The system I am working on has five symbolic tiers of play, as the PCs advance in ability:-

Budding Adventurers;
Veteran Adventurers;
Heroes & Anti-Heroes;
Fabled Heroes & Anti-Heroes;
Godlike.

Each successive tier is meant to require more than twice the playing time of the previous tier, so people get hit with a quick reward early on, but then have to work harder for newfound glory as they settle in to the game.

Assuming 3-hour game slots, you might well be...

Budding Adventurers in sessions 1 through 8;
Veteran Adventurers in sessions 9 through 27;
Heroes & Anti-Heroes in sessions 28 through 74;
Fabled Heroes & Anti-Heroes in sessions 75 through 194;
Godlike from session 195 onwards.

You cap out in terms of maximum ordinary advancement after about 110 sessions as Godlike adventurers but with supernatural means of empowerment you could continue advancing forever. Still that's about 6 years of weekly play...

Do you use tiers like this in the games you play?

Is 5 enough? Too few? Too many?

Does the above progression sound too quick? Too slow? About right? What do you think of the increasing length of play at each successive higher tier?

I recall D&D 4th had Heroic, Paragon and Epic tiers.

What do tiers add to the game for you? Does it feel like a reward to hit a tier or does it just feel like the heat got turned up a notch?

Thoughts?

To put this in context:-

My system uses d12+stat v d12+stat and by godlike tier you can have advanced almost all your stats by 12 points, roughly improving your ratio of successes to failures by a factor of 64 in sufficiently challenging situations, except for your Strength, Understanding, Toughness and something called Projectile Defence, which you can have improved by 3 points (roughly improving your ratio of successes to failures by a factor of 3ish, but more for pure contests of sheer physical strength alone), and you may well also have acquired say five new solid skills while improving five of your existing skills to Master-level.

The tiers give you better Luck and Mettle - improving your Luck is important; improving your Mettle probably isn't unless your games are ridiculously combat-intensive. Your rate of stat advancement also slows down dramatically:- at Godlike tier, your stats are advancing at one fifth of the rate they could advance at at Budding Adventurer tier.

I suppose I'd consider a change in tier meaningful if it changes the actual dynamics of play - the strategies and the feel of the game. 4E (where the idea was named) never really managed that.
I don't see much distinction between budding adventurer / veteran adventurer - maybe this is two ends of one tier.  
The doubling time thing doesn't do anything for me especially but is a defensible choice.
The only question on scaling is how scary an opponent is required for a group? Can 4 fabled heroes take on a god? Is a god, actually, suitable opponent for a Hero party? And are we talking Yahweh, Greek gods or Asian 'I'm the god of that river over there" type spirits anyway?

For some regimented, traditional games, that's fine.

My games go long, long, long.
And even after over 240 live sessions, there is no 'godlike' play, or even close.  Just not the way my games work.  I like the interest of human level drama as long as I can.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;821385I don't see much distinction between budding adventurer / veteran adventurer - maybe this is two ends of one tier.  
...
The only question on scaling is how scary an opponent is required for a group? Can 4 fabled heroes take on a god? Is a god, actually, suitable opponent for a Hero party? And are we talking Yahweh, Greek gods or Asian 'I'm the god of that river over there" type spirits anyway?

In this particular example, and imagining a party of say four to six characters with a reasonable combat focus, I guess...

budding adventurers would typically be dealing with humans and natural animals, and would find any encounter involving fae or undead opponents seriously challenging - such creatures might well be encountered one at a time; the party would be unlikely to leave the Mortal Realm without the protection of a powerful patron; a melee-oriented budding adventurer might slightly outclass the average knight;

veteran adventurers would typically be dealing with a mix of mundane and eldritch encounters, with fae and undead encounters being par for the course - but a large group of fae or undead would easily overwhelm them; they would be unlikely to leave the Mortal Realm for long, or to enter the more dangerous Otherworldly Realms without the protection of a powerful patron; a melee-oriented budding adventurer might be capable of fighting four or five knights at once (but could be grappled to the ground);

heroes would rarely be challenged by mundane encounters, and could tackle groups of fae or undead; more powerful supernatural creatures such as greater demons or fae princes or dragons might be fought one at a time from time to time (i.e. the whole party versus one dragon, as the culmination of a quest); these heroes might well enter any of the major Otherworldly Realms, except for the Pits of Hell and the Celestial Realm; a melee-oriented hero might be capable of holding a doorway against twenty or thirty knights;

fabled heroes could band together to fight a single demon lord, devil, apocalyptic spirit or similar, or a fae prince's entire warband; they could venture into the Pits of Hell; a fabled hero could slay a dragon, greater demon or fae prince in single combat;

godlike characters could band together to fight a godling, an archdevil or the like - on a par with a Greek god; the PCs themselves are approaching the level of a Greek demigod or lesser deity, at least within their spheres of competence.

However if you really wanted to you could easily get well into the Fabled Hero tier without any remarkable combat or stealth abilities, without any magic, without remarkable strength or toughness or even magical resistance, but only with remarkable persuasiveness, alertness, empathy, courage and willpower [not used for resisting magic], with some character development resources perhaps devoted to greater understanding and mastery of mundane skills of a non-combat nature such as craftsmanship and general learning. Such a character would not fight a fae prince, but could easily outwit one.

Suppose the system is d12+stat v d12+stat, and the average man's stat in almost anything is 6. For attacking in melee, your key stat is your Melee Attack.

Typical Melee Attack scores for a character who is primarily a warrior could be:-

for mid-tier Budding Adventurers, about... 11;
for mid-tier Veteran Adventurers, about... 14;
for mid-tier Heroes and Anti-Heroes, about 19;
for mid-tier Fabled Heroes, in the region of 25.

The character's stats in key defensive areas such as Eldritch Resistance, Alertness and Willpower would be likely to be lower:-

for mid-tier Budding Adventurers, about... 8 or 9;
for mid-tier Veteran Adventurers, about... 10 to 12;
for mid-tier Heroes and Anti-Heroes, about 12 to 15;
for mid-tier Fabled Heroes, in the region of 15 to 19.

The character's Melee Attack stat would cap out at about 25 or 26 without serious ritual magic or the like, so a mundane character with no ritual aid might well then begin developing in other areas. By about a hundred sessions post-Godlike status, the character's stats would nearly all be in the range of around 20 to 26. His Strength, Toughness and Projectile Defence would be about 13 and his Understanding might be 9 or 10.

This means that even at extreme range (say 120 yards with a handspan crossbow) the godlike character, who is in no way a specialist crossbowman, could expect to maim or kill an average man wearing a brigandine. Suppose on a well-lit day an average man might have a 1 in 12 chance of sneaking up on his friend from 40 yards away, across open space; in the same situation the godlike character, by no means a specialist thief, would be spotted only about 1 time in 12.

With a Melee Attack of 19, a Hero could strip naked and still take on a fully armed and armoured knight on more or less equal terms, without grappling, just punching him to death. That ignores the effects of the Fates being on the Hero's side.

With a Melee Attack of 25, a Fabled Hero could strip naked and take on and fight on roughly equal terms a group of, say, three fully armed judicial champions in full plate armour, without grappling, just punching them to death. That ignores the effect of the Fates being on the Fabled Hero's side.

Quote from: Omnifray;821365Do you use tiers like this in the games you play?

Nope.  I tend towards more naturalistic sandbox-style play, without predefined breakpoints of that sort.  I can deal with D&D-style "you gained a level", but even that is a bit too much of a metagame discontinuity (in the mathematical sense of a discontinuous power curve) for my taste.

I've always assumed that when people talked about D&D3/4 level ranges as "tiers", they were just using it as a shorthand for that range, kind of like saying "the 80s" instead of "between 1980 and 1989".  The notion of assigning particular mechanical significance to certain bands of character levels (or sessions played) is, honestly, mildly baffling to me.