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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 5635202" data-attributes="member: 3586">At present, I have the unusual experience in being involved in three campaigns, one at each tier. I'm playing in the Heroic tier campaign (just hit 6th level), and I'm DMing the Paragon tier campaign (at 15th level) and the Epic tier campaign (just hit 26th level). All three campaigns have been played from 1st level, so the PCs have all developed in play through the tiers.I've seen some discussion recently about 4E being all the same from tier to tier. This doesn't match my experience: there are some fundamental differences which have made the tiers feel and play differently. The Heroic Tier is where you learn the craft of being an adventurer. By far the most significant difference with it from the later tiers is that from 1st to 10th level you're adding more options in combat. (This is less true of the Essentials martial classes, but it's still there). The capabilities of your character undergo a bigger expansion than what occurs later - the difference between a 1st level character who is basically down to spamming at-wills for most of a combat and a 10th level character who has a much greater range of encounter powers is significant in play. The Paragon Tier brings in the Paragon Paths, and it's a little feature of the Paragon Paths that really defines the difference between Heroic and Paragon: the rider to what Action Points achieve.It's amazing how something that seems so small has a major effect on the feeling of the tier, but it does, even with a player normally only able to use one AP/two encounters. There are other factors that make the Paragon Tier feel different from Heroic, but that's the main one that we noticed mechanically.Epic Tier doesn't quite have the same point of difference. I was going to say "Criticals on 19-20" - which is quite significant - but it's a bonus that is inconsistently applied, and some characters can't get it at all (and others get it much earlier). The "When you die..." epic power doesn't really come up enough in the campaign, although it does point to "death not being an issue" which is probably the hallmark of Epic play. I'll need to discuss Epic play with my players more to see what differences they see between it and Paragon.What do you think?Cheers!</blockquote>

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