While I'm not quite ready yet to take a look at running the current adventure path, I did want to chime in and agree with you that I do beleive that there should be downtime and training between levels.
I also agree with you that training doesn't have to be boring. All I generally do wait for a break in the action, ask the PCs if there is anything they want to get done on top of their 8 hours of training a day, and then the next adventure will start after the needed time for training.
One of the things that might be a problem from time to time is that a character might get ahead of the rest of the party and gain a level when everyone else is just "close." My solution for this is to allow them to "pre train" for a level, although someone in the party must be legitimately training for a level, and you can't "pre train" any more then your next level. While it isn't perfect, its a bit of a concession to keeping the party "together."
One of the things that I think is funny about people being resistant to training rules is that I often hear people complain about longer lived races not being higher level then they are. If you add in training rules, and CR and experience, this all starts to make more sense. Only when the character is challenged to they still get XP, and they need to fight some staggeringly powerful creatures to be challenged. Then, in order to gain a level after gaining that XP, they have to spend nearly a whole year doing nothing by training for 8 hours a day.
For a campaign its not a big deal, since you can just advance the campaign a year, but from a "internal logic" point of view, it makes perfect sense, and it also explains that there may be characters that could be higher level, but they can't take a year off from their normal duties to train for a level.
You aren't alone, but I don't think that we two are in any kind of majority.
I would agree as well... what surprised me more was that the editorial response came across so snarky and dismissive of the authors point... I was a little put off by that.
Sean Mahoney
I've thought about this some, and here's one idea I had:
Somewhere (I think on the WotC boards), someone figured, with stats to back him up, that the average man-on-the-street can usually work his way up to about 8th level by retirement. The longer-lived races (esp. elves) obviously reach this goal a bit earlier (comparatively speaking) than the rest of us, but they don't get any higher (due to only facing CR 1/2 or CR 1 encounters on a month-to-month basis).
Now, if I could locate this writeup, I could implement level caps - For instance, say heroic humans and half-breeds could advance up to four levels per year, while dwarves and elves would lag behind at 2, with gnomes and halflings at 3. 8th level would be the maximum any race could achieve. Of course, there would be special ways to break this, realistically generous, "speed limit," which would involve lots of cool roleplaying. This would also mean that the villains the party faces would have more detailed backstories explaining how they became so powerful as well.
I don't see myself worrying about this in the near future, though; but if it comes to mind before I start another campaign I may bring it up and see what my players think.
TK
Creative Director
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If I came through as snarky, that was mostly an accident. The point I was trying to make in that letter was not only to stimulate responses with other letters or here online, but also to point out that the concept of lots of time passing in a campaign isn't something you see very often in prepublished adventrues.
Let me expand on my "downtime is boring" comment a little. During an adventure, in theory everyone at the table is involved in the game; the group is focused (be it on combat, or interacting with an NPC, piecing together clues, or whatever) and everyone's involved. Once you get to downtime between adventures, this isn't the case. The fighter isn't going to be interested in what spells the wizard is scribing into her spellbook. The barbarian doesn't care about the magic items the cleric is making. The paladin certainly doesn't want to be involved with the rogue tending to internal guild matters and politics. Everyone's doing something different, and since the DM can only handle one topic at a time, that means that while he's telling the rogue about his success and failure at instituting new policies in his guild, the rest of the group gets to sit there and wait paitently. Downtime might be fun for the DM 100% of the time, but in a group of four players, it's fun only for 25% of the group. I suppose that there are some players out there who remain captivated by other players' down-time stuff, but they're few and far between in my experience—they'd rather chat about World of Warcraft or Borat or YouTube or whatever. And I can't blame them.
Downtime, especially extended downtime, is best handled when the group's not gathered as a group. One-on-one sessions, email, IM chats, and phone calls are better ways to handle it, since you're not making the other 75% of your group sit and wait for their turn.
And by extension, in a pre-published campaign, it's generally best to focus on the part of the game where everyone is involved. And that means the adventure itself. In some cases, the adventure proceeds quickly, and you have PCs reaching 20th level in the space of a few months. In others, like Savage Tide, you'll be taking a lot longer. The third adventure takes 3 months (minimum) on its own, and there's opportunities between Adventures 5 and 6 for even more time to pass. With each Adventure Path we do, we get a little better at juggling the sense of urgency you need to keep a multi-part campaign going and keeping opportunities for down-time in there. Just because we don't take much time talking about the down-time doesn't mean it's not there.
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As for the speed at which characters level up... I'm of the opinion that it's too fast at low levels and two slow at high levels.
Currently, D&D is easiest (and most fun) to play at low and mid level, but you rocket through the first six levels due to the way the 3.5 XP charts work. Things slow down considerably when you reach high level, but that's the point the game gets really complex and there's not as much support, so it's more frustrating to spend more time at that end of the spectrum. Gaining levels more slowly might actually be a factor in that frustration.
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And finally: I don't feel that there SHOULD be a reason the PCs are progressing quickly. After all... the PCs should be the most important characters in the campaign. They're what the campaign follows; they're "onscreen" the most. They're the main characters. They're the ones destined to do amazing things, and probably the ones most likely to change the world. It's no fun being a player in a world where you're average and there's no real difference between your character and any other NPC in the game.
It's no fun being a player in a world where you're average and there's no real difference between your character and any other NPC in the game.
Not always. Admit it, you had fun playing one of the doomed guards at Blackwall Keep. :-)
Long term playing though, should definitely be with heroic PCs. But everyone* likes a good game of Cthulu (s.p.) or Paranoia once in a while.
*By everyone I really just mean those who are inclined toward these games, of course.
I understand what you are saying James, and once in a while it would be fine. I'll likely do that if I ever get around to running City of the Spider Queen (once I finish converting it). On the other hand, I think it kind of streaches the suspension of disbeleif that EVERY character that the PCs play in EVERY campaign are the next generation of "chosen ones" that can shoot up to 20th level in one year.
First off, the PCs will be special because most NPCs will have NPC classes. Even if by some miracle Bobo the guardsmen got 20 levels in one year, 20 levels of warrior with NPC weath standards wouldn't look that impressive next to Jimbob the Fighter when he reaches 20th level.
Secondly, being an adventurer has a lot of advantages. Not only are you likely to have better ability scores (i.e. most of the time PCs will come out better than even a character with "elite" arrays), but you usually, even if you have some responsibilities (like, you know, saving the world), you have more leeway than someone with a real job. How so? If you are a fighter and you want to take six months off to learn from the master swordsman that lives in the King's Forest, you can. If you are Sir Generic, leader of the Baron's Forces, and you want to take six months off to learn the secret arts of swordscraft, the Baron is likely to tell you what you can do with your nice stipend of gold if you decide to leave your post for half a year.
Its just my take on it, and I can understand arguements to the contratry, but its the way I structure things. You are correct in saying that when you aren't in a structured pre published environment, you can create gaps that allow for such time off more easily, and you are correct in saying that I do spend a lot of time e-mailing my players about their off time and their goals and the like so that its all in place and part of the "intermission" when we play next.
Just out of curiosity James, did you use training rules in any previous editions of the game, or have they always rubbed you the wrong way? Also, I was wondering what your opinion is on some of the newer game mechanics that have come down the pike. It seems to me that the "favored in guild," "guildmaster," "master," "apprentice," and the affiliation rules are all kind of supporting the more downtime-involved-in-off-screen-politics-kind of play style.
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Just figured I'd chime with a quick personal opinion here.
I would hate to see published downtime in adventures. Things like: the next adventure takes place 6 months later, or the PCs have 3 weeks to make this journey would really throw me off a particular adventure.
I know if/when my players want downtime. If no-one needs, we'll carry on, if they do, we'll find time for it. The pacing of the adventure paths is one of those things best left up to the DM, I would think. If you think that the party is leveling too quickly, cut some XP and add a side quest or two. The magazine probably simply does not have space for twice as many adventures, with half the encounters.
We're having a great time rocketing through the Age of Worms, simply playing at a break-neck pace. The next campaign I run, I will probably slow things down a bit, but for now, we're having a ball.
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It's no fun being a player in a world where you're average and there's no real difference between your character and any other NPC in the game.Not always. Admit it, you had fun playing one of the doomed guards at Blackwall Keep. :-)
Long term playing though, should definitely be with heroic PCs. But everyone* likes a good game of Cthulu (s.p.) or Paranoia once in a while.
*By everyone I really just mean those who are inclined toward these games, of course.
Playing the guards at Blackwall Keep was indeed fun. For one game. I'm not sure how fun it would be to play a 1st-through-20th level "you're a human warrior; no multiclassing" game, though.
Call of Cthulhu is also about extraordinary folk. They aren't nearly as superpowered as D&D heroes, of course, but they're certainly a cut above the rank and file mooks on the street.
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If it stretches disbelief to have a character go from 1st to 20th level in a year, you should by all means stretch that out in your campaign. It doesn't bother me in the slightest; there's plenty more about D&D that's even less believable. If I can accept giant spiders, dragons, monsters that eat rust, cubes of dangerous protoplasm, and magic spells, I can handle pretty much anything, I figure.
In a less-structured campaign, or perhaps one composed of six 3-part adventures, or 3 four part adventures, I can certainly see having months or even years between adventures. For a 1st-20th level adventure, it makes less sense.
As for training rules: I've never used them. They've always struck me as ridiculous. If you're spending days/weeks killing monsters in a dungeon... why would you have to go back to the city and practice sparring with your teacher to gain a level of fighter? What does that offer you that "real-world" experience doesn't?
That said, I am a HUGE fan of games where PCs do more than just dungeoncrawl. The section of the DMG II that dealt with guilds and businesses and master/apprentice and all that was one of my sections, and all of that stuff is great fun and cool and all that. And if you have a party where everyone's in the same guild or all apprenticed to the same wizard or so on, great! In my experience, when you have a half-orc barbarian, an elf cleric, a human rogue, and a halfling warlock all in one party, they tend to have different interests outside of the adventuring scene. Put another way: Downtime stuff is something that absolutely needs to be tailored to each PC, much more so than an adventure, and therefore it's something that we can't do in the magazine.
Still, you'll note that affiliations and NPC-PC relationships play a strong role in Savage Tide. It's not that the adventure paths don't support down time... it's just that down-time is something that happens when the adventure isn't.
Thanks for the detailed response James, I really do appreciate it, and sorry I didn't check on who wrote what when I mentioned those sections of the DMG II. I really do like those rules, and even in a relatively short summer campaign I ran in Skullport over the summer, they helped to tie the various PCs to their "home" organizations.
Also, I'm not advocating specifically putting in specific "X amount of downtime here" sections in the Adventure Paths. Even my planned out campaign for Age of Worms I can work in the amount of down time that I want pretty easily, with only a few tweaks here and there.
I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I can see how a martial artist, for example, will learn something from getting into fights, but he isn't going to learn new techniques or styles from constantly beating up on people. I will agree that the training rules aren't perfect, but then again, how perfectly can you represent anything in a fantasy game? I will let it go at that, because its just a different way of looking at a campaign, and I know that neither is "right" but they are just different styles of play.
Again, thanks for taking the time to give such details answers, I do appreciate it James (and beyond your work on Dungeon, the D&D products you have worked on have been pretty impresive as well).
I have always believed that the levels are gained through experience. You gain experience through defeating challenges that are increasingly hard.
They don't learn to survive and get stronger by wacking at some guy with a sword or by sparring with their masters, they learn to use their abilities in real situations and adjust themselves to it, because they have too, or they will die. And if your playing a really heroic campaign, the fate of the world is in their hands, they just can't die.
I try to keep downtime to a min because I usually have 6-8 players, meaning to figure out what each of them is doing will take awhile, this is the same reason I try to keep them from seperating as much as possible so that they aren't spending alot of time just sitting there bored, with that many players, combat can be boring from some as they wait for their turns to come around, and if one of them comes down quickly in a fight, even more so.
Thus, downtime of anytype for us is actually bad.
I truly feel that skipping out on down time is robbing players of a lot of chances for their characters to develop and be part of the world. I am certainly in agreement that this shouldn't necessarily be done "on camera" as it were, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.
Looking at it a different way, is it not fun for people when they are introduced to one another and drawing on backgrounds during the initial adventure of the campaign? I know that is great fun for most players. Why should it be different for each new adventure? Their characters were out doing things, it doesn't need to be extensive, but it add life to the campaign, shows that the PCs have lives and interest beyond what they normally do. It gives an opportunity for their weaknesses to come through and it really gives an opportunity for the relationships to shine.
Imagine each adventure as a new movie and it won't seem odd that things happen between each, instead it is exciting when something drives one of them to get the group back together.
Anyway, it is just my feeling that by skipping it or simply not giving time for it you are missing on some good opportunities.
Sean Mahoney
To put it another way, I can buy that experience gains you some things. I could understand that perhaps more hit points, better BAB, better saves, more uses of an ability you already have, and more skill points in a skill you already have could all come from "on the job" training.
I just picture that the things you get from training would be things like new class features, higher level spells that you already have access to, new feats, and skills that you previously had no ranks in.
At any rate, I do get why people would skip this in their games, but at the same time, I also think its a part of the game that I enjoy and that has helped me plan out my campaigns in the past.