Two gameplay issues

[Jay]

Last session there was some confusion about backgrounds. Colin felt
like since we did not all have them, things were not fair or
balanced. To be clear, if everyone has them that negates his concern,
so people should feel free to chose a background in the PHB2 that fits
your character.

Second, we are progressing really slowly. At this rate it will be a
couple of *years* before we get to 30. The end of the year just to
break out of heroic. I think we need to speed up our leveling. Some
proposals:

- Scheduled leveling: We gain a level every second week, regardless
of the number of sessions.
- Doubled leveling: The DM that runs will do 1/2 as many encounters as
suggested between levels.
- Skip levels: Would work best with one of the above, but perhaps skip
a level occasionally to bring up the pace.

Any other good suggestions? I propose we implement one of these as
soon as possible.

Jay

[Daniel Thayer]

I'm personally in favor of a set schedule. I would like to see what the higher levels look like, with one of my main characters.

Dan

--
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
-Albert Einstein

[Daniel Thayer]

I'm personally in favor of a set schedule. I would like to see what the higher levels look like, with one of my main characters.

Dan

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Jay <Jay.Mc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Jesse Carver]

We've been 6th level, especially, forever... between running a number of one-shots and non-sessions since the end of my mini-campaign.

If we accelerate leveling too much we would fall behind on magic items, though. One option would be to kill +x bonuses and make those level based, every 5 levels you just get an enhancement bonus to attack and damage (1st +1, 6th +2, 11th +3 et cetera). That way we actually wouldn't need any items for balance and anything we do find is just cool effects. Also fixes some problems like grab attacks and cool stunts not including magic bonuses and thus becoming a poor choice.

I think I'd be pretty happy with one level every month, myself.

[Jay]

I'm not sure about getting rid of magic item treasure. . .we would
need to speed up treasure drops, that is certain. I have some ideas
for that, but as they are kind of. . .plot based, I am not sure this
is the forum for going into it.

Ideally what I would prefer is much quicker leveling through about mid
paragon, then slow it down, and at mid epic we can get back to a
normal pace. That is my preference.

Jay

[Jesse Carver]

The idea wouldn't be removing treasure, but that treasure is then largely not necessary from a math standpoint and just does cool things...

[Jesse Carver]

Throwing ideas back and forth with Jay over messenger I'm throwing my hat into the 2 levels as a time bin. Since even and odd levels give different bonuses it would actually be pretty clean: 1 feat, 1 power, +1 everything at each level up. I'd still lean towards once a month, since realistically I'd expect to get 3 sessions out of a month. But it's less book-keeping than needing to level every other session and I think balancing magic items may be easier.

[Daniel Thayer]

seconded!

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Jesse Carver <destil....@gmail.com> wrote:

Throwing ideas back and forth with Jay over messenger I'm throwing my hat into the 2 levels as a time bin. Since even and odd levels give different bonuses it would actually be pretty clean: 1 feat, 1 power, +1 everything at each level up. I'd still lean towards once a month, since realistically I'd expect to get 3 sessions out of a month. But it's less book-keeping than needing to level every other session and I think balancing magic items may be easier.

[Jay]

Wow, I like it a lot. Speeds up gameplay without having to learn your
new abilities every two weeks. The only tweaks needed are double
magic items and. . .that's it, as far as I can tell.

Jay

[Jesse Carver]

This is Jessica hijacking Jesse's account because he left it open and because I'm terrified of my email.

I'll be there on Saturday, and I'll have my Sweet Awesome Rockin' Death Ranger with me. With Colin's permission, I'm retconning her name to Blackleaf, you can thank me later. ;J

[Jesse Carver]

Also it's 1:30 AM so I'll probably regret hijacking this thread for a silly attendance announcement later on today, but right now, I'm riding the sweet, sweet waves of insomnia.

But, umm, sorry.