Making Leveling Known to the Characters

[Reinboom]

Recently, I made leveling obvious to the PCs themselves, that is, they realize they are rapidly gaining power faster than most beings around them. I set up the situation that, there are voids in the world that, when shifted in some way, fluctuate the thought processes, the magical abilities, and the inherent strengths of beings around them rapidly, causing their training and growth to be increased at astonishing rates (making them level as PCs usually do in 3.5).
I then put in a catch in that, after a certain point in exposure, the growth rate slows down and eventually stops. The only way to break this cap is by seeking out a larger void to shift. And so on and so forth. Also, certain voids offer other benefits, and certain voids may harm you. From extended life to ripping your bones from your flesh, however, they can be tested/examined based on whats around them and their size (the smaller they are, the more dangerous they are), and, in a few cases certain spells or local reports will inform what the function of the void is here.
Ultimately, my intent was to try to give a reasoning of why certain characters (specific NPCs and PCs) were so special.

Now, further background to my campaign: the entire campaign is set around these voids. The current "BBEG" that the party is chasing/running from is powerful only due to that NPC chasing down these voids, seeking them out personally, and learning how to move them, how to combine them, and various other effects (channel magic through them, locking spell effects, and similar). Another group of BBEGs, lords of a nearby country, they have recently discovered figured out how to bind magic, and delay the effects in such a fashion as to cause the equivalent of "magic nukes" via these voids. Although, each such takes a lot of time.
The party is trying to stop a lot.

Now, with that, I would like to gather feedback on my play on the system with making leveling slightly more obvious to the characters themselves.

[AstralFire]

Don't you mean you made it slightly -more- transparent to them? Though I guess nontransparent can also mean "it's no longer invisible and thus obvious."

Anyway, I don't have an issue with this and often favor it when the PCs have become vastly more powerful in a rapid time than is normal. I always liked the most recent Tales games using the ExSphere/Eres/Capacity Core etc ideas. It adds another doohickey to play with in the world and it stops some issues with verisimilitude, especially in fast-leveling games.

[Reinboom]

Don't you mean you made it slightly -more- transparent to them? Though I guess nontransparent can also mean "it's no longer invisible and thus obvious."

Anyway, I don't have an issue with this and often favor it when the PCs have become vastly more powerful in a rapid time than is normal. I always liked the most recent Tales games using the ExSphere/Eres/Capacity Core etc ideas. It adds another doohickey to play with in the world and it stops some issues with verisimilitude, especially in fast-leveling games.

Transparency? When?
*title change!*

[AstralFire]

Transparency? When?

You can change your topic... but you can never change my freeeeeeeeeeeeedom! By which I mean my previous post's title. It shall also be this one's title.

[AstralFire]

I'd like to get more opinions.

[Fiery Diamond]

This actually is quite an interesting concept...I'd feel bad stealing it for my campaign, but it is giving me some ideas (i make stuff up as I go, I just have a very general idea-- at this point, I don't have a BBEG yet, just his arcance mark (which means he's a wizard or sorcerer at least).

-Fiery Diamond

[AstralFire]

This actually is quite an interesting concept...I'd feel bad stealing it for my campaign, but it is giving me some ideas (i make stuff up as I go, I just have a very general idea-- at this point, I don't have a BBEG yet, just his arcance mark (which means he's a wizard or sorcerer at least).

-Fiery Diamond

Not planning is nothing to feel ashamed about when it comes to DMing. Some DMs are best with seat of their pants, some are best planned out, many need a mix of both. As long as it works!

And remember: There is nothing new under the sun. As long as you make your ideas your own, don't worry too much about originality.

[Yahzi]

I make XP points tangible objects that you extract from dead monsters and carry around in your pocket. When you eat enough of them, you gain supernatural powers, like the ability to cast magic or jump out of an airplane and survive.

If you want to represent your character training and studying to become a better fighter/wizard/whatever, increase his stats. Class levels, with their ridiculous log scale of power, are supernatural effects - like magic items. And like magic items, their existence and nature is pretty well understood by everyone.

I know the idea sounds weird, but it's working very well right now. The characters decide when and where to level, or if they should spend the money on better equipment instead. So far they've spent a fortune leveling their mooks. Can you imagine if I had diverted XP to their followers? They would have whined like no tomorrow. But given control over their own destiny, they choose all sorts of interesting things.

[sonofzeal]

I had this as a plot hook for the BBEG once, actually - they deduced the nature of the XP system, and set out deliberately to exploit it for unimaginable power. They'd hire help to fight some monster, wait until both sides are wounded, and then kill them both (for the XP). Things like that.

She met the PCs fairly earlier in her career, and realized that these adventurers have the potential to level up quickly too... and if they did, they'd be worth more to her when she finally gets around to killing them (again, for the XP). So the party is put into the odd position of being the "pet" of the villain they're trying to stop, where'll she'll go out of her way to intervene on their behalf.

[Justin_Bacon]

Recently, I made leveling obvious to the PCs themselves, that is, they realize they are rapidly gaining power faster than most beings around them. I set up the situation that, there are voids in the world that, when shifted in some way, fluctuate the thought processes, the magical abilities, and the inherent strengths of beings around them rapidly, causing their training and growth to be increased at astonishing rates (making them level as PCs usually do in 3.5).

My current campaign started with the PCs waking up suffering from partial amnesia and a period of lost time.

I justified their rapid accumulation of experience thereafter as a result of the fact that, during their period of lost memories, they had already trained. IOW, their old skills are leaking through.

This explanation has weakened a bit because we added another PC who isn't suffering from amnesia. But I still thought it was a neat idea. And your idea of putting in active questing gives some of the same benefits of requiring training... but in a way that's much niftier.