Thought Experiment - Three Tiers

[Zinegata]

(Disclaimer: This is a thought experiment. I'm not out to make a game. But I am out to throw ideas/have discussions which may result in good ideas that can be applied to a game)

We've had a ton of threads on why Fighters can't have nice things recently. So it got me thinking... how can we represent a lot of what we see in fantasy lore in a levelled gaming system?

The first answer that came to mind was tiers. So for the purposes of discussion, let me "propose" a system that has three tiers. These are:

* Heroic Tier - In this tier, the game is focused on tactical combat. Fighters exist in this tier to stab people with swords. Apprentice Wizards exist to pepper the enemy with Magic Missile. Rogues backstab. The issues they solve are mostly "local" in nature - kill a chieftain, stab some goblins, and the like. Think Jon Snow (from A Song of Fire & Ice) when he's still a low-level dude stabbing wights.

* Royal Tier - In this tier, the game is focused on political intrigue. Generals exist to command armies. Powerful conjurers summon entire armies of elementals. Spymasters manipulate the courts of rival nations. The issues the PCs solve are mostly "national" or even "multinational" in nature. Manage a Kingdom. Lead a Crusade. Think Jon Snow when he takes command of all the forces on The Wall.

* Mythic Tier - In this tier, the game is focused on gaining divinity. Great Kings go out on a quest for immortality. Master Alchemists search for the Elixir of Eternal Life. Infernal Lawyers negotiate themselves to high positions in Hell. The issues the PCs solve now go beyond the mortal level - and enter the realm of Myths. Slay a God. Find the secret of immortality. Think Gilgamesh, Hercules, etc.

Now, here's a couple of rules regarding how the tiers interact:

1) The resource system changes depending on your tier.

The value of different resources change depending on the tier. For instance, in the Heroic Tier the adventurers would probably count individual gold coins to buy a sword. A King in the Royal Tier, by contrast, is more likely to use his influence over the Dwarven Forges in his territory to give him a nice shiny masterwork sword.

So, for the Heroic Tier, the resources are counted using individual gold coins.

When you hit the Royal Tier, individual gold coins don't matter anymore. You just have an overall "wealth value" which replaces gold coins. In addition to that (and more importantly), you have an "influence value" which can get you things that money can't buy... like command of the national army because the NPC Emperor really trusts you that much.

Finally, when you hit the Mythic tier, you get another resources known as the Divinity value - representing the amount of miracles you can perform based on how many people believe that you're really a God now.

2) Moving up a tier has requirements beyond XP.

A level 7 adventurer can't just break into the Royal Tier just because he has enough XP. He need to complete a capstone adventure first. To progress from adventurer to a royal, you need to complete an adventure that gives you enough wealth that you're set for life.

Similarly, when you move from Royal Tier to Mythic Tier, you need to complete a quest to give your PC a spark of divinity.

3) Characters do not have to go to a higher tier if they don't want to.

This may be controversial, but it totally fits a lot of stories. When an adventurer is level 7 and is about to hit level 8, he can choose to never progress to level 8 (even if he gets enough wealth). At that point, he can simply choose to retire, or he can continue "adventuring for fun" with the rest of the party and the game continue for him ala E6.

And the rationale for this is simple: Some people never "answer the call". A level 14 King with a really nice life may decide that Godhood may be too much and never progress to the Mythic tier.

Note though, that characters of different tiers generally should NOT adventure together (unless they're just helping each other get to the next tier). If some characters retire at the end of the tier, they can just bring in a new character of the appropriate tier.

4) Classes do not progress beyond their tier.

Let's say, for instance, that each tier consists of 7 levels. The Barbarian is a class under the heroic tier. What this means is that there is no level 8, 9, or high Barbarian. The Barbarian class stops at level 7.

If you want to go any higher, you must take a Royal Tier class that you qualify for. So at level 8, your level 7 Barbarian takes the Lord class.

The rationale behind this rule is simple: It ensures people get tier-appropriate powers. When the game focuses on political intrigue, the Barbarian can't remain

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So now that we've got a model, let's do a sample progression.

Say we start with a party of four guys - a Fighter, an Apprentice Wizard, an Acolyte, and a Hobo Rogue. They adventure together, go up in levels, and eventually slay a dragon. They get enough wealth and are now ready to progress to the Royal Tier.

At that point however, the player of the Hobo Rogue points out a Hobo doesn't really fit in a world of political intrigue. So the Rogue will retire and uses his share of the riches to open an inn.

The Fighter then progresses to become a Paladin (who has holy powers and numerous apprentice squires), the Apprentice Wizard becomes a True Wizard (who can now summon elementals to serve him), and the Acolyte becomes a High Priest (who has a congregation that follows him). Because they slew a dragon, they have gained enough wealth and influence to be given a tract of land by the King, to develop and settle. The player of the Hobo Rogue creates a new character - a Minister - who adds economic skills well-suited for this campaign level.

So they play in the Royal Tier, and eventually through a series of plots they reveal that the current King is evil. They lead the "Good guys" side in the civil war, win, and kill off the old king. Along the way, they uncover many valuable artifacts - including the Holy Grail which grants a spark of divinity.

At this point, it's time to go up another Tier. The High Priest's player decides that divinity is way too much for his character, and opts to retire the High Priest to the position of Pope. The Minister's player likewise retires his character to become the country's new Prime Minister. Only the Paladin and the Wizard decide to take a drink from the Grail and take that final, risky run to Godhood.

So at this point, the Paladin progresses to become a Living Virtue (think Christian Angel) whose former squires are now full Paladins looking for new converts, while the Wizard becomes a Nexus Archmage (a Wizard so powerful that he "leaks" magical energy, which can be tapped on by devout believers).

Early on their quest to Godhood, these two characters quickly meet and team up with the new characters the other two players choose - one is a Sworn Godslayer (think Kratos from God of War), and the other is an Air Elemental Queen. Together, they perform mythic tasks, slay demi-Gods, until a final battle against the evil God of War himself. During the battle, everyone is slain except for the Paladin - who finally assumes the mantle of becoming the new Goddess of War.

So there you have it. A possible progression from level 1 to Godhood for someone who started out as a Fighter. Is this system full of holes? Probably. Will this be enormously painful to write into an actual game? Definitely. Hence my disclaimer that this is just a thought exercise .

[baduin]

Very good, but I have one suggestion. There is no reason to use the same rules for the different tiers. In the Kingdom tier, you need rules on raising and manouvering armies. The characters fight in pitched battles, leading units of soldiers and attacking other units or gigantic monsters (they can be riding or be gigantic monsters themselves, of course). A round would represent 10 minutes, not 6 seconds, etc.

[mean_liar]

Is this a rehash? I think I stole all this already for my own Heartbreaker.

[Neurosis]

This seems really cool. I'd like to help develop it further but I'm not sure that's applicable as you said, it's a thought experiment.

What does seem odd to me is that Tier 1 is about personal power on a small scale, Tier 2 is about social influence, and then Tier 3 is about personal power on a grand scale, again. It might just be a quirk of the way you've written the descriptions, but Tier 1 and Tier 3 seem like a different game than Tier 2. One of them is about kicking ass (whether kicking goblin ass or kicking demigod ass) and the other is about persuading people to do things.

I also think that Tier 1 characters should be able to kill Tier 2 characters and Tier 2 characters should be able to kill Tier 3 characters (everyone can kill downwards). There is no point in involving yourself in political intrigue if you can fight an army yourself, and likewise there's no need to brave the wiles of court if you are immune to the poisons and backstabs of a skilled Tier 1 Assassin. Likewise, there is no point in becoming a god if you are immune to the actions of kings and nations, because you already effectively are a god. But this is getting into my issues with leveling systems in general...I prefer systems where, with the right circumstances, (almost) anyone can kill (almost) anyone, and there is no 'You must be Level X to ride (effect the plot)' signs.

If you wanted to go further, you could partially or completely decouple the Tier apparatus from the Level apparatus. For instance, if you want to stay an adventurer (Tier 1) you can continue to gain PERSONAL POWER (hurting things) without gaining plot relevance (ranks, titles, world-shaping magic) by consciously choosing to continue gaining Barbarian Levels. You would consciously be choosing to be, for instance, a Level 14 Barbarian instead of a Level 7 War Chief (previously a Level 7 Barbarian)...equivalent in personal power, but with far less plot influence.

In other words, Tiers govern plot influence while Levels measure personal ass-kicking. You need to be of sufficiently high level to improve your Tier, but you needn't stop gaining levels just because you don't want to move to a higher Tier.

[Blicero]

Is this a rehash? I think I stole all this already for my own Heartbreaker.

I wouldn't call it a rehash per se, but there have been a lot of threads that deal with the concept of putting tiers that actually mean something into an FRPG. But some repetition of ideas is inevitable on Teh Interwebz.

[Zinegata]

All fixed now.

[Zinegata]

Baduin->

That's actually the idea. The rule set for the three tiers is a bit different. There are points of commonality, but on the whole Tier 2 play should feel totally different from Tier 1.

mean_liar->

I haven't actually seen Heartbreaker >_>

Schwarz->

It's a thought experiment. It's a tool to also let other people develop their own games, so feel free to take these concepts and develop something where "Anyone can kill anyone". Decoupling tier with levels could accomplish that.

I agree though, in my example Tier 1 and 3 feel more similar than Tier 2. Because Tier 1 and 3 involve PCs kicking ass themselves, while Tier 2 is more about persuading. From a rules/mechanical perspective, I was visualizing Tier 3 as having a very different combat model from Tier 1, but I admit I probably didn't get that across.

Edit: The quote tags... they burn!

[Judging__Eagle]

I've split my own system into 4 tiers; with a capstone of 5 "major" abilities in a tier before a character can buy abilities in the next tier. Mortal, Heroic, Legendary and Epic are what I'm currently titling them.

Player Characters get dice, and spend them into dice pools; but have the option to reshuffle their pools, and have lots of dice unspent. Often, characters in stories make up abilities "on the fly"; and having resources that aren't forced to be spent upon leveling is a good way to show that potential.

Unspent dice also act as "adventure refreshed" Luck/Edge/Fate/Phlebotium dice; so, having a lot of unspent dice isn't a bad thing.

If anything, it would help explain why characters like Batman and Xander remain alive; they blow through their temporary dice pools whenever they rolled poorly enough that they would have been insta-gibbed; making up new BS dodge, or awareness, or speed powers; and then spending their Luck pool to get enough successes to avoid dying.

[Maj]

Since Blicero seems to be asleep I did a temporary patch fix.

How did you do that? And is there anyway you can swap the content of your patch post with the real content in the post that's all squished over because of the quote tags, please?

[Zinegata]

Since Blicero seems to be asleep I did a temporary patch fix.

How did you do that? And is there anyway you can swap the content of your patch post with the real content in the post that's all squished over because of the quote tags, please?

Fixed as requested. Good suggestion

Also, I "fixed" it by adding an end quote tag to my first post (without an accompanying start tag). That way, HTML just messes up two posts rather than every post after it.

[8headeddragon]

Not bad, but there ought to be either more symmetry or more uniqueness. A fourth "Ragnarok Tier" for the final battle against a hordes of balors or eliminating the second/third tier if they can't all be same or different. IMHO the second tier is the one that looks like it doesn't belong-- Royal tier could easily be folded into either Heroic or Mythic quite cleanly, and there are some characters that would fit into the odd tiers yet not into that one.

[ScottS]

Is this a rehash?

To some extent it's BECMI without the I (your character didn't exactly "transcend" its previous-tier stats, but they'd add rules based on what your character was supposed to be doing in the new tier, primarily warfare-sim and dominion-sim stuff in Companion and quest-for-immortality stuff in Master).

[Zinegata]

What's BECMI?

[Zinegata]

IMHO the second tier is the one that looks like it doesn't belong-- Royal tier could easily be folded into either Heroic or Mythic quite cleanly, and there are some characters that would fit into the odd tiers yet not into that one.

Making each tier fairly different is actually part of the point. A Hobo Rogue for instance should feel out of place in any tier outside of Heroic Tier without some major character development.

Since people have noted that Mythic and Heroic tiers feel too similar, lemme redo Mythic tier to be something more like this:

The Paladin ascends to becomg a Living Virtue (Angel) and the Wizard becomes a Nexus Archmage. They spend twenty-five years cultivating and expanding the numbers of their worshippers, partly through the help of the (now NPC) Pope and Prime Minister. Having two new demi-Gods pisses off the God of War, and he starts sending agents to kill these two upstarts.

Fortunately, the Living Virtue and Nexus Archmage are aided by a Sworn Godslayer and an Air Elemental Queen, both of whom have had grudges against the God of War. They defeat the God of War's agents, and begin their mythic adventures together.

And note that all of this - the 25 years of gaining power, meeting two fellow demi-Gods, and defeating an agent of the current God of War - it all happens in one session. Because for immortal beings, turns are measured in years as opposed to hours or seconds.

In all, their mythic quest spans about 500 years. They watch as their old NPC friends die of old age. They guide their descendants through trials and hardships. The Living Virtue's squires end up founding an Order of Paladins that spans the entire land. The Archmage helps build and destroy dozens of academies founded in his name. The Air Elemental Queen defeats her Earth Elemental rivals, while the Godslayer gleefully hunts down agents of the God of War.

Finally, they have a final showdown against the God of War. The God of War dispatches his massive armies from Hell, and chronicles speak of this time as Ragnarok or Armageddon. The Mythic PCs likewise unleash their own powers. In the end, the God of War is slain but only the Living Virtue survives the terrible battle. She claims the vacant Throne of War for herserlf, becoming the new Goddess of War.

[baduin]

I would put an additional Tier between Adventurer and Royal - something like Chieftain/Hero. In the Adventurer tier the party is four to perhaps 20 people with henchmen etc. In the Royal tier, you govern a country and lead 100 thousand strong armies.

In the Chieftain tier you command detachments. Eg a typical unit in a combat game would be 6 horsemen or 20 infantrymen, or a single flyer (wizard, flying mount) or monster. Even a character at the maximum power of the tier should have some chance of losing if fighting alone against a basic 20-man infantry unit, unless he had a defensible position or something similar.

This way there would be clear differences between tiers:
-Adventurers - dungeon crawling
-Chieftains - surface and air combat, skirmishes and battles (Warhammer). Instead of dungeon crawling a maze, you could besiege and storm a castle.
-Royal - kingdom management, mass battles and grand strategy (Dragon Pass boardgame)
-Mythic ? (perhaps Magic the Gathering?)

I would also suggest considering amalgamating Royal and Mythic levels of play. There seems to be little left to do for the Mythic level, unless you want to go for Planeswalking.

[mean_liar]

So, does anyone have experience with Reign, Birthright, Rokugan's Way of the Daimyo, Field of Blood, or Houses of the Blooded?

Just asking. They all touch on Tiering from what we're calling Heroic to Royalty.

[hogarth]

Let's say I'm interested in the Heroic and Mythic tiers, but not the Royal. Does that mean I'm screwed?

(Frankly, the Royal tier sounds like a board game to me, and I haven't the foggiest idea how you intend the Mythic tier to work.)

[Sashi]

It doesn't seem right to have a tier of mass combat & castle logistics inserted in between being a scrappy band of adventurers and a deific band of godslayers.

I'd really want a mass combat game that stood beside and slightly above each tier. You could either be the lord of a small keep and hire adventurers to clear out a den of bugbears, or you could be the adventurers who actually have to go and clear out the den. And you could be the king of a castle and send out knights on quests to kill the dragon, or the knights sent out to kill the dragon. For groups that really want to do both at the same time, they could have their castle character and their adventuring character. One player could be the lord and the court assassin, while another could be the vizier and guardsman.

One thing I'm thinking about: could the levels from previous tiers turn into backgrounds that gave a relatively small number of abilities? When you're building a character from level 1-10 organically, it's fairly easy to just choose a few things each level, but it's significantly more difficult to build a level 10 character from scratch, and the hardest is to make a 10 level build to follow from level 1.

If the game was actually structured so that playing Adventurer tier was like playing E6, with the option to slowly increase character power and add more toys to the batcave, retire the characters and start a new campaign as level 1 Adventurers, or transform the characters into level 1 Hero tier characters with their old characters as a background that would make it a lot easier to say "Your DMF is no longer valid here."

This way it would also be relatively easy to get characters from Adventurer to Immortal tier with a simple time jump and training montage: they players could just make a level 1 Immortal, with the only added complexity over making a level 1 Adventurer being choosing the 3-4 backgrounds and associated abilities.

[ScottS]

What's BECMI?

The Frank Mentzer rewrite/expansion of "Basic D&D" that ended up as five boxed sets. (Essentials uses the same art/design for their red box as Mentzer Basic.) Each box covered a specific level range (1-3/4-14/15-25/26-36/godhood) and the theme of each "tier" was supposed to be distinct as far as what your adventuring was like. You still levelled up your character as usual, and were still supposed to blow up monsters in dungeons occasionally even at higher levels, so the only tier that was fully "transformational" in your sense was Immortal, when you gave up your original class, cashed in all your earned XP for "power points", and could cast any spell or effect in the game by spending temporary PP out of your pool (also, you became a five-dimensional being that could fly, plane-travel, body-swap, etc. at will, so standard D&D scripts were well and truly out the window at that point).

[Judging__Eagle]

What's BECMI?

The Frank Mentzer rewrite/expansion of "Basic D&D" that ended up as five boxed sets. (Essentials uses the same art/design for their red box as Mentzer Basic.) Each box covered a specific level range (1-3/4-14/15-25/26-36/godhood) and the theme of each "tier" was supposed to be distinct as far as what your adventuring was like. You still levelled up your character as usual, and were still supposed to blow up monsters in dungeons occasionally even at higher levels, so the only tier that was fully "transformational" in your sense was Immortal, when you gave up your original class, cashed in all your earned XP for "power points", and could cast any spell or effect in the game by spending temporary PP out of your pool (also, you became a five-dimensional being that could fly, plane-travel, body-swap, etc. at will, so standard D&D scripts were well and truly out the window at that point).

This I like.

[Orca]

So, does anyone have experience with Reign, Birthright, Rokugan's Way of the Daimyo, Field of Blood, or Houses of the Blooded?

Just asking. They all touch on Tiering from what we're calling Heroic to Royalty.

In Birthright you could have mixed groups of rulers and non-rulers. That didn't work perfectly due to the difficulty of setting up motivations for everyone to be involved - without having the threat be earth-shattering. IME the answer of having either an NPC or one of the group just giving orders to the group really didn't work for a bunch of teenagers. At that age me and my friends and probably a lot of others hate taking orders.

[Zinegata]

Baduin->

Sure, it'd be perfectly reasonable to have more than 3 tiers.

I posted 3 tiers as an example for my thought experiment, but there's no reason you can't add a fourth tier, or consolidate multiple tiers.

The basic idea is that each tier should involve very different gameplay compared to other tiers.

mean_liar->

I only know of Birthright. I feel old -_-

hogarth->

Excellent question.

If you don't want to play a middle tier (i.e. Royal Tier), you can simply timeskip.

In this case, the DM simply adds the Grail of Immortality as part of the treasure pile in the dragon's horde. After killing the dragon, the party levels up straight to mythic tier.

They probably have 1 session dedicated to chargen/timeskip, before they start their mythic adventures for real.

As for how Mythic would work... Magic: The Gathering wouldn't be a bad way to describe it, actually.

Sashi->

Well, the model I propose assumes you want to change how the game plays between different tiers. That's why massed combat becomes highlighted in the 2nd tier (as opposed to the 1st tier, where it's about individual combat).

Also, my intent isn't to simply convert abilities from previous tiers into background material for higher tiers. You still keep those abilities. So a Royal Tier character can, if they want, still go into a Bugbear's lair.

They'll probably have better equipment, and they may have red shirts who can activate traps for them. But level 7 is really meant to be a sort of a "cap" as to what a character can do from a "single combat" perspective.

Turning former levels into backgrounds for a higher tier does sound like an awesome idea though, and it also serves as a retrain mechanic of sorts.

ScottS->

Ah, thanks!

[Ice9]

I think what's throwing me off about Mythic tier is a couple things:
1) It's a bit vague how "doing stuff" is supposed to work. Are you personally kicking ass? Managing your acolytes? Doing random acts that achieve stuff years later in a "just as planned" kind of way?
2) The Sworn Godslayer seems like a throwback to Adventurer tier, in terms of playstyle. Really, he plays pretty much exactly like the Hobo Rogue, except instead of stabbing ogres in the face he stabs divine avatars in the face. Unless I'm reading it wrong.
3) For that matter, the Air Elemental Queen seems like a throwback to Royal tier, just with more powerful subjects.


Also, the expanded timescale for Royal and especially Mythic tier sometimes jives with the "just go vaporize them yourself" factor. For instance, you're a Nexus Archmage in a centuries long struggle against a cabal of wizards that wants to systematize magic in a way they control. So you're doing abstract years-long actions like "increase the ambient magic field so that more Sorcerers are born in this kingdom" or "purge all references to your inner circle's true names".

But then the question arises - couldn't you take a few hours off and go on a teleport-spree through your rival's towers, blasting the crap out their minions and libraries? Even if all the new archmagic you've learned is slow to cast, you still have your capabilities from being top-level Adventurer tier, and presumably you'd have gotten a bit better since then. However, if this type of tactic is possible and effective, then it makes successfully completing any years-long action impossible and/or unnecessary.

[CCarter]

Well...it seems like "you can retire your character" isn't really a fix to the problem. Really, that's something people have always been able to do when the fighter they're playing starts to seriously suck.

Also, how to handle a character that works in Tier 1 and Tier 3, but not in Tier 2?
Also, you could broaden tier 3 so that its not just the quest for god-ness, but also other equally badass super-types (quest to become a mega dragon, titan, disembodied super-intellect or somesuch on par with minor deities, but without the hassles around worshippers and so on).

[Blasted]

Just an aside: Isn't this effectively what OD&D did?
My memory maybe slightly is very hazey; didn't you get to follow an advanced path come level 9 or 12 or so, and go on to become immortal if you could stomach playing that long?