Growing up (Power Level) vs Growing out (Experiences)

[codeGlaze]

Growing up (raising a player's power level) is the typical nature of showing your accumulation of experience in most iconic RPGs.

But what about growing out?
(Exemplifying your experience with out necessarily being more POWERful)
Something akin to the The E6 Project.

And where does one eventually bleed into the other?

For example... magic items CAN clearly increase your power level, like Tony Stark in his armor.
Outside of his armor he's a much lower level than inside. Much like a Fitin Manz in DnD is when he is with out his magical crutches.

So where does (personal) experience eventually power you up?
A Fighter (FT1) with 100 different 'feats' giving him a +1 (or what ever) to hit+attack vs 100 different kinds of creatures isn't really more POWERFUL than a Fighter (FT2) with 1 feat giving him a +1 vs 1 creature.

FT1 is more adaptable, skilled and/or experienced, not more powerful.
If FT2 was swinging around feats giving him +2s or +3s, that'd be more power.

A wizard (W1) that can cast a fireball for 1d6 damage vs a wizard (W2) that can cast a fireball OR an acidball for 1d6.
W2 is, once again, only more adaptable.
But if W1 could cast a fireball for 2d6 damage, he'd be more POWERFUL.

This has been touched on a thousand times. But more in the way of Fighter vs Wizard.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Adaptability does not (!==) equal power. So where do the two eventually meet?

Or do they?[/b]

[John Magnum]

I would be interested in trying to hear your definition of "powerful" where gaining more strength against a broader spectrum of challenges does NOT make you more powerful. Vertical and horizontal power growth already bleed into each other all the time, so trying to claim that horizontal power growth isn't actually more power at all seems pretty odd.

[ishy]

Any time those challenges don't pop up. Or when they they aren't being used (because they pop up so rarely, or the rules behind them are confusing etc.)

But the thing is, increasing numbers is something that can basically be done forever.
But you can't do the same with horizontal increases.

Some problems are:
1: People will always pick the better options first and thus stop caring about the new stuff they get.
2: Your game runs out of options. (for example if you only have 50 creature types, you can't have 51 +1 to hit vs a creature type (non-stackable))
3: non-optimal amount of options (player A will be bored till she has at least 12 attacks, while player B never wants the game to progress beyond 6 for anyone)

[Eikre]

Obviously more options amounts to more power, in the absolute sense. But I imagine the idea here is to furnish the player with options that are mutually exclusive, in the sense that they can bring one to bear at any given instant, and make sure there's a utilitarian granularity where any particular option is the perfect tactic for one situation, but also a decent option in other situations where any number of other tactics might be competitive.

The tendency, then, would be to take powers with as little overlap as possible to deal with as many circumstances as you can. Once you've made all the monumental jumps from "useless in this situation" to "has something at least mildly worthwhile to do in this situation," though, the marginal utility of new powers becomes comparatively less and less in a parabolic fashion, due to overlap with the solid options you already had, as your character's competence approaches 100%.

So anyway, the abstract model isn't represented by shit like "50 monsters, 50 +1's", the model is more like "Seven types of weakness, 210 monsters with three vulnerabilities each, and 210 spells dealing three energy types at once." If you've got one spell, then there are, what, 24 monsters who you can't even touch? With just one more spell, you can cover enough bases that everyone has at least one vulnerability that you can exploit. Between those two spells you also get 6 types of double-weakness and 2 triple-weaknesses. Moving on from there, you try to assure yourself access to all the double-weakness profiles, and I think that will take 42 spells. If you want to have exactly the right spell for the job in every circumstance, you'll need all 210 spells, but obviously each of those spells is only the perfect solution less than half a percent of the time.

[Wrathzog]

My group refers to this as Breadth (options) vs. Depth (bigger numbers).

They're two axes of character power. There's no need to compare them because they're only pieces of the whole equation.

With that said, I've found that broad characters tend to be harder to deal with than deep characters.

[ModelCitizen]

I could see something like this for an action-horror game. Experience fighting vampires makes you better at stabbing dudes in the heart and resisting domination gaze attacks. Fighting zombies makes you better at headshots. Fighting either makes you better at resisting grapple + bite attacks. Obviously there's some crossover (it turns out living humans also have a special boss weakpoint where they die if you stab them in the heart) but for the most part you get better at exploiting the weaknesses and resisting the special attacks of specific monsters rather than generically increasing in power.

[codeGlaze]

With that said, I've found that broad characters tend to be harder to deal with than deep characters.

Any particular reasons why?

[RadiantPhoenix]

With that said, I've found that broad characters tend to be harder to deal with than deep characters.

Any particular reasons why?

Probably because you have to keep track of more things.

Mr. Flamethrower the 10th level Fire Mage has many fewer options than Mr. Variety, the 7th level generalist Wizard who prepares only one of each spell per day.

[K]

There is innately diminishing returns on horizontal power growth vs. vertical power growth.

So while one does become a more useful and powerful character by getting more options at a set-power level, eventually the ability to cast both fireballs and lighting bolts doesn't make a lot of difference because Orcs die to both equally well. This means that you don't actually get any more power at all when you get that next ability.

To put it in DnD terms, having both a magic missile and a burning hands and the option to use both makes you a more powerful character than the guy who only has burning hands, but it doesn't compare at all to the guy with the fireball.

The fireball guy is operating on a different tier, and no amount of lower-end versatility is going to compensate for that because the other guy is getting diminishing returns and the aggregate of his power will never advance a tier. For games that use this model, it's a handy way of keeping people inside the assumed expectations of the game.

[PhoneLobster]

Something akin to the The E6 Project.

The e6 project? Wasnt that the completely stupidly borked attempt to freeze advancement at level 6 in d20, only they picked a level that didn't match their stated goals, then didnt ACTUALLY full freeze advancement. And then just sort of assed all the numbers up in really blatantly stupid ways.

Because that's how I remember that. And really while a discussion of horizontal vs vertical advancement might be interesting... those E6 suckers really were just a bunch of your usual "Lulz low powa Role Play is Realz Role play we is so awesome better than you roll playaz" jerks who did the usual things and made the usual mistakes.

[codeGlaze]

The e6 project? Wasnt that the completely stupidly borked attempt to freeze advancement at level 6 in d20, [...]

[...] those E6 suckers really were just a bunch of your usual "Lulz low powa Role Play is Realz Role play we is so awesome better than you roll playaz" jerks who did the usual things and made the usual mistakes.

Well I suppose I'm curious as to whether people think both horizontal and vertical growth can co-exist. And whether or not enough horizontal advancement eventually bleeds into vertical.

As for E6, it was just an example. I wasn't making any claims for or against it.

What are the usual mistakes that are made?

[PhoneLobster]

Their usual mistakes weren't so much related to horizontal vs vertical advancement and more related to having a bit of a "real role playaz" wank and changing the rules to support their "we are better than you because we do low power levels!" ideas without really understanding what they were doing, or even what they were trying to do.

Oh and the other usual mistake was, they wanted something dramatically different to d20, but then sabotaged themselves from the first moment by being lazy and wanting to use d20 as much as possible to do it.

So I'm not sure you'll find much to demonstrate common errors in vertical vs horizontal advancement in their material. No more than in, say, d20 itself anyway.

Though you could learn from their errors I suppose. Don't use d20 if you want a different (or consistent) balance point for your vertical or your horizontal advancement. D20 DOES have a level and class based system, which SHOULD help with balancing the two, but the differing classes are wildly different in vertical and horizontal advancement in deeply unbalanced ways. Among other things.

So basically while there are some building blocks that could have been used to balance vertical and horizontal advancement in d20, they weren't. And as such it is only marginally ahead of the vertical vs horizontal problems evident in a hypothetical purely points based system with absolutely no mechanics to balance or restrict the trade offs between the two.

I think from my point of view, you don't have to worry too much about vertical advancement. That happens on its own. You only need mechanics to limit it so that people don't throw themselves out of level appropriate ranges.

Horizontal advancement is harder to encourage, and you basically NEED mechanics that strictly enforce it. So that means classes with broad horizontal packages of abilities, points based systems with spending caps or systems where there just plain AREN'T enough available purely vertical stacking options available to spend all your resources without spreading horizontally (which is, well, like spending caps really).

There are a number of ways that it can potentially be done. But the problem is a lot of systems just plain do not do it. It seems like one of the most obvious issues in the world that say, a points based RPG in particular, should address as a fundamental basic issue... and yet it is just plain ridiculous how many points based RPGS, or even class based RPGs appear not to have so much as a single mechanic intended to limit or in any way set a balance point for vertical vs horizontal advancement or what we might know better as a problem for game play in the form of the "Specialist vs Generalist" problem.

[ishy]

With that said, I've found that broad characters tend to be harder to deal with than deep characters.

Any particular reasons why?

Because numbers are easy to fuck with as a DM. If someone does +50 dmg, you just increase all monster hit points by 200 or whatever.

[Wrathzog]

Any particular reasons why?

Radiant Phoenix and Ishy basically answered this for me. It's easier to deal with straight numbers as opposed to a character that can do a wide variety of things (well).
But K's right that a lot of games totally have height restrictions, so it's not like being super broad is going to make you super powerful. It's important to improve both aspects. In my head, I picture it like trying to expand the area of a rectangle.

[Caedrus]

One thing I'm interested in is "growing out" in-between levels, and not through simply completing a relevant activity (e.g. kill a zombie to get zombie killing skill). For example, being able to add new spells to your spellbook as a Wizard... something that, say, Fighters don't really have any equivalent to.

Some reasons why you might care about this besides simply exploring more character building game design options for non-Wizards (or simply differently imagined wizards) are for, say, making mechanics for speaking various languages. Say you want to go meet X tribe and want to be able to speak their language, and you'll probably never need to speak it again after you're done rifling through the local temple of doom. It simply wouldn't do to have you earn the language *after* the encounter. So I'm interested in exploring alternatives that open up options for instances like this, as well as the aforementioned point about opening up opportunities for other types of characters.

[codeGlaze]

One thing I'm interested in is "growing out" in-between levels, and not through simply completing a relevant activity (e.g. kill a zombie to get zombie killing skill). For example, being able to add new spells to your spellbook as a Wizard... something that, say, Fighters don't really have any equivalent to.

Knowledge in general being tied specifically to levels is kind of wonky.

Aside from that, there are things like team cooperation benefits, team fighting and the like. Stuff you pick up through being in the field and DOING things. Being able to fight back to back with a buddy may be cool when your buddy is around. But... that's not a skill that'd make your character more powerful. Maybe more resilient in specific cases, or what have you, but not necessarily more *powerful*.

[shadzar]

One thing I'm interested in is "growing out" in-between levels, and not through simply completing a relevant activity (e.g. kill a zombie to get zombie killing skill). For example, being able to add new spells to your spellbook as a Wizard... something that, say, Fighters don't really have any equivalent to.

Some reasons why you might care about this besides simply exploring more character building game design options for non-Wizards (or simply differently imagined wizards) are for, say, making mechanics for speaking various languages. Say you want to go meet X tribe and want to be able to speak their language, and you'll probably never need to speak it again after you're done rifling through the local temple of doom. It simply wouldn't do to have you earn the language *after* the encounter. So I'm interested in exploring alternatives that open up options for instances like this, as well as the aforementioned point about opening up opportunities for other types of characters.

things like languages and non-combat skill sets were lost with the inclusion of NWPs/skills as they greatly put an arbitrary limit on the number of possible options. 4 NWPs/languages in 2nd for example.

while languages may be reasoning to have some sort of limit on as we currently dont know how many languages people can learn in the real world to compare, because they dont have time to study them properly. only a few with ample time have gotten fluent in 13 languages or more. the other things like skills, that were expanded in 3rd, was still a small list. of course then 4th tried to limit them to 11. people get stuck on picking from the list, as has been shown in many places. such growth of a character was always intended to be left up to the players to decide on for D&D, but the lists made them just want to choose from the list for fear of understanding, and those added complications from those preaching RAW that can only use things on the list.

even the secondary skills of 2nd were limited in number as an incomplete list of the jobs of persons of the time period. to open back up either the lists must be removed again, or someone would have to heavily study the time period to try to replicate enough of the skill sets that exist and figure how much could one person know how to do.

[codeGlaze]

even the secondary skills of 2nd were limited in number as an incomplete list of the jobs of persons of the time period. to open back up either the lists must be removed again, or someone would have to heavily study the time period to try to replicate enough of the skill sets that exist and figure how much could one person know how to do.

I don't think it's really about how long or short the preconceived lists are, but more about how the skills/NWPs(/Feats) are/were implemented. Why can't the 400 year old elf have reams of tricks from life experience with out necessarily being a demi-god or something?

[Antariuk]

Their usual mistakes weren't so much related to horizontal vs vertical advancement and more related to having a bit of a "real role playaz" wank and changing the rules to support their "we are better than you because we do low power levels!" ideas without really understanding what they were doing, or even what they were trying to do.

Oh and the other usual mistake was, they wanted something dramatically different to d20, but then sabotaged themselves from the first moment by being lazy and wanting to use d20 as much as possible to do it.

[...]

PL, where are you getting this from? Have you actually read the E6 document yourself? Its a single guy's homebrew, and it states rather clearly that it is about semi-freezing D&D at a powerlevel he and his group were more comfortable with than D&D's higher level craziness. Later on, some other dudes picked it up and built a number of feats and what have you, but there was never some kind of organized project or something, leave alone the "better than you" attitude you're referring to.

E6 is not the all-around fix some people want it to be, but in its simplicity it works much better than most homebrew ideas I have seen. IIRC, the original author (Ryan Stoughton or something I believe) even admitted that after a certain point of amassing feats, the predictability of a group's capabilities become very difficult and the system kinda breaks, but that is long after every by-the-book game would have left any sane territory.

[shadzar]

even the secondary skills of 2nd were limited in number as an incomplete list of the jobs of persons of the time period. to open back up either the lists must be removed again, or someone would have to heavily study the time period to try to replicate enough of the skill sets that exist and figure how much could one person know how to do.

I don't think it's really about how long or short the preconceived lists are, but more about how the skills/NWPs(/Feats) are/were implemented. Why can't the 400 year old elf have reams of tricks from life experience with out necessarily being a demi-god or something?

this is EXACTLY the problem i have with those lists. Most people do not like the whole player knowledge of things translating to character knowledge, because some people are left out in this new age gaming. all day long i have been researching bookbinding again because I want to know, but whether a character would know it or not depends on the character, the DM, or the ruleset to provide this skill.

just the number of skills from medieval times, added with magical skills thrown in would be lists larger than than a DMG, PHB, and MM combined. then having to balance them out in some fashion to give a quantity to a class, race, INT/WIS based allotment, etc is a task that has only bee tried once in an old netbook.

How does one decide what a dwarf or elf gets without depowering a human character?

also with centralized character design where fairness means all PCs are more or less equal, equal in XP and level, equal in just about anything, giving the 400 year old elf more for being alive longer people would just cry foul on. age is not even a determining or important factor in gaming today to allow for this.

it has been probably the HARDEST concept to translate into an open RPG, that isnt arbitrary limits that people somehow just agree upon, ergo why most character design is based around combat, and the outside of combat elements are left for the players of each group to handle on their own.

if you limit the elf for an arbitrary reason that his age doesnt count as similar to human learning ability, then you make elves look pretty dumb and unable to learn if they have been around roughly 100 years longer than a human then have those years advantage on gaining skills.

[codeGlaze]

[...]
just the number of skills from medieval times, added with magical skills thrown in would be lists larger than than a DMG, PHB, and MM combined. then having to balance them out in some fashion to give a quantity to a class, race, INT/WIS based allotment, etc is a task that has only bee tried once in an old netbook.

How does one decide what a dwarf or elf gets without depowering a human character?

also with centralized character design where fairness means all PCs are more or less equal, equal in XP and level, equal in just about anything, giving the 400 year old elf more for being alive longer people would just cry foul on. age is not even a determining or important factor in gaming today to allow for this.
[...]

Trying to quantify absolutely everything under the sun is a fool's errand; but with that being said tying an entire character's personal development to (power) level dependency is also sort of silly.

You could generalize a lot of skills on some sort of "short" list (that can be expanded upon in supplements or GM fiat) that just cover what ever. A lot like d20 TRIED to do. Ranks, points, marks, dots, blood smears or what ever could be indicative to a person's affinity/knowledge for said skill/profession/etc, with specializations being tacked on as people progress, if need be. But those things don't need to be TIED to a person's (power/vertical) level. They could potentially be CAPPED by your p.level (you can only break the laws of physics *this* much while jumping around at p.level 5!), but vertical advancement shouldn't (necessarily) get in the way of horizontal. Presuming the characters give a rat's ass about it. Having a system that allows for more or less granular control would be a good idea. Whether or not it's feasible? Not sure.

Focusing on just age atm:
If a designer is wary of age on long lived races being a problem, then tie it into character creation or something.
ex: If character age is a boon, have it COST something... points, feats, etc
If character age is a flaw, have it GIVE something... points, feats, etc

Horizontal development just seems to be hand waved away a lot.

[Caedrus]

One thing I'm interested in is "growing out" in-between levels, and not through simply completing a relevant activity (e.g. kill a zombie to get zombie killing skill). For example, being able to add new spells to your spellbook as a Wizard... something that, say, Fighters don't really have any equivalent to.

Knowledge in general being tied specifically to levels is kind of wonky.

So what are some more options you could use instead?

[PhoneLobster]

PL, where are you getting this from?

In large part distant memories of a time in the distant past when someone here on the den said "E6, what's up with that?".

And no really. E6 has "realz role playaz are low powaz" written all over it. I don't care if it's just one dude, just one dude can do that too. And anyway, there is a whole weird little movement of "real role playaz" fans lurking behind E6 on shadowy internet forums. Mostly on Giant in the Playground if my vague memories serve correctly.

[shadzar]

[...]
just the number of skills from medieval times, added with magical skills thrown in would be lists larger than than a DMG, PHB, and MM combined. then having to balance them out in some fashion to give a quantity to a class, race, INT/WIS based allotment, etc is a task that has only bee tried once in an old netbook.

How does one decide what a dwarf or elf gets without depowering a human character?

also with centralized character design where fairness means all PCs are more or less equal, equal in XP and level, equal in just about anything, giving the 400 year old elf more for being alive longer people would just cry foul on. age is not even a determining or important factor in gaming today to allow for this.
[...]

Trying to quantify absolutely everything under the sun is a fool's errand; but with that being said tying an entire character's personal development to (power) level dependency is also sort of silly.

You could generalize a lot of skills on some sort of "short" list (that can be expanded upon in supplements or GM fiat) that just cover what ever. A lot like d20 TRIED to do. Ranks, points, marks, dots, blood smears or what ever could be indicative to a person's affinity/knowledge for said skill/profession/etc, with specializations being tacked on as people progress, if need be. But those things don't need to be TIED to a person's (power/vertical) level. They could potentially be CAPPED by your p.level (you can only break the laws of physics *this* much while jumping around at p.level 5!), but vertical advancement shouldn't (necessarily) get in the way of horizontal. Presuming the characters give a rat's ass about it. Having a system that allows for more or less granular control would be a good idea. Whether or not it's feasible? Not sure.

Focusing on just age atm:
If a designer is wary of age on long lived races being a problem, then tie it into character creation or something.
ex: If character age is a boon, have it COST something... points, feats, etc
If character age is a flaw, have it GIVE something... points, feats, etc

Horizontal development just seems to be hand waved away a lot.

modern game thinking states that age, gender, height, weight shouldnt have too many restrictions or differentiate the characters that much to be more "PC".

there always was a "short" list for skills, called ability scores, that were the source of most skills contributions.

the two ways that was working was bigger lists, and raising stats. stats not being solely connected to "skills" but also being connected to combat meant it had little effect on skills.

MAYBE just using stats and say give bonuses to non-combat functions at certain levels would give better skill growth?

STAT . COMBAT . SKILLS
STR 15 . +1 . +1

so rather than raising the mod for combat with a new level, raise the mod for the skill use. so whether you use roll-under or DC the skill keeps getting better as you level, but not exactly being connected to combat strength increase?

you would just have to use common sense in which stat a "skill" goes to, so you dont get stuck with that list of 2 skills for a 200 year old elf character.

[Username17]

At the limit of infinite options, the guy with the options beats numbers guy. He uses whatever options happen to negate the numbers guy's attacks and defenses and moves on from there. At the simplest level, you levitate out of a dire bear's reach and that is that. Even with more complicated enemies, having all the options will allow you to pick up fire resistance or immunity if you need it (or whatever else you need).

However, infinite options is generally speaking unplayable. As K rightly points out, at any finite number of options, the addition of a new option holds diminishing returns. There are scenarios that you can win because you have levitate that you couldn't win with spider climb (and vice versa), but not many.

Against a challenge of even moderate depth with a considerable increase in numbers, any amount of options you are likely to be able to even recite from memory is not going to carry the day.

-Username17