D&D 5E Favourite Tiers of Play?

[S'mon]

Let's break this down BECMI style:

Basic - weak dungeon-crawlers (5e Tier I)
Expert - tough wilderness explorers and keep builders (5e Tier II) (4e Heroic)
Companion - lords of war, rulers of nations (5e Tier III) (4e Paragon)
Masters - interplanar Epic heroes (5e Tier IV) (4e Epic)
Immortals - gods

Been coming to a realisation lately that I no longer so much enjoy the Masters/Epic play in most campaigns. Been running Classic D&D in Mystara up to Companion level (15-25 in that set) and I enjoy the big battles, the rulership & such, but I have increasingly little desire to take it into interplanar save-the-multiverse stuff. And I just started a very World-bound 4e campaign that explicitly excludes the Epic Tier, being capped at 20 (end of Paragon in that system).
My two 5e campaigns (highest PCs 18th & 14th) actually are the ones I'm most excited at seeing in Tier IV, but really even there I'm doing more world-bound Paragon type themes than 4e Epic or BECMI Masters; I'm not expecting a lot of plane-hopping, and their Ultimate BBEGs may be more than mortal, but (as currently coneived) they are not true demon lords or gods.

Using the above metrics, what Tiers of play do you most enjoy GMing for and playing? Why?

 

[guachi]

I enjoy Expert the most - particularly the late Expert.

Though that's only because of what the players have done before. I think that late Expert/Companion should be a realization of all the heroic deeds the PCs have done before. The village rescued at level 2 becomes part of the PCs' domain at level 10. The Baron helped at level 5 provides troops in a war at level 15.

 

[S'mon]

I enjoy Expert the most - particularly the late Expert.

Though that's only because of what the players have done before. I think that late Expert/Companion should be a realization of all the heroic deeds the PCs have done before. The village rescued at level 2 becomes part of the PCs' domain at level 10. The Baron helped at level 5 provides troops in a war at level 15.

Yup, that feeling of "bringing the threads together" can be really cool - I've seen that in my 5e Wilderlands game, with the PCs building a disparate coalition over years of play to defeat the invading forces of Black Sun/Neo-Nerath. Or, equally, "watching it all fall apart" as mistakes made earlier snowball into catastrophe - as happened in
the previous 4e Wilderlands campaign that resulted in the triumph of the Black Sun & formation of the Neo-Nerath empire.

I think you're right about the timing for seeing this being in that late-Heroic/early Paragon sort of area.
That's when the PCs tend to see the fruits of their initial actions at the start of the campaign, and are still ied to the local area with an only somewhat larger sense of scale. In many campaigns the PCs outgrow their starter environment and the scale changes, around about early Tier 3/Companion/Paragon level seems typical, roughly 12th-15th depending on edition.

 

[guachi]

The frustrating thing is getting a campaign to run long enough to get to the higher levels. My current campaign I'm DMing had been going about six months of weekly sessions (with four sessions skipped for various reasons). The PCs have reached level five, which is probably an indication of the slower leveling I've been using. And now two of the players are quitting because the father, a Warrant Officer, is transferring.

 

[SmokingSkull]

I prefer higher levels, especially epic. Lower levels just aren't all that interesting to me, with their goblins and kobolds and local taverns needing the rats cleared out. They're too relatable, too small in scope, too mundane for me to enjoy to the fullest. The next tier up after that is hardly more interesting than the first, it's just a little bigger than the first what with instead of villages you got major cities and fiefdoms asking you and your party to help with the orc raid happening in a fortnight. The tier after that though starts to make things interesting, especially since at that point I feel PC's really begin to shine and become something more, and at this point the decisions of a party could affect an entire realm/nation.

Epic is well...epic, you could be facing demi-gods, dark armies hellbent on destroying everything, avatars of demon princes, real fate of the world in your hands type stuff. It's not that I cannot play in a lower level campaign, I just honestly don't enjoy lower levels all that much, too low power for me.

 

[Argyle King]

I prefer the lower levels. However, I wish there was a way to advance in D&D which encouraged breadth of play rather than just adding more numbers upon numbers. Epic levels are cool, but having every campaign be a race to save the world gets old quickly. I would find it more interesting if high level heroes were leading armies rather than fighting them.

 

[Raith5]

I prefer higher levels, including epic. Some editions do a better job than others in providing material and having mechanics and maths which allow high level play. I think 4e did a really good job at this but alas 10 levels of it was probably too much.

This poll also makes me wonder what basic style 4E would look like.

 

[S'mon]

Epic levels are cool, but having every campaign be a race to save the world gets old quickly. I would find it more interesting if high level heroes were leading armies rather than fighting them.

I agree about published campaigns. In my own games high level PCs frequently do lead armies - just had a huge battle in my Classic game finale (Companion/Paragon level PCs, levels ca 14-19) using the War Machine d% rules in conjunction with regular play.

Re breadth of play, advancement through feats & stat bumps a la E6 is a good approach and can be implemented at any level cap.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The frustrating thing is getting a campaign to run long enough to get to the higher levels. My current campaign I'm DMing had been going about six months of weekly sessions (with four sessions skipped for various reasons). The PCs have reached level five, which is probably an indication of the slower leveling I've been using. And now two of the players are quitting because the father, a Warrant Officer, is transferring.

You know, I haven't found this to be a problem in 5E. Rather the contrary. 5E advancement is extremely fast if you leave the XP table in its default configuration--sometimes, even a single adventure is enough to boost PCs several levels.

If they survive, I mean.

 

[discosoc]

I ran a much more details survey monkey poll on this with a few hundred responses. The main trends I found were:

1. Full-time DM's largely preferred Tiers 2 and 3. They found Tiers 1 and 4 the hardest, although very few had actual experience with Tier 4.
2. Players preferred Tiers 2 and 4, although very few had actual experience with Tier 4.
3. Tier 2 was where basically everyone was most comfortable.

All in all, I think the big takeaway was that Tier 4 is hard to design for and run, but everyone is interested in it "in theory." The more likely a player is to DM, however, the less likely they want to actually play in T4.