The experience of writing something and turning it loose into the world is a fascinating one. Michael Suileabhain-Wilson, author of “Five Geek Social Fallacies“, puts it elegantly when he writes:
Thus, when I realized that 5GSF was striking a chord, I started following the referrers from my server logs, to see what the conversation was. That was transformative.
I have trouble coming to terms with the way people respond to the written word; the critical element, I think, is a powerful sense of detachment. Readers, more often than not, seem not to be invested in their relationship to the text. This is a different standard from the stage. Performance is, in some respects, harder than writing — if nothing else, you can’t revise away a misstep — but your audience is usually rooting for you. They came out to see the show; they have some personal investment in their own enjoyment. They want you to succeed, and as long as you don’t stink, you’ll probably be OK. Text, on the other hand, has distance built in. A reader needs to be wooed. If you fail to serve their needs, they have no mercy. (The exception here is if the reader is already a fan of yours, in which case they’ve made a personal investment which gives you some wiggle room.)
It’s difficult watching people respond to your work in that detached fashion, particularly when you have learned the first lesson of Internet criticism: never respond to a critique of your own work except to correct errors of fact, and sometimes not even then. Detached distaste is infuriating; detached approbation is unsatisfying.
The most popular thing I’ve ever written for The Alexandrian is, without a doubt, “D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations“. It was the first article on the site to attract widespread attention. (Looking at the server logs I can see it getting hot at Giant in the Playground, moving over to ENWorld, making the jump to WotC’s boards, and then exploding at StumbleUpon.) In fact, I think it’s fair to say that if I hadn’t written it the Alexandrian wouldn’t exist today. Tossing your words out into the empty void gets frustrating after awhile.
In short, “Calibrating Your Expectations” gave me an audience. And even now, several years later, it consistently remains the most popular page on the site. (Although the Three Clue Rule gives it a run for its money.)
But the interesting thing for me is that the article seems to have become popular for reasons that are almost completely inverted from the reasons that I wrote it.
What I thought people would take away from the article was a fresh appreciation of high-level play in D&D. I felt that people were struggling with a dissonance between what they thought high-level D&D was supposed to be like (Conan or Lord of the Rings) and what high-level D&D was actually delivering (mythological demigods). I thought that if people became conscious of the dissonance then they would be able to enjoy high-level play for what it was. (And this wasn’t even just about people who were unhappy with high-level play. I felt like even people who were having fun with high-level play were frequently underestimating just how awesome their characters were.)
Nor was this meant to be some sort of One-True-Wayism. I wasn’t trying to say, “High-level play is the only way to go!” But when I wrote that “Aragorn is about 5th level”, for example, what I was trying to say is, “And that means 5th level is pretty amazing. Which means that 15th level is really amazing. Let’s embrace the epic quality of our high level characters. Let’s tell stories worthy of Hercules!”
What actually happened (and, in retrospect, this should have been obvious to me) was that people who were experiencing dissonance with high-level play did, in fact, find their answers in the article. “Calibrating Your Expectations” was succesfully delivering its message that, “5th level is pretty amazing!” But most readers took that premise in a completely different direction than I did, instead grabbing hold of this passage from the article:
What frustrates some people is that D&D assumes that you’re going to move from one level of power to an extremely different level of power. So they spend a lot of time tweaking the system and trying to get it to perform at a more uniform level from 1st to 20th level.
I think this is the hard way of doing it. Instead of fighting the system, I’d rather try to work with it: Target the precise range of levels which form the “sweet spot” for whatever campaign concept I’m working on, and then tinker with the character creation and advancement rules to keep the campaign focused in that sweet spot. Those changes can be as simple as “XP awards will be 1/10th the normal size and everyone should create a 5th level character”, but more complicated variants are more than possible.
The point is that you find that “sweet spot” and then you tinker with one aspect of the system, rather than trying to redo the whole thing.
And the conclusion they reached was, “Let’s stick to low-level play.”
Which makes perfect sense. Heck, I’d even written it. But what I thought had been a secondary conclusion was, in fact, the primary conclusion for most people.
(What I find really interesting is the add-on effects from this. People who argue that D&D should stick to the gritty fantasy of low level play will cite the article to help explain their position. People who disagree with them will follow the link and read the article with eyes biased by the guy giving them the link. And then I get angry e-mails from people who think I hate high-level play because I argue that Aragorn is a 5th-level character. Take a moment to think about what that has to say about how ideas are transmitted and what the implications are when you apply it to things more important than discussions about game mechanics.)
E6
One of the really interesting things to come out of this gestalt was E6: The Game Inside the World’s Most Popular RPG. Designed by Ryan Stoughton, E6 is a system mod for D&D that allows PCs to reach 6th level and then puts character advancement into a cryogenic freeze: Characters can still advance, but only through feats (slowing the rate of that advance considerably). The philosophy of E6 was influenced by Ryan Dancey’s statement that D&D “by design changes roughly every 5 levels”, resulting in four distinct quartiles of play:
Levels 1-5: Gritty fantasy
Levels 6-10: Heroic fantasy
Levels 11-15: Wuxia
Levels 16-20: Superheroes
And in E6, basically, PCs are allowed to reach the Heroic Fantasy “quartile” and then things are slowed down so that they never leave it. This could be partly mimicked, of course, by simply reducing XP awards. But E6 improves on that model in two ways: First, by dripping the advancement in the form of feats, E6 allows for a constant pace of rewards in the form of character advancement. Second, beyond a certain point feat-based advancement no longer allows the PCs to simply become better at what they already do. The PCs are forced to diversify their abilities instead of increasing them. This allows the system to side-step a hard cap: The PCs can continue developing virtually forever.
E(X)
E6 works. It dials in a desired result and locks it into place. But what I find particularly interesting about the E6 system is that it works for any level, not just 6th. Want your PCs to stay as mere mortals? Play E1. Want to crank it up a notch so that your PCs are slipping through dimensions and polymorphing into strange creatures? Welcome to E8. Looking for some plane-hopping demigods? E15, at your service. Want the full D&D experience but think the Epic Level Handbook is a load of bollocks? E20 is your ticket.
It’s also trivial, of course, to skip the initial leveling up phase. Just dial in your desired E-level for the campaign and away you go.
THE CORE RULE: Level advancement is capped at Level X. Upon attaining Level X, characters earn a new epic feat every time they earn an amount of XP equal to the amount of XP they needed to advance to Level X from the previous level. (For example, advancing from 7th level at 21,000 XP to 8th level at 28,000 XP requires 7,000 XP. Therefore, if you’re playing E8, you get an additional feat every 7,000 XP.)
BUILDING ENCOUNTERS: When calculating Average Party Level (APL), treat every 5 epic feats as a +1 adjustment to a character’s level to a maximum of 20 feats. After that point, treat every 10 epic feats as a +1 adjustment to a character’s level.
In general, you still shouldn’t use opponents with CRs higher than Level X + 4. You should either use a larger number of lower CR creatures or you can advance monsters by giving them epic feats (using the same guideline as for PCs to determine their adjusted CR).
EPIC FEATS: In general, any feat can be selected as an epic feat (assuming prerequisites are met). The following feats can also be selected–
Ability Training: You spend time honing your abilities. Pick one ability score. You qualify for the Ability Advancement feat for that ability. (You can gain this feat multiple times, but its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat it applies to a different ability.)
Ability Advancement: Your training pays off. Pick one ability score for which you have the Ability Training epic feat. You gain a permanent +2 bonus to that ability. (You can gain this feat multiple times, but its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat it applies to a different ability.)
Expanded Spell Knowledge: You learn new spell(s) whose level equals half your caster level (round down, and treat a new 0th-level spell as 1/2). (Thus, a sixth level Sorcerer could learn one 3rd level spell, one 1st and one 2nd level spell, three 1st level spells, or six 0th-level spells.)
Expanded Caster Stamina: You gain 1 or more new spell slots, with spell levels totaling to half of your caster level. Treat 0th level spells as 1/2. (Thus, a sixth level Wizard could gain one 3rd level slot, one 1st and one 2nd level slot, three 1st level slots, or six 0th-level slots.) This feat cannot provide spell slots higher than you can already cast.
EPIC SPELL FEATS: Certain spells that have effects which are necessary to avoid “no-win scenarios” (like raise dead or stone to flesh) may have a level which is too high to cast in a particular E(X) campaign. The following epic feats duplicate the effects of these spells. However, the DM should feel free to eliminate them if they feel that the particular spell doesn’t fit the power level or atmosphere they’re trying to achieve. (If you do eliminate some of these, consider including artifact-level powers that can be sought out from remote oracles, completing holy quests, or the like as part of the campaign.)
Atonement: You can use atonement, as the spell.
Break Enchantment: You can use break enchantment, as the spell with a 250 gp material component.
Dispel Magic: You can use dispel magic, as the spell with a 100 gp material component.
Gentle Repose: You can use gentle repose, as the spell with a 100 gp material component.
Raise Dead: You can use raise dead, as the spell (paying the material component cost). (Losing a level, in the context of epic levels, means losing a feat and the associated XP. You may want to add resurrection and true resurrection as part of a feat chain.)
Regenerate: You can use regenerate, as per the spell with a 1,000 gp material component and a casting time of 1 hour.
Remove Blindness/Deafness: You can use remove blindness/deafness, as the spell with a 100 gp material component and a casting time of 1 hour.
Remove Disease: You can use remove disease, as the spell with a 100 gp material component and a casting time of 1 hour.
Restoration: You can use restoration, as the spell (paying the material component), with a casting time of 1 hour. (Note: You might include lesser restoration and greater restoration and turn this into a feat chain.)
Stone to Flesh: You can use stone to flesh, as the spell with a 1,000 gp material component, with a casting time of 1 hour.
TIP: A lot of class abilities would work just fine as feats. Even more class abilities would be appropriate as epic feats (or as part of an epic feat chain). The DM is encouraged to be flexible in helping players achieve the effects they want, as long as they would normally be achievable for the level range that the DM is shooting for.
WHAT E(X) IS RIGHT FOR YOU? If you’ve got a general sense of what level you like “best” or beyond which you feel the game no longer “feels right”, aim roughly 2-4 levels below that in setting your Level X. (The acquisition of epic feats will push the power level up into the range you’re looking for.)
Another way to think about it is to look at the most powerful monsters you imagine the PCs fighting on equal terms. Again, aim 2-4 levels below that when setting your Level X.
This material is covered under the Open Game License.
Wow. That is great. Now I’m searching for 4E mods of E6. We found paragon games slowed down greatly compared to heroic tier. This may be the shift we need to change it up. Thanks!
You post this just as I was getting ready to start an E6 campaign. Timing = perfect.
Also, the first article that I read on your site was, in fact, Calibrating your Expectations. From this site I learned about the power and speed of OD&D, and started playing that with my scout group instead of 3.5, which, when blended with 3.5 rules, made the interest in playing skyrocket. I have a lot of things that your writings have helped me with, and am thankful for those.
Ah! It was waiting for you! 😉
(This essay, in a bout of personal infamy, has been sitting in various states of half-completion on my hard drive since 2007. Last night I finally finished it, polished it, and posted it.)
Good article as always. I am a game master at a D&D based persistant world project back here in Germany and we cap our player chracters at level 14, mostly because an epic group of heroes might be ok for the consistancy of a fantasy world but on a project as ours you deal with 100+ active played characters and when most of them become some kind of demigods the whole thing is getting absurd. (I know one can argue with that in general and with the chosen level cap as well) What I wanted to say was: We started with the PW project in 2003 (based on Neverwinter Nights 1, now we use NWN2) and it worked the whole time.
Greetings from Germany
I had a commenter on my blog note that it looked like I was designing for levels 5-8 in D&D, Echelon Heroic tier. That’s just right.
Old School Hack is working on further tiers, having finished 1-4. I created a way to keep playing with the same rule set past 4th level without being disruptive, because I am not convinced that moving from one tier to another should be mandatory.
So, this is not just a D&D issue, but an issue with any game that questions how to mechanically move between tiers.
I first found your blog through DM of the Rings link, to Calibrating Your Expectations. My experience as a result of reading it was to affirm my love of associated mechanics, and to put language on why I disliked playing high-level D&D. Plus, being somewhat lazy, I didn’t like the geometric expansion of complexity in running characters/NPCs at higher levels.
Good post.
My D&D 3.5 games are capped at level 10 but instead of progressing further the PCs are turned into NPCs – quest givers, producers of magic items, spell casters in exchange for services or riches, rulers – depending on what the players achieved with the character until it reached level 10. If they spent their time wandering the wilderness and looting dungeons, they’ll end up as homeless rangers and wanderers; if the managed to conquer a city and rule it, then that is what they’ll end up as.
Walking in the presence of giants here. Cool thinking all around!
This still has to be my favorite article on the Alexandrian site. I think that I would love to try this alternative advancement scheme at an actual gaming table. The ability to develop breadth makes for a great alternative to simply stacking on more and more power. I also note that the boxed sets for Basic and Expert D&D were at these levels of power. It is not an accident that the spell list seems to be optimized for these levels.
[…] like normal and then just ignore most or all of the experience / power-increase mechanics. Borrow E(1), for […]
I took a different approach.
I seperated out the numbers, such as bab, saves, max skill ranks, etc, and set them to be based on the abilities and/or a new power stat (though bab actually is just replaced by making attacks and such skills). The power stat can be set to whatever you want, and then you can gain lots of levels which increase your versatility but not allow players to go beyond the tier the power stat is set to. It also allows you to start at any tier.
You could, for example, gain 20 levels in three classes and still be limited to a standard 5th level character’s ability to fall, jump, hp, attack, etc.
Very good work, Justin! I have had trouble with D&D’s advancement mechanics pushing high-level characters beyond the power level I am comfortable with, and this is the perfect solution.
A couple of thoughts: First, you might want to make certain higher-level spells available as either rituals or plot-based spells. For example, having things like teleport or planar binding or even wish exist isn’t a problem as such, it’s just that they shouldn’t be things that can be done casually. If summoning an outsider to your service requires waiting for the correct night, an hour+ ritual, and expending material components worth a great deal, that allows for the coolness without devaluing it. Similarly, there are those spells you mention above that you might need to avoid no-win scenarios. Say “stone to flesh” isn’t a regular spell, but a ritual that takes an hour and can only be done in a prepared ritual room (so you have to drag your stoned friend back to town).
Second, the Ability Training feat feels off to me. I understand why balance might require it, but a feat that does literally nothing but unlock another feat feels wrong. What about having Ability Training and Ability Advancement each give +1 to the ability score? That produces essentially the same effect but without the “dead feat”.
(Sorry in advance about the double post, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to edit posts).
Another angle to be discussed here is about the difference between a level-capped *campaign* and a level-capped *world*. It’s entirely possible to run a campaign capped at level 6 (either by using the E6 rules, by simply not advancing and awarding XP after hitting level 6, or by planning your campaign such that it will end when your PCs hit level 6 and you’ll start a fresh campaign with new characters after that) in a uncapped world. Level 10 and 15 and 20 PCs still exist, you just will never play them. And as long as your players are fine with that, there is no problem with it.
What I find really interesting, though, is the idea of building an entire *world* capped at level 6 (or 10, or whatever), a world in which there are no PCs above level X. That dramatically changes the way the world works.
For example, in an uncapped world a CR 16 Cornugon is a powerful and dangerous monster, but there are still heroes that can take it on on an equal footing. But in an E10 world, a single Cornugon is an abomination that no hero or small group of heroes can hope to match, that can cut down the mightiest mortal champions with ease and that can only be defeated by a great assembly of heroes, and even then only at terrible cost. One being summoned into the world is a singular event that reshapes the course of history.
Or for another example, in an E6 world teleportation spells, even the humble *Dimension Door*, don’t exist. Or at least, they exist only as rituals or plot effects, and only to the degree that the GM chooses to allow them. Even with something like flight in play, requiring everyone to cross the intervening space to get from Point A to Point B changes so much about the world’s dynamics, does so much to limit options on both the tactical and strategic scale. And it also means that access to even very limited teleportation (say, a portal connecting two specific locations on the opposite sides of a continent) becomes something that shapes the entire local political and economic scene.
Or again, depending on how your GM interprets templates, they can suddenly have completely new connotations. In normal D&D, a template becomes fairly impractical because it boosts your effective level so much that you earn XP much slower. But in an E(X) world (assuming your GM decides that LA doesn’t apply to the level cap and you can be a Level 6 half-dragon fighter in a E6 world), templates suddenly become far more valuable because they can boost effective power levels past the cap in a way epic feats really don’t. Kind of like the Cornugon example above, a vampire with maxed PC levels becomes something far closer to the classic horror-movie vampire, a monster that humans cannot hope to match in a fair fight and can only defeat by exploiting its weaknesses.
Does anyone know how the feat to level ratio is in a 5e setting (as I understand it, this article is about edition 3.5?).
Also I was wondering what level Sauron would be, if Aragorn is level 5. Because he seems kind of overpowered, but then again we never really see him fight.
Greets from Switzerland
Feats don’t really matter as much in 5th edition, as they are entirely optional to begin with. Also, 5th edition is designed from the ground up to have a much slower growth of numbers than 3rd edition had.
If you want a more low magic version of 5th edition, it might be enough to simply create a world in which anyone can only reach 10th level instead of 20th level and then stop. If you’re a bit frugal with XP, getting to 10th level will take a long time already.
Characters like Sauron wouldn’t be using the rules for making player characters. Sauron is a monster, like a balor or pit fiend. He’s completely outside the limitations of mortal heroes.
This article and the calibrating your attention and the E6 stuff is gold.
Our issue was always we wanted Aragorn, Conan, Fahfrd and the Mouser, but we did not want Demi-God Slayers and Planar Wanderers (except perhaps in very limited, kind of terrified, ways).
I have played one character over level 12 in my 42 or 43 years of gaming in D&D. That character made it to Level 18 as a female Hobgoblin warlord (Marshal/Fighter mix) who ended up female and an owner of a castle from the Deck of Many Stupidities (D of Many Things). It was an Eberron campaign and we’d saved the world from several different huge threats and one of the original PCs actually had a Weapon of Legend and ended up at L20. It was neat to do…. once.
At one point, I had to take over another player’s Ranger Assassin and found out, with the mods in play which gave lots of extra damage types to attacks, that a full attack routine for his archer involved the rolling of 35 dice. Think of that. I had to partition an area where I could roll 5 sets of 7 dice (2D20s so we could expidite hit/crit, D8 for arrow, at and 4D6 from sneak attack and additional elemental damage). If I used the one crazy power that let you shoot everyone in line of sight at once (I forget the Ranger spell), it was…. deeper insanity (Dark Elder Gods level).
My Warlord was simpler and had less crazy attacks, but I think I had to get to level 15+ to even be able to use my shield to drive an an enemy back 5-10′ (dissociated mechanic because the real world could facilitate that much earlier).
My group mostly targets levels 3 to 9 with some room for 9-12 for kind of heroic cap off. We do 1&2 to see who survives the lethality of lower levels.
We found that in old school D&D (AD&D), if you didn’t award billions of gold and any significant amount of XP from gold, and if you did award a few modest XP character play and story awards plus all standard monster XP, once you passed 7th level, it took a long time naturally to go up a level.
My 19 year campaign saw the highest level character being L12 with most being L10-11 and one multi-classer at L9. We played maybe 150 to 250 (some games were 11 hours) over those times and L12 was the furthest anyone got. The acceleration in the AD&D XP amounts was significant past level 7-9.
And you know what? It wasn’t a big thing, because past about level 5, you could do great things and fight cool enemies without needing to pop up a level every session.
I honestly don’t know how anyone ever gets to much higher levels in less time unless they give a lot more XP than the old DMG suggested or they regularly wipe out massively powerful foes like Demons, Dragons, etc but the 2E XP tables meant that many foes our guys fought could give some great XP, but nothing compared to what the level charts looked like (when we migrated versions – the game started AD&D, then AD&D + kits, then 2E, then 2E + Player’s Option books which were the bomb!).
I think I’d go a different way from E6 or E10 at least in specifics. Just have a point in your progression system that the progress gets a lot harder (keep the XP standard, change the progression track). Don’t award XP for gold or any such thing. At least for us, that would be all we’d need to limit progression.
And the great part about it is that it makes major demons, huge dragons, the 1000 year old Elven Wizard… all become tremendously horrific foes that shake the setting up when they appear.
Side note: Our 19th year old game took frequent ‘in world’ non-adventuring stints (winter, when big projects like spell research or training, or investigating stuff, etc) and it was the only campaign our D&D characters came to age at the same rate as their characters. Many started in their teens or early 20s and at the end, they were in their late 30s or 40s (which in a medeival model was a decent age, definitely into middle age). That felt right.
I won’t diss the folks that want to play high powered gaming, but in 3.5E (when successor campaigns in the same world ran), it was brutal to try as a GM to track all the feats for large monsters or the worst foe, a party of other adventurers each with character builds… ouch. Mechanically, it was gross for the DM and the players past about L10.
We’re firing up another game in the same world in 5E now. I expect it will take us to the range of 7-12 just naturally. And we’ll enjoy that.
If I wanted to be spawns of Gods or demi-gods clashing with world smashing mythic threats, I think I’d want a system more built to make that be playable and fluid, rather than at the far end of a crunchy game system’s rules.
Yeah, I know I’m late to the party… I’m catching up all the great things Justin and his commenters kicked out from 2011 up and a lot of the stuff catching my attention is nearly a decade old. I guess that would make me a Necromancer then… but the thinking and the ideas have a timeless aspect.
This is great! I came to the same conclusions in the last few years running a Keep on the Borderlands campaign for 5e that had a level max of 3. After that, they chose epic level feats. Have you considered reviewing this with 5e? I’ve heard they made it with more ‘bounding’ baked in.
I do things a bit different. Instead of E(X), I do the following:
1) I add a new stat called Power.
2) I split levels into skill levels and power levels.
2a) Skill levels gain skill points (4+int mod, one point per skill per level), feats (every third level), and ability score increase (every four levels).
2b) Power levels gain a level of a class, with class features, BAB, saves, etc.
3) Skills required a number of skill points equal to the next rank in order to gain that rank.
4) Anything based on class level, caster level, or character level is instead based on the power stat.
5) The GM sets what Power starts at and how quickly it increases. (For example, my baseline is to treat levels 1-6 as the childhood levels, and start players off at level 6 and gain Power 1 at that level, then for each +1 to Power I increase the number of levels needed to get that Power by 6, so Power 1 at 6, then Power 2 at 18, then 36, then 60, and then 90, etc. This gives me more like 100 levels of gritty realism level of play, for which I increase XP rewards to advance more often because I love advancing and I always feel feat starved and skill starved in the normal rules, and this way I get more of all three without completely breaking the game.) A GM can set Power high to start and yet level low, to feel like superheroes that don’t know how to use their powers yet, or to grow quickly in Power at first then slow down later, making the pace of growth adjustable without really interfering with the gaining of levels.
There are a few other minor adjustments that need to be made, such as dealing with spell levels and caster levels.
In Gygax’s campaigns no one ever got above level 12. His own eldest child was 12 Wizard/7 Fighter (7 levels of fighter gained on Barsoom). Looking at this he had a E12 system and honestly that is pretty much in line with what 5E seems to do well.