Staying Heroic!

[CapnZapp]

Anyone else feeling the levels go by far too fast?
And how relatively feature-poor the early levels are?

At least, that's how I feel after DM'ing a sandbox game. The characters are already level five, and yet there's so much more to do (exploration-wise, meeing NPCs, solving quests, etc). Already now, plot lines intended for levels one and two are starting to lose their relevance...

First I thought about reducing the XP gains, but that would only mean more time between each award (higher plusses, new powers, etc). This would be boring and a bit unfair.

Instead, it hit me to redo the Character Advancement table for the Heroic Tier.

Or rather, up until 13th level. That's when you no longer get more powers‡, you just upgrade the ones you've got. Why not make it so you reach this maximum in the number of powers you have sooner? Much sooner...

By this houserule, you don't need to play as many characters to get to try out several low-level powers!

    XP  Level  Powers and Features                                    Feats Known  Total Powers Known
     0    1st  class features; racial traits; train starting skills;       1†           2/1/1/0
               gain 2 at-will attack powers; gain 1 encounter attack
               power; gain 1 daily attack power; gain 1 feat
   500         gain 1 encounter attack power                               1            2/2/1/0
 1,000    2nd  gain 1 utility power; gain 1 feat                           2            2/2/1/2
 1,625         gain 1 daily attack power                                   2            2/2/2/2
 2,250    3rd  gain 1 encounter attack power                               2            2/3/2/2
 3,000         gain 1 daily attack power; gain 1 feat                      3            2/3/3/2
 3,750    4th  gain 1 utility power                                        3            2/3/3/3
 4,625         replace 1 encounter attack power                            3           2/3*/3/3
 5,500    5th  replace 1 daily attack power; gain 1 feat                   4           2/3/3*/3
 6,500         gain 1 encounter attack power                               4            2/4/3/3
 7,500    6th  gain 1 utility power                                        4            2/4/3/4
 8,750         gain 1 daily attack power; gain 1 feat                      5            2/4/4/4
10,000    7th  replace 1 encounter attack power                            5           2/4*/4/4
11,500         replace 1 utility power                                     5           2/4/4/4*
13,000    8th  gain 1 utility power; gain 1 feat                           6            2/4/4/5
14,750         replace 1 encounter attack power                            6           2/4*/4/5
16,500    9th  replace 1 daily attack power                                6           2/4/4*/5
18,500         replace 1 utility power; gain 1 feat                        7           2/4/4/5*
20,500   10th  gain 1 utility power                                        7            2/4/4/6
23,250                                                                     7            2/4/4/6
26,000   11th  paragon path features; replace 1 paragon path encounter     8           2/4*/4/6
               attack power; gain 1 feat
29,000         replace 1 utility power                                     8           2/4/4/6*
32,000   12th  gain 1 paragon path utility power; gain 1 feat              9            2/4/4/7

‡) As you can see, with this table, a character gets all his utility powers by twelfth level. Thus for levels 16, 22 and 26, you don't gain more utility powers, you just replace the one's you already got.

Because some classes and builds are fairly restricted in the powers they can take advantage of, I'd recommend you as the DM to allow powers from similar classes. What I mean by similar depends on your game, it could be by power source or by role.

If you have four players and they select one martial, one divine, one arcane, and one primal class; then I'd allow powers based on power source. But if the same players instead select one Defender, one Striker, one Leader and one Controller; I'd allow powers based on role instead.

As this recommendation has the potential to be unbalanced, you should make sure the players see what you're trying to do and that they accept there can be certain abusive combos you will deny them.

 

[keterys]

You almost always want to do powers by role, even if you have to spend a little time tweaking them to get them right.

 

[CapnZapp]

You almost always want to do powers by role, even if you have to spend a little time tweaking them to get them right.

Yeah. I wrote it the way I did because saying a Fighter could choose between "all" martial defender powers, a Cleric between "all" divine leader powers, and a Rogue among all martial striker powers would be too restrictive for some choices.

 

[keterys]

Yep - but fighters with Riposte Strike type powers is pretty mean

And eeeveryone with Twin Strike. But, stuff.

 

[Roger]

The characters are already level five, and yet there's so much more to do (exploration-wise, meeing NPCs, solving quests, etc). Already now, plot lines intended for levels one and two are starting to lose their relevance...

Can you go into a bit more detail about why the plot lines are becoming irrelevant? Thanks.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[Quickleaf]

I *think* I see what you're getting at, though it's not entirely clear from your post. You want to slow down level advancement while including more abilities gained at lower levels, is that right? And I'm assuming your players are on board with this idea, right?

The simplest way I can think of, though not necessarily appropriate for your style of play (I don't know), would be including more pure RP encounters and skill challenges and less combat.

I also remember seeing some great posts way back about making race for heroic tier what paragon paths are for paragon tier, and epic destinities for are epic tier. It doesn't have to be race, it could be, say, hometown, or some sub-class archetype.

So, you could use the chart you came up with, and just make the extras tied to a "Racial Archetype" or what have you.

 

[Garthanos]

I also remember seeing some great posts way back about making race for heroic tier what paragon paths are for paragon tier, and epic destinities for are epic tier. It doesn't have to be race, it could be, say, hometown, or some sub-class archetype.

So, you could use the chart you came up with, and just make the extras tied to a "Racial Archetype" or what have you.

Wow I really like that one...fits with the games design model nicely to have a sort of specialization at each tier.

 

[CapnZapp]

Can you go into a bit more detail about why the plot lines are becoming irrelevant? Thanks.

I *think* I see what you're getting at, though it's not entirely clear from your post. You want to slow down level advancement while including more abilities gained at lower levels, is that right? And I'm assuming your players are on board with this idea, right?

I can imagine I'm not the only DM who have taken one (or two) modules and based a sandbox game on their content. So the PCs follow up various leads and have a bunch of adventures.

Now, suddenly they're no longer low-level. What will you do with those adventures that you feel no longer are appropriate? This isn't WoW, where the developers can afford the luxury of having several quests (and even whole zones) of any given level.

It would be a shame to not use all those adventuring leads, so what do you do?

You could have the players roll up more characters; essentially going through the levels more than once. This might work, but in general is a bad idea - the players naturally want to focus on advancing their "main" character. At least for my group, even if we keep playing for a year, we will probably not have reached Epic levels. Leveling up "alts" is, simply enough, out of the question.

So you could reduce XP awards, leveling the PCs slower. With half XP, you can have double the adventure at any given level. And indeed, this is what I have done already. In my case, this means the PCs level approx. once every three or four weeks (and sessions). My players aren't complaining, though they do feel advancement should not get any slower. Getting the occasional "powerup" is, after all, an important part of the D&D experience.

Which leads me to the above solution.

If you can't reduce XP (further), and you still want to hand out a new toy now and then, you need to add more levels to the game. Which is what I've done - half levels, in fact.

Note I'm not saying the regular game is broken in any way. Just offering up a ready-to-use XP table for those who recognize in their own group some of the issues I've covered.

 

[keterys]

So... maybe the old level drain stuff was a feature?

 

[KarinsDad]

What will you do with those adventures that you feel no longer are appropriate?

Replace the challenges and treasure in them, but keep the same plot and physical environment.

Monsters too low level, replace with higher level equivalents, either the monster boosted levels or new monsters.

Treasure not enough, increase it.

Traps now powerful enough, replace them.