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

[MerricB]

Iliad: Ares is hacking through the Greek army on the field of Troy. Athena buffs the Greek hero Diomedes - "guiding his spear" - Diomedes proceeds to pwn Ares, dispelling the God of War and sending him howling back to Olympus.

Iliad: Aphrodite sees a beloved Trojan hero (Aenas?) in trouble, so she manifests to protect him. A Greek hero (Achilles?) stabs her in the hand and she dispels, crying like a girl as she flees back to Olympus. Make love not war, Aphrodite.

It's Diomedes again. (And, yes, Aeneas. Eventual founder of Rome, if you want to believe Virgil. I don't.)

"Now as manslaughtering Ares caught sight of Diomedes the brilliant, he let gigantic Periphas lie in the place where he had first cut him down and taken the life away from him, and made straight against Diomedes, breaker of horses. Now as they in their advance had come close together, Ares lunged first over the yoke and the reins of his horses with the bronze spear, furious to take the life from him. But the goddess grey-eyed Athene in her hand catching the spear pushed it away from the car, so he missed and stabled vainly. After him Diomedes of the great war cry drove forward with the bronze spear; and Pallas Athene, leaning in on it, drove it into the depth of the belly where the war belt girt him. Picking this place she stabbed and driving it deep in the air flesh wrenched the spear out again. Then Ares the brazen bellowed with a sound as great as nine thousand men make, or ten thousand, when they cry as they carry in to the fighting the fury of the war god. And a shivering seized hold alike on Akhaians and Trojans in their feet at the bellowing of battle-insatiate Ares."

Of course, Diomedes needs immortal help against Athene. And Aphrodite is something of a wimp.

[q]Edit: Maybe we have different definitions of 'mortal' - I'd say Elric at the end of Stormbringer was a 30th level PC; Achilles and Diomedes are high Paragon or conceivably early Epic, but definitely all three are still mortal. Hercules would be an Epic PC on the Demigod path, but is dead/ascended by the time of the Iliad.[/q]

By the time you're epic (or attic), you're not entirely mortal.

Cheers!

 

[keterys]

Then they need to readjust PC surges by tier. Monsters deal so much damage, I can run a party out of surges in 3 encounters. I'm having to give them surgeless heal options, and party surge management tools so they can go another encounter or two.

There are a _lot_ of surgeless healing options in powers and items, and a bucket of ways to generate temp hp and move surges around... it's definitely not that hard to have them by epic.

It's also okay for the PCs to alter tactics to adjust for excess surge loss (maybe that melee striker needs to hold back a little), or go into an important battle low on surges.

And, in epic, to just die sometimes. Or even often.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

Yes, [MENTION=65726]Mengu[/MENTION], this seems more like an issue with party tactics or encounter design. Especially at higher levels, even if following the monster design to the letter, a well-played party with a decent leader / controller / defender should be able to hit 5-8 encounters, one of which being difficult.

But again, that might be a stylistic thing. In one of the games I DM'd, the party only had maybe one encounter per week in game time. So, as some others have stated, you can simply nerf monsters or encourage your players for more tactical play.

 

[pemerton]

4E, with its Mortal World/Feywild + Shadowfell/Astral Sea split, even if it is more in my head than actual, works conceptually for me, providing "sandboxes" for adventuring that are separated.

Although the sandboxes are separated, to provide a cohesive framework for the entire campaign you need threads that tie them together.

<snip>

Something that *should* be there in more D&D games - certainly it's something that isn't as present in my own - is the influence of the gods of the PCs. If, in the epic levels, the PCs will become agents of the gods, then this really needs to be set up earlier. If a PC has a patron deity, surely that deity needs to be a little more patron-y? You know, saving the PC at various times, talking to him or her and setting quests, and suchlike. (This, of course, assumes you play the D&D game with the 'active gods' that become a part of the campaign in the epic tier).

This has been a big part of my game. The paladin of the Raven Queen has used Religion skill to commune in various ways and channel the Raven Queen's will, and is now a Questing Knight; the wizard who was multi-classed as a cleric and is now an invoker and Divine Philosopher was returned from death by Erathis to perform a quest involving the Rod of 7 Parts; and the dwarven fighter who is also a Warpriest of Moradin was brought his holy symbol by some dwarven refugees who had been given it by an angel of Moradin who directed them to where a warpriest could be found who would aid them, and to whom the symbol should be presented.

Even the chaos sorcerer is part of a secret society of drow dedicated to the worship of Corellon and to the undoing of the sundering of the elves, and wears a mask of Ioun (adapted from an item in a d20 module "Wonders Out of Time). And when he became a Demonskin Adept he woke from a terrible dream involving the Queen of Chaos to find a symbol of chaos emblazoned on one of his demon skins, and the same symbol emblazoned also on the inside of his eyelids (I thought this made sense, given that at 16th level a Demonskin Adept who scores a crit becomes blinded).

I like the 4e core mythology (both as presented in the PHB/DMG, and as expanded in the various supplements - especially Underdark, The Plane Above and Demonomicon) because it strongly supports this sort of stuff being a central part of the game. It is a mythology that is sufficiently generic and cliched to be easy for players and GMs to get a handle on and put to work, while also being sufficiently rich in terms of potential conflicts and resolutions to make for good game play. Like many aspects of 4e, and unlike many asepcts of earlier editions, I feel that it has been written with less of a focus on how it will read as a story or world description, and more of a focus on how it provides useful game elements that are easy for participants (both players and GMs) to incorporate into play.

Gods are something of a problem in D&D because you really need to run them as gods, and not just as really powerful monsters.

<snip>

Gods need to be mighty; they need to be feared.

My rule of thumb is this: God vs mortal? God wins.

By the time you're epic (or attic), you're not entirely mortal.

This suggests that you approve of the mechanical protection that at least some 4e gods enjoy - of immunity to attacks from non-epic creatures. Is that right?

In my own campaign, based on its current trajectory (still in early paragon), I would expect Lolth, Vecna, Tharizdun and/or Torog to be possible targets of epic PC violence.

Since the Greek gods are unkillable, I guess you could treat Ares & Aphrodite at Troy as Aspects/Avatars of the actual deities, although that's not how they're described. The description of them being dispelled back to their 'home plane' is a lot closer to the pre-3e D&D approach.

And to 4e's discorporation, I think.

 

[Kerranin]

In 4e it's pretty weak - kills minions on a hit, but even post errata it won't kill non-minion gnolls. Even vs minions it's far weaker than spells which create zones and do start-of-turn automatic damage.

Yeah, 4e Stinking Cloud in enclosed caves just ruled - everyone else was just there to do clean up. (it was a specific situation where it was perfect)

I am playing in two campaigns which are just about transitioning to paragon, and this does seem like a good time. (In one of them we're even running Trollhaunt.)

 

[keterys]

Fireball shouldn't be a daily - really, dailies shouldn't be "one big hit", there's not enough there to work with.

Now, as an encounter power it's just fine. If Fire Burst had the "Half damage" that they'd started doing for wizard encounters, it'd be a fine encounter fireball.

 

[Kerranin]

In future campaigns I'm halving all monster hit points. This should keep fights shorter, so less use of healing surges, and it also encourages use of direct-damage effects over nerf effects, making combat quicker still.

You could also add regeneration too. This wouldn't increase their total HP but would encourage the players to deal damage as fast as possible.