Decreasing level campaigns?

[Kaihaku]

I posted in the wrong forum but I thought I'd cover it up by editing in something...then I edited it away...and now I edited it back.

So, has anyone ever, um, played a campaign starting at 20 and decreasing to 1?

[Tokiko Mima]

I posted in the wrong forum but I thought I'd cover it up by editing in something...

So, has anyone ever, um, played a campaign starting at 20 and decreasing to 1?

Wow! That could be an incredibly depressing game. All the characters are afflicted with a degenerative neural condition and begin to forget everything they knew, lose coordination and strength, and have to scale down their world saving to town saving to eventually being challenged by housecats....

The only way I could figure doing this and not being super angsty is via a time travel game in the style of Quantum Leap.

[Kaihaku]

Haha... You caught my first rewrite.

Sure, we could talk about that too. I think it would be kind of depressing... Mechanically, huh...rolling to remove HP each level, taking away skill points...

I kind of want to do it now.

[Jayabalard]

hmm... degenerative disease....

I like popsicles

[Duke of URL]

That sounds like an awesome idea for a campaign... near-epic heroes with their abilities slowly draining away, having to thwart the BBEG at the end (and save the world, yada, yada) as 1st-level characters.

Disease could be one way, as noted above. Or maybe the PCs have to sacrifice a bit of their own power at each stage of the campaign to reach the ultimate goal, possibly resulting in a "noble end" engame scenario where the PCs have to die to succeed... played right, it could be uplifting rather than depressing.

Another option would be that the party is traveling backwards through time, "devolving" as they do so, using the clues they pick up along the way to subvert the "evil plan" before it ever got underway...

Mechanically, I'd say it's easier to do if HP are fixed per level, rather than rolled. Then all you have to do is remove the right number. Skill points are the same, just remove them, keeping the new totals legal. Any feat can be dropped at the right level as long as it leaves the others "legal". Ability scores should be tracked for dropping at character creation, though.

Best thing... don't tell the players what's going to happen. Just have them make up their characters and put enough level-by-level info down so you can "double-check" their work. Do warn them something odd will happen, though, so they aren't PO'd about it.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

That sounds like an awesome idea for a campaign... near-epic heroes with their abilities slowly draining away, having to thwart the BBEG at the end (and save the world, yada, yada) as 1st-level characters.

Disease could be one way, as noted above. Or maybe the PCs have to sacrifice a bit of their own power at each stage of the campaign to reach the ultimate goal, possibly resulting in a "noble end" engame scenario where the PCs have to die to succeed... played right, it could be uplifting rather than depressing.

Or a continent-wide aura that inflicts people with a negative level every couple of days, with a save DC based on their save, and never killing anyone. Could be an interesting time limit.

[Draz74]

Do their magic items dissolve according to WBL rules as they go down in levels?

[Kaihaku]

I would probably leave them with them, personally...though...they could be challenged to give them up or maybe it's a slower version of something like that destruction of the Forgotten Realms spellplague thing where the items are going too.

[Duke of URL]

With the "devloving via time travel" concept, I'd have their items devolve in some fashion as well.

[Tokiko Mima]

I'm running a Pathfinder Playtest and we just got into the changed Intimidate. There's been a lot of discussion about it and there promises to be a good deal more...but it was pointed out that 4e has also gone for flat DCs in many areas.

So, what's your thought?

1d20 + mods or 10 + mods? Somehow, I lean towards 1d20 because it leaves in an element of chance on both sides.

I agree with your leaning as it applies to players. For NPC's I can see where it slows down play to do opposed rolls. This disparity, I suspect, is why Diplomacy (for example) doesn't effect PC's in 3e because it would such if NPCs could dictate what they want to do to any random low Wisdom character.

I think the 3e philosophy here is that players should be given a chance to roll, even if the odds of failure or success are so high or so low as to be nearly automatic. In Pathfinder or 4e, the rolls become more or less automatic which speeds up play but takes control from the player.

Haha... You caught my first rewrite.

Oops. Oh well, it's a good topic anyway, both of 'em. Now we can discuss both topics on the same thread. You can edit back and forth and we'll forget about what you posted before, creating a degenerative deleveling thread.

[Fiery Diamond]

Wow, that is such an interesting concept. I... need to think about that one. It really sounds like it could be a cool game.

[LibraryOgre]

In Palladium's "Mystic China", there is the Reformed Demon OCC. You start off as a powerful Chinese demon, who is working hard to become human. As such, you lose powers as you gain in level, until you're able to become a human and start over in your new life.

[BobVosh]

I think it would be neater if you go merlin on this and "remember time backwards". So they aren't losing abilities nor are they playing in the "now" they are just remembering what they did back then.

Make sure the items they have at the beginning are what they get back then.

[Paragon Badger]

That sounds like a good way to handle my demonic posession idea... As you lose levels, you're demonic alter-ego gains them... Literally, you aren't losing any skill/knowledge, but are rather fundamentally losing your personality.

[TheOOB]

Ohh god, now I have to think up a Memento style shadowrun game.

[BobVosh]

Ohh god, now I have to think up a Memento style shadowrun game.

Hmm...one of my favorite movies with one of my favorite games. This can only end poorly for all but one character.

[sonofzeal]

As a player, I know for certain that I wouldn't enjoy this. I mean, I think it'd make an awesome BOOK, or movie or something, but half the fun for me is seeing the characters change and improve and progress throughout the game. Even in fiction, many of my favorite segments are where the characters are training and learning new talents. Degeneration may make for great drama, and interesting game mechanics, but to me it just wouldn't be FUN as a player. As a DM, maybe, but not as a player.

[DarknessLord]

I could see this for a nice story similar (or even exactly if you wanna run a fan game) to the backstory of Golden Sun, the world is in trouble, and in order to stop it, the very force that the world runs on has to be sealed away, and as the power drains away from the world, the heroes weaken, giving up their power (and the power of eveyone everywhere) for the safety of the world...

[Dragonmuncher]

I have an idea for an interesting variation on this- time travel, as seen in The Butterfly Effect

A Memento-style thing WOULD be cool, but I don't know how playable it would be. The players aren't just watchers of the story, they're also the protagonists, so it'd be hard to have a coherent story that the PCs could have fun playing, AND do everything backwards. Possible, I'm sure, but I sure as heck don't know how.


No, my idea would be time travel. The high-level heroes keep going back in time, and getting placed into their younger selves. Instead of doing it straight level 20 to level 1, make it more like a Butterfly Effect thing.

The PCs keep trying to make the present better by changing the past, but it all keeps going horribly wrong, or at least not as they intended. And every few sessions, you could have a high-level session to break things up as the PCs return to the "new" present.

This opens up a lot of neat stuff- on a whim, the wizard in his preteen body decides to buy a harp from a peddler. He returns to the present, and discovers that, 5 years after buying the harp, he decided to master it to impress a girl. Then, he decided to become a bard. High-level wizard is now a high level bard!

And that's not even mentioning stuff you could do with a plot- the future evil overlord that they kill as a child, the seemingly-perfect utopia that they are forced to change for some reason, etc.


Man, I really like this idea. Butterfly Effect, eh? Who knew Ashton Kutcher would inspire a D&D plot?

[Collin152]

I think it would be neater if you go merlin on this and "remember time backwards". So they aren't losing abilities nor are they playing in the "now" they are just remembering what they did back then.

Make sure the items they have at the beginning are what they get back then.

I was gunna refrence The Once and Future King...

[Ravens_cry]

Or maybe a Heroic Flowers for Algernon . By the Grace of the Gods, Mega Magic, Phlebotinum Powers, the heroes are now pumped up to uber-epic levels. However, it is too good to last, so the heroes must vanquish the BBED, before becoming tweebs again.

[Reinboom]

Butterfly Effect

*runs off with*

My super high fantasy world expands! Whales born of the clouds floating through continental hypercubes now has to deal with parties mind time traveling.

[Return of Lanky]

Well, you sir just finished some plagiarism for me.

My next campaign is rather blatantly based on the very first Final Fantasy. I was wondering how I could possibly cover that... and you hand it right to me. Each of the five orb bearers must slowly give up a portion of the powers they wield to save the world.

And...

Alright, this is cool enough I wrote up some quick and dirty generalized rules. Help develop them, please.

[Eldritch_Ent]

Oh I am SO stealing this.

[AstralFire]

Or maybe a Heroic Flowers for Algernon . By the Grace of the Gods, Mega Magic, Phlebotinum Powers, the heroes are now pumped up to uber-epic levels. However, it is too good to last, so the heroes must vanquish the BBED, before becoming tweebs again.

I think I like that better than a campaign where I am constantly just dropping in level.

[ericgrau]

What would happen to your magic items?

1st level chars with high level magic items? Or would those slowly lose their power as well?

[Oslecamo]

I actually saw this happen once.

In the Warcraft III Frozen Throne campaign, when we get control of Arthas, he loses one level in each mission instead of gaining one as usual.

The reason is because the Lich King, who granted Arthas his powers, is being attacked and is geting weaker. So Arthas must hurry back to protect the lich king before he becomes a wimp again.

In the last mission, we eventually manage to recover our lost levels by slaughtering the foolish elves assaulting the Lich King.

[UglyPanda]

This gave me an idea. The PCs play a group of level 1 historians, determined to discover what happened to a group of ancient heroes. After their first mission, they find the last journal one of these heroes ever made. The PCs then each take over the role of one of the ancient heroes and play as level 20 characters for a bit. As the campaign goes on, the PCs as historians keep gaining levels, while the ancient heroes keep losing levels since the PCs are going further back into the ancient heroes' pasts.

Of course, if the PCs go off the tracks in the ancient heroes' diaries, it could just be explained that some of them are forgeries or just contain a number of lies.

[Fishy]

Mechanically, I'd try this out in 4E rather than 3.5. Whereas a high-level 3.5 character can do everything that he could at low levels, 4E characters have power swaps - as your character decreases in levels, you'll still be picking 'new' stuff. Plus, the minion system makes it easy to create an opponent you're cutting down in swathes one week and terrified of the next.

Flavor-wise, it sounds like it's time for Ragnorok! The PCs start off as literal gods, in the Norse, Greek or Egyptian mould. When the game begins, Siegfried the Hero, or Kratos the Gladiator, or Loki the Betrayer, or some combination thereof, starts screwing with the divine status quo. The people are uniting under one new empire and abandoning their old religions, or the World-Tree has died off, or the Titans/Jotun/Demons are suddenly unleashed, or someone is systematically killing off members of the Pantheon and each one gets weaker as the rest die. Bonus points if this was all detailed in prophesies and everyone knows they're not gonna make it.

[Prometheus]

erikgrau has it right, you really don't want low-levels characters keeping their same items that they had in the beginning. I suggest either putting level requirements on various magic items, or making the level-losing process in such a way that the PCs are forced to sell their goods to slow it.


Also, you'd have to make sure that feats and prestige classes are correctly unwound when they lose levels.

I think this would make a great campaign, if the BBEG had the same condition. Perhaps he was one of them and suddenly betrayed them. Now the PCs exist in a world with increasing difficulty of travel and influence, making it ironically epic when they face off with the BBEG.

Another variant would be to have the PCs slowly transforming into monsters, so that they lose their PC levels and gain Savage Species levels.