What's wrong with high-level/epic play?

Kerrick · Dec 19, 2008

I'm going to be doing some work on the epic system soon, revising and fixing things, and I wanted to get a feel for what people think are the major problems. I'm already working on/have dealt with: immunities, skill checks, EAB/EAS, and the epic pricing system; I've got an idea for reducing iterative attacks, but it needs some testing. What else do you think should go on the list?

Remathilis · Dec 19, 2008

For the love of all things holy, fix save bonus vs. spell DCs so that having a poor fort isn't instant death, and a poor will isn't taking you out of every other fight.

The difference between a good save and a poor save (by progression) is such that by high level, good-save characters cannot fail, poor cannot succeed.

amysrevenge · Dec 19, 2008

Anytime you have rapidly increasing bonuses to a d20 roll, against static or slowly scaling DCs, the bonuses become more important than the d20 roll, leading to cases where a given attempt will either succeed on a 2, or fail on a 19. Eventually, a very large percentage of checks will be of this sort. In a nutshell, that's the mechanical problem I see with 3.x

(The 4E solution was to scale the DCs just as fast as the bonuses - I'd be interested to see a different solution.)

the Jester · Dec 19, 2008

The worst problem in 3e epic play is 'cascading bonuses' to keep track of.

When the pcs spend an hour of real time buffing before combat, then get a bunch of stuff dispelled, re-evaluating their ACs, saves, etc. can be a bitch- especially when you lose a stat booster, and because of that, lose access to certain other feats/abilities that require it, plus it ripples through everything else on the character sheet.

I love that 4e got rid of this problem.

Rechan · Dec 19, 2008

The sheer amount of abilities and information necessary to run a fight with high level monsters: All pertinent SLA information, spell durations, Picking spells (and having all the pertinent info on hand), auras, feats, etc.

The time it takes to resolve a fight.

The amount of abilities that high level players have, and how long it takes them to decipher what they can do, what they are going to do, and how to resolve that.

Rechan · Dec 19, 2008

Remathilis said:
For the love of all things holy, fix save bonus vs. spell DCs so that having a poor fort isn't instant death, and a poor will isn't taking you out of every other fight.

The difference between a good save and a poor save (by progression) is such that by high level, good-save characters cannot fail, poor cannot succeed.

A hundred times this.

Also, that monsters with save-or-die affects don't really take into account the CR system. 2-3 CR 9 monsters should be really easy for a Level 15 party to take out, but if those CR 9 monsters are Bodaks, then that's 2-3 save-or-die affects per round the PCs have to contend with. If the bodaks get surprise, waxed party.

Alzrius · Dec 19, 2008

It was, I think, EN Publishing's Four-Color to Fantasy that introduced the concept of "hyper-rolls."

A hyper-roll is where, on a d20 roll, for every full +20 of bonuses you have, you remove +20 from the total bonus and add in another d20 to be rolled. For example, a fighter with a +42 (total) bonus to his attack roll would instead just have a +2 bonus and roll 3d20. This helps to keep results relatively lower, and makes the dice stay relevant at higher levels. It might be a good idea to introduce to epic-level play.

mxyzplk · Dec 19, 2008

Yeah, the core math of the system breaks down at high levels.

1. Saves become binary, as others have pointed out.

2. Damage becomes overwhelming, and a round of full attacks kills anything. (Hence, combats shrink to a handful of rounds).

3. Hits become pretty much automatic, as AC tops out way before to-hit. You can try to optimize something with high enough AC to not get hit, but to do that you generally have to sacrifice being able to do anything useful.

4. Complexity becomes too high, with all the billions of bonus types, defense types, etc. in play all the time.

So action is slow, but very short and random. The risk of TPK is highest at first level, drops sharply, but then grows linearly back to that level and past. "Whoever wins initiative lives!"

Dausuul · Dec 19, 2008

Alzrius said:
It was, I think, EN Publishing's Four-Color to Fantasy that introduced the concept of "hyper-rolls."

A hyper-roll is where, on a d20 roll, for every full +20 of bonuses you have, you remove +20 from the total bonus and add in another d20 to be rolled. For example, a fighter with a +42 (total) bonus to his attack roll would instead just have a +2 bonus and roll 3d20. This helps to keep results relatively lower, and makes the dice stay relevant at higher levels. It might be a good idea to introduce to epic-level play.

So... if I currently have a +19 bonus to my roll, that means I should do everything in my power - including debuffing myself - to avoid getting another +1? Doesn't seem quite right to me...

Cadfan · Dec 19, 2008

The way high level combat can turn into a battle of trump cards.

You know, first the evil wizard casts Force Cage, locking everyone in an impregnable prison of force. They're totally defeated! Unless they have a way to teleport everyone in the party. Then it was just a waste of a round. So the bad guy casts Horrible Death Spell! Everyone dies! Unless they have an item or spell that makes them immune to death magic. Then it just wastes a round. Etc, etc.

There are too many ways to bypass the regular system of fighting.