What if... Pathfinder went up to 100 instead of 20?


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I was just thinking over the D20 system as a bit of a thought exercise, and I was always curious what made them decide the level range would be 1-20, and not something else. I mean, why not 10? or 30? or even 100?

I know that the mechanics would have to vary a little, so maybe that's it? it just works best with a system using a D20 to represent chance because of the inherent limitations of +bonuses to the rolls? But then again, I've seen characters get really broken cause they can get +35 to a roll before even hitting level 20, so is that really it?

I'd love to hear other people's speculations on this, and suggestions if any on how it would work to have a level range go up to 100. would we have to do out with classes altogether and build characters a different way? Change the way classes present? Or perhaps that's when prestige classing comes into play?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

You'd have to invent a whole new game.

One major issue becomes the idiotic gulf between bad and good saves. Another are skill modifiers. I know that WOTC tried doing this in the Epic Level Handbook. I also know that it still didn't work.

The other issue is the rocket tag factor. How do you challenge 50th plus level characters without killing them outright?

The game is pretty much at the breaking point at 20th level. Simply extending the existing paradigms isn't enough.


The other factor is how much you can erase from and change a character sheet before it is dead. When they first made DnD they did not have access to the internet or computers. Trying to level up one hundred times would be painful. Also coming up with enough skills to fill out 100 levels would be painful. They already try so hard to avoid "dead levels". 100 levels would not be easy to write out without half off them giving no benefit. And you would be levelling up, lets see,

average campaign,
15-25: 4-5 hour sessions? finishes level 12-16?(please disagree with my numbers if you want)

so if we average: 20*4.5 = 90 hours per campaign. Lets round to 100. level 15 would mean that on average you would level up once every 6.66666 hours. Or 1.5 sessions on average. (You do level up quicker at the start).

If 100 levels then you would level up once an hour, or 4-5 times a session. Think about that.
That is, if you want to finish your campaigns in a reasonable amount of time.


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If you wanted the power level to track about the same: you'd either have to consolidate levels or split them up, and splitting them up means either accepting dead levels or granting a lot more abilities.

If you don't want the power levels to track: there are lot of Epic level and Epic-equivalent systems out there. Just keep swimming.

Realistically it's a convenience thing.


Mythic set out a nice paradigm for things like this. Create whole new tiers of power, not simple tiers like mythic tiers. I mean tiers like "normal" level advancement is one tier, mythic is another tier, something above that is another tier, and so on. Basically, at each tier you gain new options for how to utilize lower tier abilities, the ability to affect similarly tiered encounters, and upgrading lower tier abilities to function at a higher one. The general paradigm you need to take care to preserve is that you are generally ineffective against higher ordered beings or have a very hard time being so, and are generally a whole league above lower ordered beings to the point of making them almost insignificant. This does not break the level 20 design and where possible seeks to maintain the underlying math.


20 is a solid number that allows scaling abilities at every level for most classes while maintaining a certain level of power.

A 100 level system would mean either requiring a TON more abilities for each class, or stretching out the levels at which each ability is gained.

Essentially you'd have the Final Fantasy effect in play, most levels only grant an extra +1 or +2, with every few levels providing a new ability or spell.

Granted that doesn't answer the overarching question of "Why 20 and not 10? Or 30?" but "Why not 100?" is pretty easy to nail down.


Short and dreams-smashing answer:

Because 2nd Edition standardized lv20 as the max in 1989, and when 3rd Ed came out in 2000 it was just working on 11 years of tradition, and in an attempt to make conversion from 2nd Ed to 3rd Ed as painless as possible (which was still gnarly because of all the massive changes and rules re-ordering that happened), they just went "your level 16 Paladin in 2nd Edition is still a lv16 Paladin in 3rd Edition!"

All d20 games use the lv20 setup, as well, because they're using the system set in place by the 3rd Ed/3.5 OGL.

Pathfinder, piggy-backing off of 3.5 and attempting to be backwards compatible while still fixing major issues (like condensing Skills further and simplifying all the different special attack options down into Combat Maneuvers), had to do the same thing, or else "backwards compatibility" would have gone right out the door.

---

OD&D had no limits to levels at all, but Magic-User, Fighting-Man, and Cleric all had hilariously-simple designs (much like how the current Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard are very simple vanilla classes at their base).

BD&D/BECMI had no limits whatsoever, either - the Master Rules went up to lv36, and it was just assumed that you would use the Immortal Rules thereafter.

1st Edition AD&D had levels caps for different classes. The Cleric was stated out to lv29 for spells, the Paladin went to lv20 and stopped progressing in spells, Druids's spellcasting only went up to lv14, Rangers capped out at lv17 for spells, Magic-Users went to lv29 for spells like Clerics, though Illusionists only went to lv26, Thieves went to lv17 for purposes of thiefy things, Assassins hit only lv15.

Theoretically, all classes leveled up infinitely, although their number of Hit Dice typically ended at 9, and instead they just gained a flat HP increase (+3 for d10s & d8s, +2 for d6s, +1 for d4s), except for the Druid, who actually kept accumulating HD at each level.

2nd Edition standardized every class to capping at lv20, because all that BS before was just absolutely idiotic. However, there was no such thing as "Character Level" so characters could still gain infinite levels, and there was no unified Experience system, so a Rogue, for instance, could be lv9, while a Wizard could be lv7. You could end up with a Character who had 20 levels in every class. There were ways to go "over" lv20, or rather it'd be more like Gestalting mid-game, and it was... it was awful; 1st & 2nd Ed multiclassing is best forgotten.

3rd Edition kept the 20-level standard, and instituted the modern Character Level methodology, which makes Multiclassing absurdly simple.

Both 3.5 and Pathfinder have rules in place for advancing your Character Level beyond lv20, but they do it in radically different ways.

In 3.5 you had to gain [current level x 1000]xp in order to level up, which is easy to calculate but at higher levels means you'd be gaining Character Levels like there's no tomorrow. Add onto that the fact that 3.5 had Epic Level rules which were just unbalanced crap: Classes all got lv21-30 stats, but all of them were vanilla jank that only upped the central shtick of the class a little more (more rounds of Rage for the Barbarian, more Combat Feats for the Fighter, more Channels for the Cleric, more Sneak Attack for the Rogue), but also added in horrendously broken things like Epic Feats and Epic Spells - BOTH of which make Mythic Feats and Mythic Spells look freakin' UNDERPOWERED in comparison.

Pathfinder, on the other hand, dropped the [current level x1000] model and instead adopted a three-branch Experience system which operates on more-or-less a Curve Function, each level becomes progressively harder to get. This is taken to literal exponential degrees at lv21+, where you require TWICE as much XP as you needed in order to go from your previous level to your current level.

The other thing that Pathfinder has done - or rather HASN'T done - is actually institute it's own Epic Rules, because the rules for play from lv1-20 actually work perfectly fine for lv21 play, and die rolls only really start to not matter once you get up to around lv40 or so (which, at that point, means that you have as many Hit Dice as most GODS, as defined by Deities & Demigods).

Mythic rules can be seen as "Epic Rules" to a degree, but they also double as rules for defining Deities, as well (and have even been used as such in regards to Great Old Ones, etc.), and can be taken starting from lv1, just like Deity Rules. In essence, Mythic rules are effectively Pathfinder's version of the Immortal Rules, and cause a massively different game to take place.

---

So, tl;dr, there is no magic, esoteric, philosophical mumbo jumbo about it. The team at TSR who was in charge of making 2nd Ed just basically got tired of Gygax's arbitrary crap in 1st Ed and said: "hey, does 20 sound good to you guys?"
"yeah, sounds good to me"
"me, too"
"okay, every class stops at lv20 - boom. done."


Hmm...

Okay. I'm not entirely convinced you couldn't DO something to make it work. But yeah the dead levels things would be a big pain. Hmm. Yeah I'm starting to yhink you'd have to do a different system entirely.


Well, if an automatic 1 always fails a save, there's a 1 in 20 chance your level 100 (anything) dies outright on any given save-or-die roll. :-\

Grand Lodge

The problem is the d20 itself. At low levels, the actual roll you make means WAY too much. Think about it: The difference in chance to hit with a melee attack between a 1st level fighter with 18 strength (+5) and a 1st level wizard with 10 strength (+0) is only 25%. Conversely, the d20 is almost meaningless at 20th level; you're basically just rolling it to see if you get a 1 (auto miss) or a critical threat.

Extrapolate that out to higher levels and your problem compounds. It basically amplifies everything inherently wrong with the d20 system.

On the other hand, (and I can't stress this enough) Pathfinder (and other d20 system games) is really, really fantastic when you use E6. That's the sweet spot, that's where you get that awesome feeling of adventure without all the mind-numbing math, game-breaking magic, and endless accounting and logistics. The d20 helps to randomize the game within predictable parameters without meaning too much or too little. Iconic monsters (ogres, minotaurs, most undead, and especially dragons) stay dangerous and challenging for the whole game. It's just great!


rungok wrote:

Hmm...

Okay. I'm not entirely convinced you couldn't DO something to make it work. But yeah the dead levels things would be a big pain. Hmm. Yeah I'm starting to yhink you'd have to do a different system entirely.

Again, Pathfinder is actually designed, and says almost as such, to carry on well past lv20.

You can play games with lv100 characters, yes, although at that point you are realistically playing GODS, because there is absolutely no chance you can fail at skill checks, saves, or really anything up to and including Attacks (there might be something said for Attacks, but that's only assuming you are able to keep your AC just as high).

Classes end at lv20, and trying to carry them on further, while possible, is just kind of a nightmare, and boring.

Who wants to play a Cleric for 100 levels? Or a Fighter, or a Summoner...

It's easier to just not even TRY to create "Base Class Extensions" for Epic Level play and instead just use the materials at hand: Base classes multiclassing into one another, Prestige Classes, etc.


Tiaximus wrote:
Well, if an automatic 1 always fails a save, there's a 1 in 20 chance your level 100 (anything) dies outright on any given save-or-die roll. :-\

Nah. Even a CRB only game provides rerolls and even rerolls with bonuses. To my point, mythic gives "no, in fact, I succeed" abilities even with a naturally rolled 1. That's an example of how tiers of play evolve on top of each other.


Maybe we are missing the obvious. The most common dice has twenty sides does it not? They are referred too as d20 systems. Maybe it started as a marketing thing?


My level 100 Commoner, deity of potatoes, back pain, and going out to the outhouse to get away from the kids.


If it went to 100 it would be the Arduin Grimoire.


I've always seen 20 levels and the 20 level system as you slowly obsoleting the d20 itself as you play.
Each level represents a higher inherent die roll.

If the game was based on something other than a d20, then you could mess with the game engine.

Other level systems to consider are video game systems like Pokemon or other RPGs where really, once you get to like 50 or 60 there is not much left to do until you get into the legendary stuff.


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My 358th level wizard Waldorf scoffs at your "level 100."


Goddity wrote:
Maybe we are missing the obvious. The most common dice has twenty sides does it not? They are referred too as d20 systems. Maybe it started as a marketing thing?

No, it didn't - 20 levels was the Standard in 2nd Edition, back in 1989, 11 years before the d20 system came into being.

It's JUST a legacy - you're effectively finding Jesus' face in toast and proof of the Illuminati on a box of cereal with your theory.


LazarX wrote:

You'd have to invent a whole new game.

One major issue becomes the idiotic gulf between bad and good saves. Another are skill modifiers. I know that WOTC tried doing this in the Epic Level Handbook. I also know that it still didn't work.

The other issue is the rocket tag factor. How do you challenge 50th plus level characters without killing them outright?

The game is pretty much at the breaking point at 20th level. Simply extending the existing paradigms isn't enough.

Actually, extending the paradigms works pretty well.

Like you said, Rocket Tag is a factor, yes, but no worse than at extremely low levels where you're one-shot'ing mooks and other characters of your level.

If you're DM's an idiot and they throw solo Great Wyrm Red Dragons at you without heinous amounts of DR, SR, and other protective qualities, then of COURSE you're going to one-shot it, just like you and your friends one-shot'ed that lv2 Goblin Barbarian back at lv1.

On the other hand, even a band of 4-6 lv20 character can't actually hope to survive a fight with a Brigade of well-trained soldiers - using the Troops rules as a basis, it's easy to extrapolate the data using the current CR system to determine that a Brigade (approx. 4096 individuals) of lv5 soldiers is a CR29 Encounter, and will most assuredly either kill the party or cause them to retreat.

This is only 4096 - that's a freakishly large amount, yes, but that's not millions by the least, and the chances of the party actually surviving that encounter is next to nonexistent by the shear size and number of attacks made against the Party.

Numbers are what start to matter the higher you get, even starting as low as level 10, and by the time you're level 20 the DM should know that "Quantity is a Quality Unto Itself".

Rocket Tag may make things like badly-played solo Balors a non-threat to a degree, but a well-sized legion of Hezrou will make the Party's lives a living nightmare.

At lv20+ you're not fighting Supervillains - you're fighting entire armies.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

they picked level 20 because of the d20, that is all. they wanted the dice to always stay relevant.


Rolemaster has 100 levels. It uses d100 as a primary roll, though, and progression past level 15-25 (when the most interesting spells enter the play, with most spell list rarely getting more than 3 more spells above 25th) seems to be rather boring anyway.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

It's the danger of a level based system. Too many levels, and each new level attained seems to grant too little reward. Too few levels, and each gain in level grants so many new abilities that a character seems to be a totally new character.

Epic level systems have rules to extrapolate levels well beyond the design of the published materials. There have even been third party modules in D&D 3.5 for epic levels. They are interesting ideas, yet break down mechanically. It soon feels like he GM and players are just moving the goalposts endlessly, and stories become harder to relate to. You're no longer fighting a stampede of terrasques, you're fighting some ridiculous kaijus that are other planar predators of terrasques.

The advantage is that the players can continue to play their favorite PC and still feel like they gain some type of carrot every now and then for playing. It may just be easier to play an eternal level 20 character, yet some players are just too hooked on the leveling up feeling.

In every game, there comes a point where gaining more is just a meaningless abstraction. That is the point of designed endgame, where the developers feel that anyone that played to this point could just extrapolate new horizons if they really wanted to. Still, there are those players that always want just a little more.

It is easier for point buy games to keep adding rewards, yet even they have a point when more XP becomes meaningless abstraction as the character already reached past "the best of the best" and purchased powers up to the game designs maximum limits. PCs simply don't have meaningful things left to spend their gained points on.

In short - you can play past level 20, just realize you are doing it because you don't want to lose the thrill of leveling with your favorite PCs. You aren't doing it to play a challenging game.


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Throne of Bloodstone, anyone?

The Exchange

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If Pathfinder went up to 100 instead of 20, people would whinge about the fact that they can't go up to Level 101. Next question, please.


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What does the scouter say about his HP?

It's over 9000!

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Sissyl wrote:
Throne of Bloodstone, anyone?

I remember that module. The actual material they had for the 19-100 range was laughable. I don't think that it actually covered more than half a page of the entire module. So citing THAT as evidence of level 100 support earns you one of Larry Whitmore's weak tea bags.

So let's keep it a 100 people!


Assuming we want campaigns to run about the same way, 100 levels would just mean more granularity in abilities. We could easily split up hp, skill points, saves, attack bonus and class abilities into different 'levels' but at that point, you start stretching the value of a 'level'. It would be impractical for levels to continue scaling as they do now, even in the current system, high level play becomes problematic. I am playing in a wrath of the righteous game, we are level 14 tier 6 and I'll be honest, the power isnt even fun anymore. The numbers are so absurdley inflated that its more or less silly. You would go way beyond that if you did the normal scaling of levels up to 100.

So really, the question wouldn't be can you, it would be why? All it could possibly do is stretch out existing content, and we can do that with slow progression of xp. 20 is certainly an arbitrary number, but it works as well as any other.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Bandw2 wrote:
they picked level 20 because of the d20, that is all. they wanted the dice to always stay relevant.

A pity it doesn't then.

Dark Archive

They did a seeker lvl for 1 special and now back to lvl 1-11 as it is hard enough to write something for that lvl.
Writing a scenario for lvl 25 even would be too dificult. You just start fighting elder wyrms and demon lords.
You would have to add so much more content to the game. Already too many vague rules etc. that have not been addresed as it is.
Also how easy it it to get a gm and a party of 4 or 5 to run eyes of the ten?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
joe kirner wrote:
They did a seeker lvl for 1 special and now back to lvl 1-11 as it is hard enough to write something for that lvl.

Two specials, actually.


I am pretty sure every other thread would involve "my level 100 wizard" or "my paladin 2/cleric 98."

CR would have to be adjusted (I am not sure 4e had pit fiend minions, but, in a practical sense, 100 level Pathfinder would for most of the game if CR wasn't adjusted). On top of that, they would have to mass produce a lot more monsters or adopt something like 5e's bounded accuracy.


Why not 1000?


Rogue would still be underpowered.


Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:
Why not 1000?

MAKE IT OVER TEN THOUSAND!


rungok wrote:

Hmm...

Okay. I'm not entirely convinced you couldn't DO something to make it work. But yeah the dead levels things would be a big pain. Hmm. Yeah I'm starting to yhink you'd have to do a different system entirely.

The amount of work is: don't use this system.

No, I'm not kidding.

For instance, at 100th level, your good saves would be +60 and your bad saves would be +30. While at low-level a decent roll versus a poor roll is the difference between success and failure against different spells and monster abilities, at 100th the difference between good saves and bad saves is literally more than a d20 allows. A spell-caster for instance would just target your weak save and you'd have nothing more than a natural 20 that could save you.

Same thing happens with BAB progressions and AC and so on.

Basically, the math just doesn't make any sense beyond roughly 20th. That which a fighter auto-hits, a wizard cannot possibly hit. Sure, you can play the game of "the wizard should be attacking touch AC", but there are downsides to that too.


Everyone seems to take the question as moving from lvl 1-20 as normal and then moving beyond. I assumed that the question was about stretching levels 1-20 and stretching it across 100 levels with some things thrown in to get rid of dead levels.

I imagine that it could be fun. The game balance of the core rules curves weirdly where strong martials are incredibly broken for a few levels, then everything kind of balances until higher levels. Having a lot of levels could potentially stretch out the sweet spot levels while maintaining a sense of progression. However the CR system would be less useful than ever assuming that levels mean proportionately less making the range for CR appropriateness to be huge. Also a lot of levels incentivize decade long campaigns unless you're leveling every session.

If I could reshape reality to make pathfinder the way I'd want it, there would probably be 30 levels with the limits of the game changing every 10 levels. 1-10 would be martials limited by realism and casters would be relatively low magic, levels 11-20 would be powerful casters and superhuman martials, and levels 21-30 would basically be god-mode and rocket tag with casters that completely deny the laws of the universe and martials that can cut mountains in half.


@ Malwing
Have you ever played 4e XD

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Malwing wrote:
Everyone seems to take the question as moving from lvl 1-20 as normal and then moving beyond.

That's because every time I've seen this question asked before, and trust me, it's been asked a LOT, that's exactly what's wanted.


LazarX wrote:
Malwing wrote:
Everyone seems to take the question as moving from lvl 1-20 as normal and then moving beyond.
That's because every time I've seen this question asked before, and trust me, it's been asked a LOT, that's exactly what's wanted.

That brings up one thing at the edge of my mind: What's the appeal of that? I see a lot of desires and calls for epic levels, and going bigger, harder, faster, stronger, but given the general power of level 20 characters how much further can you really go? Especially with the existence of the above mentioned 'sweet spot' levels. Even with the people that agree fully that the game balance goes out the window at certain levels, when I suggest just to play up to X levels or stop leveling most reactions I get is that its lame to not go to higher levels.


Why don't you just make level 20 more powerful and make 20 be the highest level?


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Last long term D&D game I ran we got to 53rd level. And im still planning more adventures for those characters. I don't understand the problem with high level play.
Id like the Epic level feats converted officially into pathfinder or for a 3pp to do it, but the conversions ive done myself will have to do I suppose.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Arashi wrote:

Last long term D&D game I ran we got to 53rd level. And im still planning more adventures for those characters. I don't understand the problem with high level play.

Id like the Epic level feats converted officially into pathfinder or for a 3pp to do it, but the conversions ive done myself will have to do I suppose.

What exactly does a 50th plus level character do with his/her time? What challenges do they face, and how many gods do you kill per level?

Even more important: What does the 50th level fighter do while the 50th level wizard is reordering reality to his whim?


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Really it's just backwards compatibility with 3.5

There are d20 games that use 10 levels (13th Age) and games that use 30 levels (4th Ed.) but if you look at them you can see that they scale differently.

For example in 13th age with only 10 levels, you get a feat at every level and the caster's spell level is their character level (7th level spells at 7th level).

The obsession with levels is actually a flaw in the game. The problem is level 20 capstones. People want to reach them, but once they reach them they want to make those capstones relevant. So they think, let's add on more levels so we can get more capstones, but we should give a lil' something something to those who want to focus on one build and they add on more capstones. Repeat ad nauseaum.


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The system in place - making leveling require exponential XP gains - means that the game comes pretty close to stalling out somewhere between lv25 and lv30

It's one thing to say "RAWR, HIGH LEVEL!" - it's another thing to actually see the amount of XP needed:

For a slow campaign (which I kinda suggest), you need to gain 3mil to get to lv21, 6mil for lv22, 12mil for 23, 24mil, 48mil, 96mil, 192mil, 384mil, 768mil, and finally 1.536 BILLION experience points to go from lv29 to lv30.

Level 30+ requires gaining over 3 Billion experience points and goes up from there.

So playing with your lv20+ character means that you are going to be playing for a very, VERY long time without them actually gaining levels, which is pretty fine, really. At that point, the game becomes less and less about gaining levels and building your character, and more about playing the characters out over a very, very long period of time with only small bumps of power.


Ragnarok Aeon wrote:


The obsession with levels is actually a flaw in the game. The problem is level 20 capstones. People want to reach them, but once they reach them they want to make those capstones relevant. So they think, let's add on more levels so we can get more capstones, but we should give a lil' something something to those who want to focus on one build and they add on more capstones. Repeat ad nauseaum.

I am not sure its a flaw. Its just human psychology. People want the next new thing. They look forward to it, they think about it, they plan for it. Then they get it, and its awesome, and then they want the next one. Thats why I like things like adventure paths. I would rather the pace of advancement be tied to a story. Then when that larger story is finished, time to move on to something new.

The kind of advancement that comes from levels is important to me at least because its alot of what we do. Without the new cool thing to play with, eventually a character gets stale, doing similar if not the same things over and over (in terms of mechanics).

In a long running e6 game my group is playing, we certainly have a lot of roleplay. But by simple measure of how long it takes, combat is still a big part of what we do. And most of the time for my natural weapon ranger, that is approach, then start clawing things. It gets old after a while. And because the game is E6, not a whole lot of that is going to change over the long term. Thats alot of time (in real life) doing something that becomes less and less interesting each time I do it.


I'd hate it to be spread out on 100 instead of a solid 20. With 100 you'd level up every session, or multiple times every session even.

Every level should give something (why should there be a level that dosn't give anything? No reason what so ever). In general, this would mean that you'd have to spread things out more inbetween levels (you can't just go higher and add more features), meaning that you need to make small changes to your character all the time. There will be a lot of book keeping for very little. Even more of you have more class feats.

20 levels, in Pathfinder, offers solid upgrades in almost every level for every class.


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I feel like Pathfinder is actually a 16 level game.

Lots of people like to think about capstones and high level play, but in my experience a party of 17-20th level characters is just ponderous, difficult, and unpredictable.

However, characters of levels 17-20, capstones and all, make excellent NPCs to challenge PCs in the last "playable" levels.

I give my full casters the dignity of acquiring 9th level spells and using them for the last few sessions. Then they defeat a level 20 boss, and we call it done.

Your mileage may vary, but sticking to this method does have the benefit of including everything iconic about the campaign in the game, without dealing with most high-level play issues.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
chbgraphicarts wrote:
For a slow campaign (which I kinda suggest), you need to gain 3mil to get to lv21, 6mil for lv22, 12mil for 23, 24mil, 48mil, 96mil, 192mil, 384mil, 768mil, and finally 1.536 BILLION experience points to go from lv29 to lv30.

That's a whole lot of first level goblins you would have to defeat to make it from level 29 to 30. I'm not getting any younger, so time to grind through those tens of millions of level 1 adventures. I also hope to find a fountain of youth while I'm at it.

All humor aside - for those wanting to play epic levels, sometimes it's not the challenge, it's the refusal to stop playing a favored character.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
KestrelZ wrote:
chbgraphicarts wrote:
For a slow campaign (which I kinda suggest), you need to gain 3mil to get to lv21, 6mil for lv22, 12mil for 23, 24mil, 48mil, 96mil, 192mil, 384mil, 768mil, and finally 1.536 BILLION experience points to go from lv29 to lv30.

That's a whole lot of first level goblins you would have to defeat to make it from level 29 to 30. I'm not getting any younger, so time to grind through those tens of millions of level 1 adventures. I also hope to find a fountain of youth while I'm at it.

All humor aside - for those wanting to play epic levels, sometimes it's not the challenge, it's the refusal to stop playing a favored character.

A level cap doesn't mean you need to stop playing the character. What it should mean is that you focus on growth in other areas aside from raw character power. Most literary heroes after all plateau as well. Superman, Elric, Hawkmoon, James Kirk, the Lone Ranger, Bat,am they don't grow in power to an unlimited extent. What they grown is learning. Maybe I might support a variant of the E6 system, only applied to E20 with the prgression requirement for feats doubling as each one is attained.


I really like using mythic as epic.
I know that it isn't, but it works very well that way. Because of that, I really see pathfinder as a 30 level system.

Really though, a system that goes to 50 would be more believably incorporated, it would mean gaining levels faster and gaining less at each level, but that might not be a bad thing.

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