Possible Epic .....

[Lord_Raven88]

In regards to EPIC games below are some suggestions

* NO ability boosting books, realistically these would be extremely rare to find, let alone the possibility of finding a +5 book to boost of ability scores for every character.
* Be part of an Epic organisation (such as the Clonclave of Shadows in Raymond E Feist books)
* No custom items

 

[Wrahn]

Character Creation: If you want to run an epic game, be prepared to say no. Do not feel restrained by the published rules and feel if you allowed the Complete Warrior, you have to, by default, allow the Frenzied Bezerker.

Players will try and make powerful characters, I am one of those players, but if you think my Barbarian with the 60 strength is out of bounds, tell me, and explain what you think is more reasonable. Tell people that that is what you are going to do before hand. People are creative and will come up with crap that you will never see coming. Be prepared to rein them in to a level you find acceptable.

There is a tendency for characters to become a bunch of unrelated statistics, make sure there is a story behind every character.

Equipment: If you are willing to take the effort, I would suggest having the players describe (with a description, not game stats) their significant pieces of equipment, and then you make it. If you are unwilling to go to that level of work, I would keep them with published equipment only and/or they can only have a custom piece of equipment if they actually made it with item creation feats. (again with the whole, if you don't like it, say no caveat)

Combat: Be wary of combat. Epic combats can become insanely complex. That is not say avoid them, just be prepared for them to take a while. It is a good idea to throw a few less challenging encounters at the PCs first to see what they are capable of.

 

[Endur]

* NO ability boosting books, realistically these would be extremely rare to find, let alone the possibility of finding a +5 book to boost of ability scores for every character.
* Be part of an Epic organisation (such as the Clonclave of Shadows in Raymond E Feist books)

I want to vote against both of these suggestions.

I like to play a Barbarian (i.e. King Conan).

Typically, if I'm starting a high level character, I like to start out without any magic items, but with higher stats than other PCs. One way to do that in a semi-balanced way is to spend the gold on books to boost ability scores. So I like the book option (it helps represent the fact that my character is simply made of sterner stuff than the average person).

Secondly, my barbarians tend not to join organizations. So I'm not fond of the epic org idea. Plus, most epic orgs are poorly conceived in my experience.

 

[Wrahn]

In regards to EPIC games below are some suggestions

* NO ability boosting books, realistically these would be extremely rare to find, let alone the possibility of finding a +5 book to boost of ability scores for every character.

I am not sure that I agree with the No ability boosting books. First, I think the game is a least a little balanced around the idea that the players have them, and second, you assume the origin of the books are created by other spell casters, when in fact they could be divine rewards, a naturally occuring phenomena (well a supernaturally occuring phenomena anyway) or a host of other reasons.

Realisticly speaking, how many magic swords do you think are going to be out there? If you begin using the hammer of Realstically, there are a whole bunch of D&D conventions that are going to come crashing down.

 

[Lord_Raven88]

I am not sure that I agree with the No ability boosting books. First, I think the game is a least a little balanced around the idea that the players have them, and second, you assume the origin of the books are created by other spell casters, when in fact they could be divine rewards, a naturally occuring phenomena (well a supernaturally occuring phenomena anyway) or a host of other reasons.

Realisticly speaking, how many magic swords do you think are going to be out there? If you begin using the hammer of Realstically, there are a whole bunch of D&D conventions that are going to come crashing down.

When I said realisticly I meant from the view point of the game, in my many years of RPGing I have only heard of maybe 1 such low powered book being found, whereas magic swords are dime a dozern , also I'm not against ability boosting items, al least they can be countered in some fashion and there is a limit to what you can use at any one time.

In regards to my suggestions, I'm surprised that so far people haven't liked my ideas but lets remember they are only suggestions as to what I like, which of course is different from what others or even the DM may like.

At the end of the day it will be up to whoever wants to DM such a game, to decide what suggestions he/she wants to keep or ignore.

 

[Lord_Raven88]

Since my previous suggestions got such a positive response I thought I'd better throw more ideas into the general arena.

Background
The most classical reason (again just my opnion) for the group to get to together, would be to assume that the group is an old adventuring group who had been semi-retired, one of the members got wind of some truly world shaking event (or they were told by others), (such as a plot to destroy the only peanut butter making facility in the world), which necessitates the group coming out of retirement to face this dire threat.

But seriously I do think the threat the conclave of shadows faces is a good example of an Epic threat.

 

[Endur]

I think fictional epic groups mostly work. My argument is not against fictional epic groups, but more the typical epic organizations you see in the ELH. Most of the epic organizations I read about in the ELH I did not find very convincing.

Either the group didn't make sense to only limit itself to epic level members ... why wouldn't the God Kissed, the Garrotte, the Gleaners, the Union Sentinels, etc. also have non-epic members.

Or it didn't make sense to have that many epic characters in the group working together. 5000+ epic police force members in the Union Sentinels?

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

How about gestalt classes?

Oh, I disagree with the books and I think they should be in and I can think of no other example of this than in one of Endur’s own characters that was epic level. He was part of the longest running, and maybe best ran epic games till the DM decided epic spell casting wasn't so bad, with me and I loved the 20th level Barbarian running around only with two handed sword made of adamantine and a loin cloth.

 

[Ferrix]

How about gestalt classes?

Teehee... you make me giggle BS

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Teehee... you make me giggle BS

Well I always aim to get someone to laugh but I'm also serious... (at least slightly)

To me PrC are the most worrisome item of epic play, at least if you just throw out epic magic/psionics straight out, which you pretty much forced too if you want this to work. You start looking at PrC combos and they start doing insane stuff but the core classes are pretty much designed to be even all the way through… So why not just ban PrCs?

Because then you have some rather vanilla characters but if you let people have gestalt classes, with maybe a limit of 3 different total classes, then people aren’t stuck with vanilla characters.

I still think as a DM you need to be careful with allowing some combinations but it seems safe enough to me...

I mean epic characters seem to me like they should be able to do more than normal but at the same time you need great mechanics to support them.