Thursday, March 31, 2011

Visual Experience Chart

To start playing the game, you really don't need to know how many xp a fighter will need to get to 10th or, heaven forbid, 20th level.  What you will need is an easy way to let players know as they are approaching the first few levels.  And maybe an easy way to compare level progression across classes.  How about this:
It uses the progression from Swords & Wizardry Whitebox.  Unfortunately, I don't have permission to use the TSR wizard, consider this a draft mockup. 

12 comments:

  1. Oh, and it further illustrates the ridiculously low advancement numbers of the cleric...

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  2. I really like it.

    I'm not entirely sure why the cleric's numbers are so low when it's such a solid class (at least, by the numbers), but hey, that's not exactly your fault. ;)

    Great work.

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  3. Nice. I hadn't considered before how each of these classes has a distinctive hand tool that identifies it. Alas, if you had a thief here his lockpick wouldn't register at this icon size.

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  4. However, showing the thief climbing a wall, or sneaking would.

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  5. This is an excellent visualization. It could also be used as a pledge board by villagers raising funds to hire adventurers to save the town from some diabolical threat.

    C'nor, if a thief is to be included, he should be climbing the right side of the meter.

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  6. Very nice! I'd pull each figure out just a little bit to allow you to insert a very small number that is the actual xp requirement on the lines that lead towards the scale. That way the reader would see the relationship and the true xp number as well.

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  7. Nice idea, you just need to make the x-axis longer so there looks like there's an actual difference between the lower levels. I can't tell from the chart the difference between 2nd and 3r level clerics, for instance.

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  8. Wait, forget my last comment... I was totally misreading the chart. Duh.

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  9. Thanks, all.

    @Paul: You are a genius. But . . . I don't have any good climbing silhouettes I'll go look for some.

    @Joseph: I'm afraid adding the numbers would clutter it and make it harder to read. But, I can think of two revisions that might make it unnecessary anyway. First, I can vary the lines leading to the figures and second, I started with the general scale and was pasting the figures on but, why not just list the explicit score on the scale? I did it for cleric lvl 2 already. I'll make a second draft.

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