My First introduction to Roleplaying was Werewolf: The Apocalypse 1st edition way back in 93 when I was a wee lad of 11...

I didn't really get to play Dungeons and Dragons until 96 when a friend started running it. One of the things at the time that always bugged me, was how I seemed to have more "Freedom" to advance how I wanted in a point buy system, versus a Level system..

I ended up digging 3rd edition when it came out, however, and running a few campaigns of it. Eventually though, the same problem I had seen in 2nd edition, cropped up in 3rd edition (And to a lesser extent 3.5)...

Dead Levels...

The Level where pretty much nothing on your character sheet changes except for Hitpoints, and if you're lucky maybe a save..

I hated (And still tend to dislike) Dead Levels, even as a GM who rarely plays these days.  Of course one man's Dead Level is another man's (or woman's for that matter) balance of play, and enjoyment of old school ascetics.

I love 5th edition, and have ran it a great deal, as it mostly seems to do away with my issue of PC's not really getting anything for leveling up beyond some extra hit points.

All that being said, however, I wanted to get some opinions of others when it comes to leveling. It's been my experience with many of the OSR games, they tend to vary a great deal in terms of what PC's get for leveling up.

Many OSR games seem to truncate the leveling down to 10 levels rather than the 20 in standard D&D...

I'm developing my own OSR based game now (I've done some freelancing for Savage Worlds, but this particular forum showed me how awesome OSR systems can actually be..), it's not fantasy based game... But I do worry about striking a balance between my loathing of Deadlevels and making characters far to powerful by giving them tons of stuff every level.

I'm on the fence, however, to a small extent. I have truncated levels as well, but I still wonder if giving PC's something cool, even minor, every level is too much.

What's your experience? Dead Levels really just a perception I shouldn't bitch about? Dead Levels completely okay as getting more HP should be reward enough? Or Dead Levels suck and PC's should always get something, even if it's just a +1 to an existing power/ability of some kind, and not just an HP boost?

Dead Levels were more of an issue when it took dozens of hours of play to get a level. Now that levels come every other session or so, I don't see as much of a problem.

On the other hand, getting a new "I win" button every level sounds cool, but by the time you get to level 5, you're now looking at half a dozen potential game breakers...and that's only one character. A party of that, and things get pretty messy, pretty fast, with lots of page flipping and no way everyone can keep track of everything everyone can do.

If more HP doesn't feel like a tangible increase in power then encounters are balanced too rigidly, with not enough player choice in what they take on.

More HP should make the players feel like "alright! now we can go back and fuck up that dragon we ran away from earlier!" or at least "hey! we're less likely to die before we cross the great steppes now!"

If more HP simply means the next encounter on the railroad will do slightly more damage, then you get the phenomenon of "dead" levels.

Dead levels is a bad design and it was nuked by almost ever D20 game very quickly for good reason. Nobody likes them.

In OD&D - 2e (and clones), the dead level concern was rare. Spellcasters always got new spells with levels, but depending on the level vs. class there were levels they did or did not get THAC0 or Save changes. Thieves got more % chances. But certainly this was more of an issue for Fighters who could gain levels and only get HP.

This has been somewhat rectified in some retroclones, especially those less focused on being a direct clone. For me, OSRIC is the least interesting clone, but its importance is that its the most direct clone to AD&D for those who wish to publish AD&D products. It must always be remembered the goal of OSRIC was not to play OSRIC, but play AD&D with new stuff published under the OSRIC banner. I didn't fully understand that when OSRIC was first launched.

Of course, there's Gamma World where you didn't even get HPs for leveling! All you got was a random +1 ability score bonus or maybe a +1 melee bonus.

I don't see the need for 20 levels. High level play is rare and D&D breaks at high level (quadratic wizard vs. linear fighter) so keeping an OSR game to 10 levels works fine.

Quote from: Orphan81;842752My First introduction to Roleplaying was Werewolf: The Apocalypse 1st edition way back in 93 when I was a wee lad of 11...

Awesome! How did you discover Werewolf?

Quote from: Orphan81;842752But I do worry about striking a balance between my loathing of Deadlevels and making characters far to powerful by giving them tons of stuff every level.

Welcome to design balance hell.

My suggestion is find the dead levels in your design and review the entire class to see if something can be moved there. Perhaps the class is too front loaded or maybe they wait too long for something cool.

My focus is leveling should enhance the character in a meaningful way. A 4th level character should be better than a 3rd and less than a 5th, but not wildly so. It should be meaningful improvement, but incremental change.

Good luck! Love to hear more about your OSR project!

Quote from: Libramarian;842766If more HP doesn't feel like a tangible increase in power then encounters are balanced too rigidly, with not enough player choice in what they take on.

More HP should make the players feel like "alright! now we can go back and fuck up that dragon we ran away from earlier!" or at least "hey! we're less likely to die before we cross the great steppes now!"

If more HP simply means the next encounter on the railroad will do slightly more damage, then you get the phenomenon of "dead" levels.

Yeah pretty much this. I don't recall anyone caring about dead levels in OD&D or early AD&D. And people did not usually level on a weekly basis. It seems more a function of newer games with balanced encounters, adversaries whose skill and hits are tagged to party level, white room theorizing, with maybe just a tinge of player ennui in those people who are used to getting a new smart phone every 4-6 months with a new app every day and twice on Sundays.

This is something I never heard of until five years ago.  I don't know when it became a concern, but it certainly was not one 1972-1985.

Quote from: Bren;842799Yeah pretty much this. I don't recall anyone caring about dead levels in OD&D or early AD&D. And people did not usually level on a weekly basis. It seems more a function of newer games with balanced encounters, adversaries whose skill and hits are tagged to party level, white room theorizing, with maybe just a tinge of player ennui in those people who are used to getting a new smart phone every 4-6 months with a new app every day and twice on Sundays.

Very good, sir.  I simply would have said "Waa waa waa fucking waa," but your way is far more eloquent.

Quote from: Old Geezer;842801Very good, sir.  I simply would have said "Waa waa waa fucking waa," but your way is far more eloquent.

Thanks OG. The next round is on you, at least until the name change goes through.

Quote from: Bren;842807Thanks OG. The next round is on you, at least until the name change goes through.

Come to GaryCon and I'll make good on that!

Quote from: Old Geezer;842800This is something I never heard of until five years ago.  I don't know when it became a concern, but it certainly was not one 1972-1985.

I seem to recall living long enough to level to be sufficiently rare that the bragging rights were worth it, alone.  But I grew up just north of Minnesota, so the culture might have been more lethal than the coastal stuff.

If I should attempt doing an OSR game, I'd be tempted to make all the levels equally dead. No kewl powarz for anyone!

The entire concept of "dead" levels is fucking rubbish invented by attention deficit wankers that don't bother roleplaying and only care about new and different buttons to mash on their character console.

Back in my day leveling was something that just happened as you played, not the reason for playing in the first place.

Dead levels are not good game design. One of the best things Pathfinder did was add in more options at every level expanding on 3.x design.

In Earthdawn Third Edition design we changed the way talents were set up. Each Discipline had a core talent and instead of a secondary talent chosen for the player as in 1e, 2e, EDC, we set up a pool of talents that had more options, this prevented the dead level problem that some Disciplines had in earlier editions where there were two talents that some players did not enjoy being forced to rank up at least one of them to advance to the next Circle.

Savage Worlds is well designed because regardless of what you choose, the options are pretty much +2 skill points, +1 attribute point, or +1 edge. Characters go up in power, but gradually every 5-10 XPs. Sure, the game doesn't have levels (Unless you count the five ranks as the levels of the game, Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, Legendary), but there are no dead advancement points.

Think the whinning about "dead levels" is bad? Over on BGG/RPGG a couple of months ago there was a thread complaining about the "dead levels" in... stat bonuses in D&D and how this needed to be "fixed". Jesus, and various other deities and demigods, wept.

Then there was someone bitching about ability score improvement or an extra attack "not really being anything." and so on and so on ad nausium.

Quote from: Omega;842899Think the whinning about "dead levels" is bad? Over on BGG/RPGG a couple of months ago there was a thread complaining about the "dead levels" in... stat bonuses in D&D and how this needed to be "fixed". Jesus, and various other deities and demigods, wept.

   There is something to that--if there's no functional difference between a 13 and a 14, or a 14 and a 15, why maintain the difference? This is a non-issue in pre-3E versions of D&D, of course--ability checks as 'roll under on 1d20', and the various little bits in the AD&D tables, or mapping the bonuses to the bell curve in BECMI, make the 3-18 scale valuable. But in 3E and beyond, with the unified system and the purely linear curve, the 3-18 scale is more or less vestigial.