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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5870629" data-attributes="member: 2067">Strawman argument is a strawman. D&D characters have been able to do superhuman things since OD&D, and quite frequently have been more than your average Ted right from Level 1. Whether that's because everyone else was "zero level," (1e, 2e), or because the PC's had higher ability scores and better class powers (3e), or because everyone else was effectively minionized if they were anything (4e). The way the game changes in play at various levels in D&D (through access to magic like Teleport or Resurrection, and through things like being awarded a keep) has also been a part of the game since its beginning. Gods have also always been something other than simply a high-level character, from unique mechanical tricks to divine rank to 2e's "Gods are untouchable forces of reality, but here are some avatars."Tiers codify this, and tiers-as-treasure allows the DM to determine when and if such a change is to take place.Nothing in this idea takes that away. An Orc could be a Common or Heroic tier threat (I'd probably peg it at Heroic just to keep it scary to town guards). A first level character could be Common or Heroic Tier. They could be viable enemies for each other.But the thing that brought up the issue was the idea that a king and his soldiers could be a lower tier than a PC, and how making tiers be how one can access magic items means that a PC might have better items than a king, and the king might be unable to get them, because the king is not in the same tier. They could also be in the same tier and be a viable threat for each other, and then the PC would NOT have a magic item better than the king, since they were in the same tier.Got it?All this means for your orc that the Orc is not a threat to an Epic-Tier character. And if you want to play a D&D game where a single orc is not a threat (and plenty of people do), or you want a single orc to eventually not be a threat, you can award a Tier.This allows the orc to be viable across every level if you want it to be (you never have to stop using a single orc as a viable threat!), but also allows you to never use the orc as a viable threat (it's always too low!), or to use the orc as a viable threat for a while (it's the same tier as the PC's!), only to change that at some point (now it's too low!). I'm sure the idea has other problems, but this is not one of them.</blockquote>

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