Legends and Lore April 2, 2012

[GM Dave]

A simple way to do 'Common', 'Heroic', and 'Epic'.

If you want to represent these three different 'styles' but still have things like a common born farmer that has 'Demi-God' blood and potential...

... then I would propose using a multiplier on the damage the individual does.

An easy set of numbers would be

x10 for Heroic and x100 for Epic. (Depending on your game you could use other values like x5 and x15 but adding 0s is just easier to use at the game table).

This is roughly how many Video Games make the difference in levels and allow high level characters to take on Boss Creatures which a 'normal' person would never touch.

A creature with 100 hp for a common person is a challenge but for a 'Heroic' this is not much of a challenge as damage with a weapon is now 1d8x10 and for an 'Epic' it is trivial as any damage will kill the creature.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Burning Wheel's color scales of mundane (black), heroic (gray), and supernatural (white) are a lot like the proposed tiers in some ways (though not in all). BW is gritty, about as far from Exalted as you can get.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]: it seems to me that you want to make levels 2 dimensional, for some reason. Characters will have the same old levels they always had (in D&D), plus some new ones (called, for aesthetic reasons, presumably, "Common", "Heroic", and who-knows what else) that sit orthogonally to the original ones. Why? The original ones perform just this purpose, if you want them to. You can even make the original ones DM gifts, if you want to (though I can't see any good reason, myself). What do you gain by having "levels" twice?

I'm not KM, but, I can take a stab at that.

It goes back to the idea of tying level to changes in campaign. A 3rd level king is problematic. A 19th level dungeon crawler is just as problematic. OTOH, if you have a sort of dual system, then level works as a simple short hand for what kinds of challenges you should be designing to (same as it does now) while the tier describes the broader campaign context, which at the moment, level doesn't really help you with.

 

[Janaxstrus]

I'm not KM, but, I can take a stab at that.

It goes back to the idea of tying level to changes in campaign. A 3rd level king is problematic. A 19th level dungeon crawler is just as problematic. OTOH, if you have a sort of dual system, then level works as a simple short hand for what kinds of challenges you should be designing to (same as it does now) while the tier describes the broader campaign context, which at the moment, level doesn't really help you with.

Why does a 19th level dungeon crawler cause problems?

I can't name a single D&D world that doesn't have the "highly advanced magical empire that was destroyed by some cataclysmic event". You find one of their cities or tombs or outposts or or or...

That seems a lot more easy to deal with in game than a 3rd level King.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm not KM, but, I can take a stab at that.

It goes back to the idea of tying level to changes in campaign. A 3rd level king is problematic. A 19th level dungeon crawler is just as problematic. OTOH, if you have a sort of dual system, then level works as a simple short hand for what kinds of challenges you should be designing to (same as it does now) while the tier describes the broader campaign context, which at the moment, level doesn't really help you with.

A 19th level dungeon-crawn is only problematic if you don't put any heart into it's design. Cutting through armies of kobolds is much less interesting than some highly trapped, tricky, maze-like thing with some monster that can mess with your mind in it.

The problem with the tier stuff people are talking about is it still assumes at some point players don't want to be adventurers anymore. This is not an assumption D&D should be making.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not KM, but, I can take a stab at that.

It goes back to the idea of tying level to changes in campaign. A 3rd level king is problematic. A 19th level dungeon crawler is just as problematic. OTOH, if you have a sort of dual system, then level works as a simple short hand for what kinds of challenges you should be designing to (same as it does now) while the tier describes the broader campaign context, which at the moment, level doesn't really help you with.

It's also a little design judo while keeping true to the spirt of classes. Many D&D "fixes" are basically "neuter classes". Go to a skill-based system (overtly or defacto, doesn't matter) and you can have a 3rd level king that fits right in with a higher level hero. (Or I guess I should say a "king with relatively little personal power" as "level" starts to rapidly lose any real meaning as soon as class does, usually.)

Yes, KM's proposal does do a bit of mucking with classes and levels. It's just more honest than many proposals about where it draws the lines--and thus also leaves a very solid core for the classes and levels to retain meaning.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

A 19th level dungeon-crawn is only problematic if you don't put any heart into it's design. Cutting through armies of kobolds is much less interesting than some highly trapped, tricky, maze-like thing with some monster that can mess with your mind in it.

The problem with the tier stuff people are talking about is it still assumes at some point players don't want to be adventurers anymore. This is not an assumption D&D should be making.

You could still do 19th level dungeon-crawls if you wanted. You'd simply ignore any tiers that didn't fit that pattern.

The inherent tension in traditional D&D class/level design is that the classes and levels are trying to convey both breadth and depth (from a power perspective, not characterization, naturally)--which means that you lock in a given breadth for a given depth of play. If it were mapped out on a two-dimensional grid, with depth on the vertical axis and breadth on the horizontal axis, then the line might be any angle or curve (depending on how much breadth and depth you assign to each level gained), but it would be a fixed curve for a given implementation of the system.

If I read KM's proposal correctly, what he is saying is that you get some rather narrow, fixed breadth by having a class--a little is inherent in the concept. As you gain levels, you don't gain much more. You do gain depth (i.e. power within your current breadth). So the line is running practically straight up the vertical axis. When you add a tier, you gain breadth--regardless of where you are on that vertical line. Why you gain it and when would be left up to the DM and the group.

My suggested refinement was that this essential nature of the proposal be accepted more aggressively--thus having tiers that "progress" completely independent of the levels. You might not want to start with a bunch of tiers at low levels, on grounds of it didn't fit your campaign style, but nothing in the system would stop you mechanically, if you wanted to.

Of course, given such a system, a lot of people are going to replicate something similar to AD&D, so that the effect is that the line is about a 45 degree angle--tiers being added as levels are gained.

 

[Andor]

If I read KM's proposal correctly, what he is saying is that you get some rather narrow, fixed breadth by having a class--a little is inherent in the concept. As you gain levels, you don't gain much more. You do gain depth (i.e. power within your current breadth). So the line is running practically straight up the vertical axis. When you add a tier, you gain breadth--regardless of where you are on that vertical line. Why you gain it and when would be left up to the DM and the group.

The original notion of tiers, as I understand the concept, is that each tier represents a scope of interest.

Base tier is a farmer who never travels more than a few miles from his house in his life.

Adventurers are a tier up from this. They travel, they see a bit of the world, they solve problems for farmers. Their powers are still limited to things they or a few henchmen can take care of. A town mayor is probably also in about this tier.

The next tier is the AD&D name level. At this point your concerns are larger than your personal reach. You control a realm, a guild, a university, a merchant fleet. Here you have staff and followers. Your words may be more important than your deeds. You have power.

Epic tier is beyond this. An empire, a world, planar balance, the concerns of the gods.

Levels are not strictly connected to this. A Monk who trained up to 20th level without ever leaving his monastery would be base tier. The 12 year old boy emperor of united eurasia is epic tier even if he doesn't have a level yet. A 25th level adventurer who still kicks doors at the behest of others is heroic tier even if he is the most personally powerful man on the plane.

How a base tier King who can't manage to aquire a +1 sword (unlike every third orc) relates to tiers as I understand them, I have no idea. A King is, by definition, a realm level power.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

That's one way to look at tiers--one of many possible.

 

[Hussar]

A 19th level dungeon-crawn is only problematic if you don't put any heart into it's design. Cutting through armies of kobolds is much less interesting than some highly trapped, tricky, maze-like thing with some monster that can mess with your mind in it.

The problem with the tier stuff people are talking about is it still assumes at some point players don't want to be adventurers anymore. This is not an assumption D&D should be making.

Well, yes and no. As someone who ran the World's Largest Dungeon from beginning to end, I'd totally agree that you can do 19th level dungeons.

However, it does become problematic in a campaign setting that isn't really specifically designed for this. After all, once you've amassed that millionth gp, what's the real incentive to raiding that next tomb? Never mind that it would likely just be easier to let the wizard and the cleric summon a small army, clear out the dungeon and move on.

Even looking at things like Paizo's Adventure paths, you see the scope changing dramatically as the PC's advance in levels. In the Savage Tide Adventure Path, you could map the whole 4e Heroic/Paragon/Epic tier structure onto the series quite easily. The PC's start local, move on to becoming political powers, then move on to shake the universe.

I think what KM is trying to do is allow you to shake the universe from 1st level or stay local at 20th level.