I wonders if you'd want to use this to help you model "real world" leveling :D
Haven't really tried the free version myself but it looks funny.
The one problem I have is that in my vision of the game, most people never attain level 11. The culmination of a full career brings you to level 10, and many people may age and die without attaining even that!
I think leveling up fits that age category where learning is maximized. For a human 16-24. After 24 you still learn but you aren't the sponge soaking up skills and knowledge your were when you were younger.
So I see leveling up fast in youth is just like what happens in real life. At some point you kind of settle into a career, start a family and continue off what you attained in you youth. So I can see rising to level 10 or higher before a character hits 25. After that things might slow a bit and the levels come every 3-4 years after that. It's quite possible to be level 20 by the time you are early 20s. I'm thinking of real life examples of like Olympic and professional athletes. They are the best of the best at what they do just like fighter is the best of the best at level 20.
Isn't it strange to think that as steep as the LotR experience arc is, most adventure paths are considerable steeper?
So I see leveling up fast in youth is just like what happens in real life. At some point you kind of settle into a career, start a family and continue off what you attained in you youth. So I can see rising to level 10 or higher before a character hits 25. After that things might slow a bit and the levels come every 3-4 years after that.
Not gainsaying your concept, but this paragraph made me sort of ashamed of myself. :)
Crunched the numbers for the other races. Elves retire at level 39, dwarves at 38th (though dwarves have shorter lives, the 120 year adolescence of elves makes their adventuring careers only about five years longer). Half-orcs retire at 18th level most other races end up in the mid to high 20's somewhere. Just for people who are interested.
As for Lord of the Rings, it's just weird. The badguys in the setting are goblins, orcs, uruks, ringwraiths, and cave trolls (unbarded and barded). --along with a big kraken monster and large spider (which looks huge to a halfling) as boss fights. In the first adventure they fight ringwraiths first, way over their CR and do fine. Then some goblins--loads too many for their CR plus a CAVE TROLL which is just crazy. Should be a TPK, but again, aside from Frodo (who hits 0 HP in both fights--must be rolling bad) everyone does fine. Then they fight Uru-kai, a whole army of 'em...and do fine (except for Boromir, but he was kind of the NPC redshirt who the GM kills cause he's tired of the fights all seeming too easy despite the redunkulous CR's he's throwing out).
In the last adventure in the AP, the PC's are up against--well pretty much just orcs, and then there's that large spider at the end (but they don't even kill it...the DM just basically decides it runs off--after it eats Frodo AGAIN. I figure Frodo's player just threw a fit that he keeps getting gakked and the GM decided to be nice and have Shelob take off).
Point being, the stuff the guys in Lord of the Rings fight aren't all that different from the beginning of the game to the end. They look tough, sure, but really they're all just kinda' like stormtroopers--they can't ever hit anybody and they die if they take an ewok rock to the head.
So what level is all of that? Well I'd argue it runs 4e.
the 16 year old farmboy is neither a player character nor an adventurer. he is a first level npc commoner.
want an example of a 20th level character?
any major member of the bleach cast!
anyone from Dragonball Z!
the main heroines of Magical girl Lyrical Nanoha!
the major characters from Slayers!
any devil fruit user from one piece!
any member of the straw hat pirate crew!
the major characters of Disgaea!
Your right. My Fighter stopped being a Farmboy at age 15. Went to fighter School for 1d6 years. Graduated early. (He rolled a 1) and ever since has been an adventurer. It's now 2 weeks from his 17th birthday, and if he can get just one more good adventure in, he should hit level 23 by then. (He ran a Paizo 1-20 AP. Took about 8 months.)
I have seen this article before, but one thing always irked me:
But even casual research quickly reveals that 4 lbs. is almost exactly what historical long swords weighed. The essay “What Did Historical Swords Weigh?” by J. Clements is an excellent resource for this. People didn’t make slow, heavy weapons and awkward armor because their lives depended on not making weapons and armor like that.
...the lengthy catalog of swords from the famed Wallace Collection Museum in London readily lists dozens of fine specimens among which it is difficult to find any weighing in excess of 4 pounds.And in the NEXT FREAKING PARAGRAPH:
"Medieval Swords are neither unwieldably heavy nor all alike - the average weight of any one of normal size is between 2.5 lb. and 3.5 lbs. Even the big hand-and-a-half 'war' swords rarely weigh more than 4.5 lbs.Apparently his research could have afforded to be slightly more in-depth, like mine, which involved knowing what the words "difficult to find any" mean and reading the next paragraph.
I just feel compelled to point out that your problem here is that you're misreading the article on sword weights.
The first quote is a reference to the Wallace Collection catalog. The key words are 'lists dozens of fine specimens among which it is difficult to find any'. He's not referring to swords in general, but swords in a specific museum's collection.
The second paragraph's reference to 'rarely weighing more than 4.5 lbs' is the one speaking of swords in general.
As to the OP- I like the idea as a baseline, but I'm fine with the idea of extraordinary circumstances leveling chars. in a short span of time. Sometimes it would be nice for it to take longer than a few months to go from 1-20, though. :)
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One idea I've been playing with in my head is spreading the levels out with intermediate levels.
Say, for example, that you want to map a 20th level character back to level 6, you could change level progression so that it takes 3 "progression-levels" (let's call them) to achieve one "actual-level".
A "progression-level" is essentially 1/3 of a level, so you get 1/3 of that level's benefits (you'd have to figure out exactly what - but it seems to me that you get plenty of stuff every level to make this possible).
Doing this would make monsters 3x more powerful than they are now, unless you tone them down in the same way. Personally, I would leave them the way they are, because I like the idea of promoting creatures like the lowly Ogre to something that will challenge 4th and 5th level characters. I would map down class-based abilities though.
Does that make sense?
Richard
stuff
Oops, I just realized I read that as a complaint about the wrong article- my bad. (No ability to edit old post.)