Design Decisions: Power Level

One of the first decisions I made in starting Kings of the Endless Sea was that I wanted a low-magic, low-power feel to the campaign. After all, it's a game about pirates and explorers, not legendary god-kings or whatever. I still wanted it to be D&D, however; there are plenty of monsters and magic swords. 4th edition D&D leans heavily toward the epic style of play, and is intended more towards a linear storytelling campaign, where adventures build towards a set conclusion. Heck, players get to choose their own Epic Destiny at 20th level and it has mechanical implications from there on out. That just won't do for a sandbox. I love writing campaigns with hidden villains and vast conspiracies, but the fun of a sandbox is that I have as little idea how things are going to go as the players do.

So. How to implement this in a system not optimized for it?
•Inherent Bonuses. The first decision I made was to use the Fixed Enhancement Bonus rule from the Dark Sun Campaign Setting. This was designed for Dark Sun to reflect the fact that it's a low-magic world, so I figured it would be perfect for Kings of the Endless Sea. I was hoping to eliminate magic items almost entirely, but unfortunately this doesn't happen with FEB: the book says, "These flat bonuses do not stack with enhancement bonuses gained from magic items, and they progress at a slightly slower rate. As a result, magic swords, armor, and amulets retain their appeal." In other words, I still have to hand out magic items to keep the players at the right bonuses for the game to be balanced. I briefly considered altering the FEB progression, but decided it would create too much of a risk of unbalancing the PCs versus challenges appropriate to their level (if I screwed up the numbers, basically). But I am giving out less magic item treasure, as per my version of the rules (more on that in a later post).

•Levels of Play. Every new character starts at level one, even if they're coming in later in the campaign. I'm only creating the world to account for challenges up to about level 10-- i.e., keeping it to the Heroic tier. This is all inspired by the Epic 6th/Epic 8th design ethos, which (though originally hit upon for 3rd edition) says that either 6th or 8th level is the sweet spot for D&D characters, and caps level advancement there. I don't think having players throw around ultra-powerful spells and crazy magic item effects will really fit my piratey world. Mechanically speaking, this also limits the power difference between a new character and one who's played in every game. Finally, it limits the difficulty level of the zones and dungeons I have to create. I don't have to worry about making paragon-tier dungeons, and I don't have to worry that some 3rd-level party will blunder into one and get TPKed. Lastly, this means that a 1st-level PC can hit a dungeon with his 5th-level companions and still contribute somewhat meaningfully, unlike if he were adventuring with 15th-level heroes.

All this will have ramifications later on as I design the map, tweak treasure rules, and begin recruiting players. But for now it's enough just to have some sort of guidelines in place.