Tiering Advancement in DnD

[zugschef]

So a lot of people talk about how it's ok to stab people in the face in heroic tier, but if it's still the only thing you can do in paragon tier, you're a liability. That's indisputably true, of course. So let's try tiering levels in DnD by essential abilities.

***

Heroic Tier: "I stabs teh people in da face!"
Example: Aragorn, Conan.

-> Wizards learns to cast fly, water breathing, etc.

Advanced Tier: "Death from above..."
Example: Batman, Spiderman.

-> The party cleric planeshifts to plane x and the wizard then teleports to place y...

Paragon Tier: "I give a fuck about space and distances!"
Example: Phoenix, Superman.

-> Dudes stop time, become immortal and undo the past in addition to being almost unkillable and not caring about space.

Epic Tier: "Time and space... such worldly problems..."
Example: , Obi Wan (Episode V+)

***

Now there are characters who fall inbetween such as Charles E. Xavier (not immortal but can virtually stop time) or even characters who combine tiers differing by more than one step such as Wolverine (can't fly but almost unkillable), but who said that DnD Tiers have to be proof against the abilities of super heroes or jedi knights. It's a start. It's probably the very first thing you should make clear when starting the PC section. you start as ranger, advance to ranger4/paladin2, and then you become king of gondor, making the evil necromancer crap his pants in fear with his own communication device. and when the time comes that being the king of gondor just doesn't cut it anymore, you resign your life as a king, and become a ghostly protector of the realms.

the point is that at the advanced tier you need mechanics for out of combat stuff. in aragorn's case it would be the enormous amount of ressources he has access to as the king of gondor. gandalf has the eagles card once per adventure, aragorn crowns the eagle king and forms an alliance with him (iirc and if i don't that's entirely reasonable). from now on aragorn can send in the eagles, or fly and stuff. in one on one combat gandalf could still hand him his ass, though; and even if he had a bad day and aragorn would prevail, he'd just come back from the dead. that's why aragorn needs to abandon his tenure as king of gondor and meditate at the roots of the white tree and become one with the realm it stands for. as long as the white tree lives, aragorn is immortal. now he is an adequate sparring partner for gandalf.

that's it for aragorn. but what about conan? well... obviously he has a valkyrie who is watching his ass. first she saves his ass like a deus ex machina, then he can rely on her actively ("please help me NAU!" -> makes save), then he starts summoning her in combat and they fight side by side. eventually he calls in the valkyries and joins angel summoner at the hawaiian beach drinking margaritas.

what i'm trying to say is, that you absolutely can advance any character along these tiers, if you try. and the player's handbook should be honest to players and tell them that conan can't keep being a fighter/rogue with a barbaric cultural background but needs to start being a cleric. it just shouldn't do it plain and simple. tell them that conan needs to become angel summoner and they'll go berserk. tell them that conan needs to be able to rely on his tragically lost warrior queen more and more in order to overcome increasing challenges and they'll accept it, although all you have done is change his class to cleric.

[erik]

but what about conan? well... obviously he has a valkyrie who is watching his ass. first she saves his ass like a deus ex machina, then he can rely on her actively ("please help me NAU!" -> makes save), then he starts summoning her in combat and they fight side by side. eventually he calls in the valkyries and joins angel summoner at the hawaiian beach drinking margaritas.

Ew. I'd say don't use Conan for an example if you haven't read the stories he is the main character in.

To walk away from the ultra-specific character of Conan, a barbarian type could ascend tiers by getting hold of a power source. Eat some Ambrosia and become a godling. Perform a tribal rite to take on powers of magical beasts. Craft their personal super armor/fetish which gives uberpowers. Lots of things to do besides taking a drastic departure from tank to summoner.

Tell a player that his barbarian now has to become a cohort and they'll probably walk. If they want to do that kind of change, then they should be able to, but you should not force someone into that kind of change. That's crap.

[zugschef]

Ew. I'd say don't use Conan for an example if you haven't read the stories he is the main character in.

well, i was talking about the movie, as should have been cear by me writing "NAU" instead of "now". and i bet that a lot more people have seen the schwarzenegger movie than read howard's short stories which aren't particularly exciting for the average person who likes fantasy.

[hyzmarca]

Classic Dr. Strange is probably a better example for the Epic Teir. Obi Wan does nothing except give cryptic advice all day long. Classic Doctor Strange kicks all sorts of ass in ways that make you think that the writer must have been on LSD.

[zugschef]

Classic Dr. Strange is probably a better example for the Epic Teir. Obi Wan does nothing except give cryptic advice all day long. Classic Doctor Strange kicks all sorts of ass in ways that make you think that the writer must have been on LSD.

obi wan is like: i don't care. i wait 80 years and you're dead anyway. and you CANNOT kill him. impossible.

and can we please not discuss why my examples are bad which is totally not the point?

[...You Lost Me]

and can we please not discuss why my examples are bad which is totally not the point?

So let's try tiering levels in DnD by essential abilities.

Dude, that's what we're doing by criticizing your examples. You have two lines on the highest level of D&D. One of them is some vague crap about spacetime, and the other is an example. That is to say you have one relevant line, and it is your example. So if your example is crap (which it is), then your tier system is crap, and therefore we have successfully pointed out a hole to you.

Now that you've woken up to that, Obi-wan ascending into the force is not a high-level character. At all. It doesn't matter if you can't kill him, it doesn't matter if he flies places magically, and it doesn't matter if he doesn't need to breath. That's because his power source prevents him from interacting with the world. Obi-wan fails at basic tasks like "courier object X to location A" because he can't even pick up the damn object. He can talk, he looks like a ghost, he's one with the force, and he's solves literally zero problems in the real world.

Your benchmarks don't even make sense.

This thread already makes me rage.

Wargl.

[erik]

Heh, you cannot kill him because he is already dead. That is hardly an epic achievement to be a ghost who affects nothing other than haunting a Jedi here or there.

But yeah, I'm less interested in the bad examples than the bad tiers, or intended implementation.

Actually, I'm a bit muddy on what the point of the diatribe is here. The bad examples are partly to blame.

I presume your thesis is that any character type can advance along to the next level of play. But that was not supported by your examples since you indicated that a certain character type is going to have to accept that he changes characters and his old character is retired from action. It's a contrary example for your thesis.

You may want to hammer down exactly what your goals and limitations are for different tiers, and how the game is expected to change. I'm presuming it goes something like this:

Heroic Tier.
You are basically a sell-sword, investigator, outsider to those in power. You are not terribly mobile or in control of your surroundings. Roughly mundane limitations and goals.

Advanced Tier.
You are a renowned combatant, noted by those in power and may well have a seat at the table. For purposes of combat, you are highly mobile and are not as impacted upon your combat environment. Outside of a small region your influence is not strongly felt as you do not have the oomph or mobility to strongly police a large region. You can still do investigation adventures and fetch quests.

Paragon Tier.
You are a political force unto yourself. Your area of influence on this plan is mostly limited by the borders of equally potent individuals rather than geographic obstacles. Investigation adventures and fetch quests are pretty much out, unless you are leaving for other realities. Battles worth sweating are going to be apocalyptic and often relocated to remote settings.

Epic Tier.
You care more about creating your own pocket universe, or securing the prosperity of your worshipers to maintain and improve your deity status. Things are more like Sim City than Diablo. Going toe to toe with another deity would have disastrous repercussions upon your holdings and your own power. So you play shadow games against other deities, using cats-paw adventurers to do your subtle bidding.

I'm cool with giving classes the tools they need to compete at each of these levels. I imagine most folks are. I think would have been better for 3e if they followed a sort of tiered system inspired by BECMI to let people know, hey, the game is changing here. New motivations, different types of challenges, and so forth.

I think a huge part of the problem with classes not meeting the expectations of higher level play comes from when there never is an explicit statement of what they are expected to be able to do and what sort of challenges are expected.

A paragon barbarian could be teleporting around his kingdom throwing hills at armies, redirecting rivers and carving mountains with his fists. Generally kicking ass.

[Krakatoa]

The problem isn't the tiering of progression, the problem is the imbalance of progression. There's no reason that 'epic tier' needs to be, conceptually or mechanically, "Space Time Is My Bitch". At some point your character becomes too godlike to be interesting. That's the whole reasons limits and balancing factors exist in an RPG. If you're just playing a game of 'who can pull out the biggest magicall phlebotinum trump card' then you might as well build a game around that instead of trying to hammer D&D into that mold.

[zugschef]

The problem isn't the tiering of progression, the problem is the imbalance of progression. There's no reason that 'epic tier' needs to be, conceptually or mechanically, "Space Time Is My Bitch". At some point your character becomes too godlike to be interesting. That's the whole reasons limits and balancing factors exist in an RPG. If you're just playing a game of 'who can pull out the biggest magicall phlebotinum trump card' then you might as well build a game around that instead of trying to hammer D&D into that mold.

but that's the point: dnd goes into this territory in epic play. characters become unkillable, immortal, able to snip their fingers and just go where they want and they do stop time and alter the past.

i've never said that i think anybody should actually make an honest effort to write rules for this shit. i think you can't. it's like talking about billions. the human brain actually can't deal with these dimensions. that's why you're talking about 2,3 billion x and not 2 311 200 405 x. just tell people to play MTP from now on. but you still have to write this down in your set of rules. be honest to your players. *

and i'm missing where the game is not changed by the access to fly, then the access to teleport and then the access to timestop. first you enter the 3rd dimension. then you start folding space. and then you start travelling with speed greater than light. that's my take on it. that's what makes one character not able to follow the other one. first he can't fly on his own. then he can't just go whereever the fuck he wants in a blink of an eye on his own, and then he can't act out of time on his own.

*that's something i've always missed in rpg rules, btw: an explanation for certain mechanics, design choices, etc. which are not totally trivial. one could think designers were paranoid that some customer could steal their knowledge and make a better game than them!

[...You Lost Me]

but that's the point: dnd goes into this territory in epic play. characters become unkillable, immortal, able to snip their fingers and just go where they want and they do stop time and alter the past.

God dammit no it does not. Have you ever read a high-level spell? They are variations on becoming stronger and killing a bunch of dudes. Some of them are "bring people back to life", but if you even took half a second to think about what abilities are actually in D&D you would out that what you're saying is stupid and completely untrue.

For god's sake, a wizard will want to cast time stop maybe three times a day. And it will take him 3 seconds to do it. And he will average only eighteen fucking seconds out of it. Only in the warped mind of someone who doesn't actually understand D&D can that be conceived in any way is "stopping time and altering the past".

i've never said that i think anybody should actually make an honest effort to write rules for this shit. i think you can't. it's like talking about billions. the human brain actually can't deal with these dimensions. that's why your talking about 2,3 billion x and not 2 311 200 405 x.

OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU TALKING.

The entire premise of the OP is to assign tiers to D&D, and in the paragraph that's right-fucking-above this one you said that that D&D goes into this stupid bend-time-and-space shit, and then not even a sentence after finishing that dumb tirade you say that D&D doesn't actually do all those things that you just said it does.

e[foiuhwfouhiera;fuioherfiouh;dfaj

[erik]

It's like a fractal Salvador Dali composition that gets less coherent the deeper it goes.

You just aren't appreciating the aesthetic beauty of it YLM.

[zugschef]

but that's the point: dnd goes into this territory in epic play. characters become unkillable, immortal, able to snip their fingers and just go where they want and they do stop time and alter the past.

God dammit no it does not. Have you ever read a high-level spell? They are variations on becoming stronger and killing a bunch of dudes. Some of them are "bring people back to life", but if you even took half a second to think about what abilities are actually in D&D you would out that what you're saying is stupid and completely untrue.

For god's sake, a wizard will want to cast time stop maybe three times a day. And it will take him 3 seconds to do it. And he will average only eighteen fucking seconds out of it. Only in the warped mind of someone who doesn't actually understand D&D can that be conceived in any way is "stopping time and altering the past".

i've never said that i think anybody should actually make an honest effort to write rules for this shit. i think you can't. it's like talking about billions. the human brain actually can't deal with these dimensions. that's why your talking about 2,3 billion x and not 2 311 200 405 x.

OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU TALKING.

The entire premise of the OP is to assign tiers to D&D, and in the paragraph that's right-fucking-above this one you said that that D&D goes into this stupid bend-time-and-space shit, and then not even a sentence after finishing that dumb tirade you say that D&D doesn't actually do all those things that you just said it does.

e[foiuhwfouhiera;fuioherfiouh;dfaj

the point is you can do it. not how a particular game mechanic uses it. it is possible and that's why there will be someone even better at it. the difference between flying and teleporting is bigger than the difference between stopping time for 18 seconds and stopping time for a year. and i have read ninth level spells. and honestly: they suck. really. they fuckin suck. at least most of them. it's kill 10 dudes with one spell instead of 1. but hey... couldn't i kill 10 dudes with one spell before? but whatever... that's not the point. the point is analog to this: guttenberg inventing printing was a major point in history. and while it surely had a significant impact on distribution and thus humanity, the industrialization of printing was not.

the fact that there is a timestop spell is reason enough for the existence of an epic spell which stops time x-times longer. the difference is that before timestop came into play there was no stopping time. and the moment timestop did come into play, the imaginary structure of the game started to crumble. player y develops an epic spell which lets you stop time for a year. spell is cast. game basically over. preventing this shit means using MTP. and MTP is not what the rules are for.

it's really not my fault that you're not able or not willing to think on a metalevel and lose your shit about specific spells; i.e. trivial shit in this context.

i'm looking for the REAL differences between power tiers. and i don't think it's "i do ten times more damage now" or "i kill shit in only one round and not two". really. you can disagree with me on this and make an argument why you think the ability to kill 10 dudes with a single move is game changing compared to the power to kill 2 dudes with a single move. i just don't see it. flying, teleporting and stopping time alter the physics of your universe. they are relevant in and out of combat. they make stuff obsolete; in and out of combat. animals without wings -> obsolete from level 5 on. as well as getting up to rapunzel in her tower. teleporting makes being grappled or caged obsolete, as well as the adventure to the lonely mountain. and timestop is like the difference between killing a lot of people and killing everybody, when talking about rocket tag. whoever casts time stop first, wins. before, it was like "whoever goes first, probably wins." or "oh fuck! dude dropped into the pool of lava with the one ring!" so fuckin' what: i cast wish/miracle, undo it and now that i know of it, prevent the ring from falling into the fire.

as a sidenote: being able to use totally overpowered combat ability only once per day doesn't change the fact that it's an ability that's totally overpowered. (i'd even say it would make things worse, but that's a different matter.)

now why is there no tier after epic? because i admit that i'm not smart enough and don't care enough to grasp the fifth dimension; and even if you think i'm below iq 100, i'm perfectly sure that most players don't either. if i had to guess, the next step would be to stop time forever. don't ask my why you would do that, though.

[...You Lost Me]

You are breaking my brain.

So first off you say that D&D has all these things that it doesn't have. And then you say that it doesn't.

And then when confronted on that, you shift goalposts to a point where you say the ability to kill people effectively is useless and that time stopping should only ever happen for years if it happens ever and that you need to see the fifth dimension to design high level campaigns and... and it just gets worse.

And the whole time you do it, you're topic-jumping and typing without any grammar or capitalization and "countering" random arguments that have never been brought up or even conceived. You're like a 90/10 mix of shadzar and GC... like... shadzug.

Actually that name is rather catchy.

[zugschef]

You are breaking my brain.

i think you've just lifted the curtain.

honestly, i've tried to keep this civil, but if all you can do is being too stupid to realize when you're too stupid to get the point and instead start insulting me for no reason other than that you're too stupid to get the point then just gtfo.

[zugschef]

Epic Tier.
You care more about creating your own pocket universe, or securing the prosperity of your worshipers to maintain and improve your deity status. Things are more like Sim City than Diablo. Going toe to toe with another deity would have disastrous repercussions upon your holdings and your own power. So you play shadow games against other deities, using cats-paw adventurers to do your subtle bidding.

i totally agree with this. and being obi wan episode v+ is just that. it's the point at which normal people just can't keep on. these characters are starting to have desires and goals, we can't remotely understand let alone roleplay. at least that's my opinion.

just to make my stance on this obi wan episode v+ thing clear: if you are in fact immortal and unkillable, which means that time starts to have a totally different meaning to you, in fact so different that humans can't understand it, doesn't this mean that he actually can kill you by just ignoring you? -> YLM is annoying me. well i'll just ignore him for the next 80 years and he'll be dead by then. really, totally ignoring and removing someone from your experience of life, comes very close to killing. it's just that you don't hurt others. but for you personally there is not much difference. it's like if you had a spell which could disintegrate people with the blink of an eye. obi wan doesn't like you? he'll just kill you in his perception of the universe by not appearing anywhere near you. and yes. i think that's real power.

and still, if you don't like my examples (and yes, maybe they are bad) that's ok. i'm not sold on them either. but i'm sold on the abilities which i identified as the turning points in dnd level advancement.

[Chamomile]

The frequency with which I am putting people on ignore has just leapt through the roof in the past few months. Seriously, from the time I first started posting until GC and Mistborn showed up, I had ignored a grand total of like three people. Since then, the number has doubled.

[Red_Rob]

just to make my stance on this obi wan episode v+ thing clear: if you are in fact immortal and unkillable, which means that time starts to have a totally different meaning to you, in fact so different that humans can't understand it, doesn't this mean that he actually can kill you by just ignoring you? -> YLM is annoying me. well i'll just ignore him for the next 80 years and he'll be dead by then. really, totally ignoring and removing someone from your experience of life, comes very close to killing. it's just that you don't hurt others. but for you personally there is not much difference. it's like if you had a spell which could disintegrate people with the blink of an eye. obi wan doesn't like you? he'll just kill you in his perception of the universe by not appearing anywhere near you. and yes. i think that's real power.

Well, when the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 – major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth – known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant Time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24 hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.

And that's how much sense you're making at the moment.

[OgreBattle]

Well, when the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 – major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth – known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant Time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24 hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.

And that's how much sense you're making at the moment.

Before Time Cube, Otis E. Ray advocated the sport of marbles. He authored a book titled Mr. Marbles – Marbles for Everyone,[11] and got the city council of St. Petersburg, Florida to proclaim a "Marbles Week" in the 1970s. In 1987, this became a controversial attempt to establish a million dollar marble tournament inside a huge round structure and establish a philosophical "Order of the Sphere."

It looks like he lost his marbles

[Red_Rob]

YYEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

[echoVanguard]

Sweet, a time cube thread! Wait, weren't we supposed to be talking about something else?

echo

[Caedrus]

-> The party cleric planeshifts to plane x and the wizard then teleports to place y...

Paragon Tier: "I give a fuck about space and distances!"
Example: Phoenix, Superman.

People who can travel arbitrary distances through the DC universe: Anyone with a boomtubes or zetatubes (say, Robin). People who can travel to other dimensions: Magic guys. People who can't do either: Superman on his own power in pretty much every version of himself that I'm aware of.

Your examples don't seem to match up with your "ranking by essential abilities" thesis. And you haven't really provided any particular argument for your "ranking by essential abilities" idea other than your examples... so I'm not sure why you're surprised that that's the part people are poking holes in.

[zugschef]

-> The party cleric planeshifts to plane x and the wizard then teleports to place y...

Paragon Tier: "I give a fuck about space and distances!"
Example: Phoenix, Superman.

People who can travel arbitrary distances through the DC universe: Anyone with a boomtubes or zetatubes (say, Robin). People who can travel to other dimensions: Magic guys. People who can't do either: Superman on his own power in pretty much every version of himself that I'm aware of.

Your examples don't seem to match up with your "ranking by essential abilities" thesis. And you haven't really provided any particular argument for your "ranking by essential abilities" idea other than your examples... so I'm not sure why you're surprised that that's the part people are poking holes in.

well, i was so naive to think that people would be interested in a discussion and not in winning teh internetz. *shrug*

starting to discuss wether superman can fly fast enough to equal teleportation or not is so irrelevant and trivial that it doesn't even make me laugh... actually makes me sad.

i shouldn't have used examples of characters at all. i admit that was a mistake. dnd has the spells fly, teleport and timestop, and that's all i needed to make my point.

i know that some people tier stuff on a different basis, i.e. what characters are supposed to do. that's not what i had in mind. my starting point was dnd and its iconic progression. you don't fly on level 5? it's not dnd. no teleporting on level 9? different game. and i just think that these spells/abilities are a fundamental part of dnd's identity and each of them changes how combat resolves and which adventures you're having (more than any other abilities you might have).

[...You Lost Me]

No, zug, that's not the point. The point wasn't that you shouldn't use examples, because you definitely should use examples. Examples are helpful.

The point of us saying you make no sense is because you make no sense. You think high-level D&D is about infinite-teleporting in infinite dimensions changing time infinitely for infinite forevers with the 5 dimensions and the time cube. That is a load of crap with no source material to actually support it, no logic behind it, and no actual design niche to occupy.

[JigokuBosatsu]

It's like The Den was renewed for a new season but the network heads demanded that the writers bring in a character called "Shadzar's scrappy little brother."

[hyzmarca]

You are breaking my brain.

So first off you say that D&D has all these things that it doesn't have. And then you say that it doesn't.

And then when confronted on that, you shift goalposts to a point where you say the ability to kill people effectively is useless and that time stopping should only ever happen for years if it happens ever and that you need to see the fifth dimension to design high level campaigns and... and it just gets worse.

And the whole time you do it, you're topic-jumping and typing without any grammar or capitalization and "countering" random arguments that have never been brought up or even conceived. You're like a 90/10 mix of shadzar and GC... like... shadzug.

Actually that name is rather catchy.

It really depends on what edition you're playing. 2e had Chronomancer, which totally allowed you to go back in time and change history a 1st level, (though this was a really terrible idea until you got spells that let you ignore grandfather paradoxes, which didn't come online until much later). Basic D&D has the Immortals Handbook, which let you play as gods. D&D 3e has the third party supplement by the same name, which probably deserves it's own anatomy of a failed design thread.