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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D'karr" data-source="post: 6460571" data-attributes="member: 336">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.</blockquote>

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