Explain/Defend Your Favorite RPG Leveling System

The Game Room
1

So I bought KOTOR for iOS during the Star Wars week discount (it was like three bucks back in May) and played it again, once again shaking my head at this D20 thing. Unlike when I just ignorantly monstered my way through on the Xbox however many years ago, I decided to actually try to understand what the hell was going on with the stats and what happens when you level this time.

Never played D&D as a kid. Your core stats only go up once every four turns, and then only one point. You’re very restricted by how you start. And attack doesn’t determine damage, only whether you successfully strike, then damage is separate roll. And the more levels you get as the first class takes away the ability to level as a Jedi.

WTF. Totally bizarre.

I played the game twice through (natch) and it was only on the second play-through that I felt I truly figured this shit out. The basics, anyway. Having figured it out, it left me scratchin my noggin. Is it really that good of a system? What’s the allure anyway? What are the disadvantages compared to other systems? I started reading Order of the Stick several years ago based on the immortal Cafe Society thread, and again the weirdities really stick out – it’s super helpful to have posters who know the system here so they can lay it out for the rest of us.

But broader discussion for this thread, not just D20. What’s your favorite system? Why?

Video or table-top is fine, although I have no table-top experience at all. It was console RPGs back in the day for me. I played a lot of the Dragon Warrior, and I think 12 was my final Final Fantasy. No computer RPGs that I recall. I don’t have the broadest experience, is what I’m saying, but feel free to throw in whatever and say why you like it.

2

I don’t see much wrong with Skyrim’s levelling scheme : when you use a skill, it slowly rises up. When enough skills have risen, your core stats rise a little bit and you get resources to spend to specialize in this or that aspect of a skill. It would be horrible as a pen-and-paper system, but for a CRPG it’s pretty neat and seamless.

For tabletop, I was always fond of the original 7th Sea system before they (I think ?) switched to d20 even though it’s horribly exploitable. You started off with a large set of points with which to buy core stats, profession-related skill packages (for example, buying the “sailor” package allowed you to pour points into climbing, knots, navigation, brawling…) and traits both positive or negative (“left handed”, “shrill voice”, “rich family”…). Then, in play you regularly got a trickle of experience with which to improve the skills you already got, your core stats, or buy new professions.
I liked it because it didn’t pigeon-hole you in any role or “class” while at the same time restricting you to a general logic. You could absolutely be a bookish noble wizard who nevertheless was a crack shot with a pistol, presumably due to a history of duelling other academics - but you had to “justify” it by picking professions or traits that made it possible. Lots of trade-offs on the gamey side, and the system also helped a lot when either going at it from an already set background ("well my guy spent some time in the Royal Navy so I’ll buy “sailor” and “soldier”) or when writing the background of the character you built (“then he spent time in the Royal Navy, hence the sailor and soldier packages…”)

3

Personally, my standard for a leveling/multiclassing system is this: If you take the simplest class in the game (usually fighter or something like that), create a new class that’s exactly like it, and multiclass between the two, at every given amount of XP, do you have the same capabilities as a single-classed member of that class? In the d20 system, particularly D&D 3.x, this is almost (but not quite) the case.

Ideally, I’d actually like that to apply to all of the classes, including the complicated ones like spellcasters. But I’ve never yet seen a game with that.

4

Having written out that OP, I just realized for the first time why core stats are so stable in the d20 system.

Those core stats are key personality traits. For genuinely playing roles.

This isn’t important to computerized stuff – personality is expressed with dialogue – so in a lot of the console games I played all the stats just jump every level. But in a tabletop game, if your character starts dumb, then becomes smart over time, then that is a fundamental personality change. That’s always been implicit in the story but I never knew the system so I just figured it out now.

Do you mean d20 is horribly exploitable, or the original 7th Sea is?

And if d20, then how exactly is it exploitable?

If you theoretically multiclassed with wizard and wizard, I’m guessing the result would be slightly weaker than a single-class wizard?

5

7th Sea gave skills in groups (bs example: sailor: climbing/swimming/balance) at chargen which stacked up to a point…so you could, if you really worked at it, get a wider set of skills for cheaper than focusing on an actual “class” skillgroup. (It also had a lot of other weird rules…like you can travel infinitely far each round, as long as you don’t have to open a door, or go up a step.

For D&D, most spellcasting classes didn’t quite stack with each other - for instance wizards and sorcerers cast from the same list, but wizards cast a few spells that they pre-memorize and sorcerers can cast a small number of spells a lot of times. These track separately. So multiclassed, you end up with a ton of spells, but you’re a lot weaker than a single-classed character.

6

Thinking about it, for an example of a creation system I kind of liked despite its flaws, was the classic Deadlands system - it was incredibly random.

Your stats were determined from drawing from a 54 card deck* (poker deck + 2 jokers): Die type was set by the value (not 1 to 1), # of dice from the suit, drawing either of the jokers gave you a best result stat, but meant you also got a random flaw that would make your life hell. Skill points were calculated off of certain attributes, and their die type was based off the linked stat. And if you were new to the system you had no idea which stats were going to be critically important when the setting started happening.

Still, it was mostly** classless, so your character was free to grow as needed.

Probably the most controversial part of the rules, though was the xp - you drew 3 poker chips out of a bag each session (white, red, blue, special) and you could use them for rerolls, wound soaks, etc. But those chips were also your xp if you didn’t use them. So an unfair GM could completely screw over a player.

Switching the rules to D20 took most of the weirdness out of the rules…and *all *of the breadth of the characters. Switching to Savage Worlds at least gave some of the character growth back.

*the deck was also used for initiative in combat, and in the magic systems.
**The “magic” types were the exception, though could be gained after chargen, if the GM approved.

7

Unfortunately, a wizard/wizard’ would be massively weaker than a straight wizard. You’d end up with perhaps slightly more spells per day, but they’d all be much weaker spells than the single-class wizard would get, and you’d be casting them with less power behind them. Like I said, I’ve yet to see a system where the spellcasters pass my test.

8

I meant 7th Sea - basically, one of the core stats was massively more powerful than the rest and granted additional dice on any action (also determined initiative order IIRC), so even if your character knew fuck all about fuck all he could still pull through provided he had high Panache. Which, granted, was possibly by design since as a semi-serious swashbuckling game doing things stylish was a **lot **more important than doing things efficient :).

That said, D&D is massively exploitable too - there are entire forums dedicated to pulling ridiculous stunts that are still technically allowed by the rules. In fact, I play a semi-ridiculous character myself - a druid/monk. The druid side lets him shapeshift into many dangerous critters while the monk side lets him unleash unarmed kung-fu violence. Which happens to be more dangerous the larger you are. So I do kung-fu as a Behemoth Hippopotamus. Including grappling - which I assume involves me just sitting on the enemy until they cry uncle :D.

**Unpronouncable **: yeah, I liked the old Deadlands system too (especially the magic system - in that game the most common type of wizards used the magic of poker to do their thing, so naturally you drew poker hands to determine the strength of the spells you’d cast !) ; but yeah it was kind of busted in practice, as you could have massive imbalances between characters due to the chargen process and once again one stat trumped all (in this case : Grit. With enough Grit you could shrug off shotgun blasts to the face and laugh at the worst Cthulian abominations, while gritless suckers shat their pants at the sight of a little old lady with a Derringer).
For all its flaws though, it was thematic as all getout.

9

I don’t think it’s the “best,” but the absolute worst was the Elder Scrolls prior to Skyrim. If you wanted to build the best long-term character, you should give them all the crappy or harder to level skills as primary as they would contribute to the stats increases you can get every level, but wouldn’t level you overly fast. Picking skills that you actually lose may create a crippled character if you didn’t plan ahead (having a 10x strength bonus every level was nice, but once you raised it to the maximum those bonuses would keep getting wasted). That means a great warrior or mage might want to specialize in Mercantile, Speechcraft, Enchant, etc. Otherwise I like systems where you can gain levels by doing things not (necessarily) related to killing or completing quests.

I *sometimes *like what I’ll call the fixed experience system. Like it takes 100 (etc.) exp to reach every level, but you gain less experience per action as you gain levels (e.g. Shining Force, the skills in TES). Or as you gain level, weaker enemies will give less experience or even none (e.g. World of Warcraft, at least last time I played it almost a decade ago), thus you have to fight harder enemies each level. But sometimes weaker enemies might opt to flee from you. These strike a nice balance between getting frustrated because the Puny Imps keep attacking you when you’re just trying to walk down the street (many Square games). Or Earthbound was cool, because if enemies were much weaker than you it’d skip the battle and you’d automatically win.

In games that give random amounts of X each level, I can’t resist save scumming to get the highest, so I don’t like those as it is an unnecessary hassle. I also don’t like when bonuses aren’t retroactive (e.g. your HP is Constitution x10, perhaps plus some other bonuses; I hate where each point of CON increases your bonus per level, as it penalizes you for not planning from the start).

10

You’d be doing well to break even on the numbers of spells - I took a quick look at how a 6th level wizard would compare to a 3rd/3rd wizard/wizard’ in Pathfinder, and if you ignore cantrips the single-classed character is slightly ahead on spell count, and as you rightly say he also has stronger spells cast at higher effect.

1st/2nd Edition AD&D multi-classed characters weren’t badly balanced versus single-classed; a 5th/5th level fighter/magic-user had much less hit points (because the average of a 5th fighter and 5th magic-user) and a slightly worse THAC0 than a 6th level fighter, but better saving throws and nearly the spell ability of a 6th level magic-user. The key there was that you were dividing your experience evenly between the classes, but the experience table was more or less exponential - so multi-classing cost you one effective level, not half your levels. Of course you were up against demi-human level limits in any case so while your elven fighter/mage might be happy enough while the rest of the party was at 6th level, his fighter levels were a distant memory by the time they were 12th and, rather often, being a 5th level fighter in a party with 12th-level fighters was not much better than not being a fighter at all.

Characters with two classes (you’ll remember the distinction) also shared the benefit of the experience table mathematics; if you ran your fighter up to 7th level and then switched to magic-user, you would be a weak magic-user until the rest of the party hit 8th, and then your m-u level would have caught up to your fighter level and you could use all the abilities of both classes without prejudice. Of course, you had to decide at what point you were going to make the switch, or you would be no better off than the level-limited demihumans - that said, at least you weren’t having to dump half your x.p. in a class you could no longer progress in, and you did better on hit points than the multi-classer. You were, however, stuck at the level you’d left off in your first class, barring some kind of intervention such as a manual or similar levelling-up device.

The trouble in either case in the early editions of AD&D was that once you had made your choice of character class there was not much customising to be done, apart from things like weapon and spell selection, and you have much more freedom in 3.5 and Pathfinder (I can’t speak to later versions of D&D as I’ve not played them) what with feats, bloodlines, arcane schools and so on. Still, multiclassing doesn’t really work IMO except as an entry to the prestige class of your choice - and for spellcasters, you really want to not to have to spend too many levels on your non-caster class, and the prestige class had better stack its levels with your caster levels or your magic will suck.

I do like the feat/skill aspects of the new D&D-type games as they give you a lot of latitude in creating the character of your choice. They can even, merciful heavens, give us a reason to play a fighter with a high INT score…!

11

My go-to game as a GM these days is Savage Worlds which is a generic role playing game using an extremely simplified rule set that was used in Deadlands.
Every five experience points the player can choose to do one of the following.

  1. Gain an Edge (An Edge being equivalent to a D&D Feat or a GURPS advantage)
  2. Raise an attribute (Strength, Agility, Smarts, Vigor, and Spirit.
  3. Gain a new skill at d4.
  4. Raise a single skill above it’s linked attribute.
  5. Raise two skills that are below their linked attribute.
12

On the computerized side of things, I really hate the increasing dominance of Action RPG and MMO styled leveling systems, with their dozens of trivial +0.0032% critical chance equipment bonuses and their logarithmic stat increases. As far as I’m concerned those systems are generally meant to take all significant decision making out of the hands of the player while patting them on the back and telling them how awesome and uber they are for doing some tedious arithmetic. I generally favor systems that minimize the amount of busywork, make the choices fun and interesting, and don’t require you to do nonsensical BS to optimize your character (non-retroactive bonuses can go straight to hell).

I think Dragon Age: Origins actually has a very good system. Every level, you get a new skill or ability. Some of them are passives, but for the most part each new skill is another tool in your belt. Things are tight early on, but by the mid game you usually have enough options to deal with battles in several different ways and enough leeway to pursue interesting rather than optimal options. The stat allocation is boring and should have been excised, but the per level ability system is simple and good.

Final Fantasy Tactics probably deserves a mention. There’s a bunch of behind the scenes class based stat growth stuff going on which I very much dislike, but the skill mixing and matching is great. Being able to learn skills in one class then attach them to another really gives you a great sense of experimentation and ownership of your characters. I would love to see more systems take that mix and match philosophy.

I’m very ambivalent toward the Elder Scrolls’ use skills to raise them system. It does make intuitive sense, but it often encourages tedious behavior. I remember constantly jumping and casting healing spells as I was exploring because that was the most effective way to raise my jumping and magic skills. I think a system where every time you accomplish an objective the XP gets divided up among the skills you used to accomplish that objective would be a wonderful compromise. Skyrim was a big step in the right direction, I think. Contrary to most of the old school types who claimed it was dumbed down, changing the focus from making skill numbers higher to choosing interesting perks was a great change. Unfortunately, they kinda botched the execution by making the large majority of the perks boring as hell. In principle it’s a great change though.

On the tabletop front, I think my heart will always be with DnD 3.5. It’s awful in very many ways and the balance is often unplayably bad, but it’s the system that’s most captured my character building interest. There’s just so much weird stuff you can do with it if you’re not focused on munchkining. I made a character that was a pack of velociraptors (a druid with several raptor followers who herself polymorphed into a raptor). And the Artificer is pretty much my favorite class of anything ever. The sad thing to me is that while Pathfinder cleared up a lot of the rules junk they did so by making all the classes depressingly bland. I can think of dozens of intriguing character builds for 3.5, but poring over the whole PF SRD I’ve struggled to find even one or two classes that hold my interest.

I’m kinda all over the place. I’m still looking for a system that makes me fall in love with it. Unfortunately, it feels like the large majority of RPGs have systems I tolerate rather than actually like.

13

The problem I have with D&D’s systems is the weird synergy between combat and RP (obviously you can houserule this all to hell, I mean out of the box).

I don’t really like the way that combat skills kind of box you in an RP sense. If you want to be the party’s “front man” then I hope you’re playing a Charisma-based class, and so on.

I think the problem may actually be limited to Charisma-based classes, honestly. I can see the Wisdom, or Intelligence, or Strength combat/non-combat symbiosis. But Charisma-based classes almost never make real sense. Bard is probably the one that makes the most sense, but it really feels like a contrivance. Unlike Wizards or Clerics which kind of mesh with everything, Bards have always felt like this weird design-by-committee “alright, chaps, we need to design a Charisma class, what do they do in combat?” sort of thing.

I’m not sure how to really fix it, other than making out-of-combat skills completely disparate from combat-based skills.

14

That’s actually the best way to do it, I think. If I were designing a PnP RPG, I would make sure every character gets a mix of in combat and out of combat abilities. I really hate the design philosophy of characters being able to sacrifice everything else to be really good in one area. It always ends up leading to characters that utterly wreck the balance during part of the game, then just sit on their hands the rest of the time because they don’t have anything to do. It often feels like if you play the party face you might as well not be around during combat, and if you’re a combat monster you might as well go do something else when the group is in town.

A think a good quick fix houserule for something like DnD is at the end of character creation everyone gets a few bonus feats with the caveat that they cannot contribute toward your main focus. If you’re a fighter you can’t take stuff that makes you hit harder, if you’re a magic user you can’t take things that makes your magic better. That sort of thing. It would give players a chance to grab some fun things without worrying if they’re suboptimal.

15

Actually, I think all you need to do is make sure that the out-of-combat challenges have just as much prominence as the combat challenges. Despite what many think, there isn’t actually anything in the rules that gives priority to combat.

16

Pathfinder Unchained has some alternate skill systems including one that introduces “background skills”: the skills seldom used by adventurers like Appraise and Profession are now considered background skills, and characters can essentially gain ranks in a couple for “free” (well, buy ranks in them with a new separate pool of bonus skill points, but it amounts to a free upgrade over the default skill system).

More on topic to the thread, Unchained also offers a staggered level advancement system so you get smaller stat boosts more often, instead of getting everything at once when you level up. Not in a game right now so I haven’t tried it out, but I think that would be more fun, like how people are more likely to be happy taking small but frequent vacations rather than long but infrequent vacations. The pleasure is the reward itself and the anticipation leading immediately up to it, rather than the size of the reward.

17

Yeah, Skyrim’s is the best I’ve encountered so far, and it goes hand in hand with being the best character creation system I’ve encountered. No more arbitrary scores for intelligence, strength, or agility: just, “Here are the things you can do, and here is how you can become able to do more things.”

18

There’s one piece of one game I want to call out for awesomeness: Old School Hack. Leveling itself isn’t especially interesting in that game (it’s fine, but it’s not particularly involved). But you gain XP in a pretty cool way.

The game has a pool of “awesome points” that get set in the middle of the table at the start of the game. Players start with none. When a player does something awesome–getting drinks for everyone, making a hilarious joke, outwitting the ogre in a clever way, describing a badass combat maneuver, whatever–other players can reward her with an awesome point. The GM has no say in it, and the players have complete discretion about when and whether to make the award.

The awesome points can be used in a variety of ways (small bonus on a roll, multiple points to introduce an NPC into the story, etc.) And every time you USE one, you gain an XP. Characters level up when every character has ten XP.

The system is wonderful for encouraging outgoing players to recognize shyer players, and for encouraging shyer players to try something new. It’s an ingenious bit of social engineering.

19

The one big flaw in Skyrim’s leveling system is that there’s really no incentive to do side-quests, particularly once you hit the middle levels. Sure, you could take that quest to clear the bandits out of that dungeon, or you could just wander the countryside killing random encounters, and the only thing you’re missing out on is an insignificant amount of gold, and a magic item that’s almost certainly useless to you. In games that use an experience point system, you’re always going to be getting something concrete out of a quest, even if it’s just edging .1% closer to the next level.

That makes no sense to me at all. Pathfinder has all the same classes, with all the same abilities, plus. A 3rd ed. fighter gets a feat every other level. A PF fighter gets a feat ever other level, plus armor training, plus weapon mastery, plus bravery and a half dozen other little edges and abilities. Barbarian rage powers give you a huge range of customization over the previous rule set. Same with rogues, and rogue talents. There’s actually a good reason to take more than two levels in ranger! I haven’t yet found a build that I liked in 3rd ed, that I couldn’t make in Pathfinder, and often could make better.

And that’s before they added archetypes to the rule set!

20

Another pen-and-paper system that did something interesting was White Wolf’s Scion.

Basically, the standard White Wolf fistfull-of-d10s system (with a couple of flaws fixed), but character creation functionally happens 3 times over a successful character’s existence. First “Hero” then after a certain level of advancement “Demigod” then again later “God.” Unfortunately, these are the only times a player can choose to gain/advance certain special abilities.