D&D 4E Is Paragon Tier the "sweet spot" of 4E? And other ruminations on the tiers

[keterys]

I think it's ridiculously group dependent - it's almost night and day the difference between high paragon through epic play with a group that tries to break the system, and one that is a lot friendlier about things.

Ditto, on the DM - one game might have you stunned and dazed and immobilized and weakened six ways through Sunday, but another might be pure damage. And whether marks are "extra followed" or monsters "go for the kill". Eh.

In my own games I tend to make 75+% of the monsters/traps/SkCs/etc I use, so epic wasn't any harder in that respect than heroic or paragon.

 

[Mirtek]

I actually prefer heroic tier. Level 6-10 are the best

 

[keterys]

My gut feeling is around level 4 through 14, though I suspect Dark Sun style themes might widen 1-3 a little bit - that said I've had a _lot_ of successful play much higher level than that, but it gets a bit crazy and variable on both PCs and adventurers so it just requires a little more attention to make it "less sweet". Not as crazy as things used to be, but there are a bunch of L16 features that drastically alter the game, and some of the items start getting verrry synergistic.

 

[Herschel]

I think Heroic and Paragon are quite nice where in Heroic you're the local heroes and at Paragon you're known throughout the land as being capable of taking on the baddest mamajammas roaming the joint.

For Epic, I've come to the thought that LFR has it right: one level per "adventure". This is where players are taking on the baddest of the bad in their Citadels, wiping out small armies in their way and eventually taking down elder evils and their ilk. Characters are on the fast track for immortality and become the stuff of legend. There's only so many world-threatening events and each one if, well, Epic in its scope.

 

[Argyle King]

I personally feel that the 'sweet spot' of 4 is somewhere between mid-heroic tier and level 12 or so.

I still enjoy the other levels, and I often enjoy the new options I get at higher levels, but -IMO- the monsters are still somewhat pathetic once you reach a certain point.

Yes, they now do higher damage. That does help. However, the new guidelines also mean many monsters now have lower defenses and lower HP -in conjunction with the PCs gaining stronger options. The higher damage of a dead monster doesn't make much of a difference in my experience.

 

[Marshall]

I think Heroic and Paragon are quite nice where in Heroic you're the local heroes and at Paragon you're known throughout the land as being capable of taking on the baddest mamajammas roaming the joint.

For Epic, I've come to the thought that LFR has it right: one level per "adventure". This is where players are taking on the baddest of the bad in their Citadels, wiping out small armies in their way and eventually taking down elder evils and their ilk. Characters are on the fast track for immortality and become the stuff of legend. There's only so many world-threatening events and each one if, well, Epic in its scope.

LFR has it right in the "One Adventure per Level", it falls apart at the "One day per level" that they are shoe-horning into that paradigm. At this point XP and XP budgets need to go away and be replaced with story considerations. The numbers are so large at this point they are meaningless anyway.

 

[keterys]

Not all LFR epic adventures will be over one day, but some of them will be. That said, it's a trope of _LFR_ to not have extended rests in the middle of adventures, not necessarily their epic campaign.

A home campaign DM has the ability to rejigger and rebalance things when PCs rest or don't rest at certain times. LFR DMs don't really.

 

[Herschel]

Yep. I'm not an XP guy in my home game either, nor are either of the two I play in regularly really. By Epic, I would think it completely natural to be done with strict XP tracking.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of not tracking XP and just leveling per adventure section. If I ran sandbox, might be different.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

I've run a few epic tier games, and in my experience the system has sort of grown beyond its own design. Even at paragon, depending on the type of game you wish to play, starts to become a little too wushu for many of my player's tastes.

Fortunately, in my epic games, I take the time to build up reasonable epic threats that can't even really be treated as single monsters. Certainly the players are powerful, quasi-deific, but it is their in-game knowledge and experience which makes them truly unique in the world.

I concur that the sweet spot is between 5-15, before too many things get out of hand. I prefer to DM and play in a simpler game, and have been running in an Essentials game recently (which is admittedly less tactical, but equally as fun in my experience). The biggest concern for me outside of heroic tier is that any sense of "grittiness" is difficult to obtain, as players are nigh indestructible if the party is built correctly. Of course, this can always be modified by using the deadlier, more wicked monsters; yet this brings a certain element into the game of increasing complexity simply for increasing's sake.