It's No Longer A Joke

[Enoch]

My thoughts on going beyond 30th:

No more level bonus (i.e. no bonus to attacks, defenses, skills, etc. at level 32 and beyond).
No new powers, but retraining powers is allowed.
No new feats, but retraining feats is allowed.
Any rules disallowing someone from having multiple powers/feats of the same level is ignored.

So eventually the party will have retrained all their powers to the highest level available.

After that I don't know.

Doubt I would need or use this. Even at 1 level a session, 30 levels is enough for me.

-Joshua

 

[Aristotle]

I like the fact that the game ends, and gives a certain amount of closure to players. I design campaigns all the time (for all sorts of role playing games) and we get to the end of the planned campaign, hit the climax, play out the victory, and deal with the aftermath... and then my players refuse to play other characters. As far as they are concerned *those* are the only characters they want for that game. My only recourse thus far has been to switch games or kill off the party intentionally as they insist on 'playing that character until it dies' which seems rather sad to me. Why does this hero have to fall? Why can't he retire with his glory intact?

Maybe they will accept a campaign end with some actual rules to reinforce retirement as a legitimate end. Man, I hope so...

 

[Midknightsun]

Um . . . yeah. Not seeing anything new about this, really, from any other edition I played.
Despite what anyone may say, any game your character lives through is a win. So yeah, living to the end of the campaign is part of that whole winning thing. Accomplishing some cool epic goal makes it all the sweater of a victory.

 

[Stormtalon]

Sometimes it's even possible to achieve victory in a campaign and still be TPK'd. This is highly situational, of course.
Examples: All remaining PCs die from the balor's death throes after killing it; the last surviving PC takes the artifact and jumps into the volcano that can destroy it; you defeated the master villain but the trap on his treasure does you in; etc.

Or your pursuit of the villain leads you back in time, where your climactic battle takes place on one of the floating cities of Netheril mere moments before Karsus casts his spell....

Actually did that one to my players to wrap up a campaign. They loved it.

 

[Dausuul]

Regarding going past level 30: It will almost certainly be possible eventually. BECMI was originally planned to be just BECM, but everybody wanted to be able to actually play the gods they'd spent so much effort to become, so they tacked on the Immortals rules. I'm sure 4E will get an Immortals-equivalent.

 

[mmu1]

I want to see what the DMG has to say on the subject of players failing to achieve their epic destinies. Very little, I suspect... since in 4E, everything that's not "fun" is being removed.

It's not that most D&D games I played in actually had a serious threat of failure - everyone knew that the heroes (as a group) are very likely to achieve their goals. For me, however, the fun was in seeing those goals develop organically (and hopefully, unexpectedly) and in finding out who survived long enough to see things through. Sitting down with the DM and choosing how my character's adventuring life will end? Sorry, not really interested.

I'm also very curious to see how quickly characters level under this new system, because that will have a great deal of impact on what having a level cap like this actually means. I have a sneaking suspicion their intent is to have characters go 1-30 quickly enough for players to have the motivation to buy those new PHBs that will be coming out every year. (to make better shinier characters for the new campaign)

 

[Lord Zardoz]

One could argue that in any edition of D&D, a campaign that ends without a TPK is a win.

So that game I ran back in 2001 / 2002 that fell apart because everyone I was gaming with got caught up in overtime at work and just tapered off was a win?

END COMMUNICATION

 

[ThirdWizard]

I want to see what the DMG has to say on the subject of players failing to achieve their epic destinies.

You're dead. Game over.

 

[Mercule]

And, I highly, highly doubt I'm the only one who played like this.

You aren't. I think I only played one pre-2e game that ran past name level -- and that one involved the PC ascending to godhood and retiring. There just wasn't much point to it. All the monsters had been scaled to fit a "retire at name level" paradigm and there were only so many demon princes a PC could slay without stretching the credulity of even a twelve-year old.

Second edition was better about providing foes for high level, but I also think it was the beginnings of the broken math. The PC classes weren't re-aligned to change how they behaved at higher levels. Mages tended to rule the day and fighters were little more than meat shields by 15th level (if not before). Third edition only exasperated this.

Yes, in 1e the wizard was a pansy at low levels. But, he was openly and unabashedly so. You didn't really need a wizard (or a cleric, which I'm not sure I ever saw played in 1e) to have a successful group. The people who played the wizard were those who wanted a bit more challenge and thoughtfulness in the game.

My experience, and that of most of the "old school" players I've gamed with is that the standard party is a couple of fighters (probably substitute a ranger, paladin, or some Dragon/third-party class -- like duelist or archer-ranger for one of the fighters), a rogue, a magic-user (or illusionist, witch, death master, alchemist, etc.), and then tack on some extras. Monk was as likely as cleric and druid was probably more likely. Those players and I really haven't adapted to the forced paradigm of needing the cleric and such. My hope with 4e is that the re-balancing of the math makes it possible to play sans cleric and primarily with sword-slingers. So far, it looks pretty good.

 

[med stud]

I want to see what the DMG has to say on the subject of players failing to achieve their epic destinies. Very little, I suspect... since in 4E, everything that's not "fun" is being removed.

I think this is being to harsh on 4e. I haven't seen one game which dwells on what happens if you are defeated.