I noticed in this thread there were a few people who were wanting to know about running epic tier campaigns and such. I've actually run two very high epic tier games, one to level 28 and one is about to finish on level 30. I have lots of experience with 4E epic tier and it's probably worth sharing, given that it seems a lot of people haven't played epic.
There are three core principles to epic tier that are most essential to realize:
1) PCs are much more powerful than any other tier.
This might seem obvious, but it's hard to appreciate until you see a wizard use legions hold three times per day. Or how a radiant mafia or pre-errata bloodpulse team forced movement could absolutely wreck any encounter. This means you have to adjust the way you design and think about encounters - what works at heroic no longer works by epic. The increase isn't so substantial as to make the game not function. It is substantial enough that if you aren't appropriately designing encounters, you will get caught out and things will not be challenging at all.
Of all the monsters in 4E though the creature that suffers the most by epic from the large amount of powers PCs have by this point is the poor solo. PCs by this tier have so many daze, stun and dominate until end of next turn effects, the poor guys are never going to get a turn by themselves. 5 PCs vs. 1 solo is effectively 5 chances to stick one effect on the solo - making it useless for an entire turn. Then they do it again next turn (or extend the effect or similar, such as by an orb of ultimate imposition). What I've actually done in my games -that works very well as well it should be noted - is to give solo monsters after level 11 a save against daze, stun and dominate effects even if they wouldn't normally get a save. This has actually really 'fixed' the issue considerably, meaning that an even level solo can challenge a group of PCs pretty adequately - despite the huge proliferation of daze, stun and dominate effects.
Without such a rule expect every solo in existence to end up stun locked after their first daze, dominate or stun and never do anything for an entire encounter. Either that, expect to have to put other monsters, traps and terrain into every encounter with a solo or they will be utterly trivialized.
2) Monsters from books earlier than MM3 frankly don't cut the epic mustard.
This is one of the greatest "hidden" flaws of 4E. Monsters by epic did ridiculously low damage combined with billions of status effects. If you've read peoples epic experiences you'll often find that a common complaint is that fights are a "grind", which means that PCs spend a long time killing things and aren't very threatened in the process. This is because monster powers are frequently not much better than in heroic tier for early books and they only "scratch" PCs. A DR of 10 or some temporary hit points can easily remove most of a creatures attacks - rendering them grossly ineffective. MM3 has definitely fixed this and given epic monsters the teeth they need to actually be challenging.
This is a more general problem than the solo above, which is caused by the proliferation of "until end of X turn" stun and similar powers. This is really caused by a "maths" error that really underestimated the amount of damage monsters actually should be doing.
3) Encounters need to be designed most with terrain and creature synergy in mind.
More than any other tier, you need to consider the terrain you are fighting on when you make encounters. By this point PCs should be besieging the very heart of the enemy and the enemy should be firmly on their turf. Zones, terrain, effects, traps and similar that conspire against the PCs, like the terrain given in Plane Below is perfect for this tier. You should use it copiously! Make PCs get some use out of those "useless" non combat rituals by using a ritual that lets them fight something underwater, or flying through the air over lava or whatever. Change up rules, like having the PCs fight in the heart of the aboleths mad fortress that changes how teleportation works or lets every aberration with a swim speed fly.
PCs have the ability, hit points and resilience for some experiments! Make varied encounters that don't deliberately spite what the PCs have - instead make them use those powers creatively! Got huge bursts? How about enemies that phase and can move in and out of walls (denying the character any line of effect). A battle over a huge pit of lava with small pillars can make for an exciting aerial based encounter. Make them think creatively to get around obstacles instead of doing the same thing over and over (which is very likely to work well and always trivialize an encounter, that is why they are doing it to begin with!).
First Epic Tier Game - Horrible
The first epic tier game I ran was Tides of Dust, set in Faerun and going to level 28. The primary problem with this game was I skipped a few levels into epic due to time and to finish the campaign up a bit faster. Unfortunately, this wasn't such a great idea because it meant I didn't get really acquainted with how epic tier was really different.
The first thing I noticed was the sheer power level of the PCs compared to the monsters. I had MM2 by this point but even MM2 solos like the Beholder Ultimate Tyrant, which at the time I thought "WHOA! This is going to be great" did absolutely nothing to this party. The beholder was even 4 levels higher than the party when I used it and was trivially defeated. Only its telekinetic ray kept it alive for any amount of time, for a pitiful amount of damage that didn't bloody a single PC. The gold dragon I tried was similarly useless as well.
Why was this though? What had I done wrong that heroic and paragon I had not (minding the hints that what was coming were already being seen in paragon anyway)?
Well first:
1) No terrain, it had some buildings and such, but otherwise it was a straight up fight. This rarely works in epic unless the monster you're using is exceptionally well designed.
2) A single solo vs. five level 25 PCs is not a winning combination when I did so. What caught me off guard was the "stunlock" from the Bloodmage. The power destructive salutation actually stuns on a miss until the end of your next turn. He deliberately missed with the power twice (Archmage lets you prepare a daily twice), meaning the Beholder lost every action for the first 2 rounds and did absolutely nothing. By the time it got a single turn it had taken so much damage that it couldn't effectively fight anymore.
Combined with poor damage but strong effects when it did hit, all the creature did was annoy the PCs as it delayed the inevitable. Very disappointing, especially as by all means this is a creature with a great stat block. If only it had been given the ability to use any of its powers.
3) No supporting creatures, minions or traps. If the solo won't be able to take actions, something else should be able to take some actions instead to challenge the players.
This meant combats were very straightforward and the only way to get a "classic" solo fight was to use EL + 7 (!!!) solos. Otherwise PCs hit them too easily and then just mauled them with stun and daze effects until the end of their next turn. In other words the only way to make them challenging was to basically make them un-hittable, which made combats a huge grind and really made me think solos weren't worth it anymore. Not that this was that effective because destructive salutation will still stun until the end of a creatures next turn on a miss.
The overall effect was creatures needed to have highly metagamed powers - one in particular that switched the "enemy and ally" target line was very hilarious (as it stunned the entire party instead of the intended monster). I started to adapt towards the end of the campaign, using more terrain and traps. Really started to put some very well designed groups of monsters - the solo died an immediate death and every encounter after was a group of monsters.
Suddenly things weren't so easy for the PCs. Powers like that of displacer armour (melee and ranged attacks back then rolled TWO dice for an ENTIRE encounter - insane, which was eventually fixed by wizard) were no longer instant wins as I mixed many creatures with burst and area attacks in. I increased the size of the maps, spreading monsters out and using much more elevation to my advantage (an elevation of 5 squares does little to a ranged creatures actual range, but does a huge amount to catching it in a burst and blast). I started to use more flying creatures, learning that keeping a creature outside a PCs reach and whacking him was very effective.
Tactics changed, I made "overall" rules for the final dungeon that manipulated the environment like gravity and teleportation - giving the monsters a crucial mobility advantage. I didn't just jack up the levels of monsters anymore, I started using more monsters in encounters instead. Encounters were still "grindy" but there were enough creatures that the PCs certainly noticed their overall damage output - but nothing was too bad here.
In the end the battle against Dagon at the end of the game was fun and satisfying enough, but the whole experience didn't feel as coherent and fun as it could have been. I had learned a pretty harsh lesson on epic tier and it was almost a year before I got a second chance.
Second Epic Tier Game - MM3 saves the encounter levels!
This is another FR game, that has been largely planar since the paragon tier and the PCs stepped into Sigil. Epic tier began with a quest to find an angel who was known to be associated with the BBEW (Big Bad Evil Woman in this campaign). Numerous changes were afoot this time and I was much better prepared.
1) I took my PCs tactics and capabilities into account more. Although this party doesn't use anything on the level of "Team forced movement", which was exploiting the power of bloodpulse and long distance forced movement powers, it was still important to consider their abilities.
2) I used a variety of terrain, room sizes and monster abilities - particularly flight, to make encounters much more challenging.
3) I thought more about how creatures should work together and why. Particularly I put into practice the idea that every encounter should do something very different tactically. For example, one encounter would have a lot of flying enemies, another a lot of very hard hitting soldiers or similar. Keep mixing things up all the time and keep the PCs off guard.
4) I developed a new and now defunct with MM3 tactic. I took a monster of X level and reduced its level - but only their HP and defenses. I kept their attacks and damage exactly the same. This meant monsters hit very often, but weren't substantially harder to hit themselves. With the damage of pre-MM3 creatures being "scratch them", this worked out very well because while they hit more the damage just meant they were reliable.
5) Solos were always accompanied by friends and I gave them many ways of avoiding being stunned, dazed or dominated. Auras and other tricks also helped to make solos more exciting - even so they frequently fell very short as the "until end of next turn" effects still devastated them.
Encounter Levels
Another thing with epic I did was I never used EL0 and EL+1 encounters. They were frankly a waste of time and effort, because 5 monsters could never challenge 5 PCs of the same level anymore. They would be trivially wiped out by area and burst powers that inflicted "until end of next turn" status effects. By now you'll notice that this whole "until end of next turn" thing comes up a lot - but it's really the proliferation of them by epic that's the problem. It's very easy to disable most or all creatures without any chance of a saving throw.
This meant that I jacked up the ELs, using the monster level trick I described earlier and set them upon the PCs. Epic battles were usually hit fests - but I actually resisted the temptation to spam a lot of stuns, dominates and similar on the monsters side. They were kinda grindy in many ways, because the base EL I used was EL + 3 (that was a "standard" epic encounter IMO). A hard encounter could be up to EL + 5 or even EL + 7! But I had managed to make numerous challenging encounters, through terrain, monsters powers (My PCs hate anything that flies and invisible creatures, a win for me!) and just putting a lot of effort in.
But let's be clear: It took a LOT of effort to make fun and challenging encounters. I needed to make a lot of custom traps, really optimize creatures and think of new mechanics to make monsters more interesting and challenging.
None the less I continued like this and then, as if from above in a heavenly light came Monster Manual 3.
Flaws with Epic Monsters that Monster Manual 3 conclusively fixes
1) Monster Manual 3 makes brute accuracy baseline. This means an effective +2 to all attacks and this really helps. The amount this helps cannot be underestimated, because brutes really suffer at epic. They are autohit by PCs constantly, they cannot hit your average defender except on ridiculously high rolls and when they did hit the damage was worthless anyway.
Consider the level 30 apocalypse spell brute, which does a whopping 4d10+20 damage on a melee basic attack! That's astounding and when he hits you, no matter who you are you will feel that damage.
2) Better power design. Many epic MM3 creatures are not entirely disabled by daze and stun. They have free action attacks, they can still find ways to deal damage while stunned (growing heat of the Volcanic dragon is a classic example of this IMO). The general damage output is now enough that you can't just regenerate, use DR and surgeless healing to just negate all damage.
This has led to PCs losing much more healing surges than before, with the monsters actually presenting a solid threat. Most importantly, I've dropped the encounter levels of the monsters quite a lot. The wonderful side effect of this is much faster, more violent and more fun combat. PCs are being hit and damaged for significant amounts, but monsters aren't actually needing to be massively over the PCs level or anything silly (therefore a huge miss fest).
For some examples, I posted these in general messages with my encounters this weekend, showing how the MM3 and the changes to monster design have really changed my game. I've gone from 2 encounters in four hours to running four encounters in four hours. I'm immensely happy with the new math behind monsters (especially their damage) and the general improvements to their powers.
In any event here are the encounters I ran and ELs, my party is level 28 and then level 29 after the first encounter.
Consists of: Sorcerer, Wizard, Fighter, Barbarian and Cleric.
They are currently defending the deck and controls of a huge elemental warship that they are flying straight into the BBEGs swirling fortress of doom to penetrate it.
First Encounter: EL 28 solo Balor of my own semi-construction (part Wizards and part my own). Used the new maths for damage and attack bonuses.
Was a resounding success. It was an immensely short fight, only 4 rounds but was obscenely violent. My houserule that lets solos save against "end of next turn effects", the better accuracy and huge damage meant for a very short, violent but exciting fight. One of my favourite solo fights and was completely even level with the party! No huge 2 hour grind of almost missing with the solo "scratching" the PCs for a pitiful 18 damage a hit.
Couldn't have been happier.
Next encounter with the party at level 29; EL 29 encounter.
2 Fire Archon Blazeswords (level 28 solider)
2 Oil archons (Level 28 brute)
6 Fire Archon Flamebows (Level 28 minion)
1 Iron Archon (Level 28 skirmisher)
This encounter didn't go so well, due to the PCs having legions hold (close burst 20 stun power if you've never seen it before). None the less the archons got some good hits in and were able to abuse the party quite a bit before dying, but overall got very unlucky (some very good dice rolls went against them so they didn't get to move that much).
Next encounter was around EL 30 (So EL +1).
Klurichir (level 28 soldier)
Swordtail Vrock (level 29 Skirmisher)
Herald of Colorless Fire (Level 28 skirmisher)
Godslayer Inferno (Level 28 artillery)
Chosen of Pazuzu (Level 29 artillery/controller - sort of does both)
Six shards of uralinda.
This battle was interesting because it was their first chosen. He's based on the demonomicon entry with the alternative powers that followers of Pazuzu have. His main thing is "Seed of Discord" which forces a PC to use their highest level encounter power against their allies (power "borrowed" from the Astral Kraken). The Barbarian has Hurricane of Blades (can you see where this is about to go by chance?). The Cleric at one point used his phalanx leader power, which allowed the Barbarian to teleport adjacent to him. The chosen went and in a very tense four attacks, the Cleric had to suffer his own allies Hurricane of Blades! 111 damage later, the Cleric managed to get away with it, but he was soon mobbed by the Godslayer inferno and the herald of colorless fire.
The Klurichir didn't get to do that much overall, as he was a bit far from the action in the end. He did take a big chunk out of the fighter and prevented him from healing during the entire fight, so was overall a success. The Swordtail Vrock flew about clawing at the PCs as well and generally being a pain.
None the less they progressed through that combat in 5 rounds and with plenty of time to spare. Sadly the soccer drew the defender away from the game - which slowed down this encounter and the next one quite a lot (PCs playing other peoples characters often slows the game up massively sadly).
This battle took roughly an hour (that is with a PC missing!) and it was appropriately challenging. Epic tier fights before have been walkovers with the PCs barely noticing, so I am very impressed thus far.
The final encounter was EL 21 (EL +2) and consisted of:
1 Swordtail Vrock (Level 29 Skirmisher)
1 Marilith Ward Keeper (level 29 controller)
1 Molydeus (Level 29 something, I think he's a soldier)
6 Goristo Eviscerators (Level 28 minion)
1 Bonegouge Assassin (level 28 lurker)
1 Retriever (Level 28 soldier)
1 Herald of Colorless Fire (Level 28 skirmisher)
This encounter has been interesting because the Marilith got a huge chunk out of the Barbarian straight away and the fighter. The PCs have got things back a lot by the wizard using Legions Hold twice (Close burst 20 stuns on hit, dazes on a miss - both save ends. Obscenely good actually). The bonegouge assassin hasn't had a single turn and neither has the herald of colorless fire - which is kind of annoying (really, legions hold is incredibly brutal when someone can do it three times in one encounter).
Thankfully the demonic generals have been showing the chaff how things are done. The molydeus has been on a pure rampage of destruction against the cleric, mauling him with its two turns of attacks and an opportunity attack when the cleric tried to leave (Due to his ability to autosave stun/daze effects he's not been bothered by legions hold). The Marilith as I mentioned took huge chunks out of both the barbarian and the fighter - though will be dying on her next turn unless she gets a bit lucky somewhere.
We've left the combat at around round 4 and it will probably end on round 5/6. Then I've got the final encounter of that ship to do, an antagonist from the PCs past is going to show up to try thwarting their attempt at getting to the genuine BBEG. Should be quite dramatic, as the Balor they killed in the first encounter? He's not gone yet, he's going to form into a sneaky cacodaemon and try to posses one of the PCs during that fight - making it especially tricky. It's also the highest EL I've tried since the release of the MM3: EL + 4. Let's see if it will be truly as epic as I hope!
We had to stop before finishing because another player left and it was the end of the session anyway. But it won't take long to resolve at the start of next session.
Edit: I should note where you see monsters from previous MMs, I've gone and improved their powers and abilities. For example the retriever has the hilariously bad self repair, which is a standard action for a +4 bonus to AC and a whole twenty HP. I've made it so that it gives +4 to all defenses, restores 20 HP and recharges all of its eye rays automatically (which it then uses for free on its next turn - making self repair a "Oh no" power instead of a waste of an action and a turn).
Edit2: Speaking of, here is my solo Balor's stat block. Corrected the errors in it:
There are three core principles to epic tier that are most essential to realize:
1) PCs are much more powerful than any other tier.
This might seem obvious, but it's hard to appreciate until you see a wizard use legions hold three times per day. Or how a radiant mafia or pre-errata bloodpulse team forced movement could absolutely wreck any encounter. This means you have to adjust the way you design and think about encounters - what works at heroic no longer works by epic. The increase isn't so substantial as to make the game not function. It is substantial enough that if you aren't appropriately designing encounters, you will get caught out and things will not be challenging at all.
Of all the monsters in 4E though the creature that suffers the most by epic from the large amount of powers PCs have by this point is the poor solo. PCs by this tier have so many daze, stun and dominate until end of next turn effects, the poor guys are never going to get a turn by themselves. 5 PCs vs. 1 solo is effectively 5 chances to stick one effect on the solo - making it useless for an entire turn. Then they do it again next turn (or extend the effect or similar, such as by an orb of ultimate imposition). What I've actually done in my games -that works very well as well it should be noted - is to give solo monsters after level 11 a save against daze, stun and dominate effects even if they wouldn't normally get a save. This has actually really 'fixed' the issue considerably, meaning that an even level solo can challenge a group of PCs pretty adequately - despite the huge proliferation of daze, stun and dominate effects.
Without such a rule expect every solo in existence to end up stun locked after their first daze, dominate or stun and never do anything for an entire encounter. Either that, expect to have to put other monsters, traps and terrain into every encounter with a solo or they will be utterly trivialized.
2) Monsters from books earlier than MM3 frankly don't cut the epic mustard.
This is one of the greatest "hidden" flaws of 4E. Monsters by epic did ridiculously low damage combined with billions of status effects. If you've read peoples epic experiences you'll often find that a common complaint is that fights are a "grind", which means that PCs spend a long time killing things and aren't very threatened in the process. This is because monster powers are frequently not much better than in heroic tier for early books and they only "scratch" PCs. A DR of 10 or some temporary hit points can easily remove most of a creatures attacks - rendering them grossly ineffective. MM3 has definitely fixed this and given epic monsters the teeth they need to actually be challenging.
This is a more general problem than the solo above, which is caused by the proliferation of "until end of X turn" stun and similar powers. This is really caused by a "maths" error that really underestimated the amount of damage monsters actually should be doing.
3) Encounters need to be designed most with terrain and creature synergy in mind.
More than any other tier, you need to consider the terrain you are fighting on when you make encounters. By this point PCs should be besieging the very heart of the enemy and the enemy should be firmly on their turf. Zones, terrain, effects, traps and similar that conspire against the PCs, like the terrain given in Plane Below is perfect for this tier. You should use it copiously! Make PCs get some use out of those "useless" non combat rituals by using a ritual that lets them fight something underwater, or flying through the air over lava or whatever. Change up rules, like having the PCs fight in the heart of the aboleths mad fortress that changes how teleportation works or lets every aberration with a swim speed fly.
PCs have the ability, hit points and resilience for some experiments! Make varied encounters that don't deliberately spite what the PCs have - instead make them use those powers creatively! Got huge bursts? How about enemies that phase and can move in and out of walls (denying the character any line of effect). A battle over a huge pit of lava with small pillars can make for an exciting aerial based encounter. Make them think creatively to get around obstacles instead of doing the same thing over and over (which is very likely to work well and always trivialize an encounter, that is why they are doing it to begin with!).
First Epic Tier Game - Horrible
The first epic tier game I ran was Tides of Dust, set in Faerun and going to level 28. The primary problem with this game was I skipped a few levels into epic due to time and to finish the campaign up a bit faster. Unfortunately, this wasn't such a great idea because it meant I didn't get really acquainted with how epic tier was really different.
The first thing I noticed was the sheer power level of the PCs compared to the monsters. I had MM2 by this point but even MM2 solos like the Beholder Ultimate Tyrant, which at the time I thought "WHOA! This is going to be great" did absolutely nothing to this party. The beholder was even 4 levels higher than the party when I used it and was trivially defeated. Only its telekinetic ray kept it alive for any amount of time, for a pitiful amount of damage that didn't bloody a single PC. The gold dragon I tried was similarly useless as well.
Why was this though? What had I done wrong that heroic and paragon I had not (minding the hints that what was coming were already being seen in paragon anyway)?
Well first:
1) No terrain, it had some buildings and such, but otherwise it was a straight up fight. This rarely works in epic unless the monster you're using is exceptionally well designed.
2) A single solo vs. five level 25 PCs is not a winning combination when I did so. What caught me off guard was the "stunlock" from the Bloodmage. The power destructive salutation actually stuns on a miss until the end of your next turn. He deliberately missed with the power twice (Archmage lets you prepare a daily twice), meaning the Beholder lost every action for the first 2 rounds and did absolutely nothing. By the time it got a single turn it had taken so much damage that it couldn't effectively fight anymore.
Combined with poor damage but strong effects when it did hit, all the creature did was annoy the PCs as it delayed the inevitable. Very disappointing, especially as by all means this is a creature with a great stat block. If only it had been given the ability to use any of its powers.
3) No supporting creatures, minions or traps. If the solo won't be able to take actions, something else should be able to take some actions instead to challenge the players.
This meant combats were very straightforward and the only way to get a "classic" solo fight was to use EL + 7 (!!!) solos. Otherwise PCs hit them too easily and then just mauled them with stun and daze effects until the end of their next turn. In other words the only way to make them challenging was to basically make them un-hittable, which made combats a huge grind and really made me think solos weren't worth it anymore. Not that this was that effective because destructive salutation will still stun until the end of a creatures next turn on a miss.
The overall effect was creatures needed to have highly metagamed powers - one in particular that switched the "enemy and ally" target line was very hilarious (as it stunned the entire party instead of the intended monster). I started to adapt towards the end of the campaign, using more terrain and traps. Really started to put some very well designed groups of monsters - the solo died an immediate death and every encounter after was a group of monsters.
Suddenly things weren't so easy for the PCs. Powers like that of displacer armour (melee and ranged attacks back then rolled TWO dice for an ENTIRE encounter - insane, which was eventually fixed by wizard) were no longer instant wins as I mixed many creatures with burst and area attacks in. I increased the size of the maps, spreading monsters out and using much more elevation to my advantage (an elevation of 5 squares does little to a ranged creatures actual range, but does a huge amount to catching it in a burst and blast). I started to use more flying creatures, learning that keeping a creature outside a PCs reach and whacking him was very effective.
Tactics changed, I made "overall" rules for the final dungeon that manipulated the environment like gravity and teleportation - giving the monsters a crucial mobility advantage. I didn't just jack up the levels of monsters anymore, I started using more monsters in encounters instead. Encounters were still "grindy" but there were enough creatures that the PCs certainly noticed their overall damage output - but nothing was too bad here.
In the end the battle against Dagon at the end of the game was fun and satisfying enough, but the whole experience didn't feel as coherent and fun as it could have been. I had learned a pretty harsh lesson on epic tier and it was almost a year before I got a second chance.
Second Epic Tier Game - MM3 saves the encounter levels!
This is another FR game, that has been largely planar since the paragon tier and the PCs stepped into Sigil. Epic tier began with a quest to find an angel who was known to be associated with the BBEW (Big Bad Evil Woman in this campaign). Numerous changes were afoot this time and I was much better prepared.
1) I took my PCs tactics and capabilities into account more. Although this party doesn't use anything on the level of "Team forced movement", which was exploiting the power of bloodpulse and long distance forced movement powers, it was still important to consider their abilities.
2) I used a variety of terrain, room sizes and monster abilities - particularly flight, to make encounters much more challenging.
3) I thought more about how creatures should work together and why. Particularly I put into practice the idea that every encounter should do something very different tactically. For example, one encounter would have a lot of flying enemies, another a lot of very hard hitting soldiers or similar. Keep mixing things up all the time and keep the PCs off guard.
4) I developed a new and now defunct with MM3 tactic. I took a monster of X level and reduced its level - but only their HP and defenses. I kept their attacks and damage exactly the same. This meant monsters hit very often, but weren't substantially harder to hit themselves. With the damage of pre-MM3 creatures being "scratch them", this worked out very well because while they hit more the damage just meant they were reliable.
5) Solos were always accompanied by friends and I gave them many ways of avoiding being stunned, dazed or dominated. Auras and other tricks also helped to make solos more exciting - even so they frequently fell very short as the "until end of next turn" effects still devastated them.
Encounter Levels
Another thing with epic I did was I never used EL0 and EL+1 encounters. They were frankly a waste of time and effort, because 5 monsters could never challenge 5 PCs of the same level anymore. They would be trivially wiped out by area and burst powers that inflicted "until end of next turn" status effects. By now you'll notice that this whole "until end of next turn" thing comes up a lot - but it's really the proliferation of them by epic that's the problem. It's very easy to disable most or all creatures without any chance of a saving throw.
This meant that I jacked up the ELs, using the monster level trick I described earlier and set them upon the PCs. Epic battles were usually hit fests - but I actually resisted the temptation to spam a lot of stuns, dominates and similar on the monsters side. They were kinda grindy in many ways, because the base EL I used was EL + 3 (that was a "standard" epic encounter IMO). A hard encounter could be up to EL + 5 or even EL + 7! But I had managed to make numerous challenging encounters, through terrain, monsters powers (My PCs hate anything that flies and invisible creatures, a win for me!) and just putting a lot of effort in.
But let's be clear: It took a LOT of effort to make fun and challenging encounters. I needed to make a lot of custom traps, really optimize creatures and think of new mechanics to make monsters more interesting and challenging.
None the less I continued like this and then, as if from above in a heavenly light came Monster Manual 3.
Flaws with Epic Monsters that Monster Manual 3 conclusively fixes
1) Monster Manual 3 makes brute accuracy baseline. This means an effective +2 to all attacks and this really helps. The amount this helps cannot be underestimated, because brutes really suffer at epic. They are autohit by PCs constantly, they cannot hit your average defender except on ridiculously high rolls and when they did hit the damage was worthless anyway.
Consider the level 30 apocalypse spell brute, which does a whopping 4d10+20 damage on a melee basic attack! That's astounding and when he hits you, no matter who you are you will feel that damage.
2) Better power design. Many epic MM3 creatures are not entirely disabled by daze and stun. They have free action attacks, they can still find ways to deal damage while stunned (growing heat of the Volcanic dragon is a classic example of this IMO). The general damage output is now enough that you can't just regenerate, use DR and surgeless healing to just negate all damage.
This has led to PCs losing much more healing surges than before, with the monsters actually presenting a solid threat. Most importantly, I've dropped the encounter levels of the monsters quite a lot. The wonderful side effect of this is much faster, more violent and more fun combat. PCs are being hit and damaged for significant amounts, but monsters aren't actually needing to be massively over the PCs level or anything silly (therefore a huge miss fest).
For some examples, I posted these in general messages with my encounters this weekend, showing how the MM3 and the changes to monster design have really changed my game. I've gone from 2 encounters in four hours to running four encounters in four hours. I'm immensely happy with the new math behind monsters (especially their damage) and the general improvements to their powers.
In any event here are the encounters I ran and ELs, my party is level 28 and then level 29 after the first encounter.
Consists of: Sorcerer, Wizard, Fighter, Barbarian and Cleric.
They are currently defending the deck and controls of a huge elemental warship that they are flying straight into the BBEGs swirling fortress of doom to penetrate it.
First Encounter: EL 28 solo Balor of my own semi-construction (part Wizards and part my own). Used the new maths for damage and attack bonuses.
Was a resounding success. It was an immensely short fight, only 4 rounds but was obscenely violent. My houserule that lets solos save against "end of next turn effects", the better accuracy and huge damage meant for a very short, violent but exciting fight. One of my favourite solo fights and was completely even level with the party! No huge 2 hour grind of almost missing with the solo "scratching" the PCs for a pitiful 18 damage a hit.
Couldn't have been happier.
Next encounter with the party at level 29; EL 29 encounter.
2 Fire Archon Blazeswords (level 28 solider)
2 Oil archons (Level 28 brute)
6 Fire Archon Flamebows (Level 28 minion)
1 Iron Archon (Level 28 skirmisher)
This encounter didn't go so well, due to the PCs having legions hold (close burst 20 stun power if you've never seen it before). None the less the archons got some good hits in and were able to abuse the party quite a bit before dying, but overall got very unlucky (some very good dice rolls went against them so they didn't get to move that much).
Next encounter was around EL 30 (So EL +1).
Klurichir (level 28 soldier)
Swordtail Vrock (level 29 Skirmisher)
Herald of Colorless Fire (Level 28 skirmisher)
Godslayer Inferno (Level 28 artillery)
Chosen of Pazuzu (Level 29 artillery/controller - sort of does both)
Six shards of uralinda.
This battle was interesting because it was their first chosen. He's based on the demonomicon entry with the alternative powers that followers of Pazuzu have. His main thing is "Seed of Discord" which forces a PC to use their highest level encounter power against their allies (power "borrowed" from the Astral Kraken). The Barbarian has Hurricane of Blades (can you see where this is about to go by chance?). The Cleric at one point used his phalanx leader power, which allowed the Barbarian to teleport adjacent to him. The chosen went and in a very tense four attacks, the Cleric had to suffer his own allies Hurricane of Blades! 111 damage later, the Cleric managed to get away with it, but he was soon mobbed by the Godslayer inferno and the herald of colorless fire.
The Klurichir didn't get to do that much overall, as he was a bit far from the action in the end. He did take a big chunk out of the fighter and prevented him from healing during the entire fight, so was overall a success. The Swordtail Vrock flew about clawing at the PCs as well and generally being a pain.
None the less they progressed through that combat in 5 rounds and with plenty of time to spare. Sadly the soccer drew the defender away from the game - which slowed down this encounter and the next one quite a lot (PCs playing other peoples characters often slows the game up massively sadly).
This battle took roughly an hour (that is with a PC missing!) and it was appropriately challenging. Epic tier fights before have been walkovers with the PCs barely noticing, so I am very impressed thus far.
The final encounter was EL 21 (EL +2) and consisted of:
1 Swordtail Vrock (Level 29 Skirmisher)
1 Marilith Ward Keeper (level 29 controller)
1 Molydeus (Level 29 something, I think he's a soldier)
6 Goristo Eviscerators (Level 28 minion)
1 Bonegouge Assassin (level 28 lurker)
1 Retriever (Level 28 soldier)
1 Herald of Colorless Fire (Level 28 skirmisher)
This encounter has been interesting because the Marilith got a huge chunk out of the Barbarian straight away and the fighter. The PCs have got things back a lot by the wizard using Legions Hold twice (Close burst 20 stuns on hit, dazes on a miss - both save ends. Obscenely good actually). The bonegouge assassin hasn't had a single turn and neither has the herald of colorless fire - which is kind of annoying (really, legions hold is incredibly brutal when someone can do it three times in one encounter).
Thankfully the demonic generals have been showing the chaff how things are done. The molydeus has been on a pure rampage of destruction against the cleric, mauling him with its two turns of attacks and an opportunity attack when the cleric tried to leave (Due to his ability to autosave stun/daze effects he's not been bothered by legions hold). The Marilith as I mentioned took huge chunks out of both the barbarian and the fighter - though will be dying on her next turn unless she gets a bit lucky somewhere.
We've left the combat at around round 4 and it will probably end on round 5/6. Then I've got the final encounter of that ship to do, an antagonist from the PCs past is going to show up to try thwarting their attempt at getting to the genuine BBEG. Should be quite dramatic, as the Balor they killed in the first encounter? He's not gone yet, he's going to form into a sneaky cacodaemon and try to posses one of the PCs during that fight - making it especially tricky. It's also the highest EL I've tried since the release of the MM3: EL + 4. Let's see if it will be truly as epic as I hope!
We had to stop before finishing because another player left and it was the end of the session anyway. But it won't take long to resolve at the start of next session.
Edit: I should note where you see monsters from previous MMs, I've gone and improved their powers and abilities. For example the retriever has the hilariously bad self repair, which is a standard action for a +4 bonus to AC and a whole twenty HP. I've made it so that it gives +4 to all defenses, restores 20 HP and recharges all of its eye rays automatically (which it then uses for free on its next turn - making self repair a "Oh no" power instead of a waste of an action and a turn).
Edit2: Speaking of, here is my solo Balor's stat block. Corrected the errors in it:
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