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Too often there's a disconnect between a character's class and what that class represents in the campaign's setting. A fledgling wizard who has spent their life studying to reach level 1, seems to ascend to universe-creating levels of power without doing more than reading their own journal on thereafter. A medium who forges a pact with a spirit, is granted increasingly greater powers without ever renegotiating their deal with said spirit. Or the mighty fighter seems to intuitively learn more efficient fighting styles as they adventure (Well this one I can almost get behind).
I like to think that PC classes separate players from NPCs, they are special in some way, and on a different level from NPCs. It seems the training to assume a player class can be quite difficult, so why is it that that character can then self-teach themselves all the way to level 20?
I'd like to implement a system that gates leveling, and requires the completion of class-specific quests, to earn new levels (assuming the players have accrued enough XP). Maybe the aforementioned wizard must periodically return to the acadamae where they first trained to pass a trial or test. The medium may seek out the help of a mysterious hag who offers advice on securing more favorable pacts with spirits, while entering further into their own imbalanced deal with the hag. The fighter may be compelled to seek out celebrated warriors who can teach them the finer points of a fighting technique.
The fear would be that this kind of thing would break the pace of a campaign. But these quests needn't be too arduous, they should only serve as acknowledgements that players are of a certain class, that their power is growing, and the world acknowledges that fact.
What kinds of thoughts or opinions do other people have on this kind of leveling system? Has anyone tried using a system like this in the past? How did it work out?
Too easy, why bother.
Too hard, it could break the pace of the campaign, among other problems.
In 1st or 2nd ed DnD they had training rules of some sort. You had to spend time and gp to level up.
I might suggest, it doesn't need to be at every level. Depending on how extensive and time consuming you make the training, every 2 to 5 levels. For example, easier training might mean a wizard needs to train every time they gain a new spell level. But if you make it a difficult and time consuming adventure in itself, only 1 or 2 times over 20 levels (maybe when they get 4th and 7th level spells).
I'm not even remotely a fan of this idea.
APs are not written in a way to really allow this sort of thing, and Avignon to side quest just to be given the privilege of leveling just isn't fun.
You might just ask players to describe what they're doing in their downtime to represent how they're learning or training.
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I'm not even remotely a fan of this idea.
APs are not written in a way to really allow this sort of thing, and Avignon to side quest just to be given the privilege of leveling just isn't fun.
You might just ask players to describe what they're doing in their downtime to represent how they're learning or training.
I'm so glad you brought up APs. I'm under no illusion that these kind of subsystem would lend itself to a published AP, but lately I've been feeling a little unsatisfied with APs in general. I'm finding them a bit too rigid and gated within themselves. Like if players don't do X, then they cannot advance past point Y. I've only run two APs (Rise of the Runelords and Iron Gods), and read a third (Mummy's Mask) from start to finish, and I'm just finding that they lack a certain amount of thematic consistency, from a narrative standpoint there's little scope for twists or turns, "revelations" feel stilted and lack punch. And that probably because the AP isn't so much about the players as it is about the AP.
I'm looking to broaden my horizons and perhaps run a more sandbox-y adventure, and emphasizing a class's place in the setting would hopefully add to that. In that same idea, I'd want to scale levelling back. Whenever I start with a new group, they always comment on how rapidly their characters level up in the AP. When its happens every week or every other week it feels more like homework, or so I've been told. Don't get me wrong, I love the rush of leveling up, but not so much as to cost diminishing returns.
But yeah, maybe rolling it back a bit and asking for downtimes with regards to levelling might be more streamlined. I mean there's nothing preventing me from listening to those descriptions and developing encounters or scenarios based on them.
That sounds best, don't forget that wizards and stuff still have to scribe their spells into their book and clerics need to pray so it's not like things just spawn out of no where