Horizontal advancement is not a substitute for vertical.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, quick terminology refresher.

Vertical Advancement: Game effects that increase your core competencies in a direct way, almost but not always reducible to a math equation. For example, extra attacks, +5 swords, and Weapon Focus are vertical advancement.

Horizontal Advancement: Game effects that, while making you an overall better character, don't increase your core competencies. For example, a Fighter learning how to use fireball or a Druid being able to read thoughts. While horizontal advancement doesn't have to be at the same power level as the character it's often implied for this to be the case.

Okay, so, there's this meme going around the boards that a lot of the problems we have with Vertical advancement (RNG pushing, over-specialization, etc.) can be solved with horizontal advancement, the idea that vertical advancement should go out of the game and be replaced by and large with it is incredibly short-sighted. For several reasons.

1.) The biggest one: Horizontal and Vertical advancement often recycle into one another. A lot of people would have no problem identifying Spider Climb Boots as horizontal advancement and a Ring Of Bow Master (+half-level to BAB using a longbow) as vertical. But when a paladin is using Spider Climb boots to fight from melee on the ceiling (giving them a direct and not-so-direct boost to attack and defense) and a wizard is using the Ring of Bow Master, what's the in-game difference between those items and Boots of Fireballs (shoot a fireball of CL = your char level X/day) or a Ring of Spider Dance (+1 to attack, +1d4-1 to AC per round)?

2.) Horizontal advancement, if meaningful enough to make people care, can piss into peoples' cheerios even more than vertical advancement. If a wizard gets a ring of +1 to DC of enchantment school spells, it creates envy among the other wizards. If a fighter gets a +12 Hackmaster, the other party fighter gets jealous. But when a rogue gets a ring of Telekinesis Mastery or a monk gets an amulet that lets them transform into various felines, that makes everyone jealous. More specifically, if a cleric gets a Ring of Detect thoughts that risks making the Psion upset. If a barbarian gets an Amulet of Longbow Spiritual Weapon that risks making the ranger upset for the same reason; assuming that the characters were already balanced in screentime, the cleric and barbarian's gains increased their own at the cost of making the psion and ranger's less meaningful.

3.) Oftentimes it's hard to make people care about horizontal advancement in the first place. You can do a lot of wild and wacky shit with a Lyre of Building, but if you give it to Little Trevor who is playing Krusk the Barbarian he'll just sort of stare at you blankly, write it down, then forget about it. It doesn't feel like a reward because it's not something that he cares about. And the really insidious thing is that this isn't because Trevor is an ingrate; everyone will reach a saturation point. Some people will actually really appreciate a stylish sweater for Christmas their grandma made them. Few people would appreciate five sweaters from two grandmas, an aunt, and two creepy uncles. And frankly from an overall game effect standpoint it's easier to excite people with vertical advancement than horizontal advancement. A +2 to melee attacks will generate about as much excitement as a flying carpet but if your game was already at a fairly sane level then the latter will have more of an impact--which may or may not be desirable.

So in my opinion since most games can absorb a fair deal of vertical advancement as long as things don't get too crazy and it's easier to get people excited about vertical advancement without breaking the game a successful system will use a hybrid of both. But you can't replace vertical advancement with horizontal advancement entirely.

[Gx1080]

Well, pure horizontal advancement ends up with a bunch of "do-everything" characters.

Which is fine on a game when you can only use some of your powers at the same time. Like (Warning: MMO example, angry grognards ahead) EVE Online, where you can do "everything", but can only ride one spaceship.

That system is woefully inadequate for Medieval Fantasy, where you go from slaying Kobods to slaying Gods.

[Seerow]

One way to address it is to simply not have verticle advancement affect the RNG.


Like yes, you can get a more powerful weapon. This more powerful weapon will deal more damage than your old weapon. It is not any more accurate.

This way you can have magic items that are direct power increases without having to worry about screwing the RNG for everybody with random number increases. A +2d6 damage is something a player can get excited about just like a +2 to hit/damage, but the +2d6 damage just makes enemies die faster, it doesn't shift the RNG any.

[K]

Main flaws with your critique of horizontal advancement:

1. You don't have to do overlap. There is literally no reason why you can't come up with an infinite number of Fighter tricks that never overlap with Wizard tricks, other than your own lack of creativity from a design standpoint.

For magic items, you could even make "magic-item-specific" tricks if you were worried about shtick overlap, something like only letting people get certain buffs like invisibility through magic items.

2. It doesn't preclude controlled vertical advancement. The level system works when it makes people more powerful because it's strictly controlled, and the magic item system fails because it's completely uncontrolled, but you can mix and match them pretty interchangeably.

3. You actually want people to be jealous of other people's magic items. That's how you know they are good items, and it's what keep people coming back because they hope to get an item to make other people jealous.

What you don't want people feeling cheated because their character sucks solely because they didn't the items they needed to not fall off the RNG. That's resentment, and that means people leave the game.

[Josh_Kablack]

It also depends a lot on the game you are playing.

In 3e D&D, a fifth level melee-type character will have like +12 to hit and be fighting a lot of animals and large / huge monsters with AC in the 14-20 range, meaning that they jolly well hit most of the time. They'll be rocking somewhere in the 20-24 AC range which means against CR 5 stuff with a +9/+9/+4 claw/claw/bite routine (troll) +10/+10/+8 (manticore) or +13/+13/+7 (dire lion) they'll be getting hit fairly often and can't reliably tank against level-equivalent enemies who get to make full attacks on them. They will have a Will save of maybe as much as +3 - which gives them a 40% to get to act in the fight against the CR 5 Mummy, or a 50% to not get dominate by a CR 4 vampire spawn - and even if they make that save, they have no way at all to hurt it through the monsters gaseous form.
So rationally, such a character is going to benefit relatively little from advancement that make their attacks more accurate like a sword with another +1, benefit moderately from effects that make their AC higher (such as armor/shields with another +1), and a great deal from such "horizontal" advancement as fear immunity and ghost touch weapons.

But in 4e, where the math "just works" such that you always hit 40% to 60% of the time, and it takes 4 average hits to drop a typical level-appropriate enemy, and PCs can usually survive most status effects - losing at worst a turn or two until they save, then each and every +1 to anything is precious and well worth grubbing for. Gaining a "horizontal advancement" like being able to change your weapon damage type is so rarely meaningful that it's generally foolish to give vertical advancement like a +1 to hit for it. ( unless you're uber-specialized in causing Type X: Vulnerability in your opponents)

[Gx1080]

You actually want people to be jealous of other people's magic items.

What you don't want people feeling cheated because their character sucks solely because they didn't the items they needed to not fall off the RNG.

And those two things aren't contradictory because...?

[K]

You actually want people to be jealous of other people's magic items.

What you don't want people feeling cheated because their character sucks solely because they didn't the items they needed to not fall off the RNG.

And those two things aren't contradictory because...?

Being jealous of other people's magic items is temporary, and it's focused on other players. It makes you want to adventure more so that you get something equally or more cool.

Not getting your vertical advancement and falling off the RNG makes you resent the DM and game, and it makes you feel like you won't be able to win future encounters, leading you want to stop playing the game because it feels either the DM or the game is unfair.

It's the difference between the lack of positive reinforcement and actual negative reinforcement. An analogy might be that it's the difference between having a neighbor with a hotter wife and having a neighbor who bones your wife. One is annoying, but the other could lead to murder.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Who said that you'd need any kind of optional vertical advancement to function? It's been my position for awhile that characters, even high-level characters, should be able to function at level-appropriateness with just a shirt, a stick, and a pocket full of dreams. If you find a +4 sword that's just a bullshit bonus and you're welcome to it.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Exception: If you're playing an intelligent sword, you want a +4 Swordmaster instead.

[darkmaster]

Hm, a game where everyone's an intelligent weapon and they equip better and better adventurers as the game goes on. I like the sound of that!

[TheFlatline]

Hm, a game where everyone's an intelligent weapon and they equip better and better adventurers as the game goes on. I like the sound of that!

I actually did that in the one BESM game I played. I played an intelligent, demon-haunted sword that possessed whomever picked it up. So the party went around finding badass NPCs to bargain with, knowing I'd probably possess them pretty quickly.

It was a weird game but the character was a lot of fun.

[Psychic Robot]

playing an intelligent weapon could be a fun campaign. it would certainly solve the issue of fighters vs. casters. unfortunately that anime is shit.

[Fuchs]

Question: With "vertical advancement" people mean "getting better at your core stick above and beyond what you get from leveling up"?

[DSMatticus]

Pretty much, Fuchs. Vertical advancement is reaching higher shelves. Horizontal advancement is being able to take things off more shelves of the same height.

D&D has both going on in magic items: personally, I would fold vertical advancement into the role of levelling up, that way characters don't have to worry about magic items to keep up with the party, and they don't have to worry about being pussies once they're stipped naked. If level 10 characters need a +3 to be on the RNG, new level 10 class feature: you get +3 attack and damage and your attacks count as magical. Then they can pick up a stick, a mundane sword, a masterwork sword, or a magic sword and still be at the vertical level they need to be.

And I think it's a lot easier to care about magic items when the sword you get isn't "+3 on the RNG," but instead "unlocks a small range of fire-related abilities that your character had no access to before." Lago's concerned that this will make the pyromancer feel shafted, but that's a really trivial problem. Solutions:
1) items are a few levels below the players, leaving the pyromancer to boast "I'm still the best at it," but leaving the fire sword a few useful abilities that come up in edge cases when the guy with it WANTS to blast fire (kill those ice things!).
2) item abilities and class abilities are disjoint. The pyromancer takes the sword of fire, and it makes him a more diverse pyromancer.
3) items give a few abilities, and the number of items people can use is limited. Making the pyromancer noticeably obsolete seems pretty implausible.

[hogarth]

1.) The biggest one: Horizontal and Vertical advancement often recycle into one another.

Possibly true, but your example is stupid. How is a Ring of Bow Master supposed to be the same as Boots of Fireball?

2.) Horizontal advancement, if meaningful enough to make people care, can piss into peoples' cheerios even more than vertical advancement.

Then don't do that.

3.) Oftentimes it's hard to make people care about horizontal advancement in the first place.

This is the biggest problem with it, I think.

[Lago PARANOIA]

How is a Ring of Bow Master supposed to be the same as Boots of Fireball?

If you don't see how they're similar then I don't know what to tell you. The wizard suddenly gets an ability they didn't have before (being able to use a longbow competently), the same as the fighter (being able to shoot a fireball). In the context of TTRPGs there's very little difference between not having an ability and 'having' an ability that's so small that it doesn't do anything.

Then don't do that.

If you're using horizontal advancement as a way to get people excited, especially as a replacement for the amount of vertical advancement that D&D engages in, then it's almost inevitable. Seriously, assuming that you were already at level-appropriate fightingness, how many cloak of the bats, boots of teleportation, and bag of tricks is a +3 sword worth?

That's the concern I have. People on TGD have been so flippant about horizontal advancement lately that I don't see it going in any direction other than PCs having a pile of feat, PrC/PP, and magical-item related superpowers that make the difference between classes meaningless.

And I think it's a lot easier to care about magic items when the sword you get isn't "+3 on the RNG," but instead "unlocks a small range of fire-related abilities that your character had no access to before."

I don't. If your character is fluffed as 'student of water, ice, and acid' and is satisfied by the concept do you really think that they're going to care about having a small range of fire-related abilities on top of that? They might have been going for a fire/ice antipode dichotomy for a theme but chances are they'll be all 'thanks, if I wanted to use fire powers more than occasionally I would have gotten some'.

1) items are a few levels below the players, leaving the pyromancer to boast "I'm still the best at it," but leaving the fire sword a few useful abilities that come up in edge cases when the guy with it WANTS to blast fire (kill those ice things!).

I think you're overestimating the desirability of this effect. Characters that don't get a benefit from overspecializing (which we want to get rid of anyway) like classical 3.0E wizards tend to pick powers in a way to plug their holes anyway. Sure, I can see a rogue getting excited by a Ring of Summon Monster IV, but giving that to an enchanter or plant mage will have them going 'thanks, but I already have lesser planar binding / summon earth elemental'.

2) item abilities and class abilities are disjoint. The pyromancer takes the sword of fire, and it makes him a more diverse pyromancer.

I don't see this happening either. If my pyromancer can already use Fireball / Wall of Fire / Summon Fire Elemental / Flame Wings what is he going to care about a Bow of Produce Flame and Flaming Arrows? He might use it to plug in some tactical holes but more likely it'll just fall into the category of naive optimization.

[hogarth]

How is a Ring of Bow Master supposed to be the same as Boots of Fireball?

If you don't see how they're similar then I don't know what to tell you. The wizard suddenly gets an ability they didn't have before (being able to use a longbow competently), the same as the fighter (being able to shoot a fireball).

If you're saying that giving an 8th level wizard a ring that lets him use a bow like an 8th level fighter (and lets an 8th level fighter use a bow like an 8th level fighter) is a horizontal power increase magic item, then you're right. If you're saying that a ring that gives +4 to bow attacks is a horizontal power increase magic item because the fighter might not decline to wear it, then you're an idiot.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you're saying that a ring that gives +4 to bow attacks is a horizontal power increase magic item because the fighter might not decline to wear it, then you're an idiot.

Thanks for perfectly demonstrating the blurred line between vertical and horizontal advancement. If a wizard wears it it's horizontal, if a fighter wears it it's vertical. By the converse, a helmet that lets a human temporarily give up all of their human racial abilities for that of a doppleganger is horizontal advancement, but if they take levels in Mindspy it's vertical advancement.

That's what I've been saying all along and people have been way overplaying the dichotomy.

[hogarth]

If you're saying that a ring that gives +4 to bow attacks is a horizontal power increase magic item because the fighter might not decline to wear it, then you're an idiot.

Thanks for perfectly demonstrating the blurred line between vertical and horizontal advancement. If a wizard wears it it's horizontal, if a fighter wears it it's vertical.

Oh, so you're being an idiot.

Helpful hint: If you flush a $20 bill down the toilet, that doesn't make it a turd.

[Whipstitch]

It's really one of those points where the issue becomes clearer if you look at lower powered settings or character examples and start dreaming up unintended consequences and implications from there. For example, giving a mounted warrior a bow when he already has a lance won't add any pluses to their character sheet but it will doom any closet trolls that happen to poke their heads out of doors.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oh, so you're being an idiot.

hogarth, being able to divide an argument up into more than one case is not a sign of idiocy. Being unable to comprehend anything but one-size-fits-all arguments like you're doing, however...

[Orion]

Main flaws with your critique of horizontal advancement:

1. You don't have to do overlap. There is literally no reason why you can't come up with an infinite number of Fighter tricks that never overlap with Wizard tricks, other than your own lack of creativity from a design standpoint.

Really? How does that not lead to the 4E bullshit where you print endless recombinations of "shift/attack/push/daze" with more damage dice? Writing interesting abilities is hard work, and the conceptual space really isn't that big. I don't know how much horizontal advancement you can give before Fighter and Wizard overlap in function if not in flavor.

[hogarth]

Oh, so you're being an idiot.

hogarth, being able to divide an argument up into more than one case is not a sign of idiocy. Being unable to comprehend anything but one-size-fits-all arguments like you're doing, however...

Seriously, the argument "X is not more powerful than Y because I can make something crappy that uses X" is a favourite rhetorical flourish for basket-weavers and Paizonians (e.g. "the wizard in my campaign is terrible, therefore wizards are weaker than fighters!"). I think you're better than that nonsense, at least I hope so.

[hyzmarca]

Main flaws with your critique of horizontal advancement:

1. You don't have to do overlap. There is literally no reason why you can't come up with an infinite number of Fighter tricks that never overlap with Wizard tricks, other than your own lack of creativity from a design standpoint.

Really? How does that not lead to the 4E bullshit where you print endless recombinations of "shift/attack/push/daze" with more damage dice? Writing interesting abilities is hard work, and the conceptual space really isn't that big. I don't know how much horizontal advancement you can give before Fighter and Wizard overlap in function if not in flavor.

Well, we can be prertty sure that the wizard hasn't taken any archery feats (what wizard would?), so that +4 to use bows won't let him do things like shoot a guy four times in the face with a single action.

[hogarth]

Really? How does that not lead to the 4E bullshit where you print endless recombinations of "shift/attack/push/daze" with more damage dice? Writing interesting abilities is hard work, and the conceptual space really isn't that big. I don't know how much horizontal advancement you can give before Fighter and Wizard overlap in function if not in flavor.

The glib response would be to point to the list of spells in the PHB and in the Spell Compendium and say "Here's 1,606 different abilities -- that should keep you going for a while", but I'm also ambivalent about how many really different effects there are out there. It would be boring if every class ended up looking like the same AD&D F/T/M-U multiclass, just with slightly different special effects (e.g. "I use the Ice Mace to cast Wall of Ice and Cone of Cold, so I'm totally different from the guy who uses the Fire Sword to cast Wall of Fire and Fireball!").