This is a multifaceted topic so I figure I will make different threads for each part. I got three parts in mind for now.

First for this thread is how to level up.

Traditionally you defeat enemies and gain levels which allow you to assign points and skills etc.
I read a comic where it is a game like world where people only gain experience from defeating new enemies, only for the first of each new enemy.

I have also seen games that cause individual skills to level when you use them. Skyrim is a famous example. Sometimes that also triggers level ups and sometimes it doesn't, some games the skills increasing is the leveling up, with no actual "levels", very rare. Like Ultrima Online is like that, or at least versions of it

The method I find most interesting is event based leveling. I played a game where you gain a level with each dungeon floor you descend to. Alternatively you could have it so the only way players gain experience is by doing quests. Doing a quest better can allow you to gain more experience.

The benefit of the comic one or the last event based one is removing grind from game-play.

So anyone know of games like that? Especially like the comic or event based? Or game developers here who have

VtM: Bloodlines. Exp comes from completing quests or goals, not from kills.

Evil Islands on normal (read hellish) difficulty. Exp per kill drops with each additional kill of an enemy type until it reaches zero.

Topics for future threads I plan to make
Level scaling in open world, I dislike it.
And how much power increase people get from each level and benefits of max levels as well as drawbacks.

VtM is a abbreviation for?

Vampires the Masquerade; the title of the series.

The Skyrim leveling system; I'm not a fan. You basically end up moving around the world with your finger on the jump button, hopping like a rabbit, to level your jumping skills. You reskill every so often, because after you reach the level cap for a skill, it becomes impossible to progress your character level through skill improvement.

In contrast, I have seen the idea where players only advance either through training / teaching, or by making mistakes. Meaning, the more you challenge yourself and the harder you fail, the more you gain. Something that Skyrim does only for its armor skills.

And then there is level scaling, where monsters level up with you. Depending on how badly it is implemented, it frequently ends up being a total bullocks mechanic. Often enough, only useful if the idea is to please speed runners, who wish to exploit this mechanic to get to the end of the game without levelling even once.

In Pen&Paper, levelling up falls to the DM's discretion. It tends to be whatever they want it to be. I, personally, tend to hand out level ups whenever we start a new chapter. With a bit of a bonus whenever the solution the party implemented was particularly creative. It is this creativity that I have come to miss in games, where the only viable solution is the one that the developer already anticipated and programmed into the game.

What if Skyrim didn't have a overall level system that increased health stamina or mana. Maybe there is a mod that sets these flat. Like maybe you pick traits that can alter these at the beginning but then never after that. Or special events that can alter it.(like a mage event or beginning trait that decreases health a little bit but increases mana alot) So then it's just about the the skills.

I wanted to discuss level scaling and power creep in a different thread. Or do people think we should discuss that here as well? Because that branches out into a few different aspects of levels and power. I wanted to focus on the method of gaining power and levels in this thread.

Funny, I didn't remember doing the jumping thing in Skyrim. Morrowind now, I do remember. Swimming too. Jumping improved your acrobatics skill while running or swimming improved your athletics skill. Funny that I remember it from Morrowind and not Skyrim.

ADDED: Oh, I bet I do know why I remember Morrowind and not Skyrim, because I just did another game of Morrowind last summer (summer of 2022) and I haven't played Skyrim in probably 5 or more years.

Checkpoint leveling is standard [now] in most tabletop RPGs. Many games from the narrative side of things have always been that way. Tons of people on the "mechanical" side of things moved toward it in the D&D3/Pathfinder1 era. And many newer mechanical-type games have ditched "XP" entirely for checkcpoint leveling, or have XP as an optional subsystem.

Gothic 1 and 2 had it "sort of" both ways. You could level up the "offensive"side of things (attributes and skills) with XP (from kills, quests, etc.) but you could only improve the "defensive side" (your armor, for the most part) by reaching different chapters (check points).

I guess because I'm old I lean more towards the XP way of doing things, but I do love Gothic.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, as mentioned, didn't reward XP for murdering everything in sight. Instead, you gained XP (and XP here is deflated, you get like 1 point) via quest completion.

Deus Ex did something similar where you gained skill points for completing objectives and exploring areas. Human Revolution is the one that added the wonky XP system where the game rewarded you for stealthy playstyles as opposed to the do-what-ya-like system in the original.

Pillars of Eternity only rewards kills based on how much of the bestiary you filled out via killing creatures. After that, it didn't reward XP for combat.

You mean where everyone gets experience for the session?

Pretty sure Skyrim gives experience from kills. And not from kills? And to fill out a bestiary entry, did it take a certain number of kills? Or was there some scan ability? Was each of these entries worth alot of experience?

Like how else can you earn experience in PoE? And approximately how much experience from each source? (like a ballpark percentage)

The problem with your "comic book solution" (only rewarding XP for defeating the first enemy of a type), and the reason it is in a comic book, and not a game, is that the Player would then not be motivated to engage in any other enemy encounters, and would turn the whole thing into a "hunt the next new enemy type" gameplay, which wouldn't even work for a Pokemon type game- you'd have to design loads of enemy types, or give the player loads of frustration when you repeat the same enemy types.

"Event-based XP" (giving the Player XP only at certain preset points: completion of a dungeon, completion of a quest) is certainly a solution, you just have to be aware that in that case then you're essentially limiting the Player's freedom in an RPG, and sort of turning it into a linear game, you can exactly set how much XP they'd get at each point, and plan everything exactly according to that.


Seeing the topic, I was almost certain this was a dtgreene thread, and was quite surprised when I saw it wasn't :D

I like this approach.

Some interesting examples:
* In Wizardry 6 and 7, you get skill points to allocate at level up, but some (not all) skills can improve through usage. There's also some automatic allocation of points to certain skills (depending on class) that are 50 or lower. For example, for a Valkyrie, some points will be automatically allocated into Pole & Staff, which improves through usage, so you can't put those points into Theology, which does not; hence, raising Pole & Staff through use will eventually (in Wizardry 6, as Wizardry 7 separates skill points by skill type)free up points for Theology. (Or you could just make a Priest, who automatically has points allocated to Theology.)
* Wizardry 8 is similar, except without the automatic point allocation, with *every* skill improving through use (makes the choice of which spell to cast considerably more interesting since you have to consider skill growth), and with a rule that level-up points can't be used to raise a skill above 75; only use does that. Also, each class gets a 25% bonus to one skill, (Not too surprising, for Valkyries that skill is Polearms, and for Priests that skill is Divinity.)
* SaGa games use various variations of this mechanic, but without experience levels. Exceltions are SaGa 1, which uses rather unusual methods of stat growth; original SaGa 3 (not the DS remake), which has conventional XP-based leveling; and certain races in SaGa 2 and SaGa Frontier.
* Final Fantasy 2 is also worth mentioning. That game feels like it could have been called SaGa 0, and perhaps could be considered an early prototype of the concept. Wizardry 4 does this, except you need to find a pentagram to actually gain the level. I don't like this approach because, assuming there's a finite supply of quests, this approach results in there being permanently missable XP, and I dislike permanent missables.


Another interesting example of event-based leveling I'm aware of is the Japanese Famicom game Arabian Dream Scheherezade. In this game, there's a princess to find in each chapter, and to level up, you need to find the princess after getting enough XP to gain the level. There's only 5 chapters, so you only level up 5 times.

When the game was translated into English, under the title The Magic of Scheherezade, they changed the game drastically. There's no longer princess to find (instead, you rescue them when you defeat the chapter boss), and leveling is conventional XP-based leveling. But, in a twist, your level is capped at 5 times the chapter you're in, and if you complete a chapter before reaching that level, you are automatically raised to that level, allowing you to start the next chapter at that level. (For example, if you complete Chapter 2 at level 8, you will automatically advance to level 10, and will start Chapter 3 at that level.) Perhaps you'd like it better if the skill cap were only a softcap?

Well it carries into other things I want to talk about. Like if the power difference is small, then it's not a big deal if you don't get all the levels. Like don't make the game about leveling.

And there can be things like goblin archers and warriors and so on.

it could also be coupled with certain quests and accomplishment sources of experience.

Skyrim does this for more skills. Casting higher level spells gives more skill XP, and you also see this with Alchemy and (IIRC) Smithing. In the Ebony Warrior speedrun (which requires killing an NPC who only appears at level 80), the player abuses the Fortify Restoration trick to create game-breaking potions, and it gets to the point where each potion can raise Alchemy to 100 when made.

Dungeon Master and Wizardry 8 handle this better. In both games, casting a powerful spell gives more skill XP. In Dungeon Master, failing a spell cast will still give you a bit of skill XP, while in Wizardry 8, failing even gives you *more* skill increase checks than if the spell is successful.

SaGa games, starting with SaGa 2, are also good about this. When the game determines whether a character gets a stat increase or sparks a new technique, the game takes into account an attribute of the enemy that's typically higher for more powerful enemies. (It's the SaGa equivalent of the D&D concept of Challenge Rating, except that some SaGa games give enemies different values for sparking techs versus stat increases.) Skyrim has no Athletics or Acrobatics skill; that's why you don't remember this. One interesting Idea I've had: Instead of "deflating" XP gains, inflate XP. Make it so that, by the mid-game, the XP that you get, and the XP required to level up, is large enough to be written in scientific notation. The result is that doing a quest (or killing an enemy) that's too easy will give so few XP that it rounds to 0, yielding a similar result.