True quadratic Character progression.

[Squirrel_Dude]

One of the problems people often ascribe to d20, and I am inclined to agree with them, is that it takes too long for your character to get the mechanics they need to achieve the player's concept. At the same time, I've found it harder as a GM to challenge players at later levels, as they simply continue to gain experience and abilities at the same rate as before. Technically, it'd be more accurate to say they gain levels and abilities at the same rate as before. Players are gaining more experience as they level up, but in a way that's an illusion. The CR system is designed so that you'll always need 20 ECL +0 encounters in order to reach the next level. Players experience gains are quadratic, but their increase in level is always going to be a linear relationship when compared to their level. Levels 1 to 4: 60 ECL +0 encounters. Levels 17 to 20: 20 ECL +0 encounters.

That's the genesis of this idea: Trying to decrease the time players spend at low levels, and increase the time between higher levels. To do this, I determined what I thought would be an appropriate number of encounters between each levels. I then worked backward from the experience awards per player based on an encounters CR and found the experience that would be needed to reach the next level.

The formula I arbitrarily created to determine the number of encounters was:

Next Level x 3/2 + Current Level. Rounding Up

The results (Current Cumulative XP is using medium progression)


Level
Current Cumulative XP
New Cumulative XP
XP ECL +0
Encounters Required


1
0
0
100
0


2
2000
400
150
4


3
5000
1375
200
7


4
9000
3175
300
9


5
15000
6625
400
12


6
23000
12225
600
14


7
35000
22125
800
17


8
51000
37325
1200
19


9
75000
63125
1600
22


10
105000
101525
2400
24


11
155000
165125
3200
27


12
220000
257925
4800
29


13
315000
409125
6400
32


14
445000
626725
9600
34


15
635000
977125
12800
37


16
890000
1476325
19200
39


17
1300000
2273125
25600
42


18
1800000
3399525
38400
44


19
2550000
5185125
51200
47


20
3600000
7693925
76800
49



Annotations:
The previous system required 381 encounters to reach level 20. The proposed system would require 504.
The previous system required 179 encounter to reach level 10, the proposed system would require 102.
The numbers for encounters were obviously arbitrarily created. I wanted a system that would allow for there to be about 20 ECL +0 encounters required for level 7, but no more than 50 required for level 20.

[Mando Knight]

Uh, that's not exponential. That's quadratic.

[Snowbluff]

Yeah, and screw lower levels! :smalltongue:

[Squirrel_Dude]

Uh, that's not exponential. That's quadratic.Forgive me, I haven't taken a math class in 5 years now. I don't count statistics as a math class.

[Snowbluff]

Matches are a part of fire science. :smalltongue:

I think the issue is that higher level characters might feel stagnant. May I suggest a E6 style feat progression, where you get your feats based on XP and not levels? So you might get 3 feats between 9 and 15 or something.

[Flickerdart]

What happens when you start using encounters that aren't all ECL+0? Seems like you'll have low-level characters gaining levels every other fight.

[Spore]

What happens when you start using encounters that aren't all ECL+0? Seems like you'll have low-level characters gaining levels every other fight.

Penalty for defeating higher level encounters? -50% or something? This solution isn't great and it feels penalizing because it is.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Matches are a part of fire science. :smalltongue:

I think the issue is that higher level characters might feel stagnant. May I suggest a E6 style feat progression, where you get your feats based on XP and not levels? So you might get 3 feats between 9 and 15 or something.That's interesting. I'm wan't too worried about higher level characters becoming stagnant when I came up with the list because I figured that there would be enough variety in ECL +0 challenges or things that higher level characters can generally do in a campaign that lower levels couldn't that would keep the keep the game from feeling stagnant.

I don't know if this progression would work as well for a game that started at very high levels, as opposed to one that started at lower levels, though.


What happens when you start using encounters that aren't all ECL+0? Seems like you'll have low-level characters gaining levels every other fight.I saw that problem, and then decided that it probably wasn't a major problem. If you're throwing ECL +1 or +2 combats at your party, then you should probably be expecting them to level up faster already. Though it might be bad for game pace if after every fight your players are leveling up.

The other alternative I came up (I'm making it up on the fly) with is removing experience points as a system all-together. Experience points aren't really required in Pathfinder except as a way to calculate encounter difficulty. The system doesn't use them in any other way IIRc (certainly not in any crafting or spells that I can think of). So instead, I would replace experience based leveling with strait encounter leveling. Rename experience points "Encounter Build Score" or whatever you like, and then use that to determine how much of a single encounter they are worth for that characters level.

I.E. For a first level character, a 150 point encounter (ECL 2), would be worth 1.25 encounters for a level 1 player. A 50 point encounter could be worth .75 encounter points for a character, or something similar. I would also probably say that at a certain character level, a certain ECL/build point score of an encounter would no longer reward and encounter point for character progression.

[arkangel111]

Your proposed idea in this last post is effectively just changing the numbers, but keeping xp. For my players, I just arbitrarily give them a level. The first few weeks was a level every week, and now we're at about 1/2 per week. I base it on how much story has progressed, it encourages them to find ways to avoid combat.

[ExLibrisMortis]

What happens when you start using encounters that aren't all ECL+0? Seems like you'll have low-level characters gaining levels every other fight.
It's something that's only a problem for adventurers, I think. That's the only thing the xp system needs to worry about, of course. But take a level 1 commoner recruit, and say he becomes a level 1 warrior after a few months training, and then a level 2 warrior after a single battle and a year in the army. How many encounters has he had? Well, that battle, and a drunken brawl once or twice, and a couple of skill challenges, but mostly he's been on city patrol, cleaning his gear and being bored (playing D&D, as soldiers do). He levels up at a reasonable rate, I think. A veteran of ten battles is a high-level soldier, for sure, and he's up to third level under this system (maybe fourth with skill challenges, but guard duty quickly stops being a source of xp at those levels). Adventurers are just crazy for having multiple dangerous encounters in a short space of time. Realistically, you might say that you can't learn so many new things - level up, in other words - in a few days, no matter how much you overcome, but that's something the DM solves fluff-wise by including travel time and down time. Or maybe you had that evasion all along, but you were just too nervous in combat to put it in practice, and levelling up represents you becoming less nervous about it.

[Mando Knight]

Your proposed idea in this last post is effectively just changing the numbers, but keeping xp. For my players, I just arbitrarily give them a level. The first few weeks was a level every week, and now we're at about 1/2 per week. I base it on how much story has progressed, it encourages them to find ways to avoid combat.

Yeah, "Levels When I Say So" is my preferred progression in most campaigns. XP is nice when there's multiple DMs or something (such as Pathfinder Society), where the DM can't get a feel for the progression of the characters. XP in this case lets players and DMs quickly communicate a rough quantity of the characters' experience to each other, and XP per level lets the DMs apply a consistent progression based on that. However, when there's only one DM, hiding that XP and then giving levels as appropriate to the campaign itself lets you directly control the characters' progression, either accelerating it so you can get from 1-20 faster (because you and your group want to play all those levels but don't want to take three years to do it) or slowing it down so you can stay at roughly the same power level throughout.