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Lalliman
2017-09-17, 08:06 AM
Tangentially related to my thread about gaining HP, here's another question for the masses: When a character advances in power (probably by gaining a level), how steep of a power spike is acceptable?

To illustrate with a well-known example: in D&D 5e, most martial classes get Extra Attack at 5th level, allowing them to make two attacks per round instead of one. This effectively doubles their damage output, in addition to the usual benefits of levelling up (HP and proficiency bonus). The result is that a 5th-level character is more than twice as powerful as a 4th-level one. A power boost this large doesn't really occur at any other level.

So what do you think of sudden power boosts like this? Is it weird and jarring, or is it just a natural part of the game? Why or why not?

And if you do think it's jarring, here's another question. D&D 2e and 3e both had mechanics to dampen this sudden power boost.
- In 2e, a low-level fighter gets one attack per round, a mid-level fighter gets one and a half, and a high-level fighter gets two. Having one and a half attack per round basically means that you make two attacks in turn one, one attack in turn two, then two attacks in turn three, etc.
- In 3e, every additional attack you get comes at a -5 penalty compared to the last.
In my experience, both of these are generally considered pretty awkward. Assuming you agree (which you're also free not to), would you rather accept the power spike, or deal with a mechanic like this?

Mastikator
2017-09-17, 08:39 AM
Depends on the setting IMO

If you're playing a modern day setting with focus on characters and story being plausible then the spikes should be tiny and returns should be diminishing. Measuring people's competence is hard IRL and should be very situational in the game.

If you're playing a DragonballZ setting then the spikes should be earth shattering and the returns exponential. Your character is measured directly and accurately in "power level", what you write down on your character sheet is exactly what the power-meter measures you at.

And both are equally valid games to enjoy.

Slipperychicken
2017-09-17, 08:59 AM
I prefer having power increases be incremental, localized, and well-explained.

That is to say, example-knight Garrett could hone his ability to fight (including dodging, blocking, parrying, and other fighting maneuvers) through a combination of drilling, martial-arts competition, and real-life violent struggle. But this does not make his skin harder to pierce, nor should it increase his understanding of theology or botany. A different category of training could raise his ability to 'roll with punches', fight through pain, or otherwise take action to minimize injury even when his fighting skill fails to protect him.

That said, if you're playing some kind of coming-of-age superhero game about children learning to use their supernatural powers, then it could make sense for more dramatic changes. In that case, the children are more discovering how to use existing powers have than really growing as much.

For a game about larger-than-life heroes who can easily dispatch many normal people, I'd prefer to have the players either start out that way, or work up to it slowly. It helps keep a healthier immersion. No-one really wants to address the question "Why can we kill armies now, but were almost killed a single ordinary cat three weeks ago?".

ahyangyi
2017-09-17, 09:26 AM
Especially when a system is complex enough to allow you to multiclass, I think the power spikes should be kept at a minimum. It reduces the number of meaningful builds quickly, due to certain number of levels in some classes being the obvious "dips".

I think the 2e and 3e solutions both look fine for me. It's also a bit annoying that TRPG systems have to use easy-to-understand rules, as opposed to TV games where the developers can put whatever formula they like in the game, as long as the end result makes sense. Mathematically we have lots of ways to smooth things, but not every way can be written on a rulebook!

Pleh
2017-09-17, 09:49 AM
Worth noting the two threads are not unrelated. The more HP scales by level, the easier it is to sustain these power spikes.

If you take out HP increase by level, power spikes like this have dramatically greater effect.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-17, 09:51 AM
I tend to prefer when characters grow horizontally rather than vertically.

More abilities with new applications in new areas, but about as strong as all their other abilities.
So for instance, a character that has an ability relating to on-on-one interaction might gain one for talking to crowds, or vice-versa.

A class of great toughness or violence might gain additional weapons with new applications, or might gain the ability to use their strength and endurance to affect a rapid escape or dynamic entry. (As in, bust their way through a wall.) Things like that.

Pleh
2017-09-17, 10:12 AM
I tend to prefer when characters grow horizontally rather than vertically.

More abilities with new applications in new areas, but about as strong as all their other abilities.
So for instance, a character that has an ability relating to on-on-one interaction might gain one for talking to crowds, or vice-versa.

A class of great toughness or violence might gain additional weapons with new applications, or might gain the ability to use their strength and endurance to affect a rapid escape or dynamic entry. (As in, bust their way through a wall.) Things like that.

The thing to be careful of here is that the logical extreme leads to all high level characters looking exactly alike (since everyone masters their own field, then branches into competence at every other field.

Not that this can't be avoided with proper design, but it's just the same problem growing vertically has: when there is no cap on growing vertically, you get into the "magic hammer that turns all problems into nails."

Even as capless horizontal growth eventually makes all classes identical as they eventually master cross class skills.

Lalliman
2017-09-17, 10:12 AM
It's also a bit annoying that TRPG systems have to use easy-to-understand rules, as opposed to TV games where the developers can put whatever formula they like in the game, as long as the end result makes sense. Mathematically we have lots of ways to smooth things, but not every way can be written on a rulebook!
Amen brother. Making a TRPG might be as simple as writing down the rules, but this is the main challenge in creating a good one.


Worth noting the two threads are not unrelated. The more HP scales by level, the easier it is to sustain these power spikes.

If you take out HP increase by level, power spikes like this have dramatically greater effect.
True, without scaling HP this kind of damage boost would dramatically change the balance of the game to be far more rocket-rag-y. But that's not really what I'm going for. I used Extra Attack as an example, but you could have a similar power boost in the opposite direction, e.g. doubling your HP in one level-up. My question isn't so much about the gameplay implications, but about whether this sudden empowerment breaks people's suspension of disbelief.

Slipperychicken
2017-09-17, 10:23 AM
I think it's worth noting that hp increases aren't the only way for games to represent higher durability. Shadowrun, for example, has characters' armor give a much greater impact because it both reduces damage taken, and converts it into the game's equivalent of nonlethal damage. Since damage numbers tend to be much lower (around 6-15 for most weapons), and because of the damage-resolution mechanics, it means even a small increase can be significant. Of course, "not being hit in the first place" is the preferred scenario in shadowrun, but that's a different discussion.

Pleh
2017-09-17, 10:30 AM
My question isn't so much about the gameplay implications, but about whether this sudden empowerment breaks people's suspension of disbelief.

Fair enough. Clearly the answer will be subjective, based on expectations, which I presume is why you were surveying opinions.

In most of my D&D games, I hungrily look forward to the power spikes. So much of that system feels like I'm packing for a long journey and I need to take everything I'm going to require and hope it will be enough. Double attacks don't feel like they're putting me ahead, but helping keep up.

I actually tend more to avoid full casters when I don't want power spikes trivializing the challenge. Spells can be very situationally useful (thus providing sudden power spikes).

And yes, I find magic to break suspension of disbelief quite often. I understand, "it's magic, that's what magic does." But I'm saying it really takes me out of the game. It doesn't feel like a reward to glitterdust the bad guys and make my barbarian ally never need rage.

So yes, power spikes can easily break versimilitude, but I always felt the linear martials in D&D didn't give me this problem. Mostly the quadratic casters did that for me.

ahyangyi
2017-09-17, 11:08 AM
Amen brother. Making a TRPG might be as simple as writing down the rules, but this is the main challenge in creating a good one.

You seem to be misunderstanding what I was talking about. That's probably my fault though. I'm a native speaker and I seem to have caused quite a few misunderstanding in English recently.

My point is that there are many good rules that can be implemented in TV games but not possible in TRPGs. So we are often force to make rules that are somewhat imperfect but practical for TRPGs.

For example, it's pretty obvious that you should be able to freely rotate a cone effect zone. But in a grid-based TRPG it's super hard to do so, so you are stuck with like eight different directions. That's obviously imperfect, but it's probably the only practical solution.

Similarly, for the multiple attack problem, TV games could just implement an "attack speed" property and gradually increase it. There's no artifacts like 6-second rounds. But you can't implement that in a TRPG. Or you can, like 2E did in some sense. But people will complain that mechanic is "complex" or "not elegant".

So my point is designing for TRPG is extra hard, due to its design space limited by the need of allowing human to do all the calculations in an organized way.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-17, 11:40 AM
The thing to be careful of here is that the logical extreme leads to all high level characters looking exactly alike (since everyone masters their own field, then branches into competence at every other field.

Not that this can't be avoided with proper design, but it's just the same problem growing vertically has: when there is no cap on growing vertically, you get into the "magic hammer that turns all problems into nails."

Even as capless horizontal growth eventually makes all classes identical as they eventually master cross class skills.

That's why you don't take it to the extreme.
The logical extreme of "drink plenty of water" is drowning, after all. :P

There is too much of a good thing. Hence why we describe it with the term "too much."

If all your classes end up the same, either you're differentiating them wrong or you're dragging it out waaaaaaay too long.
(If the guy who specializes in shooting things can eventually do the same things as the guy who makes communities safe and prosperous, there are WAAAAAAY too many levels.)

Lalliman
2017-09-17, 12:11 PM
Snip
No, I knew exactly what you meant and I was agreeing with that. What I meant was: Any shmuck can technically make a TRPG by writing down the rules, and it will be functional because writing out the rules is all you need. But making those rules actually any good is difficult because you usually can't make a mechanic work exactly as you want without it becoming too complex for a human to reasonably handle. We were in agreement from the beginning, though looking back I see that my response was poorly-phrased and can be interpreted otherwise.

halfeye
2017-09-17, 12:34 PM
I'm a native speaker and I seem to have caused quite a few misunderstanding in English recently.

I suspect you misunderstand that phrase. A native speaker is a speaker who was born to people who speak a particular language, almost everybody is a native speaker of a language (exceptions are people who can't speak at all, and people raised with no contact with any other humans (both of which are very rare (children raised with each other will invent a language))). I am a native speaker of English, I am not a native speaker of French. There are rare people who speak as natives in two languages.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-17, 02:32 PM
Even as capless horizontal growth eventually makes all classes identical as they eventually master cross class skills.

What's a class?

Let's bring this down a level and ask, what's the basic unit of advancement? I'm not talking about XP, that's more the currency used to buy advancement.

How about this, in a standard 'attributes+skills' system or a skill only system the smallest unit of advancement is increasing one skill by one point. It doesn't matter if there are powers, feats, or whatever, in 95% of cases they are going to be bigger than raising one skill by one point. Therefore, no matter how high we spike we have a minimum level, we cannot get lower than raising one skill by one point without staying the same or losing power.

Now there are systems which have character change or refinement in addition to or instead of character advancement. In Fate you won't ever gain an aspect (since the Dresden Files RPG), but you will change them to better reflect your character. Fate also allows you to swap two skills at the end of every session to represent changing your focus without getting more powerful. But let's ignore such systems, they aren't the point of this thread.

Now how big a spike is acceptable? Some systems have established this in the rules, in Fate a power increase is never more than a skill point and a point of Refresh (or a Stunt). In Anima: Beyond Fantasy every power spike is 100DP (and an attribute point every other level), which will likely mainly go on increasing numbers in one way or another (generally attack and defence and skills, and MP for mages). In Rocket Age it's recommended that you limit power increases to one Attribute or Skill point. Then there are systems that are all over the place, from point buy ones (where a character could leap up in power dramatically if they have enough points saved) to ones like D&D.

Personally I like the Fate method. We're getting stronger today, here's one skill point use it wisely. Although I don't mind faster advancement/bigger spikes, I also like Savage Worlds and Fantasy Age.

FreddyNoNose
2017-09-17, 05:34 PM
Tangentially related to my thread about gaining HP, here's another question for the masses: When a character advances in power (probably by gaining a level), how steep of a power spike is acceptable?

To illustrate with a well-known example: in D&D 5e, most martial classes get Extra Attack at 5th level, allowing them to make two attacks per round instead of one. This effectively doubles their damage output, in addition to the usual benefits of levelling up (HP and proficiency bonus). The result is that a 5th-level character is more than twice as powerful as a 4th-level one. A power boost this large doesn't really occur at any other level.

So what do you think of sudden power boosts like this? Is it weird and jarring, or is it just a natural part of the game? Why or why not?

And if you do think it's jarring, here's another question. D&D 2e and 3e both had mechanics to dampen this sudden power boost.
- In 2e, a low-level fighter gets one attack per round, a mid-level fighter gets one and a half, and a high-level fighter gets two. Having one and a half attack per round basically means that you make two attacks in turn one, one attack in turn two, then two attacks in turn three, etc.
- In 3e, every additional attack you get comes at a -5 penalty compared to the last.
In my experience, both of these are generally considered pretty awkward. Assuming you agree (which you're also free not to), would you rather accept the power spike, or deal with a mechanic like this?

Unless you can prove mathematically that N given sets of abilities are balanced, then it really doesn't matter that much to me. Sure something gross is bad, but GENERALLY NBD.

Knaight
2017-09-17, 07:28 PM
As usual, it depends on the specifics of the game - there are times when really dramatic changes make a lot of sense (magically attuning to one school in REIGN comes with some pretty ridiculous immediate perks, but they're a standard part of the in game magic system and thus make sense in setting), there's times when a stat and skill game bumping up one skill by one point is probably the best option (more grounded games often benefit from this). There's also the matter of how games with a focus on powers often inherently have power spikes associated with getting a new best power in a way that games that focus on skills/stats really don't, which makes all of the benefits of a powers-focused system come into play.

As far as jarring mechanics go though, part of that is that the particular mechanics in question are a bit weird more than anything else. The 2e example involves awkwardly jamming something on a round structure that doesn't support it well, the 3e example quickly leads to bloated numbers. Meanwhile the multiple action mechanic in the ORE games is smooth, and there's a gradual transition there where the option for multiple actions appears at 5d skill but is generally a terrible idea that won't work, and the odds of actually being able to pull it off gradually increases. There's also some more recent mechanics that could port backwards fairly well, such as even/odd specifics that have cropped up in some recent d20 games - one attack can transition to one attack plus another on even, which can transition to two. If the system makes a lot of use of that mechanic, it can thus be less awkward. There's also various options involving doubles on systems with at least two dice.

Pleh
2017-09-17, 08:06 PM
What's a class?

Let's bring this down a level and ask, what's the basic unit of advancement? I'm not talking about XP, that's more the currency used to buy advancement.

Let's come back to this first point a bit. What's a class? In the context of an "attribute+skill" framework, a class is a set of attribute and skill focuses that construct an overarching theme.

In short, classes are narrative archetypes. Another way to look at it is the parallel with real world academia: every career takes more or less the same approach to education with incremental learning, but certain Degrees (read: classes) follow a particular field of study more closely for the express purpose of specializing in the field.

So, we might have greater character versatility in classless systems where we construct the same characters from discreet character agency elements, but we are left to associate narrative meaning to these abilities on our own. Class based systems prepackage and bundle the character agency elements based on standardized themes, reducing the options at our disposal, but gaining the advantage of simplicity.

Classes (ideally) tell you what you've become good at doing and why.

Jay R
2017-09-17, 08:42 PM
If players are contrasting themselves with other players, and annoyed if other players' PCs have more power than their character does, then all increments should match over each level.

If they identify with the party, however, then when they get the power doesn't matter, as long as they can expect to have some time as a powerful character.

I grew up with original D&D. First level wizards had little power; high level wizards had the most power. [The biggest jump was from fourth to fifth level wizard, when fireballs and lightning bolts appeared.] It worked, because I (and others) enjoyed the challenge when we were the weakest in the party, and enjoyed the glory when we were the strongest. Not all players enjoy that, and there's nothing wrong with that approach. In that case, all players should go up at about the same level each time.

Vitruviansquid
2017-09-17, 08:58 PM
My question isn't so much about the gameplay implications, but about whether this sudden empowerment breaks people's suspension of disbelief.

Meh.

Players choose whether to suspend disbelief or not and the system has very little role in helping that outside of cases where a hypothetical system might put in something that is clearly insane for an argument's sake. You can as easily say that at level 5, fighters will have an epiphany or breakthrough that allows them to massively improve the number of attacks they can execute in a space of time, or say that a fighter is not considered level 5 until he has had that epiphany or breakthrough.

But to answer the much more interesting question of whether dramatic power spikes are good for gameplay:

I believe power spikes as you describe are, in general, not good for tabletop RPG games. They are great in shorter form games like RTS, MOBA, head-to-head card games even, because they open and close timings for skilled players to exploit. However, if we are talking about gaining a dramatic amount of power in some levels of D&D, that is bad, because you tend to stay the same level in each session, and you tend not to want some sessions to be too easy out of the blue and some sessions to be too hard out of the blue.

However, the fact that power spikes are bad must be weighed against the fact that developing complexity as you gain levels is good. Developing complexity is what brings people back session after session, as they play with one option one session, and get to look forward to trying out another at the next level. Developing complexity tends to require that characters gain new options as they level up, and these new options tend to make power spikes inevitable.

So power spikes are bad, but a quest to eliminate them altogether is also bad.

Jay R
2017-09-17, 09:10 PM
My question isn't so much about the gameplay implications, but about whether this sudden empowerment breaks people's suspension of disbelief.

Not at all. I remember as a child having a huge jump in pistol skill, after months (years?) of frustrating practice. [My father had the patience of a saint.] As a three or four year old, I had been trying to learn to skip for months, when I suddenly notice that what they were doing was "right, right, left, left". And it was instantly easy. When learning a language, there's a time when you finally start thinking in it, and everything become clear. Many of my students struggle for a long time, and suddenly "get it". [I teach statistics.]

Sudden empowerment really exists.

Knaight
2017-09-17, 10:25 PM
Players choose whether to suspend disbelief or not and the system has very little role in helping that outside of cases where a hypothetical system might put in something that is clearly insane for an argument's sake. You can as easily say that at level 5, fighters will have an epiphany or breakthrough that allows them to massively improve the number of attacks they can execute in a space of time, or say that a fighter is not considered level 5 until he has had that epiphany or breakthrough.

This is questionable. Yes, those who really like a system and are really dedicated to playing it can come up with an excuse for basically anything the system contains. The question is how often it has to be done, and weird power spikes are one of the things that can cause that. Others are bizarre economic rules (d20 Modern says hi), nominally abstract concepts that brush up against more concrete ones weirdly (the D&D HP system as it interacts with other subsystems does this pretty often), or sufficiently jarring setting elements (the geopolitics of Ninjas and Superspies is a beautiful example here).

Vitruviansquid
2017-09-18, 12:36 AM
This is questionable. Yes, those who really like a system and are really dedicated to playing it can come up with an excuse for basically anything the system contains. The question is how often it has to be done, and weird power spikes are one of the things that can cause that. Others are bizarre economic rules (d20 Modern says hi), nominally abstract concepts that brush up against more concrete ones weirdly (the D&D HP system as it interacts with other subsystems does this pretty often), or sufficiently jarring setting elements (the geopolitics of Ninjas and Superspies is a beautiful example here).

This implies there is some limit to the amount of disbelief that a system can ask from a player, and that when the limit is reached, that player will fail to further suspend disbelief.

Untrue.

Suspension of disbelief is an emotional decision, not a rational one. When you have decided whether to suspend your disbelief, you will have barely noticed the instant you made that decision, but you made that decision based on how well you are enjoying yourself with the game and how much you buy into the message of the setting. Given that you're enjoying yourself and you basically want to immerse yourself, it doesn't matter how many breaks from reality you encounter, you will choose to suspend your disbelief each time. Given that you're not enjoying yourself and you basically don't want to immerse yourself, you will have a problem at the first break from reality you encounter.

Knaight
2017-09-18, 12:46 AM
Suspension of disbelief is an emotional decision, not a rational one. When you have decided whether to suspend your disbelief, you will have barely noticed the instant you made that decision, but you made that decision based on how well you are enjoying yourself with the game and how much you buy into the message of the setting. Given that you're enjoying yourself and you basically want to immerse yourself, it doesn't matter how many breaks from reality you encounter, you will choose to suspend your disbelief each time. Given that you're not enjoying yourself and you basically don't want to immerse yourself, you will have a problem at the first break from reality you encounter.

While this is true, it involves looking at the extremes of a spectrum. Suspension of disbelief isn't so much a single decision as a budget. If you're not liking a game (or other work) it's going to be a really tight budget that gets blown quickly - but a higher budget isn't necessarily infinite. On top of that, there's a difference between a break from reality and something that just doesn't make sense. The existence of fleets of spaceships bristling with weapons is a break from reality, but it's actively desirable in a space opera context. Meanwhile a grounded spy story about international politics taking a volatile region with an important resource and declaring that the rest of the world just completely ignores it without providing a reason is immediately jarring, and will eat a good portion of even a very high suspension of disbelief budget.

Vitruviansquid
2017-09-18, 01:31 AM
While this is true, it involves looking at the extremes of a spectrum. Suspension of disbelief isn't so much a single decision as a budget. If you're not liking a game (or other work) it's going to be a really tight budget that gets blown quickly - but a higher budget isn't necessarily infinite. On top of that, there's a difference between a break from reality and something that just doesn't make sense. The existence of fleets of spaceships bristling with weapons is a break from reality, but it's actively desirable in a space opera context. Meanwhile a grounded spy story about international politics taking a volatile region with an important resource and declaring that the rest of the world just completely ignores it without providing a reason is immediately jarring, and will eat a good portion of even a very high suspension of disbelief budget.

I had considered simply not responding to this because when you talk about there being tight budgets and high budgets based on the factors I discussed, you are basically approaching the same result from a different starting point. It is easier to suspend your disbelief when you like the mechanics, when you buy into the message.

But I had to post because no, I am not talking about "the extremes of the spectrum."

I typed this specifically to say I am ignoring "the extremes of the spectrum"


Players choose whether to suspend disbelief or not and the system has very little role in helping that outside of cases where a hypothetical system might put in something that is clearly insane for an argument's sake.

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-18, 05:20 AM
This is a tricky question, because power is a multivariable and resists being boiled to a single number. (various versions of D&D try this and generally fail.) One contributing factor is that small differences in initial conditions may lead to massive differences in outcomes and these may not be obvious without extensive testing.

To give an easy to understand example: if a person is 5% faster in a foot race, they don't win 5% more often or gain 5% more rewards - they usually win all the races and gain all the rewards.

Some spikes like these are indeed "natural" in the sense that they mathematically follow from premises of the system and what the system is trying to model. It's not a big problem as long as the new & improved character can still be challenged to some extent by people on their previous level. F.ex. if level 5 Fighter can still be beat by 3 level 4 Fighters, things are still within reason. Bad things are usually going on if level N Fighter is suddenly untouchable to any number of level N-1 Fighters or similar.

Knaight
2017-09-18, 01:54 PM
I had considered simply not responding to this because when you talk about there being tight budgets and high budgets based on the factors I discussed, you are basically approaching the same result from a different starting point. It is easier to suspend your disbelief when you like the mechanics, when you buy into the message.

But I had to post because no, I am not talking about "the extremes of the spectrum."

I typed this specifically to say I am ignoring "the extremes of the spectrum"

Let me clarify - when I say "the spectrum" I'm referring to the extremes of the disbelief budget more than the extremes of what we're being asked to disbelieve. You specifically discluded those extremes (or more accurately you discluded the high extreme and the low one comes prediscluded), but also brushed over the potential for more moderate budgets that can get blown through without any one thing that's extremely egregious.

Tanarii
2017-09-18, 02:08 PM
To illustrate with a well-known example: in D&D 5e, most martial classes get Extra Attack at 5th level, allowing them to make two attacks per round instead of one. This effectively doubles their damage output, in addition to the usual benefits of levelling up (HP and proficiency bonus). The result is that a 5th-level character is more than twice as powerful as a 4th-level one. A power boost this large doesn't really occur at any other level.A 2nd level character is twice as powerful as a 1st level one. A 3rd level is twice as powerful as a 2nd. A 4th level is 50% more powerful than a 3rd level.

It's only after level 5 that double power really stops, although there's little stutter step from 3-->4. After 5 it slows down significantly though.

Slipperychicken
2017-09-18, 03:29 PM
A 2nd level character is twice as powerful as a 1st level one. A 3rd level is twice as powerful as a 2nd. A 4th level is 50% more powerful than a 3rd level.

What measurement are you using to make this claim?

Tanarii
2017-09-18, 04:23 PM
What measurement are you using to make this claim?
5E DMG p84, Adventuring Day table.

Which pretty much matches my experience with the Tier 1 game. It's probably not that precise, but it's very close.

Quertus
2017-09-18, 05:49 PM
Personally, I'm in the "hungrily look forward to power spikes", "notice such spikes IRL", and "believe that reality is stranger than fantasy in that regard" camps. People IRL often have huge spikes - probably the most commonly discussed one is "seeing the elephant". Losing suspension of disbelief over power spikes arguably just shows a lack of understanding of the real world, let alone a lack of immersion in the game world in the first place.

I love the rewarding feeling of advancing to where I'm rolling two dice for my DR (to put it in D&D terms) instead of just one, or earned enough XP to reach the next level (D&D 2e) or take the next class (WHF) or afford to build the next magic item (D&D 3e, WoD Mage). Those sudden jumps feel good in a way most point buy just... doesn't. The endless treadmill of just keeping up is just not as interesting as sudden jumps.

And, when the party levels at different times, that sort of jumps-and-starts makes for a really interesting, "what can we do now?" minigame.


However, if we are talking about gaining a dramatic amount of power in some levels of D&D, that is bad, because you tend to stay the same level in each session, and you tend not to want some sessions to be too easy out of the blue and some sessions to be too hard out of the blue.

I don't think that's universally true. I mean, things suddenly being easy is a nice reinforcement of "you just leveled - leveling matters". And, personally, I'm all about the old-school D&D "wtf is game balance?" mindset where encounters aren't "CR appropriate", and it's up to the party to determine if it's something they want to tangle with or not.

So, to me, you've just defined a feature, not a bug.


developing complexity as you gain levels is good. Developing complexity is what brings people back session after session

Is it? I'd never thought of it that way before.


Sudden empowerment really exists.

Amen.


Some spikes like these are indeed "natural" in the sense that they mathematically follow from premises of the system and what the system is trying to model. It's not a big problem as long as the new & improved character can still be challenged to some extent by people on their previous level. F.ex. if level 5 Fighter can still be beat by 3 level 4 Fighters, things are still within reason. Bad things are usually going on if level N Fighter is suddenly untouchable to any number of level N-1 Fighters or similar.

... This might just be a style difference between us. Personally, I hate systems like WoD, where the max 5 dots in a skill not only might well have you falling against a noob with only a single dot in said skill, but have you doing so inordinately often. I don't expect someone who just picked up D&D yesterday to be schooling a veteran optimizer on character creation with any regulatory.

As I hate the point buy treadmill, I'd almost argue that I only care about differentiating things that matter - "Level 7" magic decks should stand very little chance against "Level 8" magic decks, for example, and, unless they specifically target the deck's weakness, "Level 9" decks should be right out. Otherwise, if they're able to compete against each other reasonably, why put them in different tiers?

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-19, 03:22 AM
Quertus, read again what I wrote. I didn't say "people of N level should be challenged to some extent by complete beginners". I said they should be challenged to some extent by people of their previous level.

Magic decks make a poor example for what I was talking about. Like I said previously, if you're 5% faster in a race, you don't win 5% often, you win all the time. That's by-product of the nature of the contest less than a power spike.

Let's consider the example of fighters again. In a duel, when both participants are fresh, it might be a 5th level fighter has 100% win rate over 4th level fighters. But when examined closely, it is found the 5th level fighter is always left with just 1 hitpoint. This means the 5th level fighter has not spiked dramatically in power, the small difference in initial conditions just makes a big difference in the outcome. They are still challenged by people of their previous level and we can construe that against two 4th level fighters, they would not be winning 100% of time.

Let's take an alternate example. Suppose a 2nd level fighter can fight three 1st level fighters in a row. A 3rd level fighter can fight three 2nd level fighters in a row. A 4th level fighter can fight three 3rd level fighters. A 5th level fighter can fight three 4th level fighters. So on and so forth. This kind of progression satisfies my condition for a working power curve while still having a notable leap in power at each level. Even if a 6th level fighter can suddenly fight seven 5th level fighters in a row, or a 7th level fighter can only fight two 6th level fighters, things remain within reason. How many 1st level fighters a 5th level fighter can fight in a row isn't a question that's asked, nor is the answer important. The answer could be 81, it could be arbitrarily large. What's important is that there are no arbitrarily large gaps between adjacent points in the same continuum.

Tiers shouldn't be talked in this context because tiers are rarely based on or form a scale continuum. Tiers may be exclusive categories with any numbers associated with them not really signifying any clear mathematical relation between them.

Florian
2017-09-19, 03:54 AM
Hm. "Splittermond" as a system has an interesting way to handle "power growth" and "power spikes.
It´s basically a skill-based system with some "tiers of play" as limiting factor, meaning that the "Beginner levels" have a hard skill cap of 6 and you must grow "horizontally" enough (total XP) to be ready to advance to the next tier, which raises the skill cap by +3, and so on.
In this system, feats are tied to skills and you get to chose on whenever reaching the cap for a skill, modeling having reached a stage of mastery for that exact skill, putting you above your peers a bit.

"Classes" exist, but work differently than what we´re used to from D&D, as any character can learn any skill and even "schools of magic" are expressed as skills. Choosing a "class" and "culture" will simply give some free feats in advance, fitting the overall concept. (I.e. a "Sea League" Elf Bladedancer will start with a free seafaring, chain weapons and either wind or water magic feat.)

CharonsHelper
2017-09-19, 07:50 AM
However, the fact that power spikes are bad must be weighed against the fact that developing complexity as you gain levels is good. Developing complexity is what brings people back session after session, as they play with one option one session, and get to look forward to trying out another at the next level. Developing complexity tends to require that characters gain new options as they level up, and these new options tend to make power spikes inevitable.

So power spikes are bad, but a quest to eliminate them altogether is also bad.

I'm going to disagree - but I know where you're coming from.

Complexity is always bad.

But depth of play is always good.

Depth of play is purchased with complexity, and one of the hardest parts of being a game designer is to get the best bang for your buck on that purchase and know where it's worth spending to stay with your game's theme.

I do agree that increasing depth helps bring people back, and adding complexity a bit at a time (such as with a levelling system) allows you to add more over time, and therefore purchase more system depth.

But - some of that is probably just semantics.

Quertus
2017-09-19, 12:59 PM
Quertus, read again what I wrote. I didn't say "people of N level should be challenged to some extent by complete beginners". I said they should be challenged to some extent by people of their previous level.

Magic decks make a poor example for what I was talking about. Like I said previously, if you're 5% faster in a race, you don't win 5% often, you win all the time. That's by-product of the nature of the contest less than a power spike.

Let's consider the example of fighters again. In a duel, when both participants are fresh, it might be a 5th level fighter has 100% win rate over 4th level fighters. But when examined closely, it is found the 5th level fighter is always left with just 1 hitpoint. This means the 5th level fighter has not spiked dramatically in power, the small difference in initial conditions just makes a big difference in the outcome. They are still challenged by people of their previous level and we can construe that against two 4th level fighters, they would not be winning 100% of time.

Let's take an alternate example. Suppose a 2nd level fighter can fight three 1st level fighters in a row. A 3rd level fighter can fight three 2nd level fighters in a row. A 4th level fighter can fight three 3rd level fighters. A 5th level fighter can fight three 4th level fighters. So on and so forth. This kind of progression satisfies my condition for a working power curve while still having a notable leap in power at each level. Even if a 6th level fighter can suddenly fight seven 5th level fighters in a row, or a 7th level fighter can only fight two 6th level fighters, things remain within reason. How many 1st level fighters a 5th level fighter can fight in a row isn't a question that's asked, nor is the answer important. The answer could be 81, it could be arbitrarily large. What's important is that there are no arbitrarily large gaps between adjacent points in the same continuum.

Tiers shouldn't be talked in this context because tiers are rarely based on or form a scale continuum. Tiers may be exclusive categories with any numbers associated with them not really signifying any clear mathematical relation between them.

Thank you for the clarification. My seeming straw man was actually more just me trying to paint where I was coming from than me actually misreading your position. But I find your definition of what it means to be "challenged" quite interesting.

The tiers bit... was a stretch. People (maybe in this thread?) were discussing gaining new maneuvers as an alternative to more attacks, thus making tiers of maneuvers a seemingly related topic.

But, yes, a maneuver that deals 2d6 as an upgrade from one that deals 1d10 is actually arguably more of the gentle yet meaningful progression you're discussing, while still "quantifyably different" like I require differentiated objects to be.


I'm going to disagree - but I know where you're coming from.

Complexity is always bad.

But depth of play is always good.

Depth of play is purchased with complexity, and one of the hardest parts of being a game designer is to get the best bang for your buck on that purchase and know where it's worth spending to stay with your game's theme.

I do agree that increasing depth helps bring people back, and adding complexity a bit at a time (such as with a levelling system) allows you to add more over time, and therefore purchase more system depth.

But - some of that is probably just semantics.

This, on the other hand, is an explanation that sheds whole new light on a post that I had taken differently.

Complexity is usually bad; needless complexity is always bad. "Everything should be as simple as it can be, and no simpler".

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-19, 01:51 PM
Tangentially related to my thread about gaining HP, here's another question for the masses: When a character advances in power (probably by gaining a level), how steep of a power spike is acceptable?

To illustrate with a well-known example: in D&D 5e, most martial classes get Extra Attack at 5th level, allowing them to make two attacks per round instead of one. This effectively doubles their damage output, in addition to the usual benefits of levelling up (HP and proficiency bonus). The result is that a 5th-level character is more than twice as powerful as a 4th-level one. A power boost this large doesn't really occur at any other level.

So what do you think of sudden power boosts like this? Is it weird and jarring, or is it just a natural part of the game? Why or why not?

And if you do think it's jarring, here's another question. D&D 2e and 3e both had mechanics to dampen this sudden power boost.
- In 2e, a low-level fighter gets one attack per round, a mid-level fighter gets one and a half, and a high-level fighter gets two. Having one and a half attack per round basically means that you make two attacks in turn one, one attack in turn two, then two attacks in turn three, etc.
- In 3e, every additional attack you get comes at a -5 penalty compared to the last.
In my experience, both of these are generally considered pretty awkward. Assuming you agree (which you're also free not to), would you rather accept the power spike, or deal with a mechanic like this?

I prefer a gradual, shallow, linear increase, to start out with some real ability and then go up at a measured pace from there. If my character is supposed to be X, I want to start out at something like X... not as someone who could one day maybe become X.

I actively dislike the the "zero to demigod" upward curve of 3.5e and the sort. The sudden spikes of "leveling up" both make that all the more jarring, and have have their own head-scratching issues of disconnect from most settings and "fictional facts".



Meh.

Players choose whether to suspend disbelief or not and the system has very little role in helping that outside of cases where a hypothetical system might put in something that is clearly insane for an argument's sake. You can as easily say that at level 5, fighters will have an epiphany or breakthrough that allows them to massively improve the number of attacks they can execute in a space of time, or say that a fighter is not considered level 5 until he has had that epiphany or breakthrough.

But to answer the much more interesting question of whether dramatic power spikes are good for gameplay:

I believe power spikes as you describe are, in general, not good for tabletop RPG games. They are great in shorter form games like RTS, MOBA, head-to-head card games even, because they open and close timings for skilled players to exploit. However, if we are talking about gaining a dramatic amount of power in some levels of D&D, that is bad, because you tend to stay the same level in each session, and you tend not to want some sessions to be too easy out of the blue and some sessions to be too hard out of the blue.

However, the fact that power spikes are bad must be weighed against the fact that developing complexity as you gain levels is good. Developing complexity is what brings people back session after session, as they play with one option one session, and get to look forward to trying out another at the next level. Developing complexity tends to require that characters gain new options as they level up, and these new options tend to make power spikes inevitable.

So power spikes are bad, but a quest to eliminate them altogether is also bad.


I'm going to have to disagree on both.

System can easily "break disbelief" for me, and that's not a matter of choice. What I can choose to do is play anyway based on other factors.

On complexity... what you describe is not what keeps me coming back.

Vitruviansquid
2017-09-19, 06:10 PM
I'm going to disagree - but I know where you're coming from.

Complexity is always bad.

But depth of play is always good.

Depth of play is purchased with complexity, and one of the hardest parts of being a game designer is to get the best bang for your buck on that purchase and know where it's worth spending to stay with your game's theme.

I do agree that increasing depth helps bring people back, and adding complexity a bit at a time (such as with a levelling system) allows you to add more over time, and therefore purchase more system depth.

But - some of that is probably just semantics.

Yeah, that's sound.

I was sloppily folding the concept of depth of play into the concept of complexity.

Semantic, probably, but sound.

I'll reply to the other stuff when I'm at a computer and can wrangle quote formatting.

Florian
2017-09-20, 02:24 AM
Depth of play is purchased with complexity, and one of the hardest parts of being a game designer is to get the best bang for your buck on that purchase and know where it's worth spending to stay with your game's theme.

I do agree that increasing depth helps bring people back, and adding complexity a bit at a time (such as with a levelling system) allows you to add more over time, and therefore purchase more system depth.

That leads to the question what the actual goal of the game is/should be, what you´re going to play and how you´re going to play it.
Contrast, say, "Mountain Witch" and "Lady Blackbird" to the typical more open-ended design of systems like D&D.
Edit: Black Crusade has the inbuilt goal of reaching 100 Infamy before 100 Corruption, as a different, non-scenario-based example.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-20, 04:09 AM
A good point has been brought up, we should consider start points and end points as well.

I'm not a fan of zero to demigod, or even zero to hero. I like my games to go from competent to hero or professional to hero. Or I'd rather begin at the point where we can reasonably complete jobs without GM help (in D&D terms roughly third level), and end at the point where we may become legendary or our story may fade in a decade (in D&D terms roughly tenth level). I'm also not concerned with getting too much in the way of new stuff, but I do want a slow increase in competence. If D&D has a gradient of 1 I want a gradient of about 0.125 or less.

Although I also like demigod to demigod. Thankfully most superhero systems can handle that power level.

Quertus
2017-09-20, 06:42 AM
A good point has been brought up, we should consider start points and end points as well.

I'm not a fan of zero to demigod, or even zero to hero. I like my games to go from competent to hero or professional to hero. Or I'd rather begin at the point where we can reasonably complete jobs without GM help (in D&D terms roughly third level), and end at the point where we may become legendary or our story may fade in a decade (in D&D terms roughly tenth level). I'm also not concerned with getting too much in the way of new stuff, but I do want a slow increase in competence. If D&D has a gradient of 1 I want a gradient of about 0.125 or less.

Although I also like demigod to demigod. Thankfully most superhero systems can handle that power level.

If push comes to shove, I probably prefer the "demigod to god" range of play. But, regardless of the range, I generally prefer the snail's pace of, say, 2e D&D advancement over 3e's turbo advancement rate.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-20, 11:09 AM
If push comes to shove, I probably prefer the "demigod to god" range of play. But, regardless of the range, I generally prefer the snail's pace of, say, 2e D&D advancement over 3e's turbo advancement rate.

True, I'm thinking more about this problem now as well.

We have three variables to alter, power range (p), campaign length (l), and advancement rate (a), to discover our fourth quantity (power spike size/s).

For power range, let's assign a scale between 0 (no increase in power) to 10 (character becomes many times as powerful). I'm going to assume that this is a linear scale to make our maths easier.

For campaign length, let's say that we're going to measure it in months. We could do years, but I've personally not seen a multi-year game.

For advancement rate let's say we want to advance x times a month (or year if measuring it in years).

Now, we can put these variables into a formula where s=x(p/(l*r)), where x is our unit of advancement.

Quertus
2017-09-20, 12:10 PM
True, I'm thinking more about this problem now as well.

We have three variables to alter, power range (p), campaign length (l), and advancement rate (a), to discover our fourth quantity (power spike size/s).

For power range, let's assign a scale between 0 (no increase in power) to 10 (character becomes many times as powerful). I'm going to assume that this is a linear scale to make our maths easier.

For campaign length, let's say that we're going to measure it in months. We could do years, but I've personally not seen a multi-year game.

For advancement rate let's say we want to advance x times a month (or year if measuring it in years).

Now, we can put these variables into a formula where s=x(p/(l*r)), where x is our unit of advancement.

Perhaps we should be measuring is sessions, or even hours of play, given how variable session length is?

Really, it's not about play length, it's about total power change, and number of increments to get there.

So, for 2e D&D, it's the power difference between level 1 and level 20, divided into 19 discrete steps. The size of each step, on average, is (power(20)-power(1)) / 19.

But, since not all of those steps are equal, I believe what this thread is actually concerned with is measuring just how big the largest such step is, and asking what people's max value for that step is. Myself, I'm much more concerned about what the minimal value of that step is. I like big changes!

For me, ascending from peasant to godhood is a perfectly fine step, so long as there is a good in-game reason for it.

Or it happens IRL. That'd be fine, too. :smallwink:

Florian
2017-09-20, 01:22 PM
@Anonymouswizard:

Brrr! You´re jumping too far ahead for your own good, at least if this should be a serious shot at creating a system.

Cover the basics first by taking a clear stance how you want to treat the three basic cornerstones of Game, Simulation, Narrative and how you weight the individual aspects and how much influence they should have for designing the rules.

Lalliman
2017-09-20, 02:14 PM
@Anonymouswizard:

Brrr! You´re jumping too far ahead for your own good, at least if this should be a serious shot at creating a system.

Cover the basics first by taking a clear stance how you want to treat the three basic cornerstones of Game, Simulation, Narrative and how you weight the individual aspects and how much influence they should have for designing the rules.
It should be mentioned that, despite having the same avatar, AnonymousWizard isn't me (the poster). I'm the one creating a system. I think AnonymousWizard is just abstractifying the problem as a thought experiment, and doesn't actually intend to somehow use this as the basis for a mechanic.

*Goes back to lurking impartially*