No "wider" Sweet Spot in 4E after all?

[wedgeski]

I included 2009 releases on the chart (which are mostly higher level adventures) along with all other WoTC officialy published adventures. The chart in the right hand corner of the picture is starting level distribution.

Great little chart! If you could keep that updated and linked somewhere, that'd be awesome.

 

[delericho]

I recently saw a list of all the 4E Dungeon adventures by level. Guess what? About half of the adventures fall between late heroic and early paragon. In other words, levels 8-12.

I think it's purely to do with the need for adventures at various levels.

Most groups will start their campaigns at level 1, and proceed to blow through the very low levels quite quickly (due to the low number of XP required per level). They probably need only one or two published adventures, and then they're done.

At the same time, very few groups will have reached the Epic (or even high-Paragon) tier yet. And, in fact, relatively few ever will (compared to the number of groups as a whole) - most campaigns will end somewhere before level 30 as people get bored, move away, or are otherwise distracted. So, I would expect the published adventures to always cluster around the mid/high-Heroic to low-Paragon level range, but most especially now.

That says nothing about how well the game plays at low or high levels.

 

[SpydersWebbing]

If there could be a conceivable sweet spot in 4th edition, it'd definitely be epic tier play. The stuff you can pull off in epic tier....

 

[Starfox]

Even if there is not Sweet Spot at all, if all levels are just as viable, there is campaign attrition. People move and real life comes in the way in other ways. It is natural that there is less need for epic adventures.

However, by this reasoning there should be a glut of low-level adventures , and there is not. This is a little odd. Maye 4E does indeed have a sweet spot, and its higher up. My campaign is currently at 4th level, and I've played an earlier campaign to 4th as well. By this time, character options feel severely limited. It feels like the game might take off a bit once characters gain more powers. Maybe in later campaigns where we start out knowing the system I will begin at a higher level.

In earlier editions, the low levels had the thrill of lethality. Yes, you had few powers, but Everything was lethal. The wizard's crossbow could one-shot a typical 1st level opponent, like a goblin. This gave the low levels at flavor of their own. It could be fun as long as it didn't happen to you - and -10 hp is a decent buffer at levels 1-3. But mid-levels you had a sufficient palette of combat options that slightly longer fights stayed interesting, until you got tho the lethal and complex upper levels where things tended to break down.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I included 2009 releases on the chart (which are mostly higher level adventures) along with all other WoTC officialy published adventures. The chart in the right hand corner of the picture is starting level distribution.

Super little chart, thanks for putting the effort in to do that.

Cheers

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't know whether there's a sweet spot feel in play (I don't play 4E), but I definitely don't see one based on levels of published adventures. I charted them on a Power Point slide, and it shows a heavily weighted bias towards low level adventures, with no sweet spot. For a new game, this would sound logical to me. As time goes on, and there are more higher level adventures, it should even out. But, there's definitely not a concentration of adventures in the 8th to 12th range.

I included 2009 releases on the chart (which are mostly higher level adventures) along with all other WoTC officialy published adventures. The chart in the right hand corner of the picture is starting level distribution.

A great chart indeed!

Now, WotC should build a similar chart and link it with the associated Dungeon adventures or with a list of links where to order print adventures.

 

[Desdichado]

For me the 3e sweet spot is around 5-8, by 9th level the full spellcasters tend to dominate.

Agreed. I've never heard of the sweet spot of 3e being pegged as 8-12 before, and that's certainly not true for me.

I think you're trying to make facts fit dubiously into an already dubious observation, Glyf.

 

[Dausuul]

And, in fact, relatively few ever will (compared to the number of groups as a whole) - most campaigns will end somewhere before level 30 as people get bored, move away, or are otherwise distracted. So, I would expect the published adventures to always cluster around the mid/high-Heroic to low-Paragon level range, but most especially now.

That says nothing about how well the game plays at low or high levels.

This.

Agreed. I've never heard of the sweet spot of 3e being pegged as 8-12 before, and that's certainly not true for me.

Yeah, my experience is that the 3E sweet spot is around 4-10.

Of course, 4E goes to thirty levels instead of twenty, so one could argue that a 4E sweet spot of 8-12 corresponds to a 3E sweet spot of 5-8.

 

[timbannock]

I could be wrong, but I think 4e has more adventures out for it written by the parent company than most previous editions by this point. Again, maybe I'm wrong about that, but it seems like there's a lot out there. And the there's a decent range of levels, especially for so early in the life of the edition.

When you factor in 3rd party adventures, I'd say there's a good amount overall, though we definitely haven't seen enough in the high paragon and epic tiers. I don't know what exactly that says though, as earlier editions are similar.

 

[Remathilis]

I included 2009 releases on the chart (which are mostly higher level adventures) along with all other WoTC officialy published adventures. The chart in the right hand corner of the picture is starting level distribution.

Awesome. You forgot Treasure of Talon Pass (which is level 2, Free RPG day module on WotC site) and that's not even touching promo material (Into the Shadowhaunt) or RPGA/Living Realms modules.