Empty Levels: Difference between revisions

* ''[[RunescapeRuneScape]]'' has a fair bit of this in ''[[Player Versus Player]]'' combat, mainly only on Bounty Worlds. Leveling any combat skill raises your combat level, and since what level range of other players can attack you is a range from your own combat level, keeping your combat level as low as possible while maximising your combat capability (by training certain combat skills more than others, in approximate order Str>Atk>Magic>Prayer>Ranged>Hits>Def) allows you to have an advantage over other players at the same combat level who have not focused on keeping their combat level low. Unfortunately for many would-be "Pro PKers", a vast majority of all active PKers between combat levels 20-110 (PKing unavailable below level 20, and at level 110-126 the only way to get combat levels at all is to max out those stats which increase combat level without boosting combat effectiveness all that much) have their stats set up in such a way to maximise Power-in-combat to Combat-level ratio. There is even a disclaimer in the website's FAQs stating that it is impossible to undo level-ups; once you have them, you're stuck with them for good. In addition, in the non-PvP potions of the game, new armour and weapons become usable at specific levels in specific skills, for example, the differences between level 80 attack (Chaotic Rapier) and level 79 attack (Still using Abyssal Whip) or level 70 attack (Can use Abyssal Whip) and level 69 attack (still using that oldschool Dragon weaponry) are far greater (in terms of how much it boosts your ability in combat) than any other single attack level-up.

=== [[Role -Playing Game]] ===

* In ''[[EarthboundEarthBound]]'', any level-up that's not a multiple of 4 can be very wimpy. You might get as little as only a single point increase to your max HP.

* ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' is the [[Trope Maker]]. While early-edition clerics and magic users could gain new spells with every few levels, fighters and thieves were mainly stuck with the standard increase in attack bonus, saving throws and hit points that everyone got upon leveling up, in addition to increase in skill percentages if you were playing a thief. Combine this with increasingly-horrifying supernatural enemies against whom sharp-sword-swinging was a decreasingly recommendable tactic ([[Demonic Spiders|powerful undead in particular]], whose [[Level Drain]] attacks didn't care a whit about your armor and [[The Virus|turned anyone they killed into more of them]]), and it wasn't too long before the [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]] thing took hold (course, there were some enemies that were very resistant if not immune to magic, so the casters weren't immune either). Each edition has attempted to fix this, but ultimately only succeeded in making the problem worse. It is such that in 3rd/3.5 if you are not a caster you are required to take short dips in many different classes - something that only works because the martial classes are front loaded in addition to being loaded with empty levels. In 4th you might get features, but rarely are these features actually meaningful in any way. So not only are you required to heavily optimize your character just to keep your attack up at the same rate that enemy defenses scale, but you are most likely still using low level abilities to do this as the higher level abilities are not even necessarily better!

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