Epic Destinies and coming back to life

[sfedi]

From the fluff it seems that once you reach the Epic tier, you are pretty much an immortal.

Yet only some of the Epic Destinies have a mechanic for coming back to life.

This seems obviously and grossly unbalanced if only some ED can come back to life 1/day and others not.

Am I missing something here?

 

[ZzarkLinux]

Well, I guess you can add fluff to make them "become immortal".

- The Cleric has a temple of devout priests that will resurrect him
- The Rouge has people who resurrect him out of honor or fear
- The Wizard casts some ritual
- The Fighter just doesn't stay dead ala Chuck Norris
- The Shaman receives a breath of life from her spirit companion

et cetera

 

[Ryujin]

There are also several Epic tier items that will give you a chance at survival, when you would otherwise be killed.

 

[Jhaelen]

Not all epic destinies will actually make you immortal. There are several that will make you immortal in name, only. I.e. your character will be immortalized in song, etc.

From a point of balance, I agree, though. I generally prefer the ones that have an ability 'Once per day when you die...'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The "once per day when you die" ED features are generally pretty good, but they aren't the last word in ED effectiveness. Isn't it better not to die at all in the first place? EDs which lack return from the dead clauses have other features instead, which may just keep you from ever dying in the first place.

Of course EDs aren't all entirely made equal, any more than PPs are. Given the huge variety of possible underlying combinations of class/build/PP/ED I doubt it would ever be possible to make really balanced PPs and EDs. All they can really do is try to make them so that characters have some good choices at each stage and that the best mechanical choices don't create a monstrously OP character. Going over PPs with players I've found that you really only have usually 2-5 reasonable choices. I'd think the same sort of thing holds for EDs. Out of those several choices chances are some will have resurrection clauses, others may have really good synergy with your character, and some like Demigod are just flat out all around good. Even if one choice stands out, it won't be the same one for every PC.