So this is just a very rough idea I am throwing out here, and I think I may have mentioned it before or perhaps Frank talked about it briefly but I don't recall as much discussion. It also is tangentially related to the other "Three Tiers" post but not quite directly.
4e was very worried about an "action economy" and it was right, there really is an action economy (of sorts). The only difference is that in 3e, some actions meant more to different people. 4e "solved" this by making everything the same, except not really, so sometimes a minor action is the most critical thing you can do, whereas other people only care about standards, and so on.
Whatever. I can write a game wherein an action describes a singular phenomenon or the next minute of in-setting detail, and the inability to untangle, mentally, the concept that an action could describe a motion or a series of motions is part of that problem.
What I am more interested in is the concept that actions could be more valuable as power increased. Or rather, that some people could take actions that others by definition could not. Literally, the tier advancement scheme is defined by gaining an entirely new Action Type. How you draw this line is a question for the game setting to answer, but a common notion might be a division between "mortal" and "immortal" actions, for instance, or mundane and magical, or what-have-you. I prefer avoiding the use of the word "magic" here.
In any case, I thought this was an interesting concept with which to approach "tiers", and also a neat way to make it so that as tiers pass by, characters who ascend to a higher tier have actions that the previous tier does not interact with so much, so that any kind of "build" shenanigans are confined to the limits of that tier and not having level 1 qualities necessarily be that important to tier 2 characters, because they no longer affect this class of action, in the same way that your BAB does not affect your spell penetration checks, because they are just Different schemes of action entirely. It also leaves room for possibly interesting setups where the "boss monster" is a higher tier and takes actions that are affecting the scenario in a grander and more sweeping scale than the "heroes" can manage, but the heroes still can drag him down and cudgel him to death, because at least in terms of defenses (which are shared by everyone) it still has stats to interact with, even if it is using actions which are by definition hard to oppose.
This is kind of a rambling, hare-brained, unrefined scheme, I know, but I figured I would post it here because it had been banging around in my head and maybe someone else could make sense of it, and since I read so many ideas on the Den and am quietly writing my own designs (with hopefully much more polish than this) I figured I would also contribute.
Action Economies and Tiers
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TavishArtair
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So like how characters in 3.5 D&D "unlock" the ability to do shit they care about with their Swift Action slots, only more codified and transformational?
A thing to worry about is that higher level characters will almost by definition have more options available to them, so if you also make them take more actions per turn, you could end up having the game really drag at higher levels - like 3.5 D&D does now, and for largely the same reason (Option Paralysis + More Declarations per Turn + More Accounting per Action).
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A thing to worry about is that higher level characters will almost by definition have more options available to them, so if you also make them take more actions per turn, you could end up having the game really drag at higher levels - like 3.5 D&D does now, and for largely the same reason (Option Paralysis + More Declarations per Turn + More Accounting per Action).
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TavishArtair
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Yes, pretty much. "You get SWIFT ACTIONS this tier" except with a less crappy name. I mean come on, "swift?" Really? And sometimes a "minor" action can be life or death in a fight. Well, whatever.FrankTrollman wrote:So like how characters in 3.5 D&D "unlock" the ability to do shit they care about with their Swift Action slots, only more codified and transformational?
A thing to worry about is that higher level characters will almost by definition have more options available to them, so if you also make them take more actions per turn, you could end up having the game really drag at higher levels - like 3.5 D&D does now, and for largely the same reason (Option Paralysis + More Declarations per Turn + More Accounting per Action).
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I think the main way to fight "more declarations per turn" is to make it so that the number of actions you get is more sparing... one per tier, period, with each restricted to more or less one roll, minus "of course you can rub your belly and pat your head" actions like talking. Option paralysis can be tamped down to some extent by not throwing out options on a geometric or even exponential rate so that while there is an actual increase in options over levels, characters do not double their options every level or so.
See now I thought you were saying that you wanted the tiers to be
"Mundane" "Magic" "Immortal/Godly"
Essentially saying that you interact only with the normal world at first tier, then with magic at second, and then with broadly expansive powers and abilities with relatively few limitations at the next tier.
And I thought that that was completely awesome if -fairly- insane.
What you would be saying there is that NO ONE can access magic until second tier. That no matter what you use it for or how you -can not- do magic until second tier. Which would be an insane change in caster type classes. It would basically say that casters didn't go "online" until second tier and before that they would probably have to be using rituals or something that everybody has theoretical access to but do it better. I don't even really know, like I said, it's sort of insane but really interesting to me.
It's sort of saying that you play LOTR, then D&D, then Epic. And the wild disparity of tiers there is so crazy as to maybe work.
"Mundane" "Magic" "Immortal/Godly"
Essentially saying that you interact only with the normal world at first tier, then with magic at second, and then with broadly expansive powers and abilities with relatively few limitations at the next tier.
And I thought that that was completely awesome if -fairly- insane.
What you would be saying there is that NO ONE can access magic until second tier. That no matter what you use it for or how you -can not- do magic until second tier. Which would be an insane change in caster type classes. It would basically say that casters didn't go "online" until second tier and before that they would probably have to be using rituals or something that everybody has theoretical access to but do it better. I don't even really know, like I said, it's sort of insane but really interesting to me.
It's sort of saying that you play LOTR, then D&D, then Epic. And the wild disparity of tiers there is so crazy as to maybe work.
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TavishArtair
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Yes and no.deanruel87 wrote:See now I thought you were saying that you wanted the tiers to be
"Mundane" "Magic" "Immortal/Godly"
Essentially saying that you interact only with the normal world at first tier, then with magic at second, and then with broadly expansive powers and abilities with relatively few limitations at the next tier.
And I thought that that was completely awesome if -fairly- insane.
What you would be saying there is that NO ONE can access magic until second tier. That no matter what you use it for or how you -can not- do magic until second tier.
The tier ideas were only sample possibilities. I am still mulling over my own ideas.
One certainty in my mind is I do not want to make caster classes. Not that there should not be classes that are highly magical, but I do not like classes where there is a sharp divide between "magic" and "muggle", save for a level/tier basis.
Last edited by TavishArtair on Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
So what I was thinking when I read the OP was that it's really interesting to look at 'actions' on a totally different scale than you usually find in DnD, while still having access to your old abilities.
Like from the other thread about the three tiers or whatever, let's go with Zinegata's original idea of Heroic/Royal/Mythic. So if Heroic is your basic dungeon crawl, maybe you have all the stuff that regular 3.5 characters have, like standard/move/swift/immediate and so on. But then when you break into the next tier, maybe the core gameplay stays the same and your old abilities keep advancing to keep up, but your new class or classes give you 'command actions', which are actions taken over a wider time span, like you could use a day to take a command action to get a warband of dinosaur cavaliers to charge in and storm a castle. And then in the mythic tier you get 'divine actions' or something which are like the salient divine abilities from deities in 3.5: stuff that totally reshapes the world or whatever. But even at this point you still have your old actions, and the abilities that you got in your base class continue to scale up.
So even if you happen to have powers to command armies or control a country's economy, or even if you have the divine talents of reshaping all fruits in the world into penises you can still decide to go on a level-appropriate dungeon crawling adventure if that's what you fancy. And then next week the group might want to spend a session playing politics and moving armies around, and they have their abilities from the royal tier to do that stuff. But it's still the same characters, and no matter what abilities they got in each tier, they keep getting better even if you're not getting new abilities on that scale anymore.
For example, let's say that your original class is 'Horseman', and is all about mounted combat and running people over with a horse. And you play that all the way through heroic tier, eventually taking levels in the prestige class of 'Trailblazer', where your horse lights on fire and stampedes through hell. That's cool, but there's only so far you can go when your entire character concept is RIDES A HORSE.
So going into the royal tier you might take as your new class 'Cavalier', and eventually prestiging into 'Lord' when you win a castle. And you get command action abilities to at first direct your own small detachment of horsemen, and eventually large armies fighting to defend your castle as a lord. But all through this, your Horseman and Trailblazer abilities keep scaling up or even giving you additional talents on top of what you had when you were in the class to begin with. So even though you spend most of your time leading charges into enemy lines and laying siege to your rival's keep with an army of loyal soldiers at your back, if anyone challenges you to single combat you're not only able to fight back, you're a vastly superior single combat character compared to anyone from the first tier. Now people might be able to kill you if they all swarmed you at once, but one-on-one you're just flat out BETTER at dungeon-crawling and 3.5 style combat than people from that tier, even though by that point you've moved on to the next level of play.
And then it's the same thing in Mythic level. You've got your keep and kingdom, and your commanding powers continue to advance as your kingdom grows in power. But by that point you've moved on to bigger things. Once you've impressed the gods enough on earth you get accepted on a probationary contract into Olympus and become an apprentice to Apollo towing the Sun, and take levels in Solar Charioteer, and eventually overthrow your master and crush him beneath your fiery grasp, prestiging literally into SUN GOD. And at this point you're so far beyond what you originally could do that there's no comparison. But even though you now have divine action abilities to tow the sun across the sky or plunge the world into eternal night or even just light everything miles around on fire whenever you want, you could still decide to team up with a bunch of your mythic tier buddies and go break into Baator and kill Asmodeus, or if you prefer royal tier play for a bit you could declare a crusade and lead your vast armies in a holy war against some asshole god that badmouthed the Sun.
But the point is that even if as you advance in tier you're getting actions and abilities on a totally different level, you're still the same character you once were, just better and with more expansive abilities. Once you're in royal tier you can still go back and play on a heroic-style level if that's what your group wants to do, and once you've broken into mythic tier you could still play at logistics and dragons if you want. You just have additional options and new KINDS of actions available to you than people of a lower tier do.
Like from the other thread about the three tiers or whatever, let's go with Zinegata's original idea of Heroic/Royal/Mythic. So if Heroic is your basic dungeon crawl, maybe you have all the stuff that regular 3.5 characters have, like standard/move/swift/immediate and so on. But then when you break into the next tier, maybe the core gameplay stays the same and your old abilities keep advancing to keep up, but your new class or classes give you 'command actions', which are actions taken over a wider time span, like you could use a day to take a command action to get a warband of dinosaur cavaliers to charge in and storm a castle. And then in the mythic tier you get 'divine actions' or something which are like the salient divine abilities from deities in 3.5: stuff that totally reshapes the world or whatever. But even at this point you still have your old actions, and the abilities that you got in your base class continue to scale up.
So even if you happen to have powers to command armies or control a country's economy, or even if you have the divine talents of reshaping all fruits in the world into penises you can still decide to go on a level-appropriate dungeon crawling adventure if that's what you fancy. And then next week the group might want to spend a session playing politics and moving armies around, and they have their abilities from the royal tier to do that stuff. But it's still the same characters, and no matter what abilities they got in each tier, they keep getting better even if you're not getting new abilities on that scale anymore.
For example, let's say that your original class is 'Horseman', and is all about mounted combat and running people over with a horse. And you play that all the way through heroic tier, eventually taking levels in the prestige class of 'Trailblazer', where your horse lights on fire and stampedes through hell. That's cool, but there's only so far you can go when your entire character concept is RIDES A HORSE.
So going into the royal tier you might take as your new class 'Cavalier', and eventually prestiging into 'Lord' when you win a castle. And you get command action abilities to at first direct your own small detachment of horsemen, and eventually large armies fighting to defend your castle as a lord. But all through this, your Horseman and Trailblazer abilities keep scaling up or even giving you additional talents on top of what you had when you were in the class to begin with. So even though you spend most of your time leading charges into enemy lines and laying siege to your rival's keep with an army of loyal soldiers at your back, if anyone challenges you to single combat you're not only able to fight back, you're a vastly superior single combat character compared to anyone from the first tier. Now people might be able to kill you if they all swarmed you at once, but one-on-one you're just flat out BETTER at dungeon-crawling and 3.5 style combat than people from that tier, even though by that point you've moved on to the next level of play.
And then it's the same thing in Mythic level. You've got your keep and kingdom, and your commanding powers continue to advance as your kingdom grows in power. But by that point you've moved on to bigger things. Once you've impressed the gods enough on earth you get accepted on a probationary contract into Olympus and become an apprentice to Apollo towing the Sun, and take levels in Solar Charioteer, and eventually overthrow your master and crush him beneath your fiery grasp, prestiging literally into SUN GOD. And at this point you're so far beyond what you originally could do that there's no comparison. But even though you now have divine action abilities to tow the sun across the sky or plunge the world into eternal night or even just light everything miles around on fire whenever you want, you could still decide to team up with a bunch of your mythic tier buddies and go break into Baator and kill Asmodeus, or if you prefer royal tier play for a bit you could declare a crusade and lead your vast armies in a holy war against some asshole god that badmouthed the Sun.
But the point is that even if as you advance in tier you're getting actions and abilities on a totally different level, you're still the same character you once were, just better and with more expansive abilities. Once you're in royal tier you can still go back and play on a heroic-style level if that's what your group wants to do, and once you've broken into mythic tier you could still play at logistics and dragons if you want. You just have additional options and new KINDS of actions available to you than people of a lower tier do.