What would happen if you made “Level Up” require a choice between move or stat increase?

What would happen if you made “Level Up” require a choice between move or stat increase?

What would happen if you made “Level Up” require a choice between move or stat increase?

Makes the level 10 cap unnecessary?

Might help reduce the “+3” to my class stat rolls by level 3 behaviour?

Not sure about magic. Move or stat or spell?

Apologies in advance if this has been discussed ad nauseum.

14 thoughts on “What would happen if you made “Level Up” require a choice between move or stat increase?”

  1. Interesting idea. I do find my players’ characters leveling out rather quickly. This would slow things down.

    And yah, PCs should be failing rolls more ;-p

  2. Aaron Griffin he was saying that more often than not, players will throw all of their stat increases into their main stat, and thus have a +3 to that stat by level 3

  3. Right, because putting all your bonuses into that one stat means you’re not putting them into the others. I like to get my second stat up to + 2 and erase the -1 before I push up to + 3 in my main stat personally.

  4. Most other PbtA games do exactly that, but they balance it out by having each stat increase actually have meaning (they increase the bonus directly). If you do this switch without changing how Dungeon World stats work, you’re forcing players to choose between spending multiple level ups on largely meaningless numbers until they get a roll bonus, or taking moves that let them do cool new stuff. Guess which one literally everybody is going to pick?

    And fwiw, even if you did change DW stats to something more like every other PbtA game, I personally wouldn’t use it. The nice thing about DW is that you get cool new moves with every level and you intermittently increase your roll modifiers without having to sink a level into it. You get your boring but effective dinner and your flashy delicious dessert, which is something I haven’t seen in any other game that uses the system.

    (Also, I like to keep my initial -1. It keeps some situations exciting and dicey, and nets you experience!)

  5. What would happen:

    1) Leveling up would be less impactful; still pretty cool, but not as huge of a deal.

    2) The rate of advancement (as in, the rate at which your PCs become more and more competent) would slow down. (That’s a bonus in my book, but I like long-form games.)

    3) You’d have to decide if Advanced Moves were still unlocked at level 6, or unlocked after you had 5 Advanced moves (I’d do the latter).

    4) You’d want to reconsider spell levels. Is a level 3 spell still available to a level 3 wizard? Does a wizard/cleric still get to prepare the level worth of spells? Or do you want to spread that out more, slowing spell progression down so that a level 16 wizard had basically the same spells as a level 8 wizard in core DW.

    This is the hardest part to re-calibrate, in my opinion. You’d have to accept that wizards/clerics would be WAY more powerful and versatile around level 10 than their cohorts, or you’d have to significantly revise the spell progress, spell lists, etc.

    5) If you made it a choice between stat or move (or spell), I think it’d be an unpleasant choice each time you leveled up. You’d no longer be making two choices from a small menu (which of 6 stats to increase + which of ~5 to 10 moves to select), you’d be making 1 choice from a bigger menu (11-16 choices, including stats and moves… more if you consider the wizard’s spells).

    If I was going to do this, I’d make it alternate: you get a new move every even level, and +1 to a stat every odd level.

  6. Jeremy Strandberg​​​​ re spells, what if you just doubled the level of the spell list, i.e. level 1 > 2, 2> 4, 3-> 6, etc.

    Would combine with the even/odd structure of leveling choice you mentioned.

    That makes the even levels for a wizard a choice of “spell or move”? Or would you award both on the even level?

    Could also award a stat increase on level 1 to kick things off.

    Tldr: double the leveling progression time in DW for longer campaigns.

  7. Aaron Griffin​​ the motivation is stretching out that moment where you hit +3 to your stat and achieve the “oh yeah, I’m truly badass now!” moment.

    From personal experience with DW, my players hit that moment early and lost the hunger to level (and play). That’s it in a nutshell.

  8. Scott Maclure yeah, I’d thought about that, but it means rewriting the Commune, Spellbook, and Prepare Spells moves a little. Otherwise, you don’t get to cast anything other than Rotes/Cantrips at first level, which gimps Cleric and Wizard (while other class remain just as effective at 1st level).

    It also means that spell levels in your game aren’t the same as spell levels in 3rd party products, or that folks post on the web, etc. Minor, but it can be a pain.

    I suppose another possibility would be that you have a “Caster Level” that starts at 1 and increases by 1 every odd level. Slightly modify the Prepare/Commune moves to work off of Caster Level instead of just Level and you don’t otherwise have to change anything.

    You could also, then, have the Wizard add a spell to their Spellbook every even level instead of every level.

  9. Brian Holland I myself don’t like to do that, because I want to roll my garbage more so I can hit more XP. Plus if I have a crap stat it helps to characterize, even though by the time I touch my -1, I’ve already got two +3s.

    So I’m more keen on what Aaron Griffin said.

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