Infinitron said,

The idea of “class as difficulty level” isn’t very popular nowadays. The idea is that all classes should be viable options for all players, to increase choice.

The removal of this in Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity has caused some outrage among D&D purists.

Arguably though any class which requires more player intervention to use (ie, picking, aiming and casting spells) will seem more “difficult” for a newbie to use, no matter how much you beef them up or streamline their spell resource mechanics.

Maklak said,

I would prefer it if you didn’t “pull Eschalon” and decide that a certain magical explosion reset the levels and destroyed the items.

I also don’t like what WoW does with items: Every time a new expansion comes out, endgame equipment from previous part instantly becomes fairly weak. Making magical weapons (such as the fire axe in FK that was also part of a quest) stronger should be a result of finding magic dust and a crafter who can apply it for a price… or simply finding and buying better items.

I’m not a fan of DnD. It has some good stuff in it and tries hard, but it has just too many rules and books full of new classes, feats and monsters. I especially hate the wealth by level and level-scaling challenge ratings, which force me to munchkinise my character just to keep up with DnD’s expectations. However, I’ve seen E6 modification of DnD (stop levelling up at level 6 and get extra feats for each 5k XP afterwards, spells from 3rd to 7th level become rituals instead). It simply doesn’t scale to ridiculous proportions where humans can have as much HP as Dragons, but still has some sense of character advancement.

Heck, Pathfinder forum is full of complaints that DnD falls apart numerically somewhere between 10th and 13th level. For example AC can’t keep up with attack modifiers and roll modifiers become so large that the die rolls hardly matter anymore. For example with +10 strength modifier and +3 enhancement bonus, a d4 dagger, d6 shortsword and d8 longsword or even a 1d10 katana aren’t that far apart in damage output. But then that’s well beyond what normal humans should be capable of.

I find point-buy systems more versatile and they defend themselves from min-maxing by increasing the cost for higher levels of skills and stats. They have their own problems too, but for me the fact that XP just keeps coming and I can spend it however I want, instead of having 2 + int modifier skill points, an extra feat and a statpoint every so often and a few more hp is a huge win.

Anyway, I don’t think it is possible to have a well-balanced DnD-like linear growth system that would scale well from 1st to 30th level. I’ve even seen some space sim (Space Empires 4?) that had weapon technologies in 1-100 with more advanced techs costing better and levelling up a tech costing progressively more. It was best to just level the cheapest projectile weapons, because they were weak at first, but later could be researched faster than anything else and kept powerful by the sheer virtue of more powerful weapons lagging 20+ tech levels behind. The solution (in Kaptain Kwok’s total rebalance mod) was to limit all techs to 20 levels, so they scaled better and capped sooner. Anyway, I don’t think a linear system can be made to scale well. At some level it has to introduce corrections to what used to be constants, just to break apart a few levels later.

One option to handle a total reset would be to give each character several pre-generated feat progression paths. For example Arianna could have several weapon specialisations, with feats chosen for her “sword + shield”, “spear”, “2h sword” and so on. Or just pick “I want to do this myself”. While it wouldn’t really help with learning curve and could still have some non-optimal selections, it would be less daunting than building a level 13 char from scratch. So just look up how people built their characters in FK when they weren’t trying to do something crazy. Importing characters should do a good job of translating them into the new system too.

McFunkypants said,

One thing to consider: for me (and perhaps others) the most FUN part is going from level ONE cannon fodder to level FIVE mediocre. The fun slowly diminishes over time, as it is the “we’ll never make it out alive!” nephyte fear that really compels me. Start me off in the midrange and I might also have midrange enthusiasm.

I personally would prefer to start from zero again. The “discovery” of each skill and item along the way is the fun part, not actually having them.

Galenloke said,

What about separating the characters at the beginning of FK2 for a short bit. That’s much easier to explain than amnesia, and at least lets new players master one character at a time instead of 4.

Davzz said,

For all the RPGs I’ve played, I never liked “classes as difficulty level” balance in just about every of them.

Not that said design concept will never work. For example, it works perfectly fine in Fighting Games, where you have characters like Ryu who are more simple to play compared to others like Dhalsim.

I think the big difference would be the skill cap in “piloting” a character and the end result of “power level”. A good Ryu player can beat a good Sagat player with proper skill because at a basic level Ryu still has the solid tools he needs to pull off the victory, while at high level games a Fighter has no chance of beating a spellcaster barring extreme circumstances like being in an anti-magic field with magnets pulling both characters together. Not helped by the fact that Fighters toolset tends to be pretty lacking tactically.

Come to think of it, if I had to use an RPG example, while it’s not the most “traditional”, I guess it works for Desktop Dungeons, because just like the Street Fighter example, even though classes like the early game Fighter/Thief has more simple class powers than later unlocks like Assassin/Bloodmage, each class still has a very competent core set of tactical options.

As far as character transfers go in RPGs, I honestly don’t think it’s ever worked well. Resetting to level 1 may be “lame” for the storyline but it’s probably the best bet compared to trying to balance fresh characters with returning ones. At best I think the best way to do it is to maybe just carry over a handful of unique, magical items from 1 game to the sequel.

McTeddy said,

To be honest, I think Maklak might be the closest to a workable solution. Allow new players “Pick an Archetype” for each hero.

As for the imports, why not automatically sort characters into a mid-level archetype based on their stats and give a few bonus points/higher level items as their “Import Bonus”.

#1 This separates the old game balance from the new one and lets you focus on your current game.
#2 You have a new core design… so skills won’t match up even if you did import directly.
#3 Building both sets from the same archetypes will allow you to have a balanced beginning either way.

On a slightly related note… add a bit of special dialog for import characters. Those always make an import worth it.