Does 4e have a sweet spot?

[Asmor]

For better or worse, many people believe 3rd edition had a sweet spot of somewhere in the 5th-15th range (depending on who you ask, the sweet spot might be higher or lower, broader or narrower, but pretty much always somewhere in that range).

My first long term 4th edition campaign started at 10th level, and went until 16th or so, and I was quite happy with it throughout that.

I haven't had a chance to play anything of higher levels, but I've run and played in games starting at level 1 and I find them... a pale comparison. As a player, the lack of options can be maddening (1 feat, 1 encounter, 1 daily, and no utility powers). As a DM, the lack of options can be maddening (i.e. normally you have a range of monsters available of plus or minus 5 levels from party level, but if the party's low level then that severely restricts the band you can grab monsters from).

I think my ideal level to start at would be 4. Players have 3 feats and a second encounter power, and will be getting a new daily as an imminent reward, and the DM would have access to monsters from nearly the entire heroic tier. Win/win.

As I said, I've enjoyed running levels 10-16 and haven't played any higher, so if there's an upper end to the 'sweet spot' I haven't experienced it yet.

 

[Storminator]

I've done one campaign 1st thru 8th, and every level was good. I've done 2 smaller ones up to 2nd and 3rd, and both of those were good.

If I keep playing low levels, I might start to run out of adventure/encounter ideas, but so far they've all been fun.

PS

 

[MrMyth]

I've played 1-20 or so, ran from 21-30 (and ran some at heroic levels and mid-Paragon).

I'm pretty happy with it throughout. However, I'm probably most a fan of mid-Heroic (where you are still early, but starting to get a handful of options and powers and such) and late-Paragon (where you've got you Paragon Path at full and builds start to feel 'complete'.

 

[Dausuul]

Based on what I've played, I would put 4E's "sweet spot"--well, right about where it was in 3E: levels 4-12 or thereabouts. Characters below level 4 have too few options. Above level 12, it gets more complicated than I really like, and the "wahoo" elements start to dominate.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My campaign has gone from 1 to 11 and I have to say I found the first half of the tier to be a more compelling gaming experience than the upper half. This can be contributed to several things (some of which are game-related, some of which are player related):

Starting around level 7 or so, PC and monster hit points had reached a high enough level where it would take a few more extra rounds to finish off combats. Each swing of a sword seemed to be less crucial, because it would remove a lower percentage of hit points from the total than they did at lower levels.

The reason for this is partly because damage for our players did not increase exponentially enough to offset the hit point gains for everybody. Most additional powers gained (the 2nd & 3rd Encounter, the 2nd & 3rd Daily) did not always increase damage for the attack, but rather gave additional effects instead. So player choice might have resulted in every single encounter power the PC had would all still do 1[W] + modifier. And because our players are not as savvy as others might be, they might not have used the special riders on the higher level encounter powers to generate the additional damage that could have been possible had they use them to their fullest potential. But at the same time, the additional hit point for everyone was still there to have to grind through. Thus the average damage players were doing was less than the average gain of hit points gained at each level, thereby making combats take longer and become less compelling.

At lower levels, it was possible for our striker PCs to take out the occasional monster in two shots if everything in their attacks worked out for the best (via action points, crits and bonuses gained to damage from other players) and they were attacking the right type of monster. At higher levels it was never possible... standard monsters would always seem to require at least four or five hits before dropping, regardless of how well players rolled and the type of PC doing it. And the opposite was even worse for monsters versus PCs.

*****

I'm thinking that for our particular group... the E6 concept might actually be more compelling for us to use. I know that in 4E it kind of got turned into the E10 concept (i.e Heroic tier only), but even that is too much for us. Our sweet spot seems to be in the 1st to 4th level range. I wonder what would happen if PCs and monsters just numerically stopped advancing past 4th level with the exception that the PCs could still gain their second Daily at 5th level and 3rd Encounter at 6th (so that they could at least gain a pair of new rider effects, which many powers are nothing more than). But by keeping hit point and damage levels at the most to 4th level, each attack would appear (if not outright actually have) more of an impact in a fight.

It'd be interesting to

 

[cdrcjsn]

I've found level 13 to be the same as level 18 in terms of combat. Level 1-2 flew by so fast that I didn't really feel like I was being held back by fewer choices.

The places where I felt a change in gameplay were the tier breaks (11, 21).

At 11 you get your paragon path stuff and the wider options definitely has an impact on play.

Likewise, the epic stuff has a slightly different beat in combats compared to paragon.

One big thing that's changed though as I went up higher in levels was that I was more willing to cast rituals. Once a ritual is 5 or more levels lower than your current level, the cost of casting it felt trivial.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Based on what I've played, I would put 4E's "sweet spot"--well, right about where it was in 3E: levels 4-12 or thereabouts. Characters below level 4 have too few options. Above level 12, it gets more complicated than I really like, and the "wahoo" elements start to dominate.

I'd go with 2 (i.e. your first Utility Power - but then I tend to choose versatile At Wills) to 15 (i.e. before that final Paragon Path feature turns up). And in 3e I'd go for 4 (again) to 10 (i.e. before 6th level spells) - with 12 being an absolute cap even if restricting to PHB spells - by 7th level spells I couldn't run the game at all.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

I've run a lot of 4e at a lot of different levels in the heroic and paragon tiers, and I can't say I've found a sweet spot yet. The play at all levels has been fun and exciting. I think that because the game scales up as you level up, and there are interesting things to do at each level, the old 3.5 sweet spot is less of an issue. For my group, anyway.

 

[Henry]

4E has a sweet spot: levels 1 through 30.

More seriously, I think they did a good job with spreading out the number range they wanted from bottom to top. For characters and monsters of similar level, you don't want bonuses to your die rolls for attack and skills much more than the max number that the die can roll, or else the disparity is so bad that some characters can be effective and a character of the same level is absolutely useless. It's why 4e wizards and barbarians don't differ by hundreds of hit points like they would in 3e, and why a wizard's to-hit with his spells will be in the ballpark of a barbarian's to-hit with his weapons.

I also think that delaying the physics-bending spells like fly and teleport work better for paragon than heroic. Hell, if they would have delayed Resurrection and cure aflliction till paragon, I wouldn't have batted an eye.

 

[Markn]

We wrap up out level 30 campaign tomorrow night.

I would say level 3-21 is the sweet spot. Level 1 and 2 work fine, but our group is pretty rules/tactics savy and prefer more options than what you get at these levels.

I have found the game a little less enjoyable at the Epic Tier, only because the PCs can break the game in so many ways that its tough to balance things (but only a little). I will say, though, that the Epic Tier is still better, IMO, than previous editions at high level and our next campaign will still go to level 30, its just not in the sweet spot after level 21.