Does 4e have a sweet spot?

[S'mon]

Since most of the responses are "yes," this must be Andy Collins' least favorite ENWorld thread ever.

The obvious problem with 1st level is that there are no "negative level" monsters, and you have to get to 3rd level before you're considered worthy of facing a non-minion Orc or Hobgoblin. I really don't like the "5 hits to kill a kobold" feel of 1st level 4e, and I've seen others complain about this also. It was poor design IMO.

Edit: By contrast, 1st level non-minion goblins make great foes for 4th-5th level PCs, they have just the right levels of Threat and Squishiness to be satisfying.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

As a DM, I did feel limited by monsters for level 1 characters back during my first campaign ... but then, I was limited to the Monster Manual 1 creatures. I bought the initial heroic tier modules just to expand my monster options. Now with the compendium on side I'd feel pretty comfortable creating a variety of encounters for a very low-level party.

 

[Kingreaper]

The obvious problem with 1st level is that there are no "negative level" monsters, and you have to get to 3rd level before you're considered worthy of facing a non-minion Orc or Hobgoblin. I really don't like the "5 hits to kill a kobold" feel of 1st level 4e, and I've seen others complain about this also. It was poor design IMO.

Edit: By contrast, 1st level non-minion goblins make great foes for 4th-5th level PCs, they have just the right levels of Threat and Squishiness to be satisfying.

This is actually something I've been thinking of working on, making a set of -1 and 0-level monsters.

But I'm not sure if enough people would find it useful to make it worthwhile.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, I have never really liked 1st and 2nd levels and 4E is no exception. For 4E, I like 3rd or 4th to start, and wold be happy to go up to most levels, but am a bit leery of Epic. So for me I guess the sweet spot is about 3rd to 16th or so. AT 16th, you can deal with some pretty scary foes, but there are still bigger things out there.

 

[Celebrim]

Sweet spot by edition:

1st: 3rd-10th
2nd: 3rd-12th
3rd: 3rd-12th
4th: 5th-20th

My homebrew: 1st-10th(?)

I don't really play 4e, but I think the general consensus is that it has a sweet spot but that the difference between the non-sweet spot and the sweet spot is smaller than in prior editions. I haven't heard alot of good things about the Epic tier. Most concensus seems to be that the PC's get to be overpowered, and that combat is long but rarely if ever actually threatening.

I also think that it would be easier to fix the Epic Tier in 4e than it is to fix high level play in any other edition.

So, in short, I don't think 4e got everything wrong, but neither did it get everything right.

 

[Kerranin]

IME GMing and playing 4e the sweet spot seems to start around 4th, maybe 3rd, exactly the same as in 3e and 1e-2e. But I haven't GM'd or played high enough levels to know whether/when it caps out. If it follows the 1e-3e precedents that'd be around 8th-10th; but 4e was supposedly designed to avoid that, but then so was 3e.

I have the same lack of experience at higher levels, despite having played 4e almost solidly for 14 months now. I have heard many complaining about Paragon tier and above being progressively more grinding, and also not really threatening players. I believe WotC were trying to resolve some of that with the changes in MM3, any views on their level of success?

 

[malraux]

I think the other way of putting it is that after 2 years of playing roughly weekly, I feel like the first month was a little off, but since then its been great.

 

[Badwe]

I've only ever seen up to level 9 in 4e (both as a DM and player) but i'm hoping to break beyond that and on to paragon. That being said, some of the articles related to the essentials line hint at the designer's own opinion. It was said somewhere in all of the info that heroic tier probably takes too long, paragon is possibly too short, and epic should probably only be 5 levels instead of 10. So, take that in what sense you will.

I have definitely had the struggle at low levels for a decent variety, and most of my player time is RPGA which seems to have the same problem (sending level 3 soldiers at a level 1 party is often a recipe for disaster). Hopefully, some of the revamped monsters can help offset this issue. I would posit that heroic tier could flow more nicely if more of the 1-10 monsters had less HP, did more damage, and did fewer oddball things. maybe a maximum of 1 gimmick per monster, with brutes and soldiers possibly having no gimmicks aside from things like marking, an encounter power that is just more damaging/hits more targets, or something that comes with the racial kit (shifty, warrior's surge, etc.)

 

[ProfessorCirno]

As far as challenges for tiers go, it's important to note that later monster manuals are a lot better about it. The first one has it's shakiness in a few areas.

 

[Jhaelen]

The obvious problem with 1st level is that there are no "negative level" monsters, and you have to get to 3rd level before you're considered worthy of facing a non-minion Orc or Hobgoblin.

That's not been my experience. Maybe you've still been thinking in 3e terms?

My players had no trouble fighting level 5 monsters with their level 1 pcs. If level 1 monsters are used, they're either supposed to be easy encounters or to support tougher monsters along with minions.

Note, that this also matches the DMG advice on designing encounters. The templates use as much as (pc level +7) monsters for hard encounters!

It's the total xp budget for an encounter that shouldn't be much higher than (party level +2 or +3).
Again, using my players as an example: They had one level 5 encounter when they were level 1 and that one was really tough, and looked like a tpk in the making for a long time. But they prevailed and through excellent teamplay even prevented anyone from dying.

So, when looking for opponents for a level 1 party, you can use up to level 5 monsters without any problems. You can go even higher for hard encounters.