Too soon to daydream about Heroic-only Campaign?

[Drammattex]

I think the thing that peeved me most about Wednesday's article was that it now appears "Raise Dead" is a part of the upper level Heroic Tier.

A few months ago, word was that Raise Dead was unavailable to Heroic Tier. If you die, you're dead. At the Paragon Tier, death was surmountable at great cost, and at Epic, death was a speed bump. As I recall, this was all a part of a WotC feature on death in 4e.

It kills me to think that they're going back on that. <-- pun

Grr.

 

[Lacyon]

I think the thing that peeved me most about Wednesday's article was that it now appears "Raise Dead" is a part of the upper level Heroic Tier.

A few months ago, word was that Raise Dead was unavailable to Heroic Tier. If you die, you're dead. At the Paragon Tier, death was surmountable at great cost, and at Epic, death was a speed bump. As I recall, this was all a part of a WotC feature on death in 4e.

It kills me to think that they're going back on that. <-- pun

Grr.

High-level Heroic means that the raise dead ritual is theoretically available at about the same level as it was in 3E (9th).

Being a ritual that (theoretically) anyone can learn, though, instead of a spell that all clerics automatically know if they're 9th level or higher is a small but important change. It means that the default is that nobody knows how to raise the dead.

 

[Praeden]

My GAMERS WANTED advertisements usually list that my campaigns go from levels 1-12. That probably won't change for 4e..unless I dig out my D&D master level set and run it up to level 36th! HA!

Seriously though, the info they just put out said "Characters will typically have all of their magic item slots filled by level 10." That REALLY put me off.
jh

The actual quote was

"They acquire magic items quickly, though, and might even fill their available item slots by 10th level."

which doesn't carry the same meaning at all. It seems to me like there's going to be quite a bit of flexibility with regards to magic item acquisition.

 

[Harshax]

I think it will be totally possible to play a long lasting, enjoyable game at the Heroic Tier only. In fact, after reading the DMG excerpt, I'm kinda not liking the capabilities of Paragon and Epic Tiers. (They're cool, just not really the kind of games I run)

You may find that you have to tweak some things if you want Heroic play that includes forays into other planes.

 

[DandD]

I don't think you have to tweak. According to Worlds&Monsters, it's expected to be able to enter the faboulus planes of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos as much as can be the Feywild and the Shadowfell at every tier. You're just not meant to spend too much time there if you're only heroic-tier class.

 

[That One Guy]

So, I've given some thought (okay, probably a bit more than is healthy...) to this. I really like the idea of heroic tier. I think it could be fun to have that playstyle forever... everything tough and dangerous, but you can win by the skin of your teeth. It's really fun for me to play and run. However, I think for the first game (or two?) I run (because I'll probably be running the game and not playing) I'll try to stick to the rules as closely as possible. If after those games I feel like a purely heroic tier game would be more fun, then I'll run that. I have one idea for a session where the Heroic tier PCs have to go through the Shadowfell (or how I interpret it... which is awesome in my head. Think the gloom from Nightwatch. Yeahh...) briefly to get somewhere.

 

[KidSnide]

I think it will be totally possible to play a long lasting, enjoyable game at the Heroic Tier only.

That's always been possible. My current 3.X campaign has been going on for over 8 years now and the PCs are at 7th level, having started at 3rd.

 

[Blair Goatsblood]

Ditto, I think I have 2 9th level characters in my 4-year? long 3.5 campaign. Heroic Tier for me, although the Paragon and Epic rules can be used for building villains like crazy Black Company wizards, insane godlings, etc.

 

[Korgoth]

No dog in this fight anymore, but what sort of tweaks do y'all think it will require to run a "long lasting" campaign in E10? I ask because Keep on the Shadowfell is supposed to level a party all the way up to 3rd. 2 levels in one module! At that rate you hit the level cap after about 5 adventures.

Note that if I were doing anything with 4E I would be all for an E10 / heroic cap. Just wondering how you would get the most play out of it. I mean, I can imagine a variety of ways (like dividing XP by 10 or something) but I'm wondering how people more conversant with the latest 4E gossip are planning to do it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

High-level Heroic means that the raise dead ritual is theoretically available at about the same level as it was in 3E (9th).

Being a ritual that (theoretically) anyone can learn, though, instead of a spell that all clerics automatically know if they're 9th level or higher is a small but important change. It means that the default is that nobody knows how to raise the dead.

This should be emphasised more. There is no reason that anyone in hte campaign world knows of the resurection ritual, or the knowledge is very limited, requiring lots of searching obscure libraries and perhaps stealing the relevant tomes and getting a bunch of exotic artifacts.