Epic-Tier, or High-Level Gaming and You

[Aberzanzorax]

Don't start at that level. I found it seems to always work better for the players and DM if the levels are earned and then the DM has a lot of past adventures and plots to draw on to make the campaign. The books have challenges so that makes that part of the game easier.

THIS is fantastic advice. I played in 3e's Age of Worms and came in at lvl 18. It was tough to learn my guy (partly due to my being a mystic theurge/arcane hierophant).


BUT, this doesn't mean you have to play every level from 1 to epic to get there. If you really just want to run an epic game, I reccomend picking 4 or so levels at which to adventure and running an "archetypal" adventure that sets a background and story for your epic campaign and acquaints players with their characters' stories as well as abilities.

These could even be run as "flashbacks" for the lvl 20 characters.


For a lvl 20 "start" to your 4e epic campaign, I'd reccomend the following levels (the levels would be slightly different for a 3e campaign only due to the "tiers" set for 4e.):

Level 2 (players are still very weak and can explore character origins, but not lvl 1 weak.)

Level 8 or 9 (not yet paragon tier, but close to the top of their game).

Level 11 or 12 (early paragon tier, highlight the real differences between heroic and paragon...the adventure you choose should make efforts to really drive this point home).

Level 17 or 18, (late paragon tier, but not level 19 in order to further heighten the differences between epic and paragon).

and finally lvl 20, your campaign start, again really highlighting "NOW YOU'RE EPIC!" Making the differences clear between late paragon and epic.




EDIT: As I was driving around thinking about this, I thought of a couple of other (highly related ideas):

Make sure they have things from these early adventures that STILL MATTER at lvl 20. The two things that came to mind are:

NPCs: They make an emotional, political, spiritual, or other connection to an NPC during these adventures. They could be allies, salespeople, villians, etc. In whatever case, have these people matter. They could matter in the same role, or they could switch roles...the low level thief villian is now their "black market go-to guy". The "high level...e.g. lvl 10" wizard is now their creator of scrolls and potions, etc.



Magic items: Make sure to put in items (likely wondrous items) at early levels that they could use at lvl 20. These might include (and pardon me for my lack of 4e knowledge, I'll draw upon 3e items)... e.g.

1. A scarab of protection (that is always charged at the end of the artificial adventure breaks because of <insert backstory here> (such as the character finds it indespensible, their new wizard friend owes it to them as a bet, etc etc).

2. A bag of tricks, lowest level. Even at lvl 20, pulling a weasel out of a hat can be fun sometimes..if only in tavern related entertainment.

3. A figurine of wondrous power.

4. Any intelligent item that players wouldn't discard as "useless". E.G. not a sword +x, but perhaps an intelligent staff of healing?

5. Metamagic rods

6. Pearls of power

and so on.


THE IDEA HERE is that the player begins to associate the item with his character. Each time they make the levelled up version of their character, they get their one (or two, or three, or four) special item (from each of the prior adventures up to 4 at lvl 20) as a BONUS item not counted against the current treasure amount they use to make the character. These become items they "always had" since they got them in the lower level adventures, and help to define the character.

If you want to go even further with this idea, go with "treasure cards" or even "trinkets" to help further define these as aspects of the characters. You could print out pictures and stats of the item on photo paper and then laminate it. You could even, e.g. for a bag of tricks, buy a small leather bag and miniature versions of each of the animals for players to pull out. Whatever helps to drive home an attachment.



Remember, you're trying to distill a campain's worth of attachment to the character's personalities/items/abilities etc into a few adventures, so any "extras" you do can help drive home that emotional attachment.

 

[firesnakearies]

BUT, this doesn't mean you have to play every level from 1 to epic to get there. If you really just want to run an epic game, I reccomend picking 4 or so levels at which to adventure and running an "archetypal" adventure that sets a background and story for your epic campaign and acquaints players with their characters' stories as well as abilities.

These could even be run as "flashbacks" for the lvl 20 characters.

This is a cool idea. I thought about doing something like this myself.

 

[Crothian]

BUT, this doesn't mean you have to play every level from 1 to epic to get there.

One thing I have done, and it does take a little while but faster then normal, is gain a level each week. I'd run shortened one session adventures and each week the PCs would advance a level. It still takes 20 sessions to get to level 21. It gives the Players a good feel for their characters and allows lots of time to set up things for the epic campaign.

 

[Markn]

Having recently seen the damage expressions in the Dark Sun preview stat blocks, I must say, apparently the damage expression table in the DMG is waaaay too conservative.

Assuming the level 1-3 damage is about right, damage would have to scale a lot faster if you were striving for a similar threat level:

Minimum hp for a pc at level 1 is about 20hp (for a wizard), at level 30 it's about 140 hp. So monsters would need to do about seven times as much damage on average to be similarly threatening. Normal average damage starts at 8.5 (d10+3) and increases by 1 per two monster levels, resulting in 23.5 damage at level 30. That's not even three times as much damage!

So far I've been assuming the lower than expected damage in the epic tier was because of the relatively better to hit chance of monsters, but even taking that into account, the damage is too low.

The only question is: How lethal is combat supposed to be in the epic tier? Is it fine that it isn't as lethal as it is on level 1?

I think WotC should provide an alternative damage progression table for groups that prefer a higher than average threat level.

This is something I noticed very early on in 4e. I just don't understand the thinking for the low damage expressions.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Because my last comment was helpful to at least a couple of people, I thought I'd post my "pathfinder four levels to 20" as well.

Level 2 (same reasons as 4e).

Level 6 (good for getting to third level based feat, ie. 1, 3, 6, all characters with spells have lvl 5 spells, fighters have their main things, etc.)

Level 10-12 (getting into the good barbarian and rogue stuff, 5th or 6th lvl spells but no resurrection yet).

Level 16 (everything but 9th level spells, everything but the most uber powers at the end of each class)

and of course, level 20 (where classes really POP with their "uber powers")



Anyway, just thought I'd post this, as my group is using pathfinder and it might be helpful to others (or to me if someone disagrees and points out better places!).