Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5589764" data-attributes="member: 59082">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.</blockquote>