Epic play

[Primitive Screwhead]

Greetings all. I am in the middle of running a group through the upper levels of the Epic tier and, as many have noted, there is very little support for these levels. The current modules I am using follow the 3x assumption of multiple encounters in an adventuring day, with little attrition battles leading up to the main battle. 4e doesn't handle the 'little attrition' style battle well, which leads to way too much time spent on the battle grid.

I am working on house-ruling the modules into a format that works better for these levels and would like some input and help getting this closer to right.


Guidelines for Epic adventuring day in 4E:

Each adventuring day generally consists of a three phase encounter
o Plan and research the target {skill challenge or brainstorm session. Fail/success impacts the next}
o Get to the target {usually skill challenge that burns resources, fail/success impacts next, or grid-less skirmishes using 'zone' combat rules}
o Fight the target

Make it matter. Use skill challenges or gloss over things meant to wear down the parties resources. 'Lethal Obsidian' is useful here in burning healing surges and daily resources with player involvement.

Make it Big. This is Epic level play and the PCs should be able to nova in the main encounter. Of course this means that the NPCs should get to nova as well.

Never Nerf without obvious, and massive in-game reason/plausibility.

Use lower level bad guys with increased damage output. This avoids the mismatch between attack bonus and defenses on both sides of the battle.

On the battle-map, make movement/choices matter using terrain, hazards, hindering terrain and blocking terrain.

Break the rules with monster design to amp the danger. Examples; modified version of 'sleep' that has the effect of 'target dies' on the second failed save, creatures that deal a 'failed death save' as part of a special attack.
However, avoid stun-lock and action denial.

Give the PCs a way to 'win' that doesn't involve reducing all combatants to zero hit points, or at least a short-cut to that result.


I wish I had the talent and time to write this up as a sequel to [MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION]'s 'Guide to the Anti-Grind'... but I don't so I hope this is a good start!

Thanks in advance for any help in refining this.

 

[Xethreau]

I think that in any encounter, taking a hint from videogames is good advice: If you defeat the boss, the encounter is over. Either the other enemies route, never to be seen again, or the energy blast given off from the giant lich exploding from your awesome kills the others.

The other enemies are therefore a distraction. Useful to be rid of, but not the primary target. In fact, the fight might be impossible to win if several enemies are not taken out, while a few characters focus on the main baddy. Remember Stalker0's advice - brutes, skirmishers, minions and artillery. Have the artillery attack the party to defend the boss, and the melee combatants to defend them.

If the artillery go unstopped, characters can be stopped dead trying to take down the solo/elite.



Oh, and as for challenges to put your PC's through. There is no such thing as too dangerous; you are dealing with the powers of creation and destruction after all. If you want to have your PC's fight a flight of elder dragons, do it.

 

[S'mon]

It's well worth checking out Eternity Publishing, [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION] 's website - https://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/ - lots of well-designed high-Epic foes, including Asmodeus!

Your advice looks very good, though it will likely be ca 2014 before my own 4e campaign reaches Epic Tier. I ran very 'Epic' stuff back in the 1e days, some of my experience I think is still applicable. For instance, short adventures are best - I think 3-fight "Dungeon Delve" type adventures can work ok, they give a Beginning, Middle and End to an adventure, but massive single-encounter battles can also work well. Either way, don't expect to seriously attrite PC resources short of some Ragnarok-type apocalypse.

 

[Upper_Krust]

The first thing about the epic tier I would suggest would be to increase the average Encounter Level by 3 (Levels 21-23) 4 (Levels 24-29) and 5 (Levels 30). But in so doing, try not to use enemies more than 3 levels higher (or lower) than the PCs - especially soldiers.

So for example if you assume Encounter Level = Party Level to be a typical encounter, +2 to be a tough encounter, +4 to be a dangerous encounter and +6 to be an adventure boss battle. At 21st-level you'd want to be using an encounter level of 24, 26, 28 and 30 respectively, but with no single monster above 24th.

Basically at epic level you want to use Elite's instead of standard monsters, Solo's instead of Elites and Super-solo's instead of Solos.

For epic adventures I favour a 3-4 encounter set-up:

Encounter #1 : General Location of [insert place the PCs want to get to]. (ie. Abyssal Plane, Far Realm etc.)
Encounter #2 : Specific Location ~ Exterior Defences (ie. Demon King's Palace, Primordial Prison etc.)
Encounter #3 : Specific Location ~ Interior Defences
Encounter #4 : BBEG fight.

So encounter #1 might be some random encounter with the natives, while the other encounters will be specific.

For solo monsters I am currently favouring the following:

Solo Resilience: At the start of its turn the solo monster can expend a standard action to remove all negative conditions (or ongoing effect) or expend a minor action to remove just one negative condition.

...with Elite's they require a standard action to remove a single negative effect.

 

[byronagetz]

Thanks for sharing inforamtion with us.I think the developers have to do more work on epic play.

 

[Joshua Randall]

For an example of 4e Epics that play (mostly) by the book, check out the Living Forgotten Realms:
Living Forgotten Realms

Ctrl-F for EPIC3-1, EPIC3-2, EPIC3-3, EPIC4-1.

4-1 is the best, 3-1 and 3-2 are solid, 3-3 I personally didn't like at all. But all will have useful encounters and ideas to borrow.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

For an example of 4e Epics that play (mostly) by the book, check out the Living Forgotten Realms:

Thanks for the links. I skimmed through the adventures and while the stories are strong and read very nicely, I don't think they would pan out that well for me.

Each one has the same basic assumptions, to wit a 3-phase {I assume this means 3 adventuring days} that are intended to play out over 12 to 15 hours.
There are 8 to 10 combat encounters.. all nicely detailed and with dungeon tile maps. This equates to roughly 3 combat encounters per adventuring day. None of them are really over the top challenging, usually EL+2

At my table, each of these modules would take 4 to 5 sessions to grind through.. possibly 6 or more if the players are slow during combat. For a once a month game, not happening.

Assuming a 4 to 6 hour session every other week, then the timeline works out better.. but still doesn't address the encounters all being "we can win this, how many dailies do we want to waste here?" or "Last encounter.. time to show them who is the BOSS!"

 

[keterys]

You don't do those adventures over three character days. Heck, EPIC3-1 to 3-3 are resolved in less than 72 hours for all 3 adventures. And they're generally balanced (synergies, better monster design, terrain features, etc) at a much tougher point than you might be experienced for EL.

You can also generally finish the encounters much faster than having massively overleveled combats (back to the anti-grind problem)

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

It's well worth checking out Eternity Publishing, @Upper_Krust 's website - https://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/ - lots of well-designed high-Epic foes, including Asmodeus! (snip)

I was also going to suggest heading to Upper Krust's site.

I particularly like where he takes the definitions of Heroic, Paragon and Epic Tiers and proposes changing the levels of monsters to actual match those definitions. This is a great starting point for thinking about Epic design because it makes you stop and think, "What is an Epic threat?" I think one of the things that 4E got wrong was making things like swordwings - basically an upper Heroic monster - into an Epic monster despite the fact that it does not pose the sort of threat that Epic should actually be about.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, WotC definitely made some odd decisions in level placement.