Literary sources and the three-Tier campaign model

[S'mon]

Finally, comic book "versus contests" is fairly dependent upon the writer. However, I'm fairly confident that Thor, as described in the comics, is much, much weaker than pretty much any god as described in every edition of D&D. For awhile, the gods in D&D did not have stats, as they could do anything they wanted and were fundamentally equivalent to the Beyonder in terms of Marvel comics.

I don't think the 1e AD&D Deities & Demigods Thor is all that vastly different from the Marvel version. I suppose you could argue that in Marvel Asgard only Odin is a Greater God, and Thor should have say 200 hp not 399. He certainly makes the grade as a 4e Epic PC, though, even if Odin is a 40th level Solo.

 

[S'mon]

By his definition, as I understood it, Heroic was local adventurers that ramped up to saving the kingdom, Paragon was kingdom-level adventures that ramped up to saving the world, and Epic was world-level threats that ramped up to reality-changing, god-destroying quests.

This works ok as a general guide (and may have been influnced by the structure of my long-term 1e campaign, which Upper_Krust played in). But what if the setting simply doesn't have cosmic-level threats? Are you defined solely by the scope of the threats you defeat? Odysseus just wanted to get home; ergo he can't be higher than Heroic Tier no matter what legendary monsters he faced? Elric only saves/destroys one world, so he can't be higher than Paragon, whereas Corum determines the future of the 15 Planes so he's Epic?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

However, players with plane shifting, call lightning, controlling weather, and returning weapons are all abilities that wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for a Paragon Tier campaign. And, most Paragon Tier defenders are basically impervious to mortal weaponry by virtue of their armor and hit points.

They can't plane shift, call lightning or control weather at will- Thor can- and if you give a Paragon Tier eSlayer a mundane dagger, he can hurt a Paragon Tier PC.

A mundane dagger would bend or break on contact when thrust with force at Thor's skin. Bullets bounce off of him. He survives the total vacuum of outer space without protection.

Superhuman Strength: Being the son of Odin and the elder goddess Gaea, Thor is physically the strongest of the Norse gods and one of the most powerful beings in the Universe[5]. He easily lifted a million tons [6], proved able to crumble uru into dust [7], destroyed Silver Surfer's force-field with a single strike [8], knocked out a well hydrated Namor [9], defeated the Gladiator and knocked him unconscious, rendered the Abomination unconscious with a single blow [10], matched Savage Hulk's strength for an entire hour [11], stalemated Hercules in a strength contest [12], and lifted the Midgard Serpent [13], who was so large that it could coil around the entire planet Earth from head to tail multiple times over and crush it in its grip [14].

Even before the "Odinforce" stuff was written, he was routinely statted in the Marvel Universe (and other sources, like the Marvel RPG) as easily benching 50-100 tons. You don't see that in Paragon. (Much of that stuff listed above was pre-Odinforce, like the Midgard Serpent thing, which happened in Thor #327, in 1983, or defeating Namor in the 1970s.)

Thor was able to fight nonstop, for more than 9 months straight, from day to night, without any sustenance or rest, against the entire Frost Giants army, without tiring at all[19]. Thor was even able to fight the Sky father Zeus for entire months on end pushing him, from day to night without stopping for anything, and he still did not tire.

Again, this is not Paragon level stuff.

 

[Mercurius]

To be honest, I'm not sure what the problem is. The tier-system actually enables all of the above, although perhaps with a few early ("apprentice") levels missing. This seems to be a good instance of the "problem" being a lack of flexibility with the rules, and perhaps WotC's lack of encouragement for using the rules as a toolbox of guidelines rather than a codex of law. If anything the tier-system hasn't been exploited enough; it potentially allows a wide variety of play styles and different campaign configurations. I would love to see the, ah, next iteration of D&D include stronger guidelines for running single-tier campaigns. It may even better encourage this sort of play by having each tier run from level 1-10, so you could have a "P3" character (3rd level Paragon)...the psychological impact would be such that starting a Paragon campaign would feel less like skipping out on the lower levels.

There are quite a few instances of farm boy-to-demigod in fantasy literature: Pug in the Riftwar Saga and his prototype, Ged in Le Guin's Earthsea books (although Ged probably never gets to Epic in the D&D sense of the word, and of course loses his power in later books). And then there's Rand al-Thor of the Wheel of Time books who traverses Heroic tier in the first book, Paragon in the next couple books, and enters Epic sometime later.

 

[Dyir]

I don't think the 1e AD&D Deities & Demigods Thor is all that vastly different from the Marvel version. I suppose you could argue that in Marvel Asgard only Odin is a Greater God, and Thor should have say 200 hp not 399. He certainly makes the grade as a 4e Epic PC, though, even if Odin is a 40th level Solo.

I will admit to being the youngling of this discussion: my first exposure to D&D was at the end of 2E. At the time, from what I can remember, the gods were almost always presented as "so powerful that you have no hope of even harming them in any way, so stats are meaningless." And then once 3E actually gave them stats, they were ridiculous 20HD + 60 class levels + insane abilities (one of which was wish at will!). So, encountering 4E's "you can actually kill them now" is still somewhat novel to me. I admit that I mentally add abilities that have no direct importance to the plot to the statblocks of my NPCs, since in 4E stats are largely only for the parts of the NPC that the players interact with, so my perspective might be skewed.

This works ok as a general guide (and may have been influnced by the structure of my long-term 1e campaign, which Upper_Krust played in). But what if the setting simply doesn't have cosmic-level threats? Are you defined solely by the scope of the threats you defeat? Odysseus just wanted to get home; ergo he can't be higher than Heroic Tier no matter what legendary monsters he faced? Elric only saves/destroys one world, so he can't be higher than Paragon, whereas Corum determines the future of the 15 Planes so he's Epic?

I would also agree that it works as a decent guideline, especially since D&D does not have a method or player character to continue to gain abilities but remain at the same "scope" of Tier: the magic and monsters seem to kind of assume an escalation of the level of threat and control over their destinies. And I tend to imagine Tiers more in how much influence the characters have over their universe, but describing it in terms of "threat" feels easier in the context of a roleplaying game.

 

[S'mon]

To be honest, I'm not sure what the problem is. The tier-system actually enables all of the above, although perhaps with a few early ("apprentice") levels missing. This seems to be a good instance of the "problem" being a lack of flexibility with the rules, and perhaps WotC's lack of encouragement for using the rules as a toolbox of guidelines rather than a codex of law. If anything the tier-system hasn't been exploited enough; it potentially allows a wide variety of play styles and different campaign configurations. I would love to see the, ah, next iteration of D&D include stronger guidelines for running single-tier campaigns. It may even better encourage this sort of play by having each tier run from level 1-10, so you could have a "P3" character (3rd level Paragon)...the psychological impact would be such that starting a Paragon campaign would feel less like skipping out on the lower levels.

The problem I brought up in the OP is WoTC's lack of any DMing advice/support for the single-Tier campaign. It's most notable in the lack of any significant guidance for running a Paragon-only or Epic-only campaign. So I agree with your comments re lack of encouragement & desire for stronger guidelines.

It also seems like something that 3PPs might consider addressing. Something like Mongoose's 3e "The Drow War" campaign might have worked well as a Paragon-only campaign, for instance.

The kind of thing I'd be looking for would be campaign-specific notes on rooting PCs in the setting. The 'mega adventure' Revenge of the Giants does cover most of Paragon tier, but the PCs are anonymous as usual.

 

[SSquirrel]

the psychological impact would be such that starting a Paragon campaign would feel less like skipping out on the lower levels.

Skipping the levels just means we get to make up more story. I played w/a guy once who claimed you would never really know your character if you didn't start at 1st level. That was such crap.

There are quite a few instances of farm boy-to-demigod in fantasy literature: Pug in the Riftwar Saga and his prototype, Ged in Le Guin's Earthsea books (although Ged probably never gets to Epic in the D&D sense of the word, and of course loses his power in later books).

Yay a Feist reference Given how often he ends up consorting w/gods, pug certainly achieves Epic. Altho, you could easily say that by the time of his destruction of the arena on Kelewan he was already Epic or at least very high Paragon.

It also seems like something that 3PPs might consider addressing. Something like Mongoose's 3e "The Drow War" campaign might have worked well as a Paragon-only campaign, for instance.

The kind of thing I'd be looking for would be campaign-specific notes on rooting PCs in the setting. The 'mega adventure' Revenge of the Giants does cover most of Paragon tier, but the PCs are anonymous as usual.

WotC released 3 trios of adventures to cover each tier of play. I would say it is up to the DM to make the module less generic and have the players feel like things matter a bit more, but you can easily halve XP or just level players when you want to (altho you should probably discuss that approach w/them in advance) and accomplish these same goals. They could easily write some Dragon articles about how to root the PCs in the setting, but a lot of things like family and what not then just get exploited by DMs. Or maybe it was just one of my DMs who, if you had a family or whatever, tragedy would befall

Side note, we just started a Revenge of the Giants campaign. My Halfling Daggermaster Rogue is SO much fun

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ged probably never gets to Epic in the D&D sense of the word

I don't know- as the Archmage, he would have been about as "epicy" as anyone in Earthsea could be. And the power he gave up was sufficient to heal the world of it's "magic leak"- again, a sign that he's pretty doggone awesome.