Re-visiting the Tiers

[I'm A Banana]

Or...what the heck does "paragon" mean, anyway?

So, there's folks who appreciate the "common folk" gameplay, where you are a guttersnipe who kills dire rats and a goblin (if yer lucky) at level 1.

There are also folks who appreciate the "wahoo" high-level gameplay, where you slay gods and save the universe from Asmodeus and ascend to become king of all you survey and you can chop the tops off of mountains with a stroke of your sword.

There's also folks who appreciate a broad swath of things in between.

So, the idea here is to re-visit what the tiers kind of signify in the feel of a game. I feel that 4e, when it introduced the concept, deliberately skewed to the upper end of the possible spectrum, ignoring some of the lower end, but I don't think that's smart to continue to do.

To hit the broadest swath, I'd imagine maybe four teirs:

1. Common Tier: You're a town guard, or a street rat, or perhaps some lowly apprentice. You might be an especially skilled turnip farmer, but the tough town blacksmith might still be able to kick your butt, and you're certainly scared of single combat with an orc.
2. Adventurer Tier: Well, you've killed an orc or two in your day. You're competent and capable, well-trained and skilled. You're a veteran, a trained soldier, an elite member of your society. You might be a guild thief, or a promising young wizard. You know what you're doing, and most folk in the town can't easily match your skill, though perhaps a few especially notable individuals can.
3. Heroic Tier: You've slayed a dragon or two. Your reputation has spread pretty far and wide, you are known as a capable, competent individual, someone to be admired and looked up to. Perhaps you rule over a large area, attracting followers, gaining reputation, listening to bards sing your praises. You are perhaps the greatest of your generation, the most skilled in the age, the only one capable of changing the world you live in these days. You're more than capable of handling a few orcs.
4. Epic Tier: You've entered the realm beyond mortal skill. You are perhaps the greatest talent in your field who has ever lived, and perhaps the greatest that ever will. Your abilities are tinged with the supernatural, even if you are a normal person -- you can shape landscapes, alter weather, and change the world on a whim. Affecting worlds beyond your own is well within your abilities, and by the time you're done, the gods themselves will have cause to worry about you if they oppose you.

What's your idea?

 

[Stormonu]

I think I'd rank the tiers as:

Beginner: Your just starting out and getting your footing. Everything is new, and anything can conceivably kill you.

Adventurer: You've been at this long enough you know what your doing and you're generally better at it than most. Things may kill you, but it's not as easy as it was just a few levels ago.

Heroic: You've been doing this long enough to have built up a reputation - and enemies. You're more likely to succeed than fail and you can honestly say you're better than just about any other "common" individual or opponent you'd likely meet. It takes a special foe to challenge you these days.

Legendary: You aren't just adventuring for scraps of treasures in musty old dungeons any more. You've advanced to making a lasting impression on this world - building a keep, temple or tower. Perhaps it has become time to rule a kingdom - or two. Perhaps, you will establish a dynasty. Your enemies are now no longer individuals - they are tribes, armies and nations.

Epic: The fleeting mortal realm no longer holds your interest. You will go down in legends as a slayer of monsters, a ravager of kingdoms or perhaps even a god. Your enemies are eternal - demons, devils and those that would be gods; or those who would cast them down.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Honestly, I think that getting into five "tiers" of gameplay is a bit much. I'm not crazy about even having four, but I think KM's distinctions are solid enough that I'm okay with it.

The problem with any tier system, though, is that gameplay doesn't actually change between one level and the next. It's a lot more gradual. Each tier is really a continuum, not a point, and it varies by group. But since there's no real good way to model that, I think a division of three or four is the right way to go.

I also think that there's no need for the tiers to all be of the same level. Using KM's example (and assuming, just for the sake of argument, 30 total levels), I can see the Common Tier only incorporating levels 1-5. (Or even less.) Adventurer and Heroic, 10 each. Epic 26-30.

Or something like that. The precise spread doesn't matter so much as the idea that the length of the tier should be determined by what's thematically appropriate, not by a requirement to have them all be identical. And I think it's safe to say that once you've got even a few levels under your belt, you're beyond the Common Tier.

 

[Stormonu]

Actually, I see the Legendary/Epic covering the same levels, but being two distinct approaches.


I would think Epic would play more to the "Let's go adventuring" sort of play, where Legendary would focus on world-building. I see no reason players couldn't freely switch between the two, but I think the feel would very, very different.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]
I've seen this argument in several posts and I wonder if it's a sentiment you share? Basically the argument is that level 1 should be gritty peasants as you describe; the rationale being that if a group wants to play as higher powered adventurers out the gate they can simply start play at, say, level 5. However, the argument goes, if they make PCs competent adventurers from level 1, then there's no recourse for folks who want a grittier level 1 game.

However, increasing level increases complexity for most classes in most editions (the BX fighter and rogue being the main exceptions). I'm assuming that this will be true in 5e.

Say I am running a game for friends who aren't hardcore gamers who want to kick ass without worrying about death around every corner; they want to play heroes like in the movies not dungeon survival horror...
...and if starting at level 5 were the way the rules let us accomplish that...
...then the players have a really sharp learning curve to overcome with the character options (unless you make the first 5 levels really simple...in which case there isn't a sense of character advancement).

I'd like for both "gritty peasant with a sword" and "skilled adventurer starting out" to be accommodated at level 1, but it sure seems tricky to do.

Personally I'd be happy if they abandoned "tiers", both the terminology and the concept.

 

[Mengu]

I'm wanting there to be serious breaks in power, between the tiers. I'd like to see 5 levels of Apprentice. This would be where a DM could run some background building stuff for campaign. Then there would be maybe a year break in game, where the DM/players can narrate more apprenticeship stories that get the PC's to heroic level 1. The Apprentice tier is basically a prologue.

From there, I'd like to see maybe 10 levels of Heroic play. This would be the meat and potatoes of a campaign, where the story evolves, PC's begin to influence significant events, develop stronger personalities, make friends and enemies, and work towards an endgame. Some campaigns might certainly come to a conclusion at the top of heroic tier. Other campaigns might start book 2. There would be a break again before book 2, where the heroes travel the land, forge alliances, gather followers, and the like.

Book two would be about 5 levels of paragon play. There would be a big power jump again between the last level of heroic and first level of paragon. But during the paragon adventures where heroes help shape the world, they don't progressively gain that much power, they are sort of maxed out, on their adventuring and fighting abilities. The rules at this point would add more diversity instead. A fighter already knows everything there is to know about using his sword by this point. But he might begin to learn a few prayers to bolster his followers. Conversely, a wizard still has much magic to learn, but he has completed all he can do for enchantments, so he might begin studying divinations for scrying on his enemies (or his questionably loyal apprentice). Alternatively he could learn to mix some swordplay with his sorcery. I see this tier as more diversification, than getting more pluses.

Then you could move onto book 3, the Epic tier, after either a break, or perhaps some significant event. Perhaps Tiamat tears the veil between the abyss and the primal world, and a war must be fought against an army let by his avatar. Whatever the adventure is, it might involve fighting other worldly creatures, avatars, beings of incredible power that threaten the very existence of the PC's plane. So the PC's might get blessings of the gods, or be made angels, or those with a darker side might fuse themselves with the powers of a demon, or perhaps in an effort to go all out in flames, a sorcerer might become a primordial being of flame in the process. This is all story that can be narrated to explain getting to Epic tier. Epic tier obviously again involves some significant increase in power. Those daily fireballs might become at-will. With the blessing of Bahamut, that dragonborn paladin may gain a decimating breath weapon, his sword becomes a thing of pure energy, and his will becomes near untouchable. For me, these would be the tools for epic play.

So what I want to see is that going from Apprentice level 5 to Heroic level 1, should not feel like going from level 5 to level 6. It should feel like going from level 1 2e character to level 1 4e character. For paragon levels I don't want paragon level 1 and paragon level 5 to be all that different in ability to win fights. I want it to be different in amount of flexibility. I see paragon as sort of a plateau for fighting abilities, but an opportunity for developing story and additional abilities. For epic, I want a big power jump from paragon, basically with the PC's becoming superheroes.

Unfortunately, I don't think the traditional leveling system of D&D can deliver this experience for molding each tier into a story. When you are gaining d8 hit points per level, a steady increase in attack and defenses, it's difficult to create power plateaus and power spikes.

Throwing together some random numbers for power level (add a few zeros if you want to think DBZ'ish), here is what I would like to see:

[sblock]
A1 - 21
A2 - 22
A3 - 23
A4 - 24
A5 - 25
H1 - 50
H2 - 55
H3 - 60
H4 - 65
H5 - 70
H6 - 75
H7 - 80
H8 - 85
H9 - 90
H10 - 95
P1 - 96
P2 - 97
P3 - 98
P4 - 99
P5 - 100
E1 - 210
E2 - 220
E3 - 230
E4 - 240
E5 - 250
[/sblock]

 

[SensoryThought]

For me the 3 tiers of 4e work well. It allows for campaigns to have 3 chapters, and 3 is a great number in stories.

The first chapter is the origin story.
The second chapter is where the heroes face some new and unexpected danger and while they may win the battle, they far from win the war (or end at a dark point, Empire style).
The third chapter is the resolution.

You can argue about the numbers and execution in 4e, but I am comfortable with the premise.

 

[delericho]

For the standard game, I would suggest the following:

Levels 1-5 are the, um, mundane tier: characters are basically just town guards, apprentice mages, low-rent thugs, and the like.

Levels 6-15 are the heroic tier, which is more or less as understood from 4e - the characters are "a cut above", but still distinctly human. They're the Black Company, or the Three Musketeers, or whatever.

Levels 16-25 are the paragon tier, which is again more or less as in 4e - the characters are clearly superhuman, but they're still recognisable. They're Aragorn, or Lancelot, or the like.

Levels 26-30 (or 35, whatever) is the Epic tier. Characters here are essentially demigods, the best of the best, and do six impossible things before breakfast. They're Leonidas, or Achillies, or Gandalf.

But...

For the Starter Set, replace the mundane tier with a Beginner tier, where characters are much the same (they have the same lower level of complexity, the reduced number of powers, and so on), but they're much more resilient (they have a lot more hit points, when knocked unconscious make 5 saves before death, have extra uses of second wind, or whatever).

This effectively allows new players to play the same game as the more experienced players, and it allows them to jump in at 1st level just the same, while avoiding the high lethality of pre-4e low level play (which was surely a turn-off for some players - losing your wizard in the first round of your first combat before even getting to act must suck!). And then, once they've learned the game and are ready, they can step up to the Heroic tier and move seamlessly to the harder difficulty level.

(Essentially, then, playing at the Beginner tier is like playing at the Easy difficulty setting in a video game.)

Oh, and one more thing...

It would be extremely beneficial if the game would include easy rules for quickly jumping in at the "first" level in each of the tiers - basically, it should be just as valid to start the campaign at the Paragon tier as it is at level 1.

And, indeed, it would be good if they built in an E6-like model, where at levels 6, 16 and 26 you can choose not to move up to the next tier, but instead continue playing at the same tier indefinitely.

 

[Minigiant]

Well let me get in here so people can say my version of epic is crazy.

Common: You are NOT an adventurer. You are a normal citizen of wherever you reside, maybe a town guard, petty thief, or local craftsman or bureaucrat. You hide or die when the trouble starts. You give the heartbreaking stories when the real heroes so up and can barely help if possible at all.

Adventurer: You are an adventurer but no hero yet. You are fresh from training or hardened by battle lucky to be alive at this point. You are a true member of your class but a minor one. Your name is known but just as easily forgotten as you have done nothing of worth.

Heroic: You have completed a hard task or are on the path to doing so. By now, you are well known in a community or two and made contacts, friends, and enemies. You are a hero or villain and have many of the archetypical feature of your description.

Paragon: You are a legendary and bards have written songs and stories about you if your tale is not kept secret. You have done deeds that attract the attention of kings or at least given your name in the pages of powerful beings you don't know. Your actions alter nations and change the landscape of the world without just being in the right place at the right time. You can actively alter the world.

Epic: You have crossed the threshold or mortality or are one your way. This is because you have superpowers that earn you your own piece in the massive cosmic game. The true kings and queens of the world; deities, archdevils, demons princes, archfey, and the like, weigh your possible actions into their plans.

Cosmic: The divine and primordial are your equals. You are no longer an actor, you are one of the many directors and producers. Your actions can warp the universe you promote and deflate others. You have no king only allies.

 

[Rampaging Lawn Gnome]

I prefer 3 tiers, maybe a 4th for mundane (as decribed up thread). One idea I've been mulling is to have each of the 3 tiers correspond to the number of d20s to roll on attacks/skills, take highest, to model the PCs increased ability, but keeping the numbers down:

Heroic - 1d20
Paragon - 2d20
Epic - 3d20

I haven't done the math to know if it is a worthwhile idea or not, but it would certainly give a different feel to each of the tiers.