D&D Remix Power Level Caps

[jiriku]

This is a game balance tool provided for users of my D&D Remixed classes, or usable independently. It serves as a means of maintaining mechanical balance between adventurers in a party, and ensuring that threats are at least roughly appropriate to the capabilities of a party. It is not a one-stop solution to balance problems, but is helpful for setting expectations that players may use during character construction.

The system is inspired by the power levels in the Mutants and Masterminds RPG, and the math behind the sliding level caps is taken primarily from the monster creation guidelines listed in the 3.5 Monster Manual appendices.

POWER LEVEL
Power level (PL) is a means of describing how good a character is at something relative to his peers. PL is based on ECL for player characters and on CR for non-player characters and monsters. Cohorts, companion animals, familiars, summoned monsters, etc. obey the PL of their summoner or controller.

The table below shows formulas describing the Expected Power Level (EPL) for an nth level character. In general, a character whose ability is within three points of EPL is good at what he does. Abilities four or more points below the EPL are poor, perhaps because they are not important for a character or because the character’s abilities are not balanced. Abilities four or more points above the EPL are exceptional.

The table also shows formulas describing Maximum Power Level (MPL). MPL is a hard cap on the performance of PC and NPCs alike. It assists game balance. No combination of features, bonuses, or benefits can allow a character to exceed the MPL. The MPL cap is applies after all bonuses and penalties, including temporary modifiers granted by spells, feats, and special abilities during an encounter.

Category	EPL	MPL
Attack Bonus	(ECL * 1.5) + 2	EPL + 10
Armor Class	ECL + 13	EPL + 10
Saving Throws	ECL	EPL + 10
Skill Checks	(ECL * 2) + 3	EPL + 20
Ability Checks	ECL * 0.5	EPL + 10
Saving Throw DCs	ECL + 10	EPL + 10

Special Note: Certain spells, items, and class features provide extremely large bonuses that can easily push a roll above the MPL. It is beyond the scope of this post to consider them all, but a few are listed below for purposes of illustration.

true strike: Attacking with true strike still impose the MPL cap, but players may make use of the excess bonus by choosing combat actions that impose attack roll penalties (e.g. fighting defensively, Power Attack, etc.).

glibness: Bluff checks augmented by glibness are still subject to the MPL cap, but players can make use of the excess bonus to absorb situational penalties, allowing them to tell even outrageous lies with a maxed-out bonus in many cases.

Dance with the Elements: Remixed monks with this class feature may exceed MPL when making Balance, Climb, and Jump checks.

Foresight: Rolls augmented by this extremely powerful spell may exceed MPL.

[Zireael]

Looks fairly nice. I understand why the monks are excepted from the caps, but why the other exceptions?