[RPG] How fast do PCs tend to level

I'm going to take a strangely contrary position here.

Don't worry about it. Imposing or even suggesting classes without concomitant system mastery will not produce a good result.

I have found that, in starting a new campaign, peoples abilities to predict what they will and will not like to play are extremely poor. Instead of trying to make decisions for the whole campaign right now, instead, engage in a Level 0 adventure for your first game. Once you've gotten a feel for what classes the players want to play, engage in group character creation to have everyone produce a coherent party. The other benefit of group character creation is that when players inevitably make the wrong choices for their characters (mental-model mismatch is really painful, as I can attest from personal experience), it is very easy to bring in new characters without stretching suspension of disbelief.

Furthermore, any party combination should work, though some will require the party and/or the DM to increase their mental flexibility.

You may also want to read this, and this.

From a jurist's point of view, however, there are a number of exceptional combinations, depending on party preferences.

In no particular order:

• Invoker, Artificer, Fighter. The invoker's hand of radiance is hugely enhanced by the artificer. If the fighter takes deft thrower style, his double-attack can also be well-enhanced by the artificer.
• Blackguard mc vampire, thief mc vampire, wild sorcerer mc vampire: Healing? what's that? We live on the blood of our enemies, thanks.
• Eagle shaman, Warlord, Thief or slayer: Everyone channels their basic attacks into the MBA damage machine. Important house rule: if you grant an attack, you get to roll the attack. Otherwise the shammy and warlord are left with no dice to roll
• Hunter, Knight, Warpriest. Bog simple, but decent classes. Hard to screw up.
• 3 pixie executioners. Very very very non-standard party, but it will be absolutely fascinating to play and watch their strategies. You may want to use the Break&Enter 3rd party rules for this.
• Power-themed parties: an all-psi party can be quite fun, though it'd difficult for new players to master augmentations right out of the gate.
• Any party that is built together. So long as players are using the party-building guides linked above, any party should work. If they're not, any party should still work if the players are competent and willing to learn the system.

My most critical advice: Give players 2 cookies: a minor and a major respec. A minor respec is "redo your current build, but keep your class the same." or "Now that you've played the first session, fix the obvious mistakes." A major respec is "no, this person was this other person all along. Don't think too hard about it." This (peanut butter) cookie should be saved when players realize that they don't like what their current role does and would much rather play a new one. Don't forget to refluff so that the players' desires for mechanics match their desires for flavour. Especially when coming from earlier systems, the affordances provided by each class can change significantly. Few things are as un-fun as watching a bard turn suicidal because the player doesn't want to play a leader.

Don't worry about it. Render the treasure as per treasure parcels, and give the rest as a plot token which represents the rest of the treasure in the narrative of your game.

Dump most of the treasure parcels for the level at the end of the encounter. That means the dragon will be sleeping on about ninety thousand gold, not counting magic items. Beyond that, money in late paragon is almost entirely pointless with magic item rarity rules. Healing potions already cost as much as a small town.

What I'd recommend is, on top of focusing most of the level's treasure parcels on the hoard, say: "there's a lot more money here, I'll be giving you this level's money all in a lump, but because there's more than that, each of you get a 'plot token.' These plot tokens represent you spending massive amounts of money to affect some change onto the world. How do you want to spend them?"

By treating the hoard by treasure rules, you continue to maintain the character-required levels of wealth and other nonsense. By giving most of the hoard as "plot tokens" you explicitly acknowledge that "Hey, the characters have done something special here" and reward them by giving them a stake in the world.

By late paragon, most characters likely have pocket kingdoms (or equivalent) and are heading into the multiverse-spanning epic levels. Don't worry too much about "cash."

Example uses of plot tokens in the game that I played:

• I'd like a castle now.
• We, the group, want to found a city.
• I'm going to establish a thieves guild.
• We'll buy another airship.

The beauty of most of these requests is that they inevitably lead to more adventures. Not only that, but the plot resources implicit in these things lead to fantastic backdrops of "As your city's army battles it out with the tainted creatures of the world around the iceberg, you head inside." This investment-in-world also gave the paragon-epic characters reasons to fight without needing to deal with the standard epic quest-giver problem.

If you absolutely must give treasure qua treasure beyond the 90k in gold, gems, and art, consider a "ritualized residuum" substance. With normal residuum, casters can only create common magic items. With this stuff, say because a dragon had been using it for a bed for umpteen years, it can be used to enchant uncommon items of the players choice. You can then make the magical crystals which contain the "ritualized residuum" rather bulky, which gives an endless floor of twilit sparkly magic rocks.

Given that (the never considered size) of gold pieces in earlier editions was 1.5 to 3 times the size of one of our 50 cent pieces ninety to a hundred and fifty thousand of them is... not too bad for a floor covering. Feel free to emphasise how many there are by not counting them but providing the means for a quick fermi calculation as to their quantity.