hell is worth it to a player that isn't a level? The only reasonable thing I could think of magic items, but even then, it's just sort of minor.

Feats, ability boosts, taking advantage, extra skill proficiencies, extra dice drop/keep roll mechanics, anything that gives a tangible numerical benefit?

Magic item rewards are nice, but because the game is designed to limit magic item abuse for purposes of balance (ie, you can only attune so many things), you'd need to provide attunement-free magic items. And as you suggest, they'd probably have to be minor in power because otherwise the boons would start to stack and become too overpowered.

You could also play around with something like the Vestiges that Critical Role used in their campaign (basically artifacts that "level up" based on the actions of the characters/what level the characters are, similar to how D&D handles artifact concordance in 4e), where players can sort of deliberately level up their weapons (or armor, or enchanted jewelry, etc) in ways that grant them tangible benefits themselves.


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