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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 4641445" data-attributes="member: 467">What happens is that PCs gain greater powers and more options, which impacts the number of choices they have in regards to combat and adventuring.  What does not happen, however, is the PCs gaining, as they did in BECM and AD&D and to a (much) lesser extend 3E, a wholly different set of options that change the gameplay from "adventuring" to "ruling". In addition, unlike BECM and AD&D (3E kicked this one out completely) there's no sudden change in how the characters increase in power -- the rate and what they get for it -- that motivates a change in the game (the law of diminishing returns on killing things and taking their stuff).If one looks at the DMG on pg 146, "Tiers of Play" it becomes readily apparent what the design intent was.  Although it starts with the sentence, "As characters grow in power, game play changes," it goes on to describe a situation in which game play does not fundamentally change, other than scale and scope. Each tier description discusses the scale at which the characters operate, the scope of the importance of their actions and, most tellingly, the kinds of dungeons they go into, monsters they fight and treasures they win.As to whether an individual group of players can agree on a home brewed system of granting title and waging war, for example,  is irrelevent to the discussion of whether this kind of character arc is supported or intended by the game. Using skill challenges as a method of simulating these kinds of activities is all well and good, and would make for a rather interesting subsystem indeed, there's no evidence to suggest that to be the intended use of the skill challenge system.Just to clarify, by "changing game" I do not mean a change in scope or scale. I mean a change in the goals of play, supported by changes in the game system itself attached to character level and advancement. And also to clarify, I am not in any way "bashing" 4E. A highly focused design in often a much better design, at least in support of that focused play style.And, providing a consisten experience throughout the level spread encourages players to play -- players that want whatever it is the game provides in play can get it from the moment they start to the time they reach their Epic Destiny's.  These are good design choices; they strengthen the product.But that's not to say I don't miss that arc of development inherent in the game I grew up on (particularly BECM).</blockquote>

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