I’m afraid the whispers in the darkness, first heard beyond the mountains of madness, have taken Dave and seemingly 62% of you who answered last week’s poll that you like playing Cthulhu inspired RPGs. 22% of you have a preference for worlds with dragons and fantasy roleplaying, while 16% chose the mystifying poll answer of being blissfully ignorant (lucky you)! If you are one of those fans of Cthulhu, I highly recommend you check out some of the links in Dave’s inquisition last week because there are a lot of good resources and books there.
Dave and I both started running 4th Edition D&D campaigns when the system was released, now over a year later Dave’s game is solidly into the paragon tier while mine looks to be entering paragon in the next few weeks. It’s really an exciting time for me as a DM not only because this is the longest running game I’ve ever run, but also because the characters start to get a lot more unique as the choice of a paragon path stacks on top of race, class, feats, and multi-classing. I was also very intrigued during the High Level D&D seminar at GenCon because they polled the audience on which tiers have been played and some people even raised their hands for epic and that they’d played from heroic up through epic in a single game within a year. That seems insanely quick to me, but I can also imagine it being very interesting and fun to do.
With all of this in mind, I’d like to do a poll of our own and see what levels of D&D you’ve played in over the last year or two. This doesn’t have to be in any specific edition, I’d just like to see what types of games all of you are playing in!
[poll id=”139″]
We’re interested to hear more details about your game, tell us if you started at 1st level and played all the way up or if you started in the epic tier and got to kill some demon princes right away!
I never start from Level 1, usually I begin at Level 5-6. I mostly play Heroic tier, since most of the games I join just start there. I’ve played some paragon tier games when they’re started at those levels.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..Happy Cirno Day! =-.
In the half dozen or so D&D games I’ve played, I don’t think I’ve ever begun at or progressed to a level above 4th. That says more about those various groups’ lack of staying power than my preferences for playing the game.
.-= Tyler´s last blog ..[Tuesday Board Game Night] All Quiet on the Board Game Front =-.
I have 4 characters in 4 campaigns:
Dwarf Cleric 8, started at 1, about 20 sessions
Human Fighter 3, started at 1, 5 sessions
Human Wizard 2, started at 2, 1 session
Half-Orc Barbarian 6, started at 6, 1 session (joined existing party)
I find myself surprised by just how many options there are in any given combat round, even at low levels. I’d still like to try a Paragon Path though — lots of fun possibilities.
@Wyatt: Thanks for commenting almost instantly after I posted! 🙂 I have a question for you: are you starting at 5th or 6th level as a holdover from previous editions where lower levels were considered boring, or do you find lower level 4E boring also, or is it just random how it works out like that? An interesting observation is that the large majority of WotC delves and game days are set around or at 5th level.
@Tyler: I see that as a big shame, I hope you can find a game that lasts longer sometime soon! The game I’m running I feel didn’t start to really pick up until after some of the party had been with their characters for more than 5-6 levels.
@Michelle: Thanks for sharing, that’s a lot of low level characters! My impression is that not only are paragon paths great for the added options they give you in combat, but also for the roleplaying /character customization opportunities they give you. It’s one thing to have a savage acting Barbarian, but having a Barbarian / Bear Warrior is really cool to me. Also the idea of multi-classed paragon paths, if you have a Druid / Wizard that then takes a wizard paragon path it makes your character really stand out and can create some very interesting combinations.
I ran a short (3 session) adventure in paragon–updating an old AD&D module–to try and test out 4e and introduce some of the ideas to my players. Otherwise I’m playing in only heroic tier games atm.
I think I like a lot of the paragon-level mechanics, where you have awesomely powerful abilities but not so ridiculous like in epic, but a lot of my adventure ideas tend to be more styled towards heroic tier-type events.
In the game I’m DMing we started a trial game using the Keep on the Shadowfell module when it was released (before the games books came out). I scrapped that around October or early November. We’ve been playing twice a month (with a few slip-ups with only one game in a month). My characters will probably hit 7th level after the next game….
I just wrapped up playing in a 3.5 game that ran for about 2.5 years. Started at first level and I made it up to about 1/2 way through 17th level (Fighter/Wizard/Spellsword).
I don’t find Level 1-4 in 4e boring, per se. I would play them, if nothing else was around, but I like 5-6 starting point games better and make them my priority. But the lack of available powers makes it less interesting. Usually in level 1-4 in 4e, you kind of see all the “ugly things” about 4e at their most pronounced:
•You have 1 daily power you will save for the “boss monster” even if that monster never shows up and it goes unused.
•You “spam” At-Wills more often because you’re reduced to doing that a whole lot faster.
•You probably don’t have a lot of feats or magic items that make “spamming” any interesting at this point.
•If a heavy monster does show up, you don’t have enough heavy powers to throw at its face, so you’ll probably end up in a “grind.”
I can see why the delves would be set at that level. Level 5 is really where you start, in my opinion, looking like a 4e character will for the rest of its career.
One other thing that influences my decision is that I really heartily dislike the goblin and kobold-killing missions typical of level 1. I just don’t find D&Ds typical “killable” humanoids interesting at all, I hate Kobolds, I hate goblins, I hate Orcs.
This falls on the DM of course (Level 1 in a Spirits of Eden game I ran would be filled with kooky custom monsters with personality) but it makes me avoid really low level games more.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..Happy Cirno Day! =-.
Bartoneus: Oddly enough, I *do* plan to go with Bear Warrior for my Barbarian. I toyed with the Dreadnought option because the free saves would help with the mobility so critical to a Barbarian, but Bear Warrior wins because of the flavor. Mommy Bear is angry! Rawr!
Lessee:
We’ve had 3 campaigns start and end in low heroic (before level 6)
One campaign began mid-heroic and finished mid-paragon.
Our current campaign began at the beginning of heroic and is now mid-heroic. I forsee it going into Paragon, possibly Epic if it can hold out, as the story-structure is fairly well laid out.
Running one game at heroic right now, PCs are at 6th level, started at 1st.
Play in one paragon game, currently at 18th level, started in 3e at 12th level.
As a DM, I prefer to start games at level 1. I just like working from the start of the story. I’ve also been known to start a game at 0 level sans classes, houseruling a system for this in 3e and working on one for 4e.
I’ve played a few one-shot sessions with Level 1 characters, then joined a campaign at Level 1… and now hoping to rejoin the group after 4 months of absence…
Wow, I didn’t expect quite a dominance of low level games, but it’s very interesting.
@highbulp: “I think I like a lot of the paragon-level mechanics, where you have awesomely powerful abilities but not so ridiculous like in epic” – I agree with you 100%
@mike: That sounds similar to my wife’s last 3.5 character, except she went fighter/sorcerer/bladesinger.
@Wyatt: thanks for clarifying, and I think you’re right about the more ugly parts of 4E coming through in levels 1-4. I guess the “sweet spot” may always be around. 🙂
@Michelle: Mommy bear? Wow. I actually only brought up bear warrior because one of Dave’s players is a shifter (his concept is he has active lycanthropy as a disease) and so bear warrior is just his curse getting worse.
@Ktulu: I certainly hope it continues through to the later tiers, for me the extended story lines and how the characters (and players) grow with the game is why I love D&D.
@Thasmodious: Did you actually port a game from 3e to 4e in the middle of a campaign? How did that work out? I also prefer starting games from the beginning because there’s a certain feeling that comes from a story progressing for so long. I’m not sure you really need house rules for level 0, just make crappy class-less characters! 😀
@Lunatyk: Good luck!
“Did you actually port a game from 3e to 4e in the middle of a campaign? How did that work out?”
We did and it’s worked great, with one exception. I find converting most characters to 4e fairly easy if you strip away all the numbers and focus on staying true to the concept itself, rather than specifics like the 13 classes and prestige classes you combined to build it in 3e. I was playing a warmage and built him in 4e as a sorcerer, multiclassed with wizard, paragon a wild mage (his personality). The assassin ported overly fairly directly. The warblade became a fighter (I forget his paragon path, but it worked out). The one exception was the cleric/necromancer who took big advantage of being a CODzilla (not in a powergamey way, but in a bit of everything utility caster way). He was a good representative of a few things we were glad to move away from with 3e in general – caster dominate (along with my warmage, the other two were basically meatshields), buffed a bit he was the dominant melee-ist, he led an ever growing army of undead that took an hour to resolve actions for (the DM basically made up a quick mass combat system to use with them, treating them somewhat like a swarm). He didn’t even heal. We carried wands and he would usually take up one, and only one, spell slot with the Heal spell.
The player hasn’t been able to satisfactorily port that character to 4e. He tried cleric and didn’t like it, then he tried invoker and that was a bit better, but still not there. He understands why (the cleric was overpowered and basically broken up into three distinct, balanced classes in 4e), but he’s grown increasingly unhappy with his character’s much more narrow focus in 4e. He’s been thinking of rolling a monk.
@Thasmodious: That’s incredibly interesting! It’s definitely tough to recreate the 3e cleric and especially the necromancer portion in 4E. Sounds like the player might really like playing an Avenger possibly multi-classed into Invoker or Cleric. I believe you could easily re-flavor a lot of the Avenger powers to involve death and necromancy for a really cool and unique character.
If the player is feeling too narrow I might actually look at making a Bard and heavily re-flavoring the class – it is an Arcane class but if he multi-classed in Cleric, Invoker, and/or Avenger you might really start to get an interesting kind of character with a bit of the leader feel from the basic Bard class in there. The ability to multi-class multiple times is something I haven’t fully explored yet but it might work out in this case.
@Bartoneus –
You didn’t expect low-level to dominate?
At the Gencon 4e Extravaganza panel, Bill Slavicsek asked the audience:
So, yeah, I fully expected heroic to dominate.
.-= Graham´s last blog ..Damn you, Dave! You and your… logic… =-.
@Graham: What I meant was I didn’t expect QUITE this level of dominance, I expected at least 5-10% of people have played in an Epic level game especially since we’re counting all editions of D&D and not just 4E. Right now we’re at 4 votes which is about 2% of the total votes that have played an Epic game lately which to me is an incredibly low number.
I guess it was in the High Level D&D seminar, but there was actually one group of people who said they had played to epic from 1st level which really surprised me.
While true, you do say “lately”. With your audience, that will predominantly be 4e. If you said “ever”, then the number would definitely be higher.
Personally, I like the current stat for “Other”, which lists it as 8 votes/-23%. I don’t know just how 8 votes is negative 23%, especially with 187 votes in.
.-= Graham´s last blog ..Damn you, Dave! You and your… logic… =-.
I have played in Heroic and Paragon tier and have DMed both Heroic and Epic, all separate campaigns. The longest running campaign for my gaming group is the Heroic tier game I run. They started at level 2 and are now level 5. I do not count XP, but instead level them up after completing major goals (typically 2 sessions worth of playing). This works fairly well assuming we can keep combat from dragging on too long so that the players make a decent amount of progress in each session. Skill challenges have been a huge boon to being able to advance the story quickly while still challenging the players.
In the Paragon tier, we have found that combat takes far too long and we can’t get much more than one combat encounter finished in a single session (4-5 hours, but we usually start a bit late and are not the most focused group of players). As my campaign heads towards Paragon, I am looking at ways to speed up combat so that we do not see a sudden slow down once everyone gets a few more powers under their belts.
My main campaign started a few weeks after 4e came out and we have been playing every Thurs since then, with very few interruptions. Our group is really reliable and committed, and our DM is terrific. We started at level 1 and hit level 11 about 3 weeks ago. This is the longest continuous D&D game I’ve ever been in, and I have no problems imagining the game going to epic level eventually.
The same group also holds dungeon delves once a month, allowing folks to try out different characters at different levels, and letting other people try DM’ing. I DM’ed for the first time ever at one of these, and had a blast.
I had one monthly game with another group where we started at 1st level, got to 3rd before being TPK’ed, which the DM used as an opportunity to hand us all 21st-level characters, who were the ancestors of our Heroic-level characters from a hundred years ago, and were pivotal characters in the history of his homebrew setting. That was pretty interesting, but our DM ran out of energy and quit, and we switched to a Champions game.
So I guess I’m one of the few who has played every level of 4e D&D.