D&D 4E JamesonCourage's First 4e Session

[D'karr]

I think the Tier system really allows the DM to have a focused progression that helps with the organization of games. Epic is the most difficult because I really think that most players and DMs have too small of a scale of what is truly EPIC. Paragon was a lot of fun for me.

I've had several groups make it to Paragon level. With the last group I did something a bit different that made a huge difference for our play experience. I asked them when they reached 8th or 9th level to tell me what paragon path they were going to choose at 11th level. This took a bit of coaching/coaxing on my part. When they reached 10th level, I had 6 ready made quests for the group. At the end of each quest one of the characters would have had accomplished anything I thought would feed well into the paragon path they had chosen. For example I had a ranger character that wanted to be a Stormwarden so during 10th level the party spent time looking for the Stormwarden Organization in the feywild and one of the encounters explained how the ranger would be able to teleport with his new powers at 11th level. A warlock character wanted to be a Feytouched, so I spent time designing her actual Fey Patron, and developing a relationship during this quest. The madness that followed was really an awesome bit of roleplaying on her part. Play went on like this with each adventure/quest touching on one, or at times, two of the characters. When all the quests were completed they all leveled to 11th and where able to begin their paragon paths. It was quite satisfying.

During the Paragon Tier they spent time attempting to discover the secrets of the lost gods in a place called the Seat of the Stars (the equivalent of an Astral Sea Dominion). They traveled to the Black Library (sort of a repository of all knowledge in the universe) and encountered its guardian, which they can't defeat at paragon level. This will feed into Epic later on.

I made the last 4 levels of Paragon Tier be a prelude to the campaign arc which I had planned for Epic, where one of the lost gods returns and usurps the power of the time lord.

I think I enjoyed the last 2 levels of Heroic and the entirety of Paragon the best. The PCs are hardy enough that I could pretty much take off the kids gloves and make the game a serious challenge without having to worry about continuity due to a TPK.

One of the cool things about paragon is also that the PCs had much more free reign to do whatever the heck they wanted. This was liberating, and sometimes frustrating, but it was never dull. It is also important to have the gameworld attitudes change towards these larger than life heroes. Regents of countries would have given their right hand to have these heroes help them. This really started to show the difference between tiers. When they were usually scrounging about and trying to get cooperation from mayors, minor governors, and dukes in Heroic, at Paragon the tables flip. Make that obvious.

I would say that my only complaint with paragon had to do with encounter pacing. The party has so many resources that things can drag as the monsters also have a lot of resources. Keep that in mind. Don't let combats get boring. Hit them hard and hit them often but don't be afraid to "kill off" the opposition when the pacing is slowing down, preferably before the pacing does slow down. I particularly remember one fight in which the players were missing a lot (extremely poor rolls) I was starting to sense that this combat was going to drag, so I simply cut the enemies HP in half. This improved the pacing admirably, and still kept the tension level. So don't be afraid to fudge for pacing reasons. Minions and quasi minions (two hit wonders) are also your friend in this tier, use lots of them. Nothing beats 5-6 minions hitting the same character for a total of 60+ points of damage. And the look on the player's faces when they still have 20+ more opponents to go through is classic. In addition don't be afraid to level down some of the Epic Tier creatures, or level up some of the late Heroic Tier creatures for use during paragon.

Paragon for me has always been a prelude to Epic so the same thing I did for getting to paragon is what I plan for epic. Find out their desired Epic Destiny and plan the last few adventures of paragon for that.

Good Luck with your game.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Don't have a ton of time but here is a real low-res, top-down view of Paragon. If you've got any questions afterward, I'll try to give you some focused answers.

Sweet! Thanks for taking the time

On Theme

The 4e tier system is predicated on a save the town/village/area (Heroic), save the nation/empire (Paragon), save the world/cosmos (Epic). So, given that, your antagonists and the conflict should be escalating accordingly; eg coven of witches and their vampire overlords secretly hold sway over the three kings of tri-nationville. My last Paragon tier game was very much focused on two things; massed barbarian invasion and the disunity/tribalism of the ranger lodges that were originally constructed to stem the tide of such an invasion + the political corruption within the senate and the navy of a powerful nation and its imperial hubris. Of course, the PCs were tied to various bits and bobs of this via their Paragon Paths, Quests, and general backstory.

Okay, sounds good. Move focus from "help nation" or "save town" (as they've done so far) towards "unravel plot that puts nation in jeopardy and stop it" or "save nation/empire that's already in peril." That should be a lot of fun, too!

My advice would be to solicit their feedback on where they want the game to go, find out what Paragon Paths and Quests they want to pursue (you've done a great job of this in the Heroic Tier - just continue that), and just push play toward the conflicts embedded in those things.

I already have an idea on their Paragon Paths (as they've expressed them to me), and I'll be using level 10 as a transition point into Paragon.

(1) The mul (half-dwarf in my campaign world) Warpriest of The Raven Queen has indicated that he wants to go into Soul Reaper. This definitely builds on his undying devotion to The Raven Queen, and it'll be easy for me to keep up with this narratively. I'll just have to up the focus and stakes.

(2) The dwarven Knight / Paladin of Kord is going to be going into Lyrandar Wind-Rider, which will be reflavored into specific Paladin training from Kord Clan. So I'll need to up the narrative ties to Kord. Easy easy.

(3) The wilden Scout / Druid is most likely going to be entering either Guardian of the Living Gate (a druidic order that's bent on fighting back the Far Realm invasion) or Herald of Madness (meaning that he'll fall deeper into the Far Realm madness, but he'll use it to fight the Far Realm). Either way, I'll need to start having the Far Realm play a big part in the narrative. And that will be fun.

(4) The half-elf water Elementalist / Skald is going to be going into Blizzard Mage. She'll still be an NPC with the party, so I don't really think I'll need to focus on her stuff too much, but I'll keep some elementals involved, which should tie things together nicely once we finally hit Epic Tier. Not that I have plans, or anything...

Keep a lot of, hopefully player authored, Minor Quests in play to focus each session and Major Quests to focus the tier.

This is interesting. The Major Quest focusing on tier sounds like good advice, but I'm hesitant to give players self-authored Minor Quests. They're already highly motivated to RP in their area, and I've liked using Minor Quests to prod them the ways that make GMing easier for me. That'd be a tool I'd hate to lose.

Also, I'm not sure they'd be good at giving themselves Minor Quests. For example, the Warpriest might give himself "get the Third Truth before Vecna does" as a quest, but since I'm sticking to the wealth guidelines, that's probably 4-5 levels away. He doesn't know this (none of the players are at all familiar with anything GM-side in 4e; monster templates, wealth guidelines, etc.), so wouldn't know that it might be more prudent to take something more accessible. I could tell him, but this is just example. I'd have to let players know if certain quests were within the right scope (focus on this session, not too huge, etc.) and possibly correcting them a lot. At that point, it makes me wonder, why not give them Minor Quests (like I did all the time for the first five levels ish) and just keep guiding them with the carrot? Thoughts?

If your players are particularly proactive, let them compose an off-screen vignette that will convey the antagonists or thematic conflict that they're interested in engaging with in Paragon Tier. They can convey that to the group at the first session and you can use that to riff off.

They're proactive, but in an in-character and "I need a world to riff off of" sort of way. We have one pretty established as of this point. I think they'll pick something they can all agree on, and I might just ask them which way they want to go as characters once we hit Paragon. I can work with that

On Mechanics

The PCs will become much more hardy, robust and versatile in their suite of abilities. More powerful status effects will become the norm. Their novas will become more potent. You're going to want to:

1) Use more Hazards/Traps to fill out your encounter budget. Stuff that keeps combat dynamic, mobile, threatening and forces the PCs to "deal" without smashing through HPs.

More active traps and hazards. That sounds fun... I'll have to get creative! But it should make things lively.

2) Construct some of your important monsters (Leaders/Elites) with some Encounter Power (free action) that let them roll a saving throw at the start of their turn versus a brutal effect.

Looks like status effects will get vicious, huh? I'll keep this in mind.

3) Use Swarms and break them out at Bloodied (as you said).

Break them out at Bloodied? I'm not 100% what you mean here.

4) Always use Challenging Terrain, Terrain Powers, and assets that players can stunt off of.

I made a more conscious effort to provide this earlier on, and they'd use it occasionally. I'll try to make sure to do this again, because it was fun. And this should be interesting with some traps or hazards

5) Up your standard Encounter Budget by + 1 for normal fights and probably + 2 for tough fights.

I've read about a slow increase as the PCs level up. I'm expecting to have to do this.

6) Make heavy use of Skill Challenges and eat away their Healing Surges on failures. They should have ample opportunities for parlays with powerful enemies, neutral factions that they wish to turn to their side, and appeals to big-time power brokers (kings, etc).

More social skill challenges! Hurray! They panicked last time. Good time to put pressure on them and work on their resources. I'm thinking I might hit their dailies or encounter powers at times, too.

7) Consider using Extended Rests as a narrative feature rather than in-game rationale. Conversely, force them to succeed at Skill Challenges to get them and/or make good use of the Disease Track for Curses/Conditions that may prohibit or "nerf" Extended Rests.

Oh, that's an awesome idea. Conditions that prohibit or nerf Extended Rests. Yes!

That is all I've got off the top of my head.

The top of your head must be huge. Thanks Manbearcat! I appreciate it

 

[JamesonCourage]

One thing I do is with respect to common monsters.

A level x standard monster has the same XP value as a level (x + 8) minion. Fighting the minion versions of their former foes can help make the players feel their PCs are badass, especially when they're fighting A LOT of them. That's also an alternative to the swarms... although I also like use swarms in the way you describe.

Yeah. Higher defenses, but once they hit... dead! I definitely want to show them how badass they are after the leap into Paragon. I'll probably throw in something to prove it with minions of formerly tough foes or with swarms. Thanks for the tip!

 

[JamesonCourage]

I've had several groups make it to Paragon level. With the last group I did something a bit different that made a huge difference for our play experience. I asked them when they reached 8th or 9th level to tell me what paragon path they were going to choose at 11th level. This took a bit of coaching/coaxing on my part. When they reached 10th level, I had 6 ready made quests for the group. At the end of each quest one of the characters would have had accomplished anything I thought would feed well into the paragon path they had chosen. For example I had a ranger character that wanted to be a Stormwarden so during 10th level the party spent time looking for the Stormwarden Organization in the feywild and one of the encounters explained how the ranger would be able to teleport with his new powers at 11th level. A warlock character wanted to be a Feytouched, so I spent time designing her actual Fey Patron, and developing a relationship during this quest. The madness that followed was really an awesome bit of roleplaying on her part. Play went on like this with each adventure/quest touching on one, or at times, two of the characters. When all the quests were completed they all leveled to 11th and where able to begin their paragon paths. It was quite satisfying.

This is extremely similar to what I had planned! Though the PCs already have strong hooks to their chosen Paragon Paths, so it'll be a subtle transition. But it'll be obvious it's transitioning there for them once it's all done, and I'm sure they'll love it.

I don't want to spoil what I have planned, so I'll leave it at that until my next play session!

I think I enjoyed the last 2 levels of Heroic and the entirety of Paragon the best. The PCs are hardy enough that I could pretty much take off the kids gloves and make the game a serious challenge without having to worry about continuity due to a TPK.

Awesome! I've really enjoyed the last couple of levels, too, and the Warpriest having a Resurrection spell really does make me worry less about the PCs dying. Their first "boss" fight at Paragon looks really challenging, so I'm looking forward to seeing how well they handle it.

One of the cool things about paragon is also that the PCs had much more free reign to do whatever the heck they wanted. This was liberating, and sometimes frustrating, but it was never dull. It is also important to have the gameworld attitudes change towards these larger than life heroes. Regents of countries would have given their right hand to have these heroes help them. This really started to show the difference between tiers. When they were usually scrounging about and trying to get cooperation from mayors, minor governors, and dukes in Heroic, at Paragon the tables flip. Make that obvious.

Good advice, thanks. I need to make it socially obvious just as much as I need to do the same combat-wise. They're taking on swarms of kobolds instead of individuals, and royalty is treating them real nice instead of being entitled. Sounds like a fun transition that I know they'll all quite enjoy.

I would say that my only complaint with paragon had to do with encounter pacing. The party has so many resources that things can drag as the monsters also have a lot of resources. Keep that in mind. Don't let combats get boring. Hit them hard and hit them often but don't be afraid to "kill off" the opposition when the pacing is slowing down, preferably before the pacing does slow down. I particularly remember one fight in which the players were missing a lot (extremely poor rolls) I was starting to sense that this combat was going to drag, so I simply cut the enemies HP in half. This improved the pacing admirably, and still kept the tension level. So don't be afraid to fudge for pacing reasons.

I've changed encounters a couple of times before for pacing reasons. They "minionized" some people before an encounter at one point with good planning and Stealth rolls (when I knew we didn't have enough time to finish the combat, but more than enough to start it). Last session, I let the wilden Scout/Druid half convince the spider to help them (he attacked both sides), and then let the Scout talk it down after the other enemies died rather than making them play out the fight against its nearly full HP.

I'll keep an eye on this in Paragon. Thanks for the advice.

Minions and quasi minions (two hit wonders) are also your friend in this tier, use lots of them. Nothing beats 5-6 minions hitting the same character for a total of 60+ points of damage. And the look on the player's faces when they still have 20+ more opponents to go through is classic.

Haha, I remember when I had like five or six cultist minions target the Scout with Magic Missile. I went with the "auto hit" take on Magic Missile, and they dropped the Scout without rolling in the first round of combat. (He had a special card that let him get back up at 1 HP, but that's a ways back in the campaign now.)

Lots of minions would be good for this party. It'd be a little hard on the Scout, but they'd be good fodder for the Cleaving Knight and the Elementalist.

In addition don't be afraid to level down some of the Epic Tier creatures, or level up some of the late Heroic Tier creatures for use during paragon.

Alrighty! I'll give that a shot. I've already messed with creature levels of other stuff. I'm really looking forward to getting involved with more creatures found in this tier.

Paragon for me has always been a prelude to Epic so the same thing I did for getting to paragon is what I plan for epic. Find out their desired Epic Destiny and plan the last few adventures of paragon for that.

I will definitely be doing this. Yep yep!

Good Luck with your game.

Thank you! And thanks for taking the time to write out such good tips for me. I do appreciate it. I hope it helps others who read the thread

 

[MoutonRustique]

One thing I do is with respect to common monsters.

A level x standard monster has the same XP value as a level (x + 8) minion. Fighting the minion versions of their former foes can help make the players feel their PCs are badass, especially when they're fighting A LOT of them. That's also an alternative to the swarms... although I also like use swarms in the way you describe.

For a similar feel of power for the PCs - I've found that having ~recent foes (about level -3/4) and increasing their attack values by ~+4 while giving them 1/2 hp and have +1/3 of them (when using xp charts) makes for fast, dangerous and rewarding fights.

They can be record-keeping heavy (as they are not minions and there will be alot of them), but if that's not too much of an issue, they have the advantage of going down fast when hit with "serious" attacks but not falling to all those "deal 2 damage to x" type riders (llightning whetstones, I'm looking at you!).

They really show-off the PCs' power and are a nice stepping point between standard and full-minion status.

I already have an idea on their Paragon Paths (as they've expressed them to me), and I'll be using level 10 as a transition point into Paragon.

(1) The mul (half-dwarf in my campaign world) Warpriest of The Raven Queen has indicated that he wants to go into Soul Reaper. This definitely builds on his undying devotion to The Raven Queen, and it'll be easy for me to keep up with this narratively. I'll just have to up the focus and stakes.

(2) The dwarven Knight / Paladin of Kord is going to be going into Lyrandar Wind-Rider, which will be reflavored into specific Paladin training from Kord Clan. So I'll need to up the narrative ties to Kord. Easy easy.

(3) The wilden Scout / Druid is most likely going to be entering either Guardian of the Living Gate (a druidic order that's bent on fighting back the Far Realm invasion) or Herald of Madness (meaning that he'll fall deeper into the Far Realm madness, but he'll use it to fight the Far Realm). Either way, I'll need to start having the Far Realm play a big part in the narrative. And that will be fun.

(4) The half-elf water Elementalist / Skald is going to be going into Blizzard Mage. She'll still be an NPC with the party, so I don't really think I'll need to focus on her stuff too much, but I'll keep some elementals involved, which should tie things together nicely once we finally hit Epic Tier. Not that I have plans, or anything...

I was going to say that paragon paths are great levers and should really be felt in the narrative - but you've got that covered!

This is interesting. The Major Quest focusing on tier sounds like good advice, but I'm hesitant to give players self-authored Minor Quests. They're already highly motivated to RP in their area, and I've liked using Minor Quests to prod them the ways that make GMing easier for me. That'd be a tool I'd hate to lose.

Also, I'm not sure they'd be good at giving themselves Minor Quests. ...

I see two main approaches :
1 - they keep giving themselves goals (but not [quests]) which you then "dissect" and turn into minor quests.
2 - you guys have more of a "sit down talk" about their goals and collaboratively hash them out into bit-sized objectives (minor quests)

I can say that both are potentially great - this depends upon how your players want to interface with the game world. I suggest you find out (or already know?) how they'd like to go about it and propose (or keep it secret) the preferred approach. This can range from : "Hey guys, how'd you like to set the quests for your characters? Directly? Alright then, Drew bring up the white board!" to something like "Hey guys, keep your characters talking about their goals in-game. You never know, the powers-that-be might be listening..." or even "... No, no, you guys keep talking, I'm jotting down a grocery list - Mag will kill me if I forget the eggs again."

----
If your group hasn't made heavy use of rituals, I'd suggest looking into the possible alternate rules to make them more attractive. Once you hit paragon, there are some very cool ones in there that can give a good deal of options for players.

As has been stated through out - paragon is a great place to have the campaign become more "apparently" sand-boxy (I say apparently, because the point is player empowerment, not DM nightmare.)

A cool trick for can be (if your campaign includes a bit of travel and different locations) to treat the region (world?) map as a huge dungeon - each region or town/city/village becomes a "room". It's not something that should really be shared with your players, and it doesn't really impact anything much - it's just a mindset I've found useful to design adventures (it helps me stay focused on the story/sequence/events I want to build w/o getting too lost in side things that won't be needed for 10 more levels...)

Hope I'm not parroting too much; in any case, you seem to have it covered!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, the way I've worked it is the Heroic tier adventurers are fighting fairly 'mundane' sorts of bad guys. They may well have supernatural abilities of some sort, but like the PCs they don't teleport into a castle, fly long distances regularly, or that sort of thing. If they do for example fly its a fairly natural thing like stirges. Maybe at upper Heroic tier things start to get a bit more interesting. At that point the PCs are beating back threats to their little home area and starting to interact with the bigger forces that move and shape the happenings there.

As they graduate into paragon they are now fighting a more fantastic type of foe. They begin to discover the overall shape of the campaign arc. Certain foreshadowed things begin to take shape. The characters are embarking on their paragon paths, major life paths where they solidify their alignment to the higher powers and their final destinies begin to take shape. They are now reaching the greatest levels of power ever achieved by mortals in their homelands. No character may yet be a true legend, but their names will be remembered for centuries. Their actions start to be significant to the whole world they live on at upper paragon.

When the reach epic, then their destinies are clear, they are agents of something, movers and shakers in a world where they may well be the most powerful beings to have arisen in many centuries, legendary heroes who will populate epics for a thousand years and never be forgotten. Their enemies now are demons and gods, the greatest dragons, and finally fate itself. Their foes will be the great powers of the world, equipped with the most fantastical of powers, capable of reshaping the Earth itself and changing history for all time.

On a more practical level I go for a very high fantasy action-movie-like kind of game. Heroic PCs are running around in collapsing mines, burning buildings, leaping onto moving carts, flying on hippogryphs, and having a battle in the rigging of pirate ships. Paragon characters are having fights in an unstable cloud fortress, the mouth of a pit into the underdark that has a crumbling magical ward, flying down into an erupting volcano to stop the forging of a mighty weapon, and venturing into the more accessible parts of other planes of existence (the feywild for instance). Epic characters are sliding down the side of one of the mountains that holds up the sky on a god's slipper in a giant avalanche after killing an Elemental Prince. The action is analogous but more and more crazy.

There are mechanical differences in approach that have to be taken into account as you advance. Low level PCs are pretty manageable and you can challenge them basically within the structure of the encounter system outlined in the DMG. You just need to watch out to make the encounters dynamic enough that they don't turn into overly tactical slugfests. Its easy to plot these kinds of adventures, the PCs will pretty much go where you point them, or at least you know what they're able to pull out of their hats. They can improvise and make clever plans, but its unlikely to bust an entire plot. You don't need to lard it on too much to make monsters challenging.

Paragon characters start to emerge into the 'wow, you can do that?' stage. As you get into higher paragon monsters themselves become fundamentally too limited to really provide a challenge (aside from just throwing some preposterously powerful epic monster at the party, and even then they'll surprise you). Characters have access to genuinely strategic level magic like teleports, long distance flight, extreme stealth, and enough resources to construct some very useful items. You can't seriously challenge them anymore with mere terrain or simple mundane situations. You'll need to start thinking about things that go beyond what is ordinarily thought of as the framework of 4e. Start breaking the rules.

At epic monsters are almost a meaningless thing in terms of a challenge. You CAN eventually pound the characters into oblivion with enough firepower of course, but no reasonable tactical setup that falls strictly within the bounds of the monster manuals and such will really present a very interesting fight. You have to introduce a new type of element into the game. Plot becomes MUCH more important at this point. When the characters face challenges they need to be of an absolute sort, you MUST do X, and the consequences of not doing X are at best hard to mitigate and impossible to avoid entirely. Obviously a big ploy here is the threat to the whole world/universe/whatever. For this to work though you have to have laid the groundwork well from the start of the campaign so that the character's town/city/kingdom/world is now a PERSONAL ASSET of the character, it in effect belongs to the character in dramatic terms.

Its really all about story evolution, and the nature of challenges evolving over the course of the tiers. Most DMs that find Epic hard to deal with in particular are not thinking enough 'out of the box' in terms of making up game elements. They try to hew too close to the rules frameworks. That's OK up to a certain point, but there comes a time when you want to invent the deadly demon venom that simply CANNOT be cured except with the holy water of the Well of Life.

 

[Manbearcat]

Sweet! Thanks for taking the time

Not a problem. Your efforts and this thread is one of the few reasons I'm inclined toward visiting this board anymore. So glad to help and read of your adventures.

I already have an idea on their Paragon Paths (as they've expressed them to me), and I'll be using level 10 as a transition point into Paragon.

(1) The mul (half-dwarf in my campaign world) Warpriest of The Raven Queen has indicated that he wants to go into Soul Reaper. This definitely builds on his undying devotion to The Raven Queen, and it'll be easy for me to keep up with this narratively. I'll just have to up the focus and stakes.

(2) The dwarven Knight / Paladin of Kord is going to be going into Lyrandar Wind-Rider, which will be reflavored into specific Paladin training from Kord Clan. So I'll need to up the narrative ties to Kord. Easy easy.

(3) The wilden Scout / Druid is most likely going to be entering either Guardian of the Living Gate (a druidic order that's bent on fighting back the Far Realm invasion) or Herald of Madness (meaning that he'll fall deeper into the Far Realm madness, but he'll use it to fight the Far Realm). Either way, I'll need to start having the Far Realm play a big part in the narrative. And that will be fun.

Good stuff. One of the great things about the Themes and Paragon Paths of 4e is how thematically provocative most (but not all) are and how richly they are tie into the conflicts and antagonists that 4e puts front and center. With those 3 PPs, I'm sure you'll have plenty to work with.

More active traps and hazards. That sounds fun... I'll have to get creative! But it should make things lively.

I find that forcing the PCs to deal with threats that they can't hack away at (eg they have to deal by deploying tactical countermeasures - eg Medium Acrobatics check - or preemptive strategy) becomes a better and better expenditure of your encounter budget XP as the game progresses:

a) It lowers the total HPs required to burn through to "win" an encounter.

b) If the hazards/traps are appropriately synergized (thematically and mechanically) with the rest of the encounter, it forces the players to think "one or two moves down the line" and approach the resolution of the encounter through vectors beyond DEPLOY MOAR HURT; eg they avoid this or that, because it hurts and its action economy doesn't go away at 0 HP...because it doesn't have any HP, while they are doing this other thing.

c) Keeps fights mobile and interactive as they're supposed to be in 4e.

Looks like status effects will get vicious, huh? I'll keep this in mind.

They do. Just keep in mind to use something like (Encounter Power - Free Action - roll ST at the start of your next turn) sparingly and only for important bad guys. You want to reward the deft use of control effects, but "named" bad guys should have abilities to at least attempt to shrug one off now and again (so it doesn't disproportionately impact a fight coupled with a big nova round).

Break them out at Bloodied? I'm not 100% what you mean here.

For instance:

1 level 8 Elite Swarm (which is an abstract form of a commander and a bunch of his shock troops) @ 700 xp.

At Bloodied, break it out into the Standard (Leader) commander (350 xp) who is at Bloodied and 4 minions (88 xp apiece * 4 = 352 xp or ~ 350) for the final standoff between the (worn down or maybe rallying) good guys and the BBG and his troops.

This is interesting. The Major Quest focusing on tier sounds like good advice, but I'm hesitant to give players self-authored Minor Quests. They're already highly motivated to RP in their area, and I've liked using Minor Quests to prod them the ways that make GMing easier for me. That'd be a tool I'd hate to lose.

Also, I'm not sure they'd be good at giving themselves Minor Quests. For example, the Warpriest might give himself "get the Third Truth before Vecna does" as a quest, but since I'm sticking to the wealth guidelines, that's probably 4-5 levels away. He doesn't know this (none of the players are at all familiar with anything GM-side in 4e; monster templates, wealth guidelines, etc.), so wouldn't know that it might be more prudent to take something more accessible. I could tell him, but this is just example. I'd have to let players know if certain quests were within the right scope (focus on this session, not too huge, etc.) and possibly correcting them a lot. At that point, it makes me wonder, why not give them Minor Quests (like I did all the time for the first five levels ish) and just keep guiding them with the carrot? Thoughts?

If you don't mind, I'm going to copy and paste (and sblock) a post that I did on another thread (of which I didn't care to respond to the response because [a] it was unresponsive and it was probably too off-topic and I didn't want to derail further). It will be helpful here to convey my thoughts (which I'll try to sum up at the bottom).

[sblock]"Player-focused" design causes an internal feedback loop that consistently gives myself and my players a satisfying gaming experience.

For instance, in a current Dungeon World game I'm running, my players are playing the following characters:

Elven Arcane Duelist (Otthor)

Alignment (Good): Slay a menace to the innocent.

Bonds:

* Saerie and I share a common enemy. We will not rest until they are utterly defeated.
* Saerie has much to teach me about the ways of this world.
* I will protect the weak against the tyranny of evil men.
* I will pursue the lost art of the Bladesong.

Elven Ranger (Saerie)

Alignment (Chaotic): Break an unjust law to benefit another.

Bonds:

* Otthor does not understand the wilds of this place, so I will teach him.
* I worry about the ability of Otthor to relate to the humans of this world.
* The layfolk of this world are brave souls, I have much to learn from them.
* I am bound by solemn oath to protect Giliad’s Rest.

The system rewards 1 XP to players for each of the following things:

1) Fail a "move" (roll a 6 or less)
2) Fulfill your alignment
3) Resolve a bond
4) At the end of each session, these three questions are answered as a group:

- Did we learn something new and important about the world?
- Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy?
- Did we loot a memorable treasure?

For each “yes” answer everyone marks XP.

It is a tightly designed system marrying these components, the basic resolution mechanics, player moves, GM moves, and very transparent and focused GMing principles. Given my two PCs, here is a short list of thematically laden scenes/conflicts I should be framing them into:

1) An antagonist defiles an innocent specifically or innocence as an idea, especially if it can manifest as an opportunity for a duel - Otthor.
2) A set of precepts that a society is ordered around which may have some tension (which she could perceive as unjust) built within them to perpetuate the culture's values or fundamental needs (such as exploitation of a particular caste, might equals right, or over-burdensome debt/duty fulfillment) - Saerie.
3) Opportunities for Otthor to clash with the people of this world and opportunities for Saerie to learn from them - both.
4) Opportunities for Otthor to be bewildered or awe-struck by the wilderness so Saerie may teach him its ways, price, and boons - both.
5) The people of Gilliad's Rest needs to be placed in peril - Saerie.
6) I need to put in place strong, wicked, and exploitative antagonists that advantage themselves by or mistreat the weak, the meek, and the downtrodden - Otthor.
7) We need to learn through play just what the lost art of the Bladesong is and how it may be found/recovered - Otthor.
8) I need to give both of them opportunities to strut their thematic stuff (moves) from their classes/race:

a) Duels (especially with humanoids) + gallant warriory stuff that lets him express his martial/magical prowess, his boldness, and his accrued martial mental acumen - Otthor.

b) Hunting/tracking/treking/stalking; living in the unforgiving wilds on the strength of your own skill and your loyal animal companion alone - Saerie.

9) Together, we need to learn new stuff about the world and about the characters as we "play to find out what happens"; Which means low prep (no over-riding metaplot that dictates the play agenda in place of the "player-focused feedback loop") and very low resolution setting (as this will emerge through play).


With even a modicum of GMing skill and proactive players, it inexorably funnels play precisely toward that "player-focused feedback loop" that you apparently are not a fan of.[/sblock]

So that is Dungeon World and its Alignment and Bonds. However, other games, including Marvel Heroic's Milestones and Mouse Guard's (Burning Wheel derivative) Beliefs/Goals, do the same. 4e with its Minor Quest system fills this system niche; elegantly and transparently synthesizing character (player) objectives/rewards in a simple feedback loop of the game (which pushes play towards where its meant to go).

If you're interested at all, you may want to just take a look at http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/playing-the-game#TOC-Alignment and the examples of Bonds for each of the classes and elsewhere. They're extremely brief, extremely transparent, focused goals for a PC in a game session. You could easily just have each of your players pick one and you could weave them into play. Once resolved, they can pick a new one.

Or not Either way, enjoy.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Thanks for the replies, guys! I'm on my phone at a hotel at the moment (in Sacramento for CIM, a nearby large marathon), as my partner is using the computer. I'll try to give some thoughts and feedback later on tonight, though. Thanks again

 

[JamesonCourage]

Alright, she is down for the night. Time for some replies!

I was going to say that paragon paths are great levers and should really be felt in the narrative - but you've got that covered!

The game makes it easy

I see two main approaches :
1 - they keep giving themselves goals (but not [quests]) which you then "dissect" and turn into minor quests.
2 - you guys have more of a "sit down talk" about their goals and collaboratively hash them out into bit-sized objectives (minor quests)

With this group, I think that (1) is the way to go. Ask them what they want to do, assign them some minor quests to encourage it, and help both of us stick to their goals (me for prep, and them for... XP?).

If your group hasn't made heavy use of rituals, I'd suggest looking into the possible alternate rules to make them more attractive. Once you hit paragon, there are some very cool ones in there that can give a good deal of options for players.

The Elementalist NPC has rituals, and the Scout has the martial equivalent (Martial Practices?). I'll look into new ones, but new Martial Practices become rare past Heroic, if I remember correctly

As has been stated through out - paragon is a great place to have the campaign become more "apparently" sand-boxy (I say apparently, because the point is player empowerment, not DM nightmare.)

A cool trick for can be (if your campaign includes a bit of travel and different locations) to treat the region (world?) map as a huge dungeon - each region or town/city/village becomes a "room".

Interesting... I'll reflect on this.

Hope I'm not parroting too much; in any case, you seem to have it covered!

Thanks for the input!

 

[JamesonCourage]

As they graduate into paragon they are now fighting a more fantastic type of foe. They begin to discover the overall shape of the campaign arc. Certain foreshadowed things begin to take shape. The characters are embarking on their paragon paths, major life paths where they solidify their alignment to the higher powers and their final destinies begin to take shape. They are now reaching the greatest levels of power ever achieved by mortals in their homelands. No character may yet be a true legend, but their names will be remembered for centuries. Their actions start to be significant to the whole world they live on at upper paragon.

Yeah, this is what I need to keep in mind. Thanks for this.

Paragon characters are having fights in an unstable cloud fortress, the mouth of a pit into the underdark that has a crumbling magical ward, flying down into an erupting volcano to stop the forging of a mighty weapon, and venturing into the more accessible parts of other planes of existence (the feywild for instance).

That does sound fun!

Paragon characters start to emerge into the 'wow, you can do that?' stage. As you get into higher paragon monsters themselves become fundamentally too limited to really provide a challenge (aside from just throwing some preposterously powerful epic monster at the party, and even then they'll surprise you). Characters have access to genuinely strategic level magic like teleports, long distance flight, extreme stealth, and enough resources to construct some very useful items. You can't seriously challenge them anymore with mere terrain or simple mundane situations. You'll need to start thinking about things that go beyond what is ordinarily thought of as the framework of 4e. Start breaking the rules.

Any suggestions about breaking the rules? And what do you mean by "extreme stealth"?

Thanks for the feedback! I'll come back and look it over again at near-Epic!