[AD&D] Number of levels

[Finarvyn]

Funny how the memory can play tricks on a person. For years I've always had in my mind that AD&D is designed to work for levels 1-20, but when I looked again at my Player's Handbook I realized that most of the classes only include XP charts through levels 11-12 or so.

Bizarre.

Of course, the magic-user spell chart went up to level 29. Who would pick 29? 20 or 25 or 30, sure, but 29? (Illusionsits stop at 26.)

[kesher]

They were all probably making enough money for a bit too much of that fine Longbottom Leaf...

[coffee]

That's the player's handbook.

What I find more telling are the combat charts and saving throw matrices in the DMG, which range from 17+ to 21+.

That's probably where you got the initial idea.

[Finarvyn]

Could be. I had this idea of taking the 20-level tables I expected to see in AD&D and tinkering with them with my "half-level" concept (found in other threads). Then I realized that the AD&D XP tables weren't as complete as I expected and in fact don't extend much above the OD&D tables.

That sort of rocked my world, since in my mind the level range is always one of the biggest differences between the two games.

[coffee]

I think they were more accepting of higher levels in AD&D. But once you've reached name level, and your hit points and experience requirements regularize, there's really no need to print the additional levels in the book. People can still advance, they just have to calculate how many xp it'll take.

For spellcasters, of course, it's different; that's why they go higher. Also classes with special abilities.

But I think they really didn't believe people would let characters get that high...

[Falconer]

Maybe it is less so than in OD&D, but still in AD&D, I tend to think of hitting name level as in a sense “winning the game,” at least in the sense of regular campaign dungeoneering. At that point, the new Baron goes off to build a castle, raise an army, and start expanding his borders. Either you get a Chainmail game going at that point, or he becomes a sort of mini-DM who can run new players through his PC’s dungeons, or he is basically retired and only brought out for tournaments. At a tournament, you will want to bring your “finished” (i.e. name level) character to compete. Note that 9-12 is the level for all the famous published tournament scenarios. As we’ve discussed before, tournament mods are different from how you would run a campaign, so 9-12 isn’t the ideal level of campaigning, it’s the ideal level for a tournament. By contrast, ToEE, a campaign module, is for levels 1-8. Regards.

[Finarvyn]

Aug 11, 2010 12:21:38 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Maybe it is less so than in OD&D, but still in AD&D, I tend to think of hitting name level as in a sense “winning the game,” at least in the sense of regular campaign dungeoneering.

An excellent point. It certainly does seem like powers, etc., tend to level off at that point.