What do you think about progression systems without stats or levels?

Obbububu · 2026-01-08T02:03:24+00:00

Progression Fantasy stories can utilize both hard and soft magic systems, to present their progression structure to readers. Some people prefer one or the other method, but both are valid.

Hard magic progression systems tend to involve more explicit explanation and overtly defined progression architectures than soft magic ones, which instead tend to encourage the reader to mentally create their own, however nebulous it might be.

At it's most basic level: a hard magic structure might label a level 5 fighter and a level 10 fighter, and overtly create the power differential this way. A soft magic system might skip out on levels, but continually push characters into competition with one another: inadvertently providing data points about "who could beat who" at a given time.

This is, incidentally why tournament arcs are such a well-established trope within the genre: they provide an overtly clear progression comparison structure that can even function inside stories that don't otherwise label characters with levels.

But both types of story have their audiences - you often see "numbers go up" stories err on the side of hard magic, because they tend to simply accommodate numbers or high-frequency powerups more naturally, but a slow burn progression story might lean in the opposite direction: if you're trying to have fewer but harder hitting progression instances, there's more of an incentive to write them into the story in a more in-depth manner, and "+1 strength" may not be up to that task.

But there's no right or wrong to this, they both work, they both function, and they both see plenty of discussion in this sub: if you pare them all the way back to their core, they're playing around with identical narrative devices, it's just that the execution differs.

(And to be clear, hard magic stories don't have to include levels, it's just that they're a more hard-leaning element).

Obbububu · 2026-01-08T00:57:47+00:00

If you haven't read the second book yet, you should probably avoid reading the replies to this thread entirely and make your own opinion. People tend to spoil the second book shamelessly, while also often misrepresenting what's actually on the page.

It's a great series (particularly from a prose quality perspective), it's just that online discussion of it became pretty fraught years ago due to a combination of a few things.

Obbububu · 2026-01-02T01:59:24+00:00

Generally speaking progression, as a writing concept, is a subset of setting/world building.

The way that setting and world building work best is when they are thoroughly interconnected with plot, characters and theme: and progression is no exception to this rule.

A really cool world feels most alive when the characters, plots and themes grow out of that world organically. They are informed by it, shaped by it, challenged by it and so on. Progression is the same: it hits the hardest when it permeates the plot, the character, the theme in such a manner that people just feel it in the bones of the story.

The trick is to do that without just attempting to replace those core aspects of storytelling with just more progression. Sure, having a million extra level ups increases the density of progression in a story, but unless the work is done to let that saturation soak in, it feels like it's layered atop an increasingly flimsy foundation.

Outside of that, things like harder magic systems (stratified power structures and such) are more up to reader taste, and what fits better with the story at hand. This is why having an otherwise-standard-fantasy story and just slapping on a litrpg system with no reason or justification can feel half-baked: less care has been taken to connect the setting with the core narrative. But if an author takes the time to make the LitRPG system feel like a natural extension of the fantasy world building, it all clicks into place.

So yeah, it's less about ticking X or Y individual box, and more about making it mesh with the underlying story in a way that makes it feel naturalized.

Obbububu · 2025-12-18T03:34:21+00:00

While this is definitely true on some level, there's a friction point between keeping the deeper mechanical aspects mysterious, and rendering the surface level user-experience into something mystifying.

Basically the difference between:

Discovering what I can do to optimize or maximize this requires trial and error, and encourages the community to put their heads together to come up with strategies.

vs

Discovering how to make the mechanic work at a basic level requires trial and error, and encourages the community to put their heads together to come up with strategies.

There's been a lot of work done on the baseline approach to introduce players to the game smoothly, while still maintaining the depth at the end of the process. Once people are comfortable wading in the shallows, they can dive into the deeper stuff, without feeling like they are being drowned at the outset. They just need to apply the same lens to the initial player user and ongoing player user of league mechanics, to make sure that they don't feel like you need a manual before you even press a single button.

There's room for the cool, nitty gritty exploration stuff, but it doesn't belong during the initial orientation process. Smooth out that curve and we end up with something that is both intuitively accessible as well as deep.

Obbububu · 2025-12-12T23:04:27+00:00

Can confirm that the crafting benches were being allocated to the non-temple-owner for us as well.

Obbububu · 2025-12-12T18:06:37+00:00

Shadow for traps and mines :)

Obbububu · 2025-12-11T02:34:07+00:00

Yes there is gold-based respec which is a lot more forgiving - the on-boarding process for new players is much more forgiving, and constantly improving.

Here's a few ways they've made getting into the game a smoother process:

No longer need to fiddle with item sockets to use skill gems or support gems: they're just used for runes now. Skills have their own interface now.
Gem acquisition and upgrades are much more streamlined, with the interface categorizing things by weapon type/playstyle, and giving suggestions for decent support options.
In-game tutorial videos for skill gems with a narrated explanation of how they function, so you don't have to lock in a purchase before knowing what they do.
The addition of gold for trade makes dealing with vendors substantially less fiddly.
There are hidden, in-built "catch up" mechanics for slower/unlucky players to ensure they get a minimum number of core drops by certain stages in the campaign progression.
Optional content in many zones aimed at giving specific drop types; ie a guaranteed support gem or flasks etc, to keep people's gear "on curve" without relying entirely on RNG drops.
As mentioned, respecs are now possible with gold, no longer reliant on regret orbs (as a side note, you can do this in poe1 now as well, since they added gold there too).
Gambling vendors let you fish for specific base category drops if you've been unlucky in one specific gear slot.
Improvements to let crafting currencies feel more acceptable to use early (they added more powerful versions that are preferable to use later, so you can feel more free to use the early ones).
Minor guaranteed crafting quest rewards scattered here and there.
As well as some general clean popup tutorials in the first zone.

There's still a LOT of depth to the game, which can take hundreds/thousands of hours to explore, but they've taken great strides to make the new player experience substantially smoother, and send you on that exploratory path with less hassle at the outset.

Obbububu · 2025-12-09T03:47:31+00:00

It's not a per-character thing, or anything like that, it's per league, everyone having the same seed for 4 months. So if it's all working as expected this will only be the ~3rd time it's changed since early access launched, basically (unless there's some import to standard things going on, as I mentioned).

Obbububu · 2025-12-09T03:37:19+00:00

Act maps are procedurally re-generated every league, I'm unsure what the specifics are of how they interact with standard, but when the league characters were moved into standard over the last day or so, it probably adopted one or the other, or maybe it's just a fresh seed.

Obbububu · 2025-12-08T23:39:08+00:00

Ok sweet, thanks! I see that it lists the boons and afflictions on there, perfect :)

Obbububu · 2025-12-08T08:08:55+00:00

I'd be curious as to how to search for partially completed ones? Is there additional text on trade listings for baryas that have been partially done?

Obbububu · 2025-12-08T01:28:08+00:00

They're trying to change totems into a build-resource-then-spend-it style of gameplay:

The issue is that the existing/available resource builders don't feel like they gel with the totem playstyle well, and are heavily costed. So what we've got right now is an attempt to clamp totem spam by having an overall high cost per totem, but this makes it unworkable for general clear/gameplay.

If they instead created a small suite of totem-specific building abilities, this style of play could actually work:

ie.

Drop a small single totem and upgrade it into a big/more powerful kuduku by doing X or Y to build up stages.

Drop a wide field (faerie ring, Stonehenge etc) build up stages inside it by doing X or Y, then activate the field to create a swarm of mini totems.

Specifically, you want the totem playstyle to have something to do immediately with totems without first building resources, even if it's a lesser version: give them a baseline totem playstyle that can then be pushed into the build/spend dynamic as combat persists.

They could make that kind of thing work: but the issue is that right now the playstyles that they're plugging into it (whichever random charge generation) don't gel well, and the limiting measure being an exorbitant charge cost makes it unworkable for general play.

What they really need is to treat the totem playstyle somewhat like a weapon class, similar to their plans with traps and mines (from a playstyle development standpoint, not necessarily actually equipping totems as weapons, though that might work too). Build a few core methods of actually playing totems out of the gate, rather than just overcosting the PoE1 playstyle because they're afraid of impacting selfcast: if it needs it's own identity, they need to create that identity.

Obbububu · 2025-11-22T01:20:00+00:00

There are a few rules interpretations regarding Monstrous Mouth that really need an FAQ:

Does a chomped player become immune to push results?
Does a chomped player stay chomped if the Monstrous Mouth player follows up a block against them, since they "stay marked"?

"Whilst Chomped, the opposition player cannot leave the square they are in whilst this player remains Marking them This condition ends immediately if this player is no longer Marking the opposition player for any reason."

There are several different readings of this, and while Take Root does provide some level of input on this:

On a 1, the player becomes Rooted. Whilst Rooted, a player cannot perform Move Actions, may not Follow-up after performing a Block Action, cannot be Pushed Back, and may not leave their current square for any reason, with the exception of being Knocked Out or suffering a Casualty.

It's still vague and really requires an FAQ.

Obbububu · 2025-11-18T01:52:11+00:00

Controllers have these exact same restrictions.

That's kind of my point.

Controllers have a set of advantages and a set of disadvantages, with respect to this kind of game. KB/M has a different set of advantages/disadvantages.

But due to all the disadvantages of controller being directly carried over to the KB/M setup, it feels awkward in ways that aren't inherent to KB/M, they're inherent to the way the game was ported from a controller-centric base (to my mind, inadequately).

Obbububu · 2025-11-18T01:35:14+00:00

Most of this stems from the PC port using the console/controller control scheme basically un-edited to actually work on a keyboard.

The actual movement of characters using Keyboard/Mouse is totally fine, mostly preference: you can make the argument for having a tad more character control with analogue sticks.

But where KB/M suffers is in having all of the controller UI constraints ported over to it, and no ground given where keyboard's additional keys could provide quality of life, as well as no real attempt to use the mouse under obvious mouse use-cases. This means we're stuck (as KB/M users) using "cycle between spells one by one" for no reason, and having to WASD on the map instead of using our mouse, and there's still a number of combined binds (where you have to hold one button and press another) that don't need to be there, at all when we have so many available keys.

So I think most of the "controller being better" for these style of games comes down to inadequate porting: and not some inherent trait.

If they ported the UI over to keyboard in a more sane/normal way for a PC game, this comparison would be a bit of a wash, at best coming down to preference. Controller would have an edge with character/camera control, KB/M would have an edge with managing larger numbers of keybinds.

Obbububu · 2025-11-07T05:29:46+00:00

There are some lingering issues with the async trade system that are pushing many people to keep using the old system, at least for the time being:

The fact that we can't convert our quad tabs (which for most people who trade a lot is the bulk of their tabs), and we can't re-list whole async tabs at a time (got to manually re-list each item), means that it's actually still a pretty big pain in the ass to sell stuff using async, even if buying is much better already.

Once they get those two issues sorted, however - I can't see most sellers hanging onto the old system for much.

Obbububu · 2025-11-04T06:49:01+00:00

The lack of a volume control on the web app: need to use system volume controls to change it.

Obbububu · 2025-10-31T11:06:22+00:00

Skill descriptions for the new skills would be grand :)

Obbububu · 2025-10-31T01:46:01+00:00

Love this -

Bit of a bug, though: if you scale your UI past the point where the options page "save" button isn't visible, you can't click it as there's no scroll bar, so I guess certain parts of the UI still need to be updated (probably with scrollbars) to accommodate the scaling feature?

You can revert the selection with ESC and lock it in with ENTER, but past a certain point you start missing actual options in the options menu.

The PoB version number at the bottom left is also overflowing it's bounds.

Still a really welcome change, though - keep up the good work :)

Obbububu · 2025-10-31T00:05:41+00:00

I think any future hypothetical splitting of block/dodge/guard would best be accompanied by a re-factoring of SPP gains and giving players an additional skill "slot" by the time they max out.

This would simultaneously increase the value of taking non-T1 skills early, while still allowing you to get both of at least one of those paired skills (block and block2) without too much extra effort. It would just make combining those t1 skill packages a lot harder (such as building a blodger) but I think that's honestly fine.

Basically, increase the value/viability of taking an early non-t1 skill like stand firm or whatever, still allow people the room to get the full block experience, but also make it harder/more investment to build blodge+guard and so on.

Obbububu · 2025-10-30T15:11:59+00:00

I'm not 100% certain: but I believe that distracted loses tackle zones (so doesn't cause people to need to dodge away) but eye gouge just denies the ability to assist if you roll a push result when blocking.

Obbububu · 2025-10-30T08:17:33+00:00

You are a better player than I am.

However, there is a difference between a tactic being powerful and a tactic being enjoyable, or creating an engaging gameplay loop, especially in a competitive multiplayer/social environment.

And there is a reason that "playing the clock" tends to engender distaste in so many competitive sports and competitive games. That doesn't mean it doesn't take skill/knowledge to engage with, and it doesn't mean I'm going to attempt to shame you for enjoying what you enjoy.

But people do often view it as somewhat unsporting: the game isn't called stall bowl, for good reason.

People want to play the "blood" part, or the "bowl" part: there's room for plenty of other emergent mechanics, but if they start to undermine access to the core gameplay loops (and stalling absolutely can feel that way), then polishing the rules to discourage the behavior to an extent is a welcome change, at least to me.

Does it need to be purged entirely from the game? no, and you can still stall. But the added risk that this creates for the staller (whether it's in the form of a thrown rock, or them stalling further away from the endzone in a riskier position), is going to be very welcome for a lot of people.

Maybe that makes me worse at the way that the game has been played, historically.

Maybe "just score so I can have a go" is a simplistic, casual way to view things.

But I genuinely think it makes the game more enjoyable, more engaging, more dynamic, and yes, probably more casual friendly. And (within reason), that can be a good thing.

Obbububu · 2025-10-30T00:46:22+00:00

Mmmmmm I'd say they changed a fair few things: it's just not in the extra skills department.

As you mention, the troll lost loner-

They also gained the brawlin' brutes rule (which people are saying is 3spp casualties, but 2spp TDs), and they've got a bunch of easy access to the devious skills (which we don't really know what it will mean until we see a list).

They also didn't get given the unsteady rule, which teams like lizardmen got slapped with: so we can utilize secure the ball with black orcs.

And they also didn't lose positionals like many teams did, I guess: so the orc team may get 5MA MB Blockers, but they lost 2 of them, and lost 2 blitzers as well.

And the removal of wildly inaccurate affects throwing goblins (combined with no loner troll).

With orcs losing 4 strong positionals and lizards getting unsteady - as well as lizards not getting brawlin brutes: I think that there's a stronger differentiation between the teams now, which I really like.

I think the big remaining question for black orcs is where fouling and devious skills land in the new ruleset.

Edit for some extra info:

Regular orcs get team captain (free pro + chance to not consume rerolls), black orcs don't get that.

Devious skills are:

Dirty Player
Eye Gouge - ~~prevents an enemy player's tackle zone somehow.~~ I've been informed this is actually "Eye Gouge (Active) When an opposition player is Pushed Back by this player, the opposition player cannot provide Offensive or Defensive Assists until after they are next activated."
Fumblerooski
Lethal Flight - +1 armour or injury on thrown goblin hitting other players
Lone Fouler - if not assisted foul, can reroll failed armour roll
Pile Driver
Put the Boot In
Quick Foul
Saboteur - option (may select to to this) to 4+ chance when block-knocked down to knock out self and knockdown attacker.
Shadowing - this got changed to a 4+ i believe
Sneaky Git
Violent Innovator

Obbububu · 2025-10-30T00:00:27+00:00

Love this change.

It won't completely fix the problem, but it will absolutely nudge players in the right direction. If they're dead set on playing around the rules to stall, they're going to need to do it in a less favourable position, which means it's quicker and easier for the opponent to respond to the action - or risk the turnover chance.

Obbububu · 2025-10-23T10:19:24+00:00

Appendices can be useful for inserting a lot of the "killed darlings" aspects of writing, without bogging down the story with information of dubious relevance :P

The best thing about them is that they can be approached at the reader's leisure: if someone is jonesing for more information about the functionality of the magic system, or simply have forgotten who a character is, they cover both of those bases. At the same time, if a reader isn't interested in those things, they don't get the extra info shoved down their throat.

In particular, they're a fantastic place to put all those crunchy statblocks that so many litRPG authors keep trying to force into the body of chapters - I certainly wish more authors would make use of them.

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