13th Level

I think "general understanding" is about as far as you can take it. Gygax in one article specifically states that, in the (at that time) four years that the longest campaign had been running (Blackmoor), nobody had gotten past 8th (I think). Or something like that.

And yeah, getting in a good position to "retire" meant you could start again with another, new, character. And that was something people liked back then (from what I understand).

I run my OD&D games with the implied highest level as 12th. My rank demarcations are 4th=hero, 8th=superhero, 12th=legend.

However, I allow a 13th level of experience for characters that have become iconic in their class and reached their normal limits. An iconic character cannot be dual or multi classed and must be 12th level (so they are almost always humans, further enforcing the idea of a humanicentric setting).

There can only be a single iconic character at a time. So there is only one iconic fighter, one iconic assassin, one iconic cleric, etc. Iconics gain skills and abiliites unavailable to other characters. I don't have any set rules written down for what sort of abilities they gain; this I base more on how they have played their character over the years. A thief who has made it a steady habit of being able to hide from his enemies might gain the ability to become actually invisible at will. A fighter who always rushes into combat screaming like a maniac might get the power to force his opponents to save or flee in terror.

Since there can be only a single iconic member of a class at any time, there are instances where a character must either wait for the iconic to perish or else set out to kill them theirselves if they REALLY want that 13th level. I insist that there be some role-playing reason to do so, since player characters wouldn't actually know about "character levels" and the like, and would likely not be motivated to go out and seek a higher level character to kill off just to "get cool powers."

Finally, it is almost impossible to tell an iconic from any other high level character. Conan might be his world's iconic fighter, Elric his world's iconic magic user, etc. While these characters are certainly the stuff of legends, it isn't like they have little diamonds over their heads revealing their levels.

Doc

Here's the Gygax passage to which coffee and Falconer refer:

"It is reasonable to calculate that if a fair player takes part in 50 to 75 games in the course of a year he should acquire sufficient experience points to make him about 9th to 11th level, assuming that he manages to survive all that play. The acquisition of successively higher levels will be proportionate to enhanced power and the number of experience points necessary to attain them, so another year of play will be no means mean a doubling of levels but rather the addition of perhaps two or three levels. Using this gauge, it should take four or five years to see 20th level. As BLACKMOOR is the only campaign with a life of five years, and GREYHAWK with a life of four is the second longest running campaign, the most able adventurers should not yet have attained 20th level except in the two named campaigns. To my certain knowledge no player in either BLACKMOOR or GREYHAWK has risen above 14th level."

(from "D&D Is Only as Good as the DM" in The Strategic Review #7, April 1976, page 23)

Let's crunch Gary's numbers a bit.

1. Let's assume weekly sessions, thus 50 sessions/year (assuming a couple missed sessions each year). Since that's at the low end of the range Gary mentioned, it would make sense to assume that 50 sessions would yield 9th level (i. e., also the lower end of the level range).

2. Let's assume Gary was talking about fighting-men, the "standard" class. To reach 9th level, a fighting-man needs 240,000 xp. So 50 sessions yields 240,000 xp.

3. Each level above 9th-level Lord takes another 120,000 xp. Thus each such level would take 6 months to attain, or 2 levels per year (as Gary says). So our hypothetical fighting-man at the end of each of the following years will have attained the following level:

end of 1st year: 9th level
end of 2nd year: 11th level
end of 3rd year: 13th level
end of 4th year: 15th level
end of 5th year: 17th level
end of 6th year: 19th level
end of 7th year: 21st level
etc.

But what gives? Gary said that after 5 years, the highest level PC in Blackmoor was 14th level. Why wasn't he 17th level? I think Gary gives us the answer here: "he should acquire sufficient experience points". So what happened to the missing 3 levels? Encounters with wights, wraiths, spectres, and vampires.

Other possibilities: No-one actually played 50 sessions per year for 4-5 straight years. Arneson probably wasn’t even using the XP tables that Gygax published. Players played multiple characters (Ernie Gygax played Tenser, Serten, Erac, Erac’s Cousin, Burne...).

I think its somewhat telling that when Gygax typed up the original Thief character in 1975, he worked out the tables to 12th level and no higher.

Arneson forcibly retired his characters at level 20 and treated the player to a steak dinner! I think this only happened twice, since he only mentioned two players who got the dinner.

Nice catch! I didn't think to look for that one!

My case is stronger!

After a year and a half of play -- close to 50 sessions -- no one in my Dwimmermount campaign has achieved a level higher than 6. The pace of level increase is quite slow, if you use Supplement I-descended XP rules and I expect the same would be true even if you go pure LBB and use the fractional XP guidelines.

Anyway, I don't think it's necessary to explicitly make 12th level a cap, because in any reasonably paced campaign, it'll take years to reach even 9th level, so the point is probably moot. But I like allowing for the possibility of higher advancement should a player stick with a single character for many years.

A good point. Every fictional world has that "iconic" character, who might be the 13th level guy.

Has anyone else seen the spoof movie Spinal Tap? I keep having these visions of the guy who renumbered his music amplifier to go from 1-11 instead of 1-10, because there are some times when 10 just isn't loud enough. He can just go to 11....

As it can be linked to that question, please note I added useful things for OD&D archeology on my webpage (see my sig).

Very nice.

Just goes to show you -- Greyhawk changes the game quite a bit.

Again, my supposition is that the "levels above those listed" section of Men & Magic was more of an add-on and not part of the original concept.

Once you've opened Pandora's Box and created levels above the original plan, why not extend the charts? Also, with those added spell levels in Greyhawk (7-9) this changes some of the early level stuff a little, so they would need to at least re-do that part of the charts.

Crazy that in AD&D, John Carter had gone from Level 13 to Level 30!