What is the Problem with Union!

[fnork de sporg]

Union is just laughably bad.

There's a fifteenth level Fishmonger (Fighter 11/Expert 4) who uses a Cubic Gate to get fish directly from his fishing vessels, so it'll be fresh, and to get ice to pack them in directly from a arctic polar region.

Or the fact that the Union Sentinels, the epic level town guards mentioned earlier, are payed Character Level x 5 gp each day. They are depicted elsewhere in the chapter doing things such as selling 15gp Trade Writs to visitors, helping traffic flow in the market district, and breaking up arguments over about price gouging.

Or the Halfling cat-burglar who lives in a small second story apartment and is level 34.

As a planar metropolis Union isn't that bad. A trading post run by the Mercane that regularly connects to different places and worlds. But there is no reason for it be all Epicy. It certainly doesn't feel Epic. If you were to cut everyone's level in half the place would run fine without changing a single bit piece of flavor text.

Well, that's not true, you'd have to go back and say all the groups from the Epic Organizations chapter are based elsewhere, but I'd probably do that anyways since they have nothing to do with the city and near as I can tell were only put there because they happened to be in the same book. Would the uber assassin guild really be based in a heavily regulated trade-center entirely owned by the Mercane?

It's as if the author had this place in his home campaign, had always wanted to get it into a D&D book, and retrofitted it when he learned he would be working on the ELH bumping up everyone's levels but changing little else.

A lot of the book had this same under thought feel to it. Like that uber assassin's guild, which is just like a normal assassin's guild except everyone is higher level.

Well,, no that's not true, they have access to a super-poison that prevents people from being raised/resurrected and their leader has a cloak that opens to an unnamed "void dimension" that even Greater Gods cannot access. Of course the cloak has no origin story, nor does the leader herself. The cloak itself is barely mentioned, and the leader herself is only described as Enigmatic, Powerful, and Subtle. She has no goals, no personality, no history, and certainly no given reason why she is wasting her power playing den mother to a bunch of contract killers and not, say, ruling an empire of countless worlds or conquering her own level of hell.

No one is given such a reason. It's as if the authors were unaware of the changes high level play can bring.

I actually intend to use the city in my campaign but I won't be giving it any special epic status and there certainly won't be any potential warlords gutting fish for a living.

 

[Yair]

One of the ideas I am playing around with is All Elves Are Epic. The idea is that elves (along with everyone else) grow in experience as they age and, hence, every adult elf is mid-level and old ones are epic level.
This will explain their chaotic society - each elf is essentially a bastion of strength and is largely self sufficient (often throguh the use of the Surivival skill). Most elves will have some levels of Ranger, Druid, and/or Wizard and will be fairly independent. The population will be small, scattered, growing only very rarely, and highly individualisitic. Humans and other short-lived races would be (justly) looked down upon.

At any rate I agree about Union - it's nonsensical.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If you are Epic level, there should be hordes of people around you that you can break on a whim. Otherwise, what's the point?

I mean, sure, you don't have to harm or kill them, and ultimately there will be repercussions to your callous behavior (such as a bad reputation or even other epic-level characters who will want to "vanquish your evil"), but still, you can kill allmost everyone and only a very small number of people would be able to stop you.

That knowledge, together with the knowledge of the resulting responsibility about the use of your powers, needs to be present, or else the campaign won't feel very Epic. In Epic campaigns, the characters should tower above pretty much everyone else.

Union takes this away - there, they are just some folks among many, and no longer anyone special. And that is what is so dissappointing with it.

 

[Piratecat]

That knowledge, together with the knowledge of the resulting responsibility about the use of your powers, needs to be present, or else the campaign won't feel very Epic. In Epic campaigns, the characters should tower above pretty much everyone else.

You've perfectly elucidated something that I've been grasping at but have never been able to express. Nicely done.

Personally? I thin that Union is an interdimensional prison. The only thing that explains it is that when a hero hits lvl 21 in a non-epic campaign, they get sucked into Union and can never go home.

 

[Aaron L]

You've perfectly elucidated something that I've been grasping at but have never been able to express. Nicely done.

Personally? I thin that Union is an interdimensional prison. The only thing that explains it is that when a hero hits lvl 21 in a non-epic campaign, they get sucked into Union and can never go home.

Union is a Ravenloft analogue created by the Epic Powers!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

You've perfectly elucidated something that I've been grasping at but have never been able to express. Nicely done.

I learned a lot when I started GMing Exalted. Exalted PCs tower over ordinary mortals by several orders of magnitude, and there are only few people or beings in the whole world who pose a serious threat to them. Thus, a huge part of the campaign centered on just how they should use their powers to change the world - that they are able to change the world was seen as a given, and rightfully so.

And though I haven't run D&D adventures for Epic levels, the same principle should hold true for them. The PCs should be able to topple most kingdoms and realms (those without Epic-level protectors, that is) with relatively little effort. Armies present no serious threat to them. There is no point in trying to prevent them from toppling that king that always bullied them when they they were young and low-level. They can now humiliate him any way they want, and there is no one who is able to stop them.

Thus, it becomes all the more important to work out the consequences of their actions. If they remain virtuous and true to ideals, they will be seen as heroes. But if they let their powers get to their heads and abuse it for petty reasons, they will be feared. They don't actually have to be evil for this - but if you were to meet a person who could kill you merely by looking at you, wouldn't you fear him, too, no matter how pleasant he acts at the moment? The same holds true for epic-level PCs - normal people will never again see them as "ordinary folks" unless they disguise themselves, and the PCs should constantly be reminded of this, and that their old life of near-anonymity is gone. Even if the reaction is not fear, it can be unwelcome nonetheless. They will encounter a steady stream of syncophants, people who want favors from them or involve them in some intrigue or other (if you can convince the PCs to go after your enemies, many of your problems might simply go away...), or even groupies who worship the ground the PCs walk upon.

All this, and how the PCs react to this, should play an important part in epic-level campaign, and if the DM cannot make the characters uncomfortable with these consequences, he isn't really trying. And Union does not even make the attempt...

 

[Aaron L]

I learned a lot when I started GMing Exalted. Exalted PCs tower over ordinary mortals by several orders of magnitude, and there are only few people or beings in the whole world who pose a serious threat to them. Thus, a huge part of the campaign centered on just how they should use their powers to change the world - that they are able to change the world was seen as a given, and rightfully so.

And though I haven't run D&D adventures for Epic levels, the same principle should hold true for them. The PCs should be able to topple most kingdoms and realms (those without Epic-level protectors, that is) with relatively little effort. Armies present no serious threat to them. There is no point in trying to prevent them from toppling that king that always bullied them when they they were young and low-level. They can now humiliate him any way they want, and there is no one who is able to stop them.

Thus, it becomes all the more important to work out the consequences of their actions. If they remain virtuous and true to ideals, they will be seen as heroes. But if they let their powers get to their heads and abuse it for petty reasons, they will be feared. They don't actually have to be evil for this - but if you were to meet a person who could kill you merely by looking at you, wouldn't you fear him, too, no matter how pleasant he acts at the moment? The same holds true for epic-level PCs - normal people will never again see them as "ordinary folks" unless they disguise themselves, and the PCs should constantly be reminded of this, and that their old life of near-anonymity is gone. Even if the reaction is not fear, it can be unwelcome nonetheless. They will encounter a steady stream of syncophants, people who want favors from them or involve them in some intrigue or other (if you can convince the PCs to go after your enemies, many of your problems might simply go away...), or even groupies who worship the ground the PCs walk upon.

All this, and how the PCs react to this, should play an important part in epic-level campaign, and if the DM cannot make the characters uncomfortable with these consequences, he isn't really trying. And Union does not even make the attempt...

That whole post is classic and should be whipped out whenever starts decrying Epic level games as juvenile munchkin powertrips.

Of course theyre power trips. That doesnt mean they cant be mature and logical.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

That whole post is classic and should be whipped out whenever starts decrying Epic level games as juvenile munchkin powertrips.

Thanks for the kudos.

Of course theyre power trips. That doesnt mean they cant be mature and logical.

They can be far more mature than low-level campaigns. Low-level adventurers always have the excuse: "They are too powerful, so we simply can't change anything." Epic-level adventurers don't have that excuse. They have the power to change things. The question is whether they should change things, and whether their changes will be for the better - or worse. Depose the Evil Tyrant, sure - but then who keeps a whole region from falling into anarchy and chaos when his bureaucracy crumbles? Establish your own kingdom with the laws you have created - but will society be just, or suffer under its contradictory laws? All your personal power will make it easy for you to get to the top - but does it also make you an effective leader?

Frankly, if the PCs - or even the players - lack foresight, an Epic campaign doesn't actually need that many villains. The PCs dealing with the consequences of their own actions will provide plenty of adventure material on its own, as one thing leads to another and the world changes under their touch. And that's not "screwing with the PCs" - after all, in real life we also have to deal with the consequences of our actions for the rest of their lives, so how much larger must these consequences be for a group of people in whose footsteps nations tremble?

 

[pogre]

The problem with Union is it failed to be epic in the classic sense of the word. Everyone above has captured its faults, but overlying it all is the lack of real epic flavor. Making epic common - makes it less than epic.

 

[hong]

That whole post is classic and should be whipped out whenever starts decrying Epic level games as juvenile munchkin powertrips.

Of course theyre power trips. That doesnt mean they cant be mature and logical.

Hey! What's wrong with immature and illogical?