Diegetic Leveling in 5th Edition D&D
When a character reaches enough experience points in 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons they gain a new level. They gain more hit points and more class abilities are bestowed upon them by… the gods or something? They just kind of pick up new abilities along the way I guess? A wizard just somehow knows some new spells? Maybe they were studying them the whole time? I’m not entirely sure.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter. It’s a convention we’ve learned to accept. You gain more abilities when you level up. It doesn’t NEED to make sense. However, I think tying character advancement to things that happen in the world is interesting and more fun. When a Wizard finds an ancient scroll in a dungeon, and learns a spell through the fruits of his exploration, my heart sings. That is the stuff of legend and myth. That’s character advancement I can be into. Your character learns something in the story, and they grow from what happened in the story.
This kind of in-fiction happening, where the events of the narrative dictate the events of the game is sometimes referred to as ‘diegesis’. I am enamored with the idea of diegetic advancement, and I see no reason why we can’t apply this idea to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.
Diegetic Advancement
When your character levels up, gain more HP as normal, but you don’t gain any of your class abilities until you can justify learning them in the story. You must learn them from someone else, undergo training or a period of self-reflection. Each class has its own methods of advancement. Wizards search the world for spells, or duel other wizards to steal their knowledge. Perhaps they advance their skills at a wizard’s college. Fighters may seek out powerful opponents to test their mettle against in single combat, or seek out new fighting techniques from powerful fighters around the world. Warlocks patrons may require you complete a quest before being granted more power. An example of how this might work for rogues is listed below.
Montage-ing
Whenever your character learns new skills over a time period, for each skill or ability you have to montage it. That is, come up with a training sequence that shows your character learning the skill. The DM and player both collaborate to narrate a training sequence that makes sense for the advancement.
First, show your character as a beginner, then improving, then finally reaching mastery. Depict your mentor’s role in this training, if any. Are they supportive or abusive? Trusting or doubtful? Involved or disengaged?
Rogues & Guilds
Rogues learn their abilities by being a part of a guild. Guilds are clandestine organizations who teach the forbidden knowledge of crime, subterfuge and murder. Each has its own methods of advancement, their own ends and means.
Each guild is tied to one of the ‘Roguish Archetypes’ in the Players Handbook. In order to gain your roguish archetype at level 3, you must be a member of that guild. If you don’t have a guild membership, you level normally, but do not gain abilities from your roguish archetypes until you can gain membership or somehow steal that secret knowledge from those guilds.
The Thieves Guild
The Thieves Guild secretly works for the crown, although low level members of the guild do not know it. They commit covert criminal activities both in service to the crown prince, and also for their own monetary gain. The guild acts as a covert intelligence service and a crime family simultaneously. Their loyalty to the crown comes from the autonomy they are given to run a monopolistic criminal empire with little recourse. The members all get rich in return for keeping other criminal syndicates in check and for providing the crown prince with valuable information and wealth.
Guild member activities
- Act as spies, embedding themselves within the nobility, clergy, and military social circles to feed information to the crown.
- Take the fall for specific crimes, taking the heat off higher level members or allies to the crown. Guild members don’t spend long in the crown prince’s dungeons.
- Steal valuable treasures from nobility who the crown prince suspects of not paying their taxes.
- Steal dangerous magic items that might upset the balance of power in the city.
- Embed themselves in adventuring parties to direct their activities toward the guild’s and the crown prince’s own ends.
- Attack merchant caravans from other countries to wage economic warfare.
- Instigate violence in parts of the kingdom in order to justify increased military presence and raids.
- Assassinate rival heads of state.
The Assassins Guild
The Assassins Guild is a secretive order of killers whose legend stretches back into antiquity. The assassin’s guild operates in cells, where members only ever know their direct patron. The teachings of the guild are passed on as an oral tradition, which allows the guild to leave no written records of their existence. Their methods of contact are obscure, but most folks with money have heard rumors on how to mark someone for death by contacting a member of the guild via any number of strange rituals. Most common among them is the lighting of a black candle in your window.
The Assassins Guild seem to be merely contract killers, but they do serve a greater purpose. Each patron has their own patron back to a single person, known only as the architect. The architect issues their own orders down the chain in an elaborate centuries long game. Only the architect themself knows to what end they are directing the course of fate.
Guild Member Activities
- Making contact with patrons in order to get ‘marks’, and passing those instructions along to a patron.
- Impersonating a mark while another assassin kills them.
- Infiltrating a nobles house guard to compromise security for another assassin.
- Killing another assassin in order to cover the existence of the guild.
- A strange and uncharacteristic quest you suspect is an order directly from the architect.
Arcane Tricksters
You are trained at the wizard college to serve a newly graduated wizard as protection and espionage. Defending against your wizard’s spells being stolen, and stealing spells for your wizard in turn. You have two mentors, a master rogue in the employ of the wizard college, and your wizard (possibly another PC).
Guild Member Activities
- Guarding magic knowledge with traps.
- Infiltrating the coffers of a powerful wizard.
- Decoding or encoding encrypted magical knowledge.
- Providing a security detail for your wizard during a public appearance.
- Procuring rare spell ingredients.
Leveling Up
Level 0
Pick race and background
To level up - Play a session, or decide on a crime you committed that got the attention of one of the guilds.
Decide who your patron in the guild is, and why you have been marked for guild membership.
Level 1
Tentatively accepted into rogues guild, and receive initial training & equipment, you are also indebted to the guild. This takes 2 weeks.
Gain Expertise, Sneak Attack & Thieves’ Cant
To Level Up: You are given a mark, it should pay off some of your debts.
Thieves guild - A treasure to steal from a wealthy Nobel, and a sealed letter from his desk. Do not open the letter
Assassin’s guild - a wealthy merchant from out of town.
Arcane Trickster - Steal a scroll from a rival wizard.
Level 2
After your first successful mark, your patron shows you a secret technique of the guild. Spend two weeks of intense training.
Learn Cunning Action.
To Level Up: One last test. You are given a mark of higher importance.
Thieves Guild - Steal the dossier of a foreign diplomat visiting the kingdom. He must not know that the documents have been stolen
Assassin’s Guild - Murder a diplomat from a neighboring kingdom. He must appear to have arrived safely in his quarters.
Arcane Trickster - Steal a dangerous magic item from a prominent city official suspected of conspiring against the crown.
Level 3
You gain full membership into the guild. You can patronize other members, and you gain your roguish archetype features. 2 Weeks of training is required.
Thief - Fast Hands, Second-Story Work
Assassin - Bonus Proficiencies, Assassinate
Arcane Trickster - Spell casting - taught by both your wizard patron and the master rogue of the wizard college.
To Level
Strike out on your own and complete an adventure.
Identify an NPC who could either be a mark for your guild, or a recruit.