TNE: To Tier or Not, and Mass Combat and Setting

[mean_liar]

Non-linear tiers allow you to group characters in ways that actually make sense, without forcing people to become personal combat badasses to achieve meaningful character abilities.

Your game, your rules, but I think this is a mistake. DnDv3.5's Prestige Classes were an awesome design choice and I think taking that idea and building on it would produce excellent results.

There's nothing to say that going up in levels in a class intrinsically means that all stats meaningfully raise - that skillful commoner may just be 15th level Commoner, a class that gives +1 HP per level but stacking Skill Foci or whatever. I don't think that DnD's HP system is something worth retaining, if you were to build from the ground up.

[Username17]

You know, the only point of having tiers in the same game system is so that characters can advance from one tier to the next.

If you don't have that then you might as well just make 3 different games, one for each tier.

Not true. There's also the purpose in having different tiers encounterable by people in your tier. The fact that your character is not civilian tier and adventurer tier at different times in the same game does not mean that there is no advantage in having characters of adventurer tier interacting with NPCs who are civilian tier.

There's nothing to say that going up in levels in a class intrinsically means that all stats meaningfully raise - that skillful commoner may just be 15th level Commoner, a class that gives +1 HP per level but stacking Skill Foci or whatever.

If levels don't have consistent meaning, there's no purpose served in having levels. What you are talking about is an incredibly clumsy and shitty skillbase/levelbase hybrid combining all the disadvantages of both. Characters are unable to be made freely competent in desired fields and characters of level X have no assumable competency to take on level X challenges. That's terrible.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Yes, because taking levels in COMMONER and then getting screwed is bad?

I have no idea how you could possibly think that using short classes inherently means that capabilities of those characters are underpowered.

Levels have a consistent meaning insofar as they belong in identifiable chains. Knight - Mystic Knight - Holy Warlord is an identifiable chain. That's short classes feeding into each other. If you think taking Knight - Mystic Knight - Craftsman and getting an underpowered character is somehow a product of bad design, then you're (once again) just making crap up because you don't understand what someone is talking about and would rather shit on something than ask a question.

Seriously - you think multiclassing into an explicit "This is for NPCs that make baskets" class and getting a poor result for the effort is a product of bad design?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Frank, "tiers" is probably not the best way to describe what you're proposing, given that it's a synonym for "levels". Perhaps "phase" "role" or "milieu" would be a better descriptor.

At any rate, it sounds like a great idea. I hope it turns out to be workable in practice.

[MGuy]

Sounds something like FFTactics or other Job based VG system. I like it in those games and I happen to like it.

[Username17]

Seriously - you think multiclassing into an explicit "This is for NPCs that make baskets" class and getting a poor result for the effort is a product of bad design?

Yes. Duh.

If taking a level of a class does not put you on the same level as someone who takes levels in another class, then those levels aren't level. And then your levels don't mean anything. You're making the argument that it's OK for a 12th level Fighter to be worse than a 12th level Druid because obviously he doesn't have magic to make him as awesome at 12th level as someone who does. The moment you concede that, the terminology "12th level" doesn't mean anything at all.

Taking a level in "basket maker" needs to give you as much character power as taking a level in "Storm Wizard." Because that's what levels mean. Storywise, you can have the NPC basket makers gain levels much more slowly to explain why people regard storm wizards as frightening (at least, more so than basket makers). But it's totally unacceptable for a 15th level basket maker to be less powerful than a 15th level storm wizard. Just as it is unacceptable for the 15th level Barbarian to be any weaker than the 15th level storm wizard.

If your power level is 9000, then that's what your power level is. If the thing you do is something that people normally rank at power level 6000, that means that you're pretty good at that thing. If the thing you do is something normally rated at 20,000, that actually means that for the thing you are, you suck. If the thing you do is something normally rated at power level 2 to 3, then you're a fucking god of whatever that thing is.

That's how power levels work. And if you intentionally make them work some other way, your use of leveled nomenclature is an active hindrance to good game design.

-Username17

[Thymos]

So what if classes are grouped into tiers?

Warrior, Basket Weaver, Expert are Tier: Commoner

Fighter, Barbarian, Bard are Tier: Adventurer

Wizard, Cleric, and Fightan class equal to the two previously mentioned (doesn't exist, but if we follow this through we'd make one) are Tier: Heroics

We'd probably have to give some kind of ratio (a level 10 commoner tier could beat a level 1 adventurer tier and so forth), but this could be workable.

[ckafrica]

Sounds something like FFTactics or other Job based VG system. I like it in those games and I happen to like it.

That's were the idea original came from in discussions here though it looks like it's evolving into no levels at all from the micro levels mentioned there. I think it's for the best as it should allow you to spend more time in your preferred sweet zone without feeling like your getting no progress.

[mean_liar]

If taking a level of a class does not put you on the same level as someone who takes levels in another class, then those levels aren't level. And then your levels don't mean anything. You're making the argument that it's OK for a 12th level Fighter to be worse than a 12th level Druid...

Taking a level in "basket maker" needs to give you as much character power as taking a level in "Storm Wizard." Because that's what levels mean.

...

That's how power levels work. And if you intentionally make them work some other way, your use of leveled nomenclature is an active hindrance to good game design.

You're tying your "power level" (better defined as Effectiveness) explicitly to Level. That's unnecessarily limiting.

The idea is to have a set of tiered classes that feed into each other with prereqs - easily-hit prereqs for PC-types, but that those tiers are of an arbitrary length of Levels dependent on the archetype. If it helps, don't think of it as a Level so much as a parcel of Effectiveness, with some parcels better than others. Higher prereqs = better parcel, keeping the mooks down in mook-town.

It's not the only way to do it by far and you don't like it. That's fine. But iIf you start with the hard premise that Level = Effectiveness and Fighters Can't Have Nice Things, then you've already backed yourself into a corner since that basically leads to some kind of tiering and this thread is pointless for you.

I think the concept of Tiers is good. I also think that its possible to do without the explicit step-wise function of Hero/Paragon/Epic, instead using a smoother level progression.

[Manxome]

If it helps, don't think of it as a Level so much as a parcel of Effectiveness, with some parcels better than others. Higher prereqs = better parcel, keeping the mooks down in mook-town.

Dividing effectiveness into parcels is useless and misleading (and therefore bad design) unless the parcels are in some way comparable--not necessarily equal in power, but equal in cost, or equal in how they interact with some game mechanic, or divided into groups that are equal in some respect. Something. Otherwise they have no reason to exist, and adding additional rules (especially misleading ones) that serve no purpose is bad design.

And since the term "level" has historically been widely used as a measure of effectivness, if you are going to have a bunch of parcels in your game that are not equal, calling them "levels" is bad design, even if the parcels are not inherently bad design.

If your game is divided into tiers, you could have a level system within each tier such that levels are not comparable across tiers, but they would at least need to be comparable within tiers--and if they are not comparable across tiers, then asking people to choose whether they want to gain a level in tier X or tier Y is a Bad Idea.

[baduin]

1. Mythic tier is very different, and requires a separate, or specially designed setting. In addition, mythic heroes generally fight in their own separate world- D&D planes etc. For that reason, I think it is best to left mythic tier alone for the beginning. It can be added later.

2. A few posters suggested that a group of heroic characters should be able to fight an epic character. From this follows that a heroic army will automatically defeat an epic character (if it can catch him, of course), or small group of epic characters.

I think this point is very important. The fact that in D&D higher level heroes are invulnerable to lower level threats doesn't add anything to the game, and removes a lot of interesting options from it.

If epic tier heroes are vulnerable to large groups of lower level threats, you can still do the typical D&D combat encounters:
- a group of heroes against a group of opponents
- a group of heroes against a single super-monster

But you can, in addition, do the following encounters:
- a group of epic heroes against waves of minions in complicated terrain (eg castle) - as a balanced encounter. Space Hulk shows that such a thing can be an interesting game. Of course, it will be more difficult to design it for mostly melee combat.
- epic heroes sneaking through a camp of heroic army to spy on it, or to assasinate the commanders.
- a mass battle, in which each of epic heroes commands a heroic unit.

So, we want epic characters to be able to automatically defeat a single heroic character, but to have a balanced combat against a group of them. The best way to do this, I think, is to give high bonuses for attacking in groups. In order to avoid ganging on one opponent to be always the best tactics, group combat must have corresponding drawbacks.

Eg: to attack as a group characters must be by each other, and to spend a standard action to combine into an unit. The resulting unit gives each character a bonus to melee attack and defense, but it moves as a single character, at lowest initiative count and at half speed, and it must divide its attacks between adjoining opponents as equally as possible. If a heroic unit sacrifices its defense for offense (using all-out attack option), it have an attack bonus comparable to an epic hero.

[Spaghetti Western]

"In order to avoid ganging on one opponent to be always the best tactics, group combat must have corresponding drawbacks."

But isn't is almost always the best tactic in reality? As long as no members of the gang or so feeble as to be a liability when would ganging up not better than going 1 on 1?

[CatharzGodfoot]

"In order to avoid ganging on one opponent to be always the best tactics, group combat must have corresponding drawbacks."

But isn't is almost always the best tactic in reality? As long as no members of the gang or so feeble as to be a liability when would ganging up not better than going 1 on 1?

Not if you can reduce their ability to attack by keeping them engaged.

[virgil]

And it's not purely the best tactic, group assault. From what I'm aware of, military ops in city invasions can't do that because you need to cover any possible attack vector; also, overkill is a very real concern, you only need one or two people shooting one fellow to get him dead or at least hiding to keep from being dead.

[baduin]

But isn't is almost always the best tactic in reality? As long as no members of the gang or so feeble as to be a liability when would ganging up not better than going 1 on 1?

Imagine there is 5 our guys and 5 opponents. All 5 of our guys stomp one opponent. leaving themselves wide open. The remaining 4 opponents backstab one of our guys each. A knife in the back is enough to get a man out ouf combat, generally.

Now we have 1 guy, and opponents 4. And, of course, they do gang up on him - because it is the best tactic, but only if you have numerical advantage.

[Spaghetti Western]

point taken

[mean_liar]

Dividing effectiveness into parcels is useless and misleading (and therefore bad design) unless the parcels are in some way comparable--not necessarily equal in power, but equal in cost, or equal in how they interact with some game mechanic, or divided into groups that are equal in some respect. Something. Otherwise they have no reason to exist, and adding additional rules (especially misleading ones) that serve no purpose is bad design.

And since the term "level" has historically been widely used as a measure of effectivness, if you are going to have a bunch of parcels in your game that are not equal, calling them "levels" is bad design, even if the parcels are not inherently bad design.

If your game is divided into tiers, you could have a level system within each tier such that levels are not comparable across tiers, but they would at least need to be comparable within tiers--and if they are not comparable across tiers, then asking people to choose whether they want to gain a level in tier X or tier Y is a Bad Idea.

Then "level" is a bad semantic choice, but what I'm basically talking about it splitting max Power/Skill/BAB capabilities from the acquisition of those capabilities.

The way it's been explained, the Tiers are large step-wise increases in the maximums. What I'm saying is that there's no especial reason or advantage to doing it that way, without incremental increases.

One advantage is that you don't need separate rules for mooks and lieutenants at each tier since you just give them an appropriate max.

Really, this is the PL system of Mutants and Masterminds, which is what tiers end up looking like except you're going from PL 5 to 12 to 18 with the three proposed tiers.

[Username17]

The way it's been explained, the Tiers are large step-wise increases in the maximums. What I'm saying is that there's no especial reason or advantage to doing it that way, without incremental increases.

Yes there is. Indeed, I see no special advantage in having small incremental increases in a person's "awesomeness" at all.

Let's say someone is Civilian Tier. We know that they can't effectively adventure with someone in the Adventurer Tier, because the Adventurer Tier character gets abilities like "run on rooftops" and "set shit on fire with their fucking mind" while the Civilian gets abilities like "has marriageable daughter" and "can forge nails." The civilian's adventures are going to come across like a Call of Cthulhu adventure because he probably can't take a goblin warrior in hand to hand combat.

But seriously, what's the point of having someone be a 3rd level Civilian? What the fuck would that even mean? He's not 30% of the way to being an adventuring wizard, he's never going to become an adventuring wizard. He's a silver smith or something. He has civilian tier abilities and civilian tier adventures. What is there to be gained by subdividing things such that there are adventures for civilians level 4-6 that are too hard for civilians level 2 or 3 and too easy for civilians level 8 or 9?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

What is there to be gained by subdividing things such that there are adventures for civilians level 4-6 that are too hard for civilians level 2 or 3 and too easy for civilians level 8 or 9?

The only thing I can think of is that players tend to like a feeling of progress. I mean even in Call of Cthulhu, you can raise your skills a bit and stuff like that.

[Draco_Argentum]

Personally I hate the part of leveling up where you go change a bunch of numbers on your sheet. I'd be happy to get rid of it. Gaining a new power is interesting progress instead of tedious progress.

[Edit]This is post 111111 on TDG.[/Edit]

[mean_liar]

The point of a 30th level Civilian is that it allows badasses relative to identical tiers:

"Manar knows everything about farming AND blacksmithing!" can coexist with "I am the adolescent son of a god".

Probably more common is, "Manar has been through eight wars and he's seriously the most dangerous infantry sergeant ever" and "I am the son of a god".

You can have a character with supreme maximums and little skill other than raw power, and a character with an INTENSE handle on mundane crap the children of gods would never care about but still can't handle a sword very well, or a grizzled veteran who can scare mundanes but who isn't going to matter one crap once the badasses show up.

I'm just curious why you'd fixate on three tiers.

[NativeJovian]

Does "can farm harder than six normal men" even need to be made explicit in the mechanics? If the whole point of tiers is to organize combat power (so you don't have a level 20 commoner who can forge seventeen masterwork longswords per day but can get his ass kicked by a level 5 fighter), and RPGs are about stabbing things in the face and taking their stuff, then why do you even want or need a non-combat tier at all?

Unless there's actually demand for a game where you can grow the best potatoes in the kingdom but still run screaming from wolves and bears, there's no point in a non-combat tier. Trained fighters -- even a level 1 trained fighter with nothing more than a dull sword and some rusty armor to his name -- can stab farmers and craftsmen to death all day long without breaking a sweat. If tiers represent combat capacity, then farmers and craftsmen honestly belong in the same tier as cows and sheep -- neither can kill ANYONE effectively, so they're not a threat individually (although they might be in groups -- a stampede or an angry mob would be a combat-tier-appropriate threat, even though a cow or a farmer wouldn't be).

[Korwin]

The point of a 30th level Civilian is that it allows badasses relative to identical tiers:

You dont need levels for that, look at how much XP the Civilian has and thats it.

[mean_liar]

But "mook" is a relative concept, entirely dependent on who is supposed to be mowing it down.

So a low-grade mook at Epic is different from a mook at Mundane. And so within the context of farming, maybe it doesn't matter but there's always some kind of benchmark you're going for. If you want every civilian to be the same and just handwave them all, including goons, then there's no point - but if you want to distinguish between Civvie A and Sergeant B there is.

And Korwin has the right of it, since at this point I'm only using the term "level" to describe how many parcels of XP they've gotten to spend independent of maximum capabilities.

[violence in the media]

I think one of the appeals of tiers and scaling and farm production and all that crap is the idea that you could zoom in and out of the action in the game world.

I can't imagine that I'm the only one that occassionally wants to play SimCity or Civilization in the context of D&D. Sometimes you want to play the build up your fief minigame, and then you can zoom into the adventure minigame when you go clear the Bugbear tribes out of your woods. Sure, you can DM fiat this, but that's just MTP and unsatisfying. You want the fact that you claimed the copper mines in the hills in your last adventure to mean something tangible to your estate. You also want it to be consistent regardless of who controls the mines (unlike MTP where the DM's fuck target wins).

Then, when you go to war with the neigboring Hobgoblin empire over your copper mines, you know that you can consript 500 soldiers from your lands and you want to command your troops in battle and have that be meaningful. Maybe this game plays something akin to WFB. Though the reason you don't simply do that is that there's no real way to translate your character into that system.

Again, I know that you can simply Tea Party a lot of this stuff, but I can't help but occassionally wish it was supported by the system. It's the same sort of frustration you get in video games where you have high explosives and rail cannons, yet you're still mucking around in the sewers looking for the fucking blue key.