Level or not to Level Characters

I suggest you add enough health potions or herbs or what ever your going to use for the characters to over come the stronger monsters down the road. In Castlvania for the Psp, this game was difficult to play because there wasn't enough health potions to pass most of the bosses. To me it was annoying trying to dodge and yet the character kept flipping backwards.

Leveling up a character is a way to tell other players that my character level 8. Im experienced in what my character has accomplished. Remember how long your character in a DnD game would take to get to level 8 or 10 or higher? It brings back great memories, long conversations about how the story began, how it almost ended because a player forgot to use a skill check on a trap or use a saving throw or something entirely different, and how the story ended by the characters won but didnt get anything in return?

I think a dungeon crawl game needs to promote a sense of achievement in order to have replayability. Often this is done by levelling, but could be gaining new skills or some other mechanism. In fact, in my view gaining access to new skills/abilities gives more of a sense of achievement than simply getting +1 to hit. Story-based or strong roleplaying rpgs don't really need this kind of advancement because the achievement is accomplished through the narrative, but let's face it that a typical dungeon crawl is short on narrative. In my view accumulating equipment/money does not give the same sense of achievement as character advancement, because equipment/money can come and go but new skills are permanent.

With regards to your comment that "the monsters just get stronger", I'm not sure what game balance mechanism you have but one of my pet peeves is "inflatable monsters". "Inflatable monsters" means that when I am level 1 I fight a level 1 goblin, and when I am level 5 I fight a level 5 goblin. This undermines the whole principle of the "sense of achievement" that should be associated with character advancement.

As a player, after I've played a few games with the same character I want to be able to look back and see that my character can now accomplish more things than he could have accomplished when I started playing. So I want to be able to run faster or hit harder or climb further or cast new spells. I want new options that were not available to my character in his first adventure. And I want to be able to fight *different* monsters or *more* monsters that I could not have defeated previously -- not just higher level versions of the same monsters.

Regards,
kos

That was one of the problem with levelling in dungeon crawler and I think this is why there is no levelling in hero quest. If I roll 3D to attack and the enemy roll 2D to defend, then if I level up and roll 6D to attack, when the enemy roll 4D to defend, the proportion end up the same. So is there really an interest to level up, NO.

So instead of keeping track of tons of bonus and malus, if you really want levelling, why not only keep track if your opponent is stronger or weaker than you and simply give a fixed bonus or malus.

In the dungeons and dragon board games, they had an interesting way to manage XP. It was more used as a flushable resource. I reused the same concept with determination tokens in dungeon quest, it could be used to temporarily raise a stat after a roll you have fail to succeed it. I made that defeating monster gave determination tokens because player felt there was no reward to defeat a monster.

In a video game RPG of mine, I wanted to avoid the situation where high level characters always hit low level creatures, and low level characters can never hit high level creature. What I did is that I made the level have no impact on the capacity to hit an opponent. So a level 1 fighter has the same odds to hit than a level 10 fighter (if they have the same attribute). But the level 10 fighter can sustain more damage and inflict more damage giving him more chances to survive in a high level monster area. But still, the game will never prevent low level character to access an area, they will just need to be on the edge all the time.

Finally, considering leveling is hard in board games since you cannot change the stats on a card, why not focus levelling on versatility. Being higher level gives you more skill an abilities making you more versatile to deal with various kinds of situation or allowing you to defeat more monsters in the end, but dot not make players or monster do more damage.

Sidenote: Phantasy Star 1 is the best.

Well, you could just give cards to track influences on the players and then just have little deck boxes or elastic bands to store them between sessions (Your deck might have a card for each of your current stats, a couple of wound cards, and a couple of item or enchantment cards). You don't have the write anything down, but your game still has memory.

Equipment gathering can be a useful equivalent to leveling and has the benefits of being more modular and temporary (your armour disintegrating is slightly more acceptable than permanent -2 to Toughness). You can see this kind of advancement in Zelda or similar games.

Another option is to simply scale the challenges as the players go on by making the challenges harder or the players weaker. This relies on the players themselves advancing in skill, and could be very rewarding. The difficulty of this system is that it requires a good deal of strategic depth in your game to be workable and a lot of work to make the challenges scale correctly. Essentially what you are doing here is trying to hit the Flow sweetspot between challenge and player skill the entire game.( http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/foundation.htm#flow )

I like the idea of equipment gathering, but when you're looking for a controlled progression I think it really misses out. Unless you have specific decks for different "adventures." Even then someone might pull out the best magic sword out of the draw deck on the first turn and be Grognak The Invincible for the rest of the game.

I have an unconventional but I think interesting idea for you. Have you thought about leveling skills individually. Let's say you have your warrior character, and he's able to use any weapons and armor but no magic, and he starts the game out with a sword. a sword at first you would need to roll a die like a d20 (or something else that's ridiculous) and he needs a 2 or less to hit. the first time he hits he gets one experience point towards swords, so now instead of rolling a d12, but he still needs only a 2 or less, but now it doubles, if he hits two more times, he graduates to a d8, then 4 times with that a d6, then finally a d20. now, keeping in mind he's using 1hand weapons. he has no exp in 2h so if he was to grab a 2h weapon he'd be back at a d20.

same thing with the shield, he would start with a d(?) needing a certain amount for a successful block. then as he successfully blocks the dice used for different checks goes down, like he's becoming better at that specific thing.

If this was the case i would try to limit the amount of items just so I can keep the player boards litter free.

i'd go,
melee weapons:
1 handed
2 handed
Polearm
Mace

ranged:
short bow
long bow

armor
light
medium
heavy

magic:
elemental
blood (like necromancy)
divine

with magic you could have the dice go down as well, but you could use that as a system of possibly miscasting the spell. so let's say he gets the stuff for his fireball spell ready and he doesn't roll the appropriate bit, it misses. I'd start with a lower level die for the magic and ranged weapons. Also, i'd figure out some sort of "mana" system for the magic, maybe an area appraise (per dragonrealms if anyone has played it) Let's say you want to use elemental magic and you're nowhere near nature, you're in the middle of a city, your cast might not be as effective. Also if you added ammunition mechanic to the bow and arrow, probably with the option of retrieving the items after you're done with the battle (to be gentler to the player) that'd be really neat.

With the armor, i would push for something simple, as you get hit, even though the armor degrades you get better at using that type of armor. you get exp for every succesful dodge or hit and instead of making the dice lower it adds a modifier to your other roles. Like if you get better at using medium armor, when you wear medium armor you get a bonus to your attack, so instead of only rolling a 3, you can roll a 6 or lower to hit, because you become accustomed to the armor type therefore are more efficient at it.

These are all just thoughts off the top of my head and it could add a whole lot of trackers and pieces to the game.
but if you give players player mats (a la zombicide) that makes keeping track of this information easy then you could be onto something really cool i think.