The Mundane Melee fighter can go fuck himself.

[Cyberzombie]

But everyone else loves them. Seriously, Prestige Classes were the most popular thing in 3e even though they were badly done.

I highly doubt that Frank, given that most 3E games didn't even get past 5th level.

[Username17]

So what to do about "+1 Spellcaster level"?

I never was a fan of that separation and the drag it created for noncasters.

Well, obviously you're going to need to not have ability progressions that wrap into prestige class progressions. There are several ways to do that, and you'll have to pick one.

One way would be to have your initial class abilities simply scale to level while you pick up prestige abilities. So if you take your early levels as a Fighter, your sword blows keep getting better and stay a level appropriate way to kill people even while you're in Paragon environments getting your level appropriate puzzle solving and mobility options from being a Gaea's Avenger or a Morninglord. Meanwhile, if you start your early career as a Shaman, your spirit curse keeps getting better and remains a level appropriate debuff to hit things with even when you're running around Paragon environments getting your level appropriate puzzle solving and mobility options from being a Dragon Master or Witch King.

Another way would be to have your initial class abilities get rapidly marginalized by your new powers. So now that you're a Doomspeaker, you're going to be using Doomspeaker powers and it doesn't much matter whether you had a Rogue's Sneak Attack or a Berserker's Power Attack, because both those attacks are bullshit compared to the Doomspeaker's Killing Word.

Another way would be to have some limited number of resource management systems (that limited number could be "one") and then letting the players progress to prestige classes within their resource management system. So your Psion could advance into any prestige class that used power points and your warblade could advance into any class that used power slots.

And so on.

But the thing where some classes can and must take prestige classes that advance their core powers and everyone else's prestige classes suck monkey balls is something that has to go.

-Username17

[Grek]

Would it be balanced to have core spellcasting classes grant spells of level 1 through 3, and prestige spellcasting classes grant spells of higher levels without advancing the lower level spells at all? If you go Wizard -> Doomlord, your spellcasting caps out at third level spells, but you get access to your Doomblade just as quickly as if you'd gone Fighter -> Doomlord. And a character going Fighter -> Archmage gets 4th level+ spell progression despite not having any lower leveled spell slots.

[Previn]

I highly doubt that Frank, given that most 3E games didn't even get past 5th level.

You are an idiot if you think that. The most popular and best selling adventure paths all started round, or took you far beyond 5th level. 4e was developed to take the 'sweat spot' of 3.5 play which actual research showed was 3-15th level and stretch it out over 30 levels. PrCs are basically inaccessible if your are 5th level or less, and the crunch heavy PrC filled books sold better than other books. You're trying to postulate play where no one gets a 2nd attack from BAB, where no on gets Spring Attack or Whirlwind.

Heck, even E6, which is explicitly designed to stay low level takes you to 6th level, and then continue to provide advancement past that, just not as levels.

[Schleiermacher]

It's probably true that the number of games that never made it past 5th level is higher than the number of ones that did. That fits my experience, even though it's not true in my case. (I've been lucky, and had a stable group for a long time.)

But the thing to keep in mind is that games that go longer, last longer and get played more, so even if I have more characters that never made it past 5th level than ones who did, I probably spent more time playing any one of the characters who made it to level 10+ than I did playing all of those unfortunate guys put together.

[Whipstitch]

Besides, even if your group is likely to call it good at level 10 it still helps to have support for statting up some level 12 guys to dogpile on when it comes time for the boss music to start playing.

[tussock]

There's thousands of PBP games on the net that died at level 1, including those adventure paths. There's plenty here. That doesn't just happen on the net, heaps of real-world games start somewhere low and don't go anywhere at all. Once you get into "we got to the third module and it was stupid so did something else" stories (there seems to be very few people finish adventure paths, from what I read), that's still around level 5.

Just a simple matter of time, you can play dozens of those games for every one that does scale a bunch of levels. The reason many people like to start games at 6th-7th level is that you often don't get there at all unless you start there, at everyone's played to 4th-5th level a lot of times already.



Sure, once you do get in a long-running group, you can spend some time everywhere, but that often includes spending even more time at level 1-5. Even if you're one of the few people that plays all the way to level 16 and finishes a prestige class and an adventure path. With all of 1 or 2 fights to use your capstone power in.

Really, if you want people to see Fighters as having a power source, most people aren't going to see it unless it's at level 1. Just like all the other classes get (except maybe the Monk, who is also crap as a result).

[Cyberzombie]

You are an idiot if you think that. The most popular and best selling adventure paths all started round, or took you far beyond 5th level. 4e was developed to take the 'sweat spot' of 3.5 play which actual research showed was 3-15th level and stretch it out over 30 levels. PrCs are basically inaccessible if your are 5th level or less, and the crunch heavy PrC filled books sold better than other books. You're trying to postulate play where no one gets a 2nd attack from BAB, where no on gets Spring Attack or Whirlwind.

High level adventures were harder to design, so it's more likely people are going to purchase higher level modules rather than make their own. Even the worst of DMs can create a low level orc quest. Making something to challenge mid or high level PCs though is difficult and thus that's going to sell better.

I'm not saying no game ever goes beyond 5th level, I'm saying that the majority of games don't. It isn't a planned thing, it's real life gets in the way, or the increasing complexity of the higher level game causes DMs to get overloaded. Also sometimes the group gets TPKed and has to start over. Things happen.

Consider every PC you've made for any D&D game. Unless you're one of the very few fortunate ones with a very dedicated stable group or a group that likes to start at higher than 1st level, the majority of your PCs are going to be 5th level or lower.

[JonSetanta]

Another way would be to have your initial class abilities get rapidly marginalized by your new powers. So now that you're a Doomspeaker, you're going to be using Doomspeaker powers and it doesn't much matter whether you had a Rogue's Sneak Attack or a Berserker's Power Attack, because both those attacks are bullshit compared to the Doomspeaker's Killing Word.

I'm in favor of this one since spells put the previous levels into retirement (ideally)

You're not going to use those level 1 spells such as Magic Missile during high level combat when you have Finger of Death to spam.

This goal could apply to warriors but you'd end up with the 4e paradigm where fancier moves each have their own name, special effect, and damage.
The basic attack becomes obsolete and haters of the Book of Nine Weeaboos begin to bitchmoan once more.

...given that most 3E games didn't even get past 5th level.

This is true. In the hundreds of games I've played between AD&D to 4e only one campaign of them was past level 6.
Most crapped out at level 3 due to groups falling apart, or were reset when the DM felt like it.

[Previn]

High level adventures were harder to design, so it's more likely people are going to purchase higher level modules rather than make their own. Even the worst of DMs can create a low level orc quest. Making something to challenge mid or high level PCs though is difficult and thus that's going to sell better.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil started at 4th level. Red Hand of Doom started at 6th level. both were massively popular modules in 3.5. I'm not exactly sure what you consider high level.

I'm not saying no game ever goes beyond 5th level, I'm saying that the majority of games don't. It isn't a planned thing, it's real life gets in the way, or the increasing complexity of the higher level game causes DMs to get overloaded. Also sometimes the group gets TPKed and has to start over. Things happen.

Games that fall apart for non-game reasons aren't a useful measurement and tell you nothing about what people like about the game. They're almost worse to include than to ignore entirely. I could just as easily say that people don't like high end sports cars, because so few people buy Ferraris.

The increasing complexity of high level games overloading a DM... requires people to get to high levels first.

I don't often see people throw out a plot or group because of a TPK and start over at level 1 unless they were tired of the game/plot anyways, or were basically low level. People want to jump back in basically where they were even after a TPK.

Even if I did accept that we should use games that fall apart as part of our measurements, people don't remember those games as anything more than a game that fell apart. They do remember getting to pick up a PrC and being a bad ass dude with some special ability a lot more.

Consider every PC you've made for any D&D game. Unless you're one of the very few fortunate ones with a very dedicated stable group or a group that likes to start at higher than 1st level, the majority of your PCs are going to be 5th level or lower.

I've had 1 game that didn't go past, or start above 5th level. The one PBP game I joined briefly about 9 years ago started at 10th level. I start players in my 3.5 games at 3rd level. I'm currently in a game that I'm running a 21st and 20th level NPCs for another DM to take the weight off him with a party of 6 players, all of whom are 19th level.

There's thousands of PBP games on the net that died at level 1, including those adventure paths.

PBP is a special kind of hell for RPGs. They tend to move at a glacial pace that makes them bad examples even of the games that fall apart after a few sessions because they face additional hurdles to play and keep going.



Incidentally, I would also expect that if people basically didn't make it past 5th level, adventures above 5th level wouldn't sell, and Paizo wouldn't end up with more adventure path that are above 5th level than not.

[OgreBattle]

That's why I'd like base classes to end at 5 levels

At level 1-5 you can multiclass to get interesting abilities without feeling left behind, and for those who don't multiclass you can stick a capstone ont he 5th level.

Then you enter PrC's at level 6, so the fighter1/sorc1/rogue3 and sorc5 can both get level appropriate power when they enter lvl 6 as a Mystic Ninja1

[tussock]

I would also expect that if people basically didn't make it past 5th level, adventures above 5th level wouldn't sell,

It would be sensible if people only bought the things they need as they needed them. But that is not real life. Rich people drive mercedes, not yugos. People buy stuff because it's pretty and desirable and they want some of that magic to rub off on them. Buy enough high level modules and one day you might even get to write them for a living. If you do that long enough you might even get to play one.

My name is James Sutter, and I have never played in an epic-level game.
In fact, I’ve never even played in a high-level game. My knowledge of prestige classes is strictly academic. As far as can recall at the moment, the highest-level character I’ve ever played only made it to 7th level before the GM, Jason Bulmahn, took him out in a blaze of glory. <...>
As a GM, I’ve had a bit more experience with the upper end of things, with my highest-level game taking a party of seven characters (down from the original nine) up through 15th level in the Savage Tide Adventure Path, <...>
All of which is to say that my personal experience with high- and epic-level play is nil, nada, and squat. Sure, I’ve developed and edited high-level adventures—dozens of them. I’ve built prestige classes and high-level monsters, and helped ensure they were balanced.

Sure you have, James, sure you have. I think there's a quote from Monte Cook saying similar things somewhere. Mearls and Heinsoo and co hated high level play so much they banned it from the game, and what was left still sucked because they've never really played it. Your theory is that everyone else plays it? When the rules don't really work?

[Username17]

Tussock, no one is saying that people play 16th level with any regularity. We're saying that the claim that people don't play past fifth level is absurd. Even when Heinsoo and company were ranting about "extending the sweet spot" they were talking about seventh level, not third. 5th-10th level play was often called "medium level" and it was played quite a bit. Lots of people started campaigns in that level range.

I've personally played several characters up to that level and run several games that ran through that level range as well. And as previously noted by Schleiermacher, those characters of mine who have been played long enough to reach 10th level were also played longer than the ones who haven't. So my 11th level Illusionist actually has considerably more game hours behind him than all of the many characters I've played in 3rd edition one shots combined.

-Username17

[Sashi]

Would it be balanced to have core spellcasting classes grant spells of level 1 through 3, and prestige spellcasting classes grant spells of higher levels without advancing the lower level spells at all? If you go Wizard -> Doomlord, your spellcasting caps out at third level spells, but you get access to your Doomblade just as quickly as if you'd gone Fighter -> Doomlord. And a character going Fighter -> Archmage gets 4th level+ spell progression despite not having any lower leveled spell slots.

It would be balanced as long as the low level abilities remain relevant. Though the primary hurdle of implementing a system like that is dealing with the massive grognard hate for Fighters suddenly gaining phenominal cosmic power by taking archmage at level 15, or Wizards becoming Charles Atlas superheroes at by taking a single level of Doomblade.

[NineInchNall]

Though the primary hurdle of implementing a system like that is dealing with the massive grognard hate for Fighters suddenly gaining phenominal cosmic power by taking archmage at level 15, or Wizards becoming Charles Atlas superheroes at by taking a single level of Doomblade.

This sort of thinking was one of the reasons full-BAB gish classes were so rare.

"It doesn't make sense for the Wizard to take one level of PrC X and suddenly have Fighter BAB!" (Actually said by a WotC dev.)
"Um, he doesn't. He has Wizard levels."
"Stop bringing your math into this. You can't use math to quantify characters!"

[Tumbling Down]

Well, if your goal is to herd all the cats towards level-appropriate abilities by upgrading to new and Different power sources, then you just plain shouldn't have shit like Archmages in the game.

But other than I can't see any particular reasons why you couldn't split it up, assuming that you are intentionally planning on having the low level stuff go obsolete, and as long as you don't actually label shit as "Level 1-3 spells" and "Level 4-9 spells" and split those up between different fucking classes.

[JonSetanta]

The problem with expiring low level spells is you miss out on things like Identify which never goes out of fashion.

It would also help to have those high level PrCs casters be very specific like the Warmage or similar rather than just a bunch of empty high level spell slots.
My favorite, a series of at-will SLAs in a row would work, duplicating a very focused spellcaster.

And the grognards all moan.

But really, a Fighter 5/Warmage 5 would be getting things like Fireball and various AoEs but no Magic Missile.
The transition from warrior to caster would need to be incorporated into PC quests and character development or else it wouldn't even make sense.

[OgreBattle]

Sure you have, James, sure you have. I think there's a quote from Monte Cook saying similar things somewhere. Mearls and Heinsoo and co hated high level play so much they banned it from the game, and what was left still sucked because they've never really played it. Your theory is that everyone else plays it? When the rules don't really work?

How do you become the designer for an RPG and write content for an RPG without actually having played the RPG at the level the content is meant for? Even the mantra of the Pathfinder playtest was "sure thats sum math you got there but did you PLAY IT IN TEH GAME??? IF YOU HASNT THEN UR MATHS IS ZERO!!!", but the goddamn designers were just writing content without actually knowing what it was like to play it!?

Well... is there any D&D/PF guy who likes/plays over level 10?

[MisterDee]

Monte Cook ran his Ptolus campaign up to level 20 or thereabouts.

Of course, that was the final playtesting of 3.x pre-publication and a bit post IIRC, so that was in an environment that:

1-Didn't have the full effect of PrC bloat;
2-Still had PrC's that you had to join in-game organizations to get;
3-Had PrC's that were generally less powerful;
4-Was slightly less caster friendly (Ptolus had limits on planar-related stuff and it has "order custom magic items in my dreams, get it delivered magically" magic malls, which benefits gear-dependent classes more.)

I'm not aware of any name designers having officially played full-bloom high level D&D.

[Username17]

Well, if your goal is to herd all the cats towards level-appropriate abilities by upgrading to new and Different power sources, then you just plain shouldn't have shit like Archmages in the game.

Sooner or later, if characters get hig enough level, they will be archmages. If not at 11th level, then at 16th level. Or 27th level. Or whatever the fuck. Elminster exists, and he is an archmage. You can't make him not exist, you can only make him be higher or lower level.

Whatever level you set Elminster to, the players have to be that good when they get to that level. Which means any character concept that is conceptually incapable of being that good needs to be augmented with power source upgrades before it gets that high in level.

-Username17

[icyshadowlord]

Kinda sucks being on the side that actually likes playing till level 20 and realizing you might just be the minority...

[Cyberzombie]

How do you become the designer for an RPG and write content for an RPG without actually having played the RPG at the level the content is meant for? Even the mantra of the Pathfinder playtest was "sure thats sum math you got there but did you PLAY IT IN TEH GAME??? IF YOU HASNT THEN UR MATHS IS ZERO!!!", but the goddamn designers were just writing content without actually knowing what it was like to play it!?

Well... is there any D&D/PF guy who likes/plays over level 10?

I'm unsurprised many designers haven't. 3E wasn't playtested much at higher levels. It's quite simply that they put most of their quality into the content that everyone is going to see, and less into content that fewer people will see. Almost anyone who has played 3E/PF has played a 1st level character, and the higher the level, the fewer percentage of people have actually played a character that high.

So getting a feat like power attack or toughness right is more important than getting the archmage PrC to work correctly.

[Previn]

I'm unsurprised many designers haven't. 3E wasn't playtested much at higher levels. It's quite simply that they put most of their quality into the content that everyone is going to see, and less into content that fewer people will see.

The 3.0 playtest was pretty darn large, but it was the playtesters that started at 1st and played it like a campaign, not testing all the levels. WotC was able to get low to mid level play as good as they did because that's what they got the most feedback on, not because that's what they focused on. The playtest wasn't really long enough to get to high level play with campaign style play.

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything to suggest there was a bias against high level play until after the internet found the problems with high level play.

[Tumbling Down]

Sooner or later, if characters get hig enough level, they will be archmages. If not at 11th level, then at 16th level. Or 27th level. Or whatever the fuck. Elminster exists, and he is an archmage. You can't make him not exist, you can only make him be higher or lower level.

Whatever level you set Elminster to, the players have to be that good when they get to that level. Which means any character concept that is conceptually incapable of being that good needs to be augmented with power source upgrades before it gets that high in level.

-Username17

Well sure, if you do the 4e approach of having more prestigious prestige classes for people who have transcended beyond normal prestige classes, then you can have an Archmage Epic Destiny. Or just have "archmage" be a term for high level spellcasters or what ever

But if you're going to pull the wool over people's eyes, so they don't realize that you're phasing their Fighter out specifically, you can't have there being something as generic as a "Wizard, Stage II" available.
Otherwise, sooner or later, some Fightard is gonna wonder why there's no Archfighter for him to PrC into, when the mage gets to continue being a mage; and then, just maybe, if he really puts his tiny pea-brain to work, he will realize that he's been bamboozled and that the whole PrC business was an elaborate lie all along, just to rob him of his pwecious DMF. Or maybe he'll write up his own homebrew, and then you get Fighter 5/Weapon Specialist 10/Weapon Supremacist 5, and we're back where we started.

[Dean]

sooner or later, some Fightard is gonna wonder why there's no Archfighter for him to PrC into, when the mage gets to continue being a mage; and then, just maybe, if he really puts his tiny pea-brain to work, he will realize that he's been bamboozled and that the whole PrC business was an elaborate lie all along, just to rob him of his pwecious DMF.

Nah. Anyone with that level of critical thinking skill would have also been able to figure out why the DMF isn't a valid high level concept in the first place. It's like a Catch-22 of not being retarded.