Tiers Excerpt (merged)

[WyzardWhately]

I have a couple friends who had a tirade about str 8 wizards arm-wrestling str 18 fighters (and the 25% chance the wizard will beat them in a straight-up str check) when 3e was first released. Apparently, such things make a system unworthy for human consumption.

I can't wait for the reaction when they find out that a 20th level wizard (str 8), with an 8 str is going to have a 75% win rate against a 1st level fighter (str 18). Blood will shoot from their eyes. I'm bringing popcorn.

See, I'm willing to roll with that, and simply make it a known part of the setting. High-level people are godawful scary. That stick-thin Wizard, the one who looks like he's never worked a day in his life? Well, he's gone to other worlds, contended with devils, and cast world-altering magics. His strength no longer comes from his muscles alone, and he can easily best Thomas the Blacksmith in a feat of strength.

It makes the world more clearly supernatural, but I'm not going to fight the game-world being what it is.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

If you need the characters to follow your plot, or else everything is going to be "ruined," then go write a novel.

While I don't necessarily agree with the tone, that's my feeling on the matter as well. I will say that if you're going to run a plot-based game, try and take the "plot-ruining" powers into consideration rather than trying to build without them. Think about the villains, and what they would do with similar rituals and opportunities. What's good for the goose, etc.

 

[AZRogue]

Utility powers aren't replaced by newer powers. You still remember the ones from before.

So, does anyone see anything game breaking with characters remembering their old encounter and daily powers? The more I think about it, the more I think this is going to be a hard line house rule for me.

 

[WyzardWhately]

While I don't necessarily agree with the tone, that's my feeling on the matter as well. I will say that if you're going to run a plot-based game, try and take the "plot-ruining" powers into consideration rather than trying to build without them. Think about the villains, and what they would do with similar rituals and opportunities. What's good for the goose, etc.

You're right about the tone, that's my bad. I have been a part of too many games ruined by this attitude, and I've got some leftover bitterness, I suppose. I ended up leading the rest of the PCs in what I refer to as the "Great Plot Rebellion," and...well, one less bad GM in the world, because that guy swore he'd never run a game again.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

So...old gypsy woman...alone in the wagon...no one really watching...with the ability to scry...hmm...I've got an Intimidate Skill of +12... there's no penalty for out-of-alignment acts-....hmm..."

"I attack the gypsy woman."

DM: Just as you start to raise your arm to attack her, she looks at you with a piercing gaze and speaks quietly, "You may want to reconsider that. An old gypsy woman, alone in her wagon with her crystal ball has plenty of time to look into the sea of future events and prepare for a young, foolish bravo such as yourself. Following the waves of what you contemplate doing, your future seems surprisingly short, even in those ripples where you leave this wagon alive and with what you desire."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I get pretty tired of GMs complaining that this spell or that spell "ruins their plot." You know what the solution to that is? Don't have a plot. Have compelling NPCs and organizations and whatnot in the world who are trying to do varying things. Trap the PCs in the middle and let them make their own decisions, and find their own solutions. If you need the characters to follow your plot, or else everything is going to be "ruined," then go write a novel.

I cannot count how many GMs I've seen try to bring the hammer down on the PCs at every turn to preserve some half-assed "story" that wouldn't have held up in a ThunderCats episode.

As a world-builder that my players later can use as a playground, I still have to take all these abilities into account. And that can create some very bizarre worlds. That probably won't really change in 4E.

And then, I am not such a great DM that I can give my players total freedom. They can't go everywhere in the world and expect me to have that part ready for them to interact with. I am happy if I manage to keep my adventure idea in mind and don't forget important details, or details I added for fluff/flavor/enjoyment.

Just as an example for something that is game-breaking (if you didn't take it into account) in my view:
Let's assume I add a murder scene happens. At 1st level, if the players choose to interact, they will have a lot of leg work to do. (But Detect Evil can totally wreck the idea of a good-pretending evil guy)
At 5th level, they have spells at their disposal that willl allow them to compel others to tell the truth. That changes how the adventure must be built. The culprit needs to either have counter-magic, or not get even close to the characters. At higher levels, I have to take into account Speak with Dead (which is a pretty nice spell for this, I admit. It's not so hard to make it useful without game-breaking). As levels grow, the number of spell that become "auto-win" buttons increase if you don't take them into account. The problem is predicting when this will become true.

Sure, I don't have to introduce this kinds of scenarios at all. But the point is - it could have been fun doing so, but if you know a spell can shortcut everything, it's becoming a lot harder.

But more importantly, this doesn't have to be a "fixed" plot. My only assumption is that the PCs will be motivated enough to find out that who was the murderer. How they do it, I don't care, as long as it can entertain us for a session.

With guidelines for what to expect in tiers,
1) I know what I have to take into account when coming up with adventure ideas and scenarios. I don't have to care about Scry-Buff-Teleport at Heroic Tier, and I can make it nearly a requirement for Paragon level.
2) I have a lot of time to use the concepts that fit in there. This is probably the most important part, since spells always came with a level limit. But they came early and often, and that made it hard to have a free-form campaign over multiple levels.

 

[Shroomy]

Detect Thoughts, Detect Evil, and Speak with Dead are the most likely ways for a low-level mystery to be blown out of the water. Something tells me that there is no more Detect Evil (or any alignment for that matter), and that the other two are higher-level rituals than we would expect from earlier editions of the game.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Utility powers aren't replaced by newer powers. You still remember the ones from before.

So, does anyone see anything game breaking with characters remembering their old encounter and daily powers? The more I think about it, the more I think this is going to be a hard line house rule for me.

I suppose even low level per day and per encounter powers are usually better then at-will powers. So the problem is that you get to use more of them in each individual encounter or day, which can be game-breaking. It might work if you have some kind of "pool" from which you draw encounter powers, so in each given encounter, you can only use 3-5 of them, despite knowing all the old ones. That might be an easy house rule. (From a pure gamist perspective.)

 

[AllisterH]

Utility powers aren't replaced by newer powers. You still remember the ones from before.

So, does anyone see anything game breaking with characters remembering their old encounter and daily powers? The more I think about it, the more I think this is going to be a hard line house rule for me.

I would modify it so that if the "theme" is followed, you can upgrade. Basically, if the 1st level power is "Levitation" and then they want to replace it with "Fly", they should be able to.

Other than that, I doubt there would be a noticeable difference as many of the powers seem to inherently scale with level or are powers that are good for any level.

 

[malraux]

While I don't necessarily agree with the tone, that's my feeling on the matter as well. I will say that if you're going to run a plot-based game, try and take the "plot-ruining" powers into consideration rather than trying to build without them. Think about the villains, and what they would do with similar rituals and opportunities. What's good for the goose, etc.

One of the issues might be that the exceptional powers appear relatively quickly in previous editions. Speak with Dead pops up with no cost at 5th level, but of course a scroll of it could be purchased earlier. Because of that, murder mysteries can really only happen at first and second level, or extremely clever DMing. And while of course extremely clever DMing is the ideal, unfortunately I like to DM. I don't think that the issue is that these solutions to problems exist, its that they show up so quickly in the game world that DMs need a good system mastery to create plots, even at the lower levels of the game.