RPG Design Patterns

Provide a rough gauge of a character’s survivability in a given environment and, optionally, a number from which skill effectiveness is derived.

Not Applicable

Class, Rank

Any game that provides a number (or small set of numbers) to represent a character’s overall level of “experience” or “power” follows the Level pattern. Of course, this usually implies that a character’s power increases in some way as play progresses. At the very least, the use of the Level pattern suggests that a character’s overall effectiveness can differ from that of other characters in some way.

There are essentially two reasons a game designer might decide to use the Level pattern:

1. To reduce the number of values a player must maintain for his character, and thereby simplify the game design,
2. To provide a quick estimate of a character’s chances of overcoming some foe or of successfully completing an adventure.

Adding a “Level” to a character’s statistics reduces the amount of bookkeeping a player must maintain if a significant portion of a character’s skills have their effectiveness determined by his level. That way, numbers for individual abilities do not have to be maintained as is required by other skill rating patterns (see the Rank pattern). Many players would argue that the cost to flexibility is too high, but the truth of the matter depends entirely on your design goals. Games geared toward young children must be particularly sensitive to complexity issues and you may decide you are justified in applying a Level strategy in such a situation.

Having a simple way to measure a character’s overall survivability within a game scenario is also a valid design goal. If you want to write game supplements that provide pre-canned adventures, or “modules,” having a concise means of conveying the survivability requirements to the players can prove convenient. Players with “1^st level” characters could easily avoid the near-certain disaster of tackling a module clearly labeled “For 4 to 6 characters of 12^th to 14^th level.”

Use the Level pattern when your design goals include

1. A need to allow characters to increase in power as play progresses.
2. A need to quickly gauge a character’s chances of survival in a game environment where foes can vary widely in their own power and capabilities.
3. Reducing the amount of bookkeeping needed to maintain the effectiveness of a wide variety of abilities. (optional)

If you want to keep your game rules adaptable to computer video games, the Level pattern is suitable as well. Many “role-playing” computer games, both online and offline, use levels as a means to determine what aspects of the game a character can explore. For example, some games allow characters to “group” and adventure only with other characters of a similar level.

On the other hand, a character’s chances of survivability are equally easy to gauge in games that have no concept of character “advancement.” In such games, all characters have an equal chance of survivability and rewards are provided by means other than the accumulation of power.

If a character’s effectiveness is directly based on his Level, the pattern can have a big impact on the game. Such a system is necessarily constrained in how much control players have over their individual character abilities. Some RPG veterans refuse to play “Level-based” games due to this built-in inflexibility. But, the pattern does lower the bookkeeping overhead of maintaining a character, so games geared toward very young players can benefit from its use.

Games that use the Level pattern as a “power gauge” and yet still allow abilities to be individually customized sacrifice little or no flexibility by using this pattern. Of course, they also forego any bookkeeping benefits the pattern offers, so the justification of using the pattern is similarly reduced.

When adopting the Level pattern, you should first cogitate on how pervasive its use will be throughout your game. If you want to use it primarily as a power gauge, then you should look at the Rank pattern as an alternate way to determine the potency of character abilities.

If you want to base some abilities on Level but use some different measure for others, then you need to construct sharp boundaries between various groups of abilities to avoid confusion. For example, you could decide that all combat abilities should be based on level while all other “skills” are individually ranked. Before making these kinds of distinctions, though, make sure they satisfy some important game goal or you will complicate your design unnecessarily.

You also need to figure out how levels are raised or lowered. Will the level automatically rise by one for every successfully completed adventure (see the Success Reward pattern)? Will you base it off of some notion of character experience? Will it vary based on some subjective judgment of “good” role-play (see the Idiom pattern)?

A game using the Experience Point pattern may derive a character’s Level from the amount of experience points he has accumulated. In such a game, you might see a Level description like the following:

Your character’s Level gives you a quick summation of your character's success to date. It is determined by the number of Experience Points (X.P.) your character has earned according to the following table:

Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 uses levels in conjunction with classes (see the Class pattern). So, a character gains levels within a specific class, such as Fighter or Wizard, as he earns experience points. Many character abilities are based directly off of the character’s level, such as combat proficiency and spell casting effectiveness. But, individual skill ranks can be purchased with “skill points” that are earned as characters gain levels (see the Skill and Rank patterns). Characters are limited to a total of 20 levels in all classes. However, supplements can be purchased that provide rules that allow players to continue adventuring above level 20 with “epic” level characters.

HARP bases its levels off of experience points as well. Gaining a level earns a character “development points” from which attribute bonuses, talents, and skill ranks can be purchased (see the Point-Spend Attributes, Gift, Skill, and Rank patterns). Level has no other obvious effect in the game mechanics.

RIFTS follows the pack and also bases its levels off of experience points. Levels are gained at different rates based on experience point tables provided for each character class (see the Class pattern).