Pros and Cons of Epic Level Play?

[D'karr]

If your foes are now easily defeated, it doesn't feel very epic at all. If anything, I think epic gaming is a license for the DM to throw the kitchen sink at the PCs.

Absolutely. I've DM'd 4e at all levels. The progression goes something like this:

Heroic Tier - Characters have survivability. However, the DM must still be careful not to completely overwhelm them, or it becomes a TPK.
Paragon Tier - Characters have extreme survivability. The DM can take the kid's gloves off and work to hurt them.
Epic Tier - The characters are near immortal. Take the kid's gloves off, bring out the nuclear weapons, kick them when they're down and be a complete rat bastard. Anything short of that is hardly a challenge.

I've heard it said that 4e epic is simply D&D with bigger numbers. You can certainly play it that way if that is what floats your boat. The game does not prevent the DM from doing that. But a failure to be epic is mostly a failure of thinking about what are the correct challenges on an epic level. The challenges at those levels need to be epic in story characteristics. Saving the little town could definitely be the by-product of an Epic campaign but it should not be the goal.

One of my friends was describing a long running campaign in which they reached Epic Level. From the middle of Heroic Tier they had been fighting against a world spanning crime syndicate. When they were close to ending paragon level they finally defeated the crime syndicate. Their jump into epic, they decided to become the leaders of the crime syndicate. 1 level into epic they figured out that goal was simply menial for epic level characters. Thankfully the DM adjusted and they went for an epic goal rather than a mundane one with big numbers.

My disappointment with epic level support is not about epic paths, magic items/artifacts, or even monsters. WotC did provide quite a bit of that. What they did not support well, or enough was what kind of stories are supposed to encompass epic level.

 

[Celebrim]

Epic Level play has become some what of a forgotten aspect of many games which is a shame.

If I had a motto, it would be: first level characters; epic situations. There is no reason that a game needs big numbers in order to be epic. The Lord of the Rings manages to be fully epic arguably without anyone being above 6th level. George Martin's Game of Thrones likewise has an epic sense of scale, again arguably without anyone being above 6th level.

Beyond a certain point, number inflation doesn't lead to more epic situations; it leads to less epic situations. Eventually numbers become meaningless, the tribulations of characters stop being relatable, the imagination first boggles and then recoils from the vision as it begins to assess the logic of the situation and finds it ridiculous. At some level, the 15th level character is more epic than the 100th level character. The second number buries itself in its pomposity and ridiculousness. It's so out of scale with the rest of the universe as to be comic rather than awe inspiring.

What are the reasons?

There are probably two reasons.

First, the scale of an epic game in the 3.X D&D sense is such that it becomes unrunnable. When stories involve the clash of whole civilizations and worlds, it all becomes either a meaningless backdrop simply painted on to the scene or less an attempts to simulate it bog the game down to a halt. You can't reasonably run WWII as process simulation, much less a galaxy spanning war or a war between universes.

Second, as you scale out in power toward the divine, the characters and the situations and challenges that they face become increasingly inhuman and probably incomprehensible. Even if you could tell the story and run it, would it be anything we could care about in the way we care about stories of more human beings?

In general the two things feed off each other, so that story tellers either flee from such vistas so that in effect, demon princes and cosmic forces become little more than orcs or ogres in dungeons with just bigger numbers, less balance, and clumsier resolutions systems, or else the world becomes impossibly convoluted and perhaps beyond the ability of the human imagination to conceive and the whole attempt explodes in its excess of ambition. Playing the game as a 'realistic' 3.X deity requires realizing you are fighting a hundred front or thousand front war against scores of potent enemies simultaneously. Who can reasonably pretend to a be an Int 30 character capable of multitasking dozens or scores of situations at once?

 

[DaveMage]

I love epic level play.

It's fun taking on (and taking down) demon lords.

 

[Ahnehnois]

My disappointment with epic level support is not about epic paths, magic items/artifacts, or even monsters. WotC did provide quite a bit of that. What they did not support well, or enough was what kind of stories are supposed to encompass epic level.

They didn't do much of a job with that in 3e either. It's more a situation where there are a few interesting tools there, and an enterprising DM with a vision can create some nice outcomes with them.

DMing epic taught me a few things about DMing the rest of the game, simply by demonstrating what the raw numbers can and cannot do.

 

[Kinak]

It's not technically epic, but I have a certain fondness for Pathfinder's Mythic rules. It provides a lot of flexibility for how you integrate those "extra levels" into your game, if at all, and how they interact with your setting.

DMing epic taught me a few things about DMing the rest of the game, simply by demonstrating what the raw numbers can and cannot do.

It's definitely a learning experience.

The biggest thing I learned was how to structure a setting to allow for epic play, having the forces that can become epic enemies or allies baked in from low-levels.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Alan Shutko]

Since this is tagged All D&D....

On the good side, your character can seek immortality. By this time, characters have moved from minor adventures into more responsibilities: they likely have a domain, or have set down roots somewhere. Almost nothing can directly combat your character, and that makes things more interesting because your character cares about other things, and hitting your dominion, stealing your apprentice, or destroying your trade routes are all valid attempts to hurt you. You have superpowers, but also have to think about how to USE them, because it's harder to fight an enemy who fights from the shadows.

On the bad side, a lot of character goals tend to be personal goals. Immortality isn't really sought by parties, but by individuals. It's harder to come up with reasons for four barons and their personal fleets to get together on an adventure (though possible, the M-series of modules had some decent hooks).

It's sad that this style of play vanished for so long. I find it more compelling and also less prone to breakage than "You're still a rag-tag team of adventurers, just fighting bigger monsters."

 

[KidSnide]

I enjoy epic adventures as the capstone in the campaign.

When I say "epic", I mean:
(1) The monsters are epic. The monsters that used to frighten you as mid-level characters become mere speed bumps; you can face dozens or hundreds now. You have already defeated top tier bad guys (major liches, demon lords, etc) and are capable of fighting more than one top tier opponent in a given adventure. The types of opponents that are left are the most dangerous in the campaign world. There's no tier of villains left after this one.

(2) The player's characters are epic. The movers and shakers of the world treat the PCs as equals (or at least relative equals). The PCs have access to all the most important strategy meetings of their side and can influence that strategy if they so choose. Major magic items the acquisition of which might once have been the focus of a major adventure are not wielded by several PCs. The players feel like their characters could kick ass and take names in pretty much any adventure they've had so far. Spell casters will have access to some game changing (level 7-9) spells.

(3) The adventures are epic. Planar travel, time travel, LotR style armies, cities cleaved off the face of continents -- these are all appropriate in epic level adventures.

(4) The consequences are epic. The result of these capstone adventures should shape the game world in a significant way. If you continue playing in the game world with a new set of characters, it should be obvious to all those new players how the previous group affected the world (for better or worse).

Mind you, I have never needed epic rules to play this type of game. In my long running 2e to 3.x campaign, the PCs finished at level 16. The final adventures were incredibly epic. The PCs went back in time to the creation of the universe, completely changed the time line and ended up blowing up their home planet so they could replace their existence with a version of history they liked better.

But I couldn't imagine using actual epic-level rules for those adventures. Building encounters became increasingly annoying after 11th or 12th level. The idea of having more than half the campaign take place over level 10 blows my mind.

To paraphrase Forest Gump, "epic is as epic does." Any high level campaign (and even some mid-level campaigns) can have epic adventures. D&D works better at more moderate levels, so I recommend placing your epic games just above whatever you find to be the sweet spot. That way the players get to experience some broken-in-their-favor rules, but don't spend so much time there that the DM goes crazy. As I see it, the value of epic level rules is primarily in the ability to create super-powerful NPCs for groups of high level PCs to face.

-KS

 

[Celebrim]

I enjoy epic adventures as the capstone in the campaign.

When I say "epic", I mean:

(1) ...There's no tier of villains left after this one.

There is always a plausible tier of villains left after this one. In my game, presumably the capstone would be the Nameless Destroyer said to exist bound at the bottom of the negative energy well. This is a tier above the most powerful extant gods, so before the PC's could plausibly take on that, they'd have to have defeated directly not only the sort of deities like Gashuwen, Nuati or Karophet that back the dark cults that the PC's regularly face, but the chiefs of the evil deities like Barmal, Vargna, and Usurl, and ancient 'dead' gods like Old Chaos. The power level implied of the PC's is that of beings that have taken direct control of all of time and space. I would like to think that we hit 'Epic' well before we run out of villains.

(2) The player's characters are epic. The movers and shakers of the world treat the PCs as equals (or at least relative equals).

At various times, the PC's have had audiences with Benevolent Despot of Amalteen, the Painted Lady (head of a multination spanning thieves guild), and both the Hinga and Hurin of Talernga. The Hinga and Hurin are politically and militarily the most powerful individuals along the entire Storm Coast, and certainly within a 500 mile radius. Talernga as a city is among the 10 or so largest and most powerful on the planet, and one of the 5 or so greatest centers of learning on the planet.

It's worth noting however that none of these individuals were more than 8th level. Currently my PC's are doing more moving and shaking than most of the 20th level NPCs on the planet.

(3) The adventures are epic. Planar travel, time travel, LotR style armies, cities cleaved off the face of continents -- these are all appropriate in epic level adventures.

At first level, the party fled a tidal wave that washed away more than a 1/3rd of a city of 40,000 people and caused widespread devastation up and down a 50 mile stretch of coast line. They later learned that the tidal wave had been caused by a malfunction of an artifact of the legendary art mages from the age of wonders. After that, they participated in a massive night time battle between the city survivors and an invading army of deep ones. Then at 2nd level, they defeated an awakening centuries old draco-lich by destroying his phylactery. Since that time they've ventured into the depths of catacombs that had been sealed closed by the settings most legendary hero on the trail of a necromancer in search of a weapon that had been crafted to fight the gods and which threatened to destroy the continent or the world, and penetrated the secrets of the tomb of Menes III - in my setting the grandfather of Acerak the Eternal of Tomb of Horrors fame, fought a 900 year old curse manifestation related to the founding of the nation they lived in, participated in a massive naval battle between 11 warships mounting collectively hundreds of siege weapons, boarding and taking a ship in one case and helping to burn down another by dive bombing it on the back of hippogriffs, slew a dragon, and have been taken to the Astral Plane by a mysterious alley cat in order to learn about the power of the cosmic 'lightning' storms that flash between the positive and negative elemental planes.

All this before 7th level.

The consequences are epic. The result of these capstone adventures should shape the game world in a significant way. If you continue playing in the game world with a new set of characters, it should be obvious to all those new players how the previous group affected the world (for better or worse).

See above.

Mind you, I have never needed epic rules to play this type of game. In my long running 2e to 3.x campaign, the PCs finished at level 16. The final adventures were incredibly epic. The PCs went back in time to the creation of the universe, completely changed the time line and ended up blowing up their home planet so they could replace their existence with a version of history they liked better.

But I couldn't imagine using actual epic-level rules for those adventures. Building encounters became increasingly annoying after 11th or 12th level. The idea of having more than half the campaign take place over level 10 blows my mind.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[The Human Target]

The numbers get inflated.
The plots get over the top.
The rules get more elaborate/complicated.
The game looks less like the classic idea of D&D.

Whether those are pros and cons is up to the user.

 

[Vaprak001]

"At first level, the party fled a tidal wave that washed away more than a 1/3rd of a city of 40,000 people and caused widespread devastation up and down a 50 mile stretch of coast line. They later learned that the tidal wave had been caused by a malfunction of an artifact of the legendary art mages from the age of wonders. After that, they participated in a massive night time battle between the city survivors and an invading army of deep ones."

Crucial to this victory was the party's role in wearing out the deep ones with their constant 'running away'. Whether the party were aware of the poorly developed lung-capacity of the deep-ones is unknown, but by the time the Old Woman who lived in a shoe turned up with her feral offspring the invaders were on their last legs and made for easy pickings.

"Then at 2nd level, they defeated an awakening centuries old draco-lich by destroying his phylactery."

It was all Dave the Paladin's fault! There he is wandering around the market place when his bl**dy detect evil 'spidey-sense' starts tingling again. Drawing his sword he charged across to the market stall that was the source of the evil. There, on display was an ancient alabaster snuff box that exuded malignancy; Dave swung his sword but no connection was made. The snuff box owner was quite fond of his snuff and the pretty box it was being kept in so what was a 70 year-old ex soldier supposed to do? Once Dave had regained consciousness he wisely chose a different tactic and bartered for the offending box. Dave wasn't to know that giving away his Plate Mail and magical +1 sword was to cost him dearly later in the campaign. Anyhow, back at base Greg the party Dwarf quickly destroyed the box with his hammer. The DM gave a happy Dave 500 XP's for his efforts, unfortunately the DM also adjudicated that no XP's would be given for the ancient draco-lich for which this box was a phylactery as he resided on a different continent altogether.

"Since that time they've ventured into the depths of catacombs that had been sealed closed by the settings most legendary hero on the trail of a necromancer in search of a weapon that had been crafted to fight the gods and which threatened to destroy the continent or the world, and penetrated the secrets of the tomb of Menes III - in my setting the grandfather of Acerak the Eternal of Tomb of Horrors fame,"


Greg this time! The bartender had dared to tell him that 15 pints was enough and that they'd run out of beer. Greg demanded that Bob, the party wizard open the rune-covered cellar door but being only 2nd level he didn't have the knock spell yet. Greg, being Greg (and drunk) took his hammer and smashed a hole in the wall beside the door instead, then leapt through. It was only later once the party had caught up with the enraged dwarf that they realised this was no cellar but ancient catacombs. Most importantly for Greg there wasn't any more beer.

"fought a 900 year old curse manifestation related to the founding of the nation they lived in"

Helping the UN with a widespread innoculation campaign

"participated in a massive naval battle between 11 warships mounting collectively hundreds of siege weapons",

Well, of course Greg couldn't afford to pay for the damages to the pub so the judge sentanced the party to six months hard-labour 'at the oars'. The food was terrible and the blisters were painful, but there were great views of the river from that angle.

"boarding and taking a ship in one case"

They had no choice, it was the only life-craft available

"and helping to burn down another by dive bombing it on the back of hippogriffs"

It was very brave of Greg to offer to exchange commuting the rest of his sentance for a one time gig as live ammunition. We think he assumed he'd be fired from one of the ships catapaults - one of his favourite drunken party tricks. He looked very worried as he was being strapped to the back of that Hippogriff, and we thought setting him alight before being dropped was a bit harsh considering how co-operative he'd been up to that point.

"slew a dragon"

It's what saved Greg in the end. The gods must have been watching, Greg went straight through the deck of that ship and killed the dragon that was sleeping on the river-bed underneath. It gave Greg just enough XP to raise him the level and the extra HP meant he just about survived the fall - what luck!

"and have been taken to the Astral Plane by a mysterious alley cat in order to learn about the power of the cosmic 'lightning' storms that flash between the positive and negative elemental planes."

Thats the last time they try Jim, the party's Druid, "special" mushroom pizzas!




I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. My point is that epic can be great fun and parties can certainly participate in epic events at lower levels, even 'turn the tide', but for me having novice characters 'issued' with hippogriffs or slaying dragons just doesn't leave enough leg-room for building momentum and evolution in campaigns.