[Design Question] DCC RPG and 10 Levels

[joela]

Joseph Goodman has mentioned that the DCC RPG PCs may only go as high as 10th level. How does that change the underlying math versus the math underlying the SRD for 3.x and Pathfinder, which go up to 20th level? Do the modifiers for actions like Total Defense, for example, change? What about armour class bonuses?

[mshensley]

I have a feeling that most of the game will barely resemble d20 at all.

[Hamakto]

I have a feeling that most of the game will barely resemble d20 at all.

I disagree with you on this. There are enough elements of the game that someone who is familiar with d20 DnD or d20 C&C will have very little problem picking up the game.

Joseph Goodman has mentioned that the DCC RPG PCs may only go as high as 10th level. How does that change the underlying math versus the math underlying the SRD for 3.x and Pathfinder, which go up to 20th level? Do the modifiers for actions like Total Defense, for example, change? What about armour class bonuses?

This is totally my opinion on this from reading the forums, etc...

In 3e, the game plays really well until you hit level 12 or level 13. At that point, there are so many things that start to get out of whack that the game starts to get more unbalanced. Instead of trying to re-balance the entire game for high levels, he is removing that from the game. This reduces the need to let bonuses climb to impossibly high values and create yet another d20 clone that is very unbalanced.

Since bonuses only go to 10th level, you should not see many bonuses that climb very high. This allows all the DC checks, AC checks and hit points to remain in a reasonable range. I guess to put it this way, Joseph hates inflation for inflations sake. No need to have 30 levels if 10 is good enough. Remember the game is about RPing and not about leveling up.

[smathis]

This is totally my opinion on this from reading the forums, etc...

In 3e, the game plays really well until you hit level 12 or level 13. At that point, there are so many things that start to get out of whack that the game starts to get more unbalanced. Instead of trying to re-balance the entire game for high levels, he is removing that from the game. This reduces the need to let bonuses climb to impossibly high values and create yet another d20 clone that is very unbalanced.

I'd say that's better than opinion. It's pretty much fact. By level 12 or 13, you're doing something wrong if you're not rolling 30 or above on skill checks pretty routinely. Heck, I've had 1st level characters start out with +6 or +8. The inflation starts to get silly around level 12. It's not so much things getting unbalanced as things just being plain broken. "Physics" appear to unravel right around those levels.

[Hamakto]

I'd say that's better than opinion. It's pretty much fact. By level 12 or 13, you're doing something wrong if you're not rolling 30 or above on skill checks pretty routinely. Heck, I've had 1st level characters start out with +6 or +8. The inflation starts to get silly around level 12. It's not so much things getting unbalanced as things just being plain broken. "Physics" appear to unravel right around those levels.

Not to take this on a tangent, I wonder how well 3e would play if you only rolled 3d6 like DCC RPG (and take out ability boosting items). By keeping the statistics in line, I think the system would actually work pretty well. It is just when someone starts to get +6 or +8 ability bonuses, the system starts to unravel very fast.

[GnomeBoy]

..."Physics" appear to unravel right around those levels.

...It is just when someone starts to get +6 or +8 ability bonuses, the system starts to unravel very fast.

On the other hand, a +6 or +8 bonus is the equivalent of the god-like stats of earlier editions, so maybe physics bending is appropriate -- and if you're opposed to that, merely let your players know that there is a cap of 18 (or whatever number you prefer) for natural abilities...

[smathis]

..."Physics" appear to unravel right around those levels.

...It is just when someone starts to get +6 or +8 ability bonuses, the system starts to unravel very fast.

On the other hand, a +6 or +8 bonus is the equivalent of the god-like stats of earlier editions, so maybe physics bending is appropriate -- and if you're opposed to that, merely let your players know that there is a cap of 18 (or whatever number you prefer) for natural abilities...

Interesting point ahead. With 3e's feats and skill synergies, it's a no-brainer to have multiple skills starting out in the +6 to +8 range. I've seen them in the +10 range.

And when I say 'start out', I mean FIRST LEVEL!

So, yeah, it's a problem for me. Besides, I've read the Epic Level Handbook. It was a while back. But I recognized how insanely broken 3e was when I read what DCs in the 30s and 40s for different skills represented.

When I knew I had 5th-6th level characters hitting that range all the time. Extrapolate that out to 10th level and it was just crazy. We're talking "Take 10" to be a superhero.

I get the Physics bending at really high levels. I understand that. But I'm talking about physics bending with 18 hit points. And not by use of magic.

Things just got silly in the double-digit levels. At least that was my experience with it.

[GnomeBoy]

Well, my reply was more to Andy's "ability bonus" reference, which I took to be about Str, Int, etc.

As for a skill starting at 1d20 +8, well, that'll hit a DC 15 70% of the time and a DC 20 45% of the time. I agree that's generally a mighty good start for a first level character. That'd be an ability mod of up to +4, or a Feat boosting things by +2 along with an Ability mod of +2. I don't find that too gross, since it is tying up a feat at first level to get the boost. That's going to make that character great at that, but at what cost...?

The real challenge I find is creating challenges for players that make them use the skills that waste away on the sidelines, which would encourage them to diversify their skills more, which would alleviate that problem... Part of the trouble there is that some of them are overlapping with roleplaying, and if someone roleplays a negotiation really well, I'm not going to make them roll and possibly fail because of the dice (not like that, anyway).


And as a minor point, with skills having a maximum of 4 ranks at first level -- how is anybody getting the benefits of a skill synergy?

[Hamakto]

The real challenge I find is creating challenges for players that make them use the skills that waste away on the sidelines, which would encourage them to diversify their skills more, which would alleviate that problem... Part of the trouble there is that some of them are overlapping with roleplaying, and if someone roleplays a negotiation really well, I'm not going to make them roll and possibly fail because of the dice (not like that, anyway).

We always took care of that this way. We let the RP scenario unfold with players RPing the event. After it was done, I determined what sort of bonus they got on the roll. If they were jerks, rude, etc.. they would get a -2 to -4 on the roll.

If they did a good RP situation appropriate to the 'diplomacy' at hand, they would get a +1 to +4 on the roll. It would always depend on how well they did.

So the way we always worked it was that the diplomacy skill is very important, but your RPing can help or hurt you.

[mshensley]

I disagree with you on this. There are enough elements of the game that someone who is familiar with d20 DnD or d20 C&C will have very little problem picking up the game.

Except that there are no feats, no skills (not in d20 sense anyway), bonuses are added by additional dice - not a constant number, magic is very random and rolled on individual tables, random combat stunts, etc. This game will be less like d20 D&D than C&C is.

[smathis]

Well, my reply was more to Andy's "ability bonus" reference, which I took to be about Str, Int, etc.

As for a skill starting at 1d20 +8, well, that'll hit a DC 15 70% of the time and a DC 20 45% of the time. I agree that's generally a mighty good start for a first level character. That'd be an ability mod of up to +4, or a Feat boosting things by +2 along with an Ability mod of +2. I don't find that too gross, since it is tying up a feat at first level to get the boost. That's going to make that character great at that, but at what cost...?

Don't discount Skill Synergy. So if I put 5 ranks in Sleight of Hand, I get a +2 to my Bluff. Or if I put 5 ranks in Tumble, I get +2 to Jump AND Balance.

So dumping 5 ranks in a skill is as good as buying a feat for another skill. Assuming I'm assigning attribute scores in a reasonable manner. I can start out with a +8 in Sleight of Hand with a 16 Dex and my 5 ranks, while adding +2 to whatever it is I want to do with bluff.

That's without spending ANYTHING on a Feat. And with a 1st level character too.

I'm so glad DCC is dumping this. So very, very glad.

[Hamakto]

I disagree with you on this. There are enough elements of the game that someone who is familiar with d20 DnD or d20 C&C will have very little problem picking up the game.

Except that there are no feats, no skills (not in d20 sense anyway), bonuses are added by additional dice - not a constant number, magic is very random and rolled on individual tables, random combat stunts, etc. This game will be less like d20 D&D than C&C is.

Actually...

There are skill rolls (spell craft, find traps, open locks, stealth, etc.). There are just not skill points.

Fighting feats are for Warriors are represented by MDoA... yes, they are not consistent, but they do work fairly well.

So to be honest from a rule standpoint...

The only things that DCC RPG is missing from d20 DnD are:

1. Feats --- Most feats outside of the core book feats really do break the game more than it helps it.
2. Magic that works 100% of the time

Skills do exist for some classes, but they are more along the line of class abilities specified out as a d20 DC check. After that, you just have to justify having the skill on your character sheet via background or prior knowledge/experience in adventuring. They are very similar to C&C for this.

[Hamakto]

[
So dumping 5 ranks in a skill is as good as buying a feat for another skill. Assuming I'm assigning attribute scores in a reasonable manner. I can start out with a +8 in Sleight of Hand with a 16 Dex and my 5 ranks, while adding +2 to whatever it is I want to do with bluff.

That's without spending ANYTHING on a Feat. And with a 1st level character too.

I'm so glad DCC is dumping this. So very, very glad.

I think his point was that you can only have a max of character level +3 ranks in ANY feat.

So you cannot put 5 ranks in a feat at first level. Only 4.

[nanstreet]

Ten levels sounds good to me. I think the math and the play has always worked better at the lower levels for D&D type games (by that I mean 1e, 2e, and 3e. I've never played OD&D or 4e). But then, I've always prefered the grittier feel of low level play. May of the people I game with seem to prefer over-the-top high-powered gaming, but a few (who haven't played anything but 3e) have expressed interest lately in trying out an old school style game. I'm liking DCC because it seems to have old school feel without being a retro-clone of D&D.

When it comes to the math, I'm very interested to see how that warrior mechanic works out in play, where instead of getting a straight BAB they instead roll another die along with their d20 to hit. Even a level 10 warrior could miss an unarmored foe with that mechanic. That seems the perfect solution to the problem of high modifiers, because if that mechanic were used instead for other things as well, there would always be a chance that both dice would roll low.

[jmucchiello]

This is totally my opinion on this from reading the forums, etc...

In 3e, the game plays really well until you hit level 12 or level 13. At that point, there are so many things that start to get out of whack that the game starts to get more unbalanced. Instead of trying to re-balance the entire game for high levels, he is removing that from the game. This reduces the need to let bonuses climb to impossibly high values and create yet another d20 clone that is very unbalanced.

I've played and DMed 3.5e at the 30th level and it worked just fine as long as you aren't expecting "gritty Appendix N" play. It is a bunch of superheroes at that point and it is no more or less fun than other play levels. Balance is a meaningless word. Balanced against what? What is the baseline on which you are leaning this so called balance? Balance will always be in the eye of the beholder. Point to anything in any RPG and say it is "too strong" and someone else will come along and say the other stuff is "too weak". I've said this in many forums. Balance is unimportant, "The illusion of fairness" is all that matters. As long as your players (customers) believe the game provides "fairness" (or the illusion thereof) people will call it balanced. As long as the DM can create challenges for a 30th level party, that party will call 30th level balanced.

OTOH (and a total 180), you could argue that 5th level (not 12th) is the sweet spot. There's a great article that pins Gandalf at 5th level wizard (possibly Ftr1/Wiz5) based on what he does in LotR. There's a d20 system game called E6 that calls for cutting level progression off at 6th level and you only gain feats every 5000 XP there after. It also eliminates all high level play from 3e and does it very well. No 4th level or higher spells. No magic item whose creation requires those spells. 6th level characters are powerful but they can still be defeated by a horde of orcs (or angry villagers). The game can be epic and gritty at the same time. (The E in E6 stands for Epic.)

[smathis]

I think his point was that you can only have a max of character level +3 ranks in ANY feat.

So you cannot put 5 ranks in a feat at first level. Only 4.

Ah. I forgot about that one. Good catch.

So only a +7 in my example at first level -- +8 if they have an 18 in the stat. Have to wait until second level to get that +8. Meaning you'd get to spread the love out to even more skills. And that one skill point at second level will net at least one more skill a +2. I remember people in 3e going crazy with the skill synergy.

As well as the racial attribute bonuses. When people started going wild with those, I'd see attributes coming in at first level with 19 or 20. Little did I know it was just a precursor to the mess that is 4e...

[finarvyn]

What I've seen doesn't even go up to level ten. I think that the assumption is that only a few characters survive level 0 to reach level 1, only a few of those survive level 1 to reach level 2, and so on.

Also, keep in mind that with 3d6 rolls that lack gaudy modifiers, total plusses shouldn't be too large. Others in this thread have mentioned +7 or +8 modifiers at first level; DCC RPG won't have that problem. There shouldn't be a danger of maxing out the system.

[Black Dougal]

Ten levels sounds good to me. I think the math and the play has always worked better at the lower levels for D&D type games (by that I mean 1e, 2e, and 3e. I've never played OD&D or 4e). But then, I've always prefered the grittier feel of low level play. May of the people I game with seem to prefer over-the-top high-powered gaming, but a few (who haven't played anything but 3e) have expressed interest lately in trying out an old school style game. I'm liking DCC because it seems to have old school feel without being a retro-clone of D&D.

This is my feeling as well. I prefer the low-level play. The campaigns that I have played in tended to peter out before getting to level 12-13.

When it comes to the math, I'm very interested to see how that warrior mechanic works out in play, where instead of getting a straight BAB they instead roll another die along with their d20 to hit. Even a level 10 warrior could miss an unarmored foe with that mechanic. That seems the perfect solution to the problem of high modifiers, because if that mechanic were used instead for other things as well, there would always be a chance that both dice would roll low.

It worked well in the playtests that I have done, but seeing is definitely believing.


As I have said before, I am interested to see how this game shakes out at higher levels even though I will probably never play at that high of a level. I am still considering running a level 15 or level 20 game in June when the beta playtest document is released as a kind of stress test of the system. The Zocchi dice and the spellcasting tables should play out interestingly at that level, if I can even get the game to scale that high. It will be fun to see what works and what doesn't.

[finarvyn]

I've played and DMed 3.5e at the 30th level and it worked just fine as long as you aren't expecting "gritty Appendix N" play. It is a bunch of superheroes at that point and it is no more or less fun than other play levels.

I agree with you that balance is relative and 30th level characters can find just as much challenge as long as the monster is a lot tougher. The problem is that DCC is supposed to be "gritty Appendix N" play. As such, 30th level characters would be totally out of the scale range and as such would be out of place in the game.

[smathis]

I've played and DMed 3.5e at the 30th level and it worked just fine as long as you aren't expecting "gritty Appendix N" play. It is a bunch of superheroes at that point and it is no more or less fun than other play levels. Balance is a meaningless word. Balanced against what? What is the baseline on which you are leaning this so called balance? Balance will always be in the eye of the beholder. Point to anything in any RPG and say it is "too strong" and someone else will come along and say the other stuff is "too weak". I've said this in many forums. Balance is unimportant, "The illusion of fairness" is all that matters. As long as your players (customers) believe the game provides "fairness" (or the illusion thereof) people will call it balanced. As long as the DM can create challenges for a 30th level party, that party will call 30th level balanced.

OTOH (and a total 180), you could argue that 5th level (not 12th) is the sweet spot. There's a great article that pins Gandalf at 5th level wizard (possibly Ftr1/Wiz5) based on what he does in LotR. There's a d20 system game called E6 that calls for cutting level progression off at 6th level and you only gain feats every 5000 XP there after. It also eliminates all high level play from 3e and does it very well. No 4th level or higher spells. No magic item whose creation requires those spells. 6th level characters are powerful but they can still be defeated by a horde of orcs (or angry villagers). The game can be epic and gritty at the same time. (The E in E6 stands for Epic.)

Problem for me with high-level 3e play was that it was superheroes. I don't play D&D to be a superhero. I play M&M or Marvel FASERIP for that.

When we got high enough level, we scrapped 3e, remade our 15th or whatever level characters in M&M and went from there. Everyone enjoyed it MUCH more. Why? Because M&M did superheroes better than 3e did.

And that article you mentioned has a big tie in to Epic6. IIRC, it was one of the inspirations for E6. When I run 3e, I will only run it with E6. Too much of a hassle otherwise. It's also nice to know at what point your character is officially a badass.

To keep high level play relevant in 3e, opponents had to continually scale upwards. This often gave the impression that advancement was practically meaningless. There was no endpoint to the grind.

The beauty of E6 was it gave everyone a scale to measure by, IMO. No one worried about levelling up high enough to kill the Tarrasque because a Tarrasque was freakin' scary in E6. But everyone knew that at 5-6th level they were legit. They were the paragons of the game world. Not just a hamster on a wheel.

E6 was great because it introduced tangible benchmarks into 3e -- instead of allowing the bar to be raised over and over in a Pavlovian routine of ever-increasing silliness.

I can't recommend it highly enough. If DCC has the same problems that vanilla 3e did, E6 will be enjoying a resurgence with yet another 3e-based game I will own. Here's hoping DCC has the inflation under control. It sounds like the randomness does a good job with it, as well as no feats and whatever is going on with skills.

[Black Dougal]

I've played and DMed 3.5e at the 30th level and it worked just fine as long as you aren't expecting "gritty Appendix N" play. It is a bunch of superheroes at that point and it is no more or less fun than other play levels. Balance is a meaningless word. Balanced against what? What is the baseline on which you are leaning this so called balance? Balance will always be in the eye of the beholder. Point to anything in any RPG and say it is "too strong" and someone else will come along and say the other stuff is "too weak". I've said this in many forums. Balance is unimportant, "The illusion of fairness" is all that matters. As long as your players (customers) believe the game provides "fairness" (or the illusion thereof) people will call it balanced. As long as the DM can create challenges for a 30th level party, that party will call 30th level balanced.

This strikes me as a very "Gygaxian" view. EGG wrote something along those lines in the 1e AD&D PHB. Balance does not come from a set of rules. Balance comes from a game that is DMed in a fair and even manner.

[jmucchiello]

This strikes me as a very "Gygaxian" view. EGG wrote something along those lines in the 1e AD&D PHB. Balance does not come from a set of rules. Balance comes from a game that is DMed in a fair and even manner.

Where do you think I stole it from? But I take it further by saying that even fairness is an illusion.

Even the rules don't mean anything. No rule system will help a bad DM run a good game. And no good DM can be dragged down by bad rule system. "It's the singer, not the song" applies to RPGs 100%.

[Black Dougal]

I've played and DMed 3.5e at the 30th level and it worked just fine as long as you aren't expecting "gritty Appendix N" play. It is a bunch of superheroes at that point and it is no more or less fun than other play levels.

I agree with you that balance is relative and 30th level characters can find just as much challenge as long as the monster is a lot tougher. The problem is that DCC is supposed to be "gritty Appendix N" play. As such, 30th level characters would be totally out of the scale range and as such would be out of place in the game.

I am not sure superheroic and "gritty Appendix N" are incompatible with each other. Look at the characters in the Chronicles of Amber, Dworkin and Oberon for example. Those are some very powerful characters.

[finarvyn]

Just a little "old guy, 'get off of my lawn' kind of rant. Apologies if this goes against the play style of anyone on these boards. It's not my intent to change your mind as much as to give you insight as to how I've played for years and how I like my games to be played.

When I think about levels, I tend to fall back to the scale of OD&D (which was based on Chainmail before that). 4th level was defined as "Hero" and 8th level was "Super Hero." When I stat out NPCs or characters from literature I tend to use this rule of thumb, so if a person is a solo character he probably has around 8 total levels and if a person is one of a party or team he has closer to 4 levels.
* Conan ... solo hero ... around 8 levels.
* Elric ... solo hero most of the time, sometimes had a sidekick (Moonglum) ... maybe 6 levels.
* Fafhrd & Grey Mouser ... around 4 levels each.

I hear people say "No! Conan was at least 50th level!" and I just don't get it. The original game scale worked just fine in the 1970's and can work just fine in the 2010's, but players (and DMs) need to be educated a little about what the scale means. I think that modern RPGs have gotten so far from this baseline that characters become absurd in a hurry. Many of the arguments I hear about why D&D should be improved can be taken care of if a person limits the levels in the game to fit this model.
* Level limits for demihumans? Not a problem because no one goes really high.
* Characters with too many hit points are unbeatable? Not a problem because they shouldn't get so many. (Remember that a 10th level fighter in OD&D got 10d6+1 hit points, which gave him an average of 36 hit points. Solid but not invincible.)
* Monsters are only really formidable if you have low-level characters, but become just another thing to bash with high level characters. (Recall that OD&D dragons were 5-12 hit dice.) How many dragons should one character be able to fight at a time? (I'd say fewer than one, but that's just one guy's opinion.)

I've run quite a few C&C games where I started characters off at 4th level and they never advanced. I tell them "hey, you're a hero already!" You can certainly design new and better challenges for higher and higher level characters, but I think that a lot of the fun and danger happens at lower levels and many of the cool monsters aren't so cool when don't have to fear them.

I have the same basic issue with characters with stats above 18. If 18 is defined as the maximum attainable by mortal humans, why do some players feel the need to have stats of 23 in order to be a worthwhile character? If an 18 happens one in 216 rolls of 3d6, why do players get bummed if they only have one or two of them? It's simply a question of scale, and part of the whole "old school" thing is about bringing the scale of the character back to the point where you can actually be afraid that your character might die. And that doesn't happen so much with really high-level characters.

Just my two coppers.

[Black Dougal]

Just a little "old guy, 'get off of my lawn' kind of rant. Apologies if this goes against the play style of anyone on these boards. It's not my intent to change your mind as much as to give you insight as to how I've played for years and how I like my games to be played.

When I think about levels, I tend to fall back to the scale of OD&D (which was based on Chainmail before that). 4th level was defined as "Hero" and 8th level was "Super Hero." When I stat out NPCs or characters from literature I tend to use this rule of thumb, so if a person is a solo character he probably has around 8 total levels and if a person is one of a party or team he has closer to 4 levels.
* Conan ... solo hero ... around 8 levels.
* Elric ... solo hero most of the time, sometimes had a sidekick (Moonglum) ... maybe 6 levels.
* Fafhrd & Grey Mouser ... around 4 levels each.

I hear people say "No! Conan was at least 50th level!" and I just don't get it. The original game scale worked just fine in the 1970's and can work just fine in the 2010's, but players (and DMs) need to be educated a little about what the scale means. I think that modern RPGs have gotten so far from this baseline that characters become absurd in a hurry. Many of the arguments I hear about why D&D should be improved can be taken care of if a person limits the levels in the game to fit this model.
* Level limits for demihumans? Not a problem because no one goes really high.
* Characters with too many hit points are unbeatable? Not a problem because they shouldn't get so many. (Remember that a 10th level fighter in OD&D got 10d6+1 hit points, which gave him an average of 36 hit points. Solid but not invincible.)
* Monsters are only really formidable if you have low-level characters, but become just another thing to bash with high level characters. (Recall that OD&D dragons were 5-12 hit dice.) How many dragons should one character be able to fight at a time? (I'd say fewer than one, but that's just one guy's opinion.)

I've run quite a few C&C games where I started characters off at 4th level and they never advanced. I tell them "hey, you're a hero already!" You can certainly design new and better challenges for higher and higher level characters, but I think that a lot of the fun and danger happens at lower levels and many of the cool monsters aren't so cool when don't have to fear them.

I have the same basic issue with characters with stats above 18. If 18 is defined as the maximum attainable by mortal humans, why do some players feel the need to have stats of 23 in order to be a worthwhile character? If an 18 happens one in 216 rolls of 3d6, why do players get bummed if they only have one or two of them? It's simply a question of scale, and part of the whole "old school" thing is about bringing the scale of the character back to the point where you can actually be afraid that your character might die. And that doesn't happen so much with really high-level characters.

Just my two coppers.

Thank you for providing a frame of reference.

I, perhaps like many here, have a different frame of reference. Mine comes from Mentzer BECMI, 1e AD&D, 2e AD&D, and 3e/PFRPG. So, my knobs have always gone up to 20, to paraphrase "This is Spinal Tap."

This is something that definitely needs to be called out explicitly in the rulebook. I don't remember at this time if Joseph or Harley have given any concrete examples of the level scale for DCC RPG. I would love to know what levels the designers would assign to the iconic characters of Appendix N and have specific examples, perhaps using those characters, in the final text.

EDIT: If level 10 really is "Immortal" or "Godly", then my proposed level-15 experiment becomes rather pointless.