Tier-crossing quests

[Lacyon]

Would it not be better to have a party fulfilling a quest to move from heroic to paragon?

Otherwise, won't you end up with some disgruntled party members when Josh the Wonderful takes everyone on his paragon quest and they tag along - or when Fred the latecomer still hasn't done his quest and the rest of the party don't want to allow him the time to do so?

Cheers

One way to resolve this issue is to start having the tier-shifting quests at, say, level 9. Everybody can still actually progress up to paragon at the same time, after all the quests are done, but each character still has an individual proof of his worthiness.

 

[Korgoth]

Would it not be better to have a party fulfilling a quest to move from heroic to paragon?

Otherwise, won't you end up with some disgruntled party members when Josh the Wonderful takes everyone on his paragon quest and they tag along - or when Fred the latecomer still hasn't done his quest and the rest of the party don't want to allow him the time to do so?

Cheers

It depends on how you set it up. Certainly an all-party quest with a suitably face-rocking conclusion could be sufficient to justify the propulsion of the PCs into paragon-dom. Or you could set up the individual quests several levels in advance.

One option would be to set up individual quests in advance, and then at a suitable juncture set up a one-on-one sessions with each of the players to game out the conclusion of each quest. And then you could bring them back together for the finale session of the heroic tier.

But yeah, you probably don't want a rotational situation such that some guy has to sit through all the other paragon quests until it rolls around to his turn, bringing up the rear. If you did individual quests you'd want them to dovetail somehow. Like, they all take place in Sigil but getting to Sigil takes a lot of work, etc. So even if they all culminate individually, getting them to the threshold of culmination was a group effort.

 

[Revinor]

From the practical point of view, it might be a problem when everybody advances from 10th to 11th level at once and then everybody wants to pass his own advancement quest before others do. While it might lead to quite interesting negotiation phase, it will be quite bad to be the 6th one and know that you will not advance a level for next 5 sessions (and when you do, some others might be already even on 13th level if they get lucky with xp).

Second point is that it is very videogamish. I will not mention double-U Oh double-U, but it smells a bit like that.

I would suggest something else. Let them get the abilities anyway, but if they complete the quest (and this quest should be already paragon-specific, allowing or even requiring them to use new powers), they get something extra - outside of normal scope of the class. Some specific magic item fitting the paragon path, some special ability/stat bonus outside of normal advancement rules. Still big benefit if they take the pains to complete the quest, but it is not blocking normal advancement. Plus, you can vary reward each time depending on the player and group needs/wishes/performance.

IMHO, paragon paths are underpowered from what we have seen currently. Adding a nice bonus on top of them won't break the game. Gimping them further will only make entire paragon thing pointless (and people will just multiclass to one of the basic classes at 11th, for better abilities and less pain with required 'rites of passage').