D&D 5E Alternate Progression Discussion: PCs frozen in time.

[Professor Murder]

So I am running a Ravenloft game using 5th and the focus is more on investigation and RP with combat sprinkled in. I think I would say in terms of style and tone, it is like playing Call of Cthulhu using 5th DnD for the system. I started the PCs at level 4. My thoughts were it gives a reasonable amount of power, some HP for survivability, all classes have selected subclasses, and anyone who didn't multiclass gets an ability upgrade or a feat. We have played 4+ sessions so far.

With the blessing of the players, what I have done differently is that thus far no one has leveled up and I don't plan to use traditional level advancement any time in the future. So instead, I am looking for alternatives. I am thinking of a "point buy" of sorts. I will give the players a few options, and then they can pick what to improve. Perhaps a feat, or pick up a new skill, or improve an ability score. The goal is to allow for some growth but to keep them basically in this tier of overall power indefinitely.

I am looking for input and advice but I wish to make something clear. I am doing this and my players like the idea. So honestly, I don't need to hear about how you would not do so or think it is a mistake. I am looking only for ideas for how to implement the proposed alternate advancement.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

If you are using downtime, learning tool proficiencies (especially if you apply some if the extra uses from Xanathar's Guide to Everything) and languages (especially if you travel to different domains in Ravenloft) can be good options, especially if you use the faster method of acquiring training from XGtE.

Another option is to allow background features that make sense to be acquired in the same manner.

 

[Dausuul]

This is basically the same as "E6"--a system people came up with in 3E, where they capped level advancement at 6, then gave out feats to handle advancement beyond that point (with some new feats to flesh out the options). You're putting the cap at 4 instead of 6, but otherwise it sounds like the same thing.

I know some folks have tried adapting E6 to 5E, though I don't know how widespread it has been. I've toyed with the idea myself. For my games, I'd probably put the cap around level 8; level 4 is lowish for my tastes, a lot of subclasses haven't really begun hitting on all cylinders at that point. But if it works for your group, awesome.

So, advice-wise, my suggestion would be to Google E6 and see if that contains useful ideas for you.

 

[Stalker0]

This idea was posted a while back ago on Enworld and I modified it for my game. Effectively you give the players "points" that they can either spend or save, to gain the following benefits from the list.

-10 points: Gain a feat

• 5 points: Increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20 or learn a cantrip.
• 4 points: Gain proficiency in the next class of armor (Light, Medium, Heavy)
• 3 points: Gain proficiency in shields or the next class of weapons (Simple, Martial)
• 2 points: Gain proficiency in a skill
• 1 point: Gain proficiency in a tool or language

 

[aco175]

You can give rewards for each adventure based on difficulty and success. Typically there may be 2-4 adventures per level so you can figure out where the big events are and reward them there. Maybe think about what elements of leveling up makes the biggest impact to the players and to their PCs. Maybe even a point buy system to give the players a choice.

I find that HP may be the biggest goodie along with class abilities. I would scale these two up each level so that they cost more each level. Maybe to get 2nd level HP or ability, it coast 3 points and then for 3rd level it now costs 5 points and 4th level maybe 10 points. Some of the other things could cost less, like 2 points for a skill or language.

You could also chop up the class abilities to spread them out more. I have not looked at too much, but I do not think that each class has too much at each level.