Contra: Why Do We Even Need Levels?

In which I argue against a excerpt from Between Two Cairns

In the in an episode of Between Two Cairns, Yochai and Brad answer an extensive mailbag question (airing of grievances?) that, among other things, makes the complaint that there aren’t enough high-level adventures. Brad Kerr responds at ~9m40s:

I kind of agree that there's not enough high level stuff, but also it's harder to use it. The more I read high level stuff, I'm like, why do we even need levels? I'm kind of falling into the Yochai school. Why do we need to do it like this?

There are reasons for the kinds of play people like and people like different things. I understand that argument. Some of it seems so arbitrary.

The Monster Manual has monsters that are strong. They've arbitrarily decided a troll is stronger than an ogre. You have to be a stronger character if you want to kill a troll. I don't know. It just seems like we're starting with some broken base assumptions. Why can't lower level characters kill a troll? You've just decided a troll has to be really strong, and you have to kill a bunch of other monsters before you're ready to kill a troll. I don't know.

I’ll try to frame what I think the actual argument is and then reply to that.

The game system has decided that some challenges (like monsters) are more challenging than other challenges (like other monsters), and that in order to overcome those challenges, the characters involved ought to be stronger themselves. In terms of What is Tested - Arnold K, the answer would be that some challenges test character power (levels, gear, etc), and I think Brad wants to know “why?”.

We can either take issue with the existence of power differentials or we can take issue with the abstraction of power as levels.

Why are Some Monsters Stronger Than Others?

It is extremely difficult for me to imagine a fictional world where this isn’t the case. A large dog is probably not 1v1ing a silverback. A chimpanzee is probably losing to a grizzly bear. A grizzly bear is probably losing to a Tyrannosaurus.

D&D’s implied setting follows the same idea. A Ghoul is less threatening than a Mummy, which is less threatening than a Vampire. Does it matter that these were arbitrarily decided? Not especially. We could have decided that mummies are stronger (or equally as strong) as vampires, it’s just that we didn’t (in the default setting).

Presumably we aren’t deciding that all monsters are equally dangerous, so it seems like the idea that “some things are more dangerous to fight than other things” is as close to an axiom as one can get.

It follows that adventurers can also be stronger than other adventurers in the same way that some humans are stronger than each other. I can’t deadlift 1100 lbs but Eddie Hall can. I would get obliterated in a fight against Max Halloway. One of the main tropes in fantasy fiction is the characters growing stronger as they adventure.

If adventurers can be fictionally (and mechanically) stronger than other adventurers, and monsters can be fictionally (and mechanically) stronger than other monsters, it follows that some adventurers are fictionally (and mechanically) stronger than some monsters (and weaker than others).

Weaker adventurers can defeat stronger monsters through cunning, planning, numbers, luck, etc, but the base level assumption, that some things are intrinsically stronger than other things seems like a good, worthwhile assumption.

Why Do We Use Levels to Represent Strength?

The OSE Grizzly Bear is level 5, has 6 AC, attacks for ~9.5 damage per turn, and hits Chain armor 55% of the time. The Cairn Grizzly Bear has 6 HP, 15 STR, 13 DEX, 5 WIL, and has high damage: claws (d8+d8), bite (d10).

Both of those are more mechanically threatening than their respective system’s War Dogs.

Cairn represents character power growth by Scars; as you adventure you probabilistically increase in mechanical power. It’s easy to imagine that at the beginning of a character’s adventuring career, they would be mechanically weaker than a Grizzly Bear, and after gaining sufficient scars, they are mechanically stronger.

OSE represents character power growth by Levels. A ~level 8 fighter is probably more threatening than a grizzly bear, whereas a level 1 fighter is not.

So, the concept of a character gaining combat prowess by adventuring exists in both systems, and in both systems a character can become more individually threatening than a Grizzly Bear. It’s just that OSE abstracts this power into Levels and Cairn doesn’t.

I think the abstraction is ultimately useful. We could take the level number away and rewrite the rules to use stats directly: at 2000 XP, a fighter gains 1d8 HP. At 4000 XP, they gain another 1d8 HP. At 8000 XP, they get another 1d8 HP and +2 to hit and all of their saving throws, and so on. Have we gained anything by dropping the level? It would still be the case that at some point the fighter becomes more powerful than a Troll, just like in Cairn.