Rule of Three finally addresses an important epic tier question!

[Incenjucar]

They should have just said the old classic and truism. It wouldn't sell enough and we are now in a lock and load mode where every product we even think about must deliver above and beyond what it should killing any fringe style products that we might once have brought out.

Unfortunately, this also means that you can never assume that any product you buy now will ever receive support, so you have to make your purchases with the assumption that everything within is 100% of what will ever be produced for anything within. No more buying PHB3s with the hope that Psionic Power will fix it later.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

There is also a certain amount of opportunity cost involved, and this is a case where WotC diminished epic inadvertently. I haven't gotten around to epic yet ... because I'm enjoying the heck out of the thought of playing 11-20 without pulling my remaining hair out. Epic is just this thing out there that I might get to eventually. I surveyed the players in our group, and the verdict was overwhelming--we want to wallow in paragon for awhile.

I'm sure there are also some groups so thrilled with "being heroes from 1st level", that they are playing heroic over and over again, too.

 

[DEFCON 1]

They should have just said the old classic and truism. It wouldn't sell enough and we are now in a lock and load mode where every product we even think about must deliver above and beyond what it should killing any fringe style products that we might once have brought out.

What kind of marketing person in their right mind would just be honest like that? Doesn't that go against every rule of Marketing 101?

 

[Mengu]

In many years of playing 2nd and 3rd edition D&D, I've never had a character higher than 14th level, nor have I ever run a campaign higher than 14th level. So those last 6 levels largely went unused, except the occasional item or spell that was available in the form of a scroll.

In 3.5, I distinctly recall having to keep a ledger of what round spells would expire by the time we got to 9+ level. I had to make a monster summon book for my wizard. Things got really complicated, and even if the campaigns weren't coming to a close, we didn't really want to mess with it any more. As 4e came out, we wrapped up our last 3.5 campaign and immediately started new 4e campaigns.

Heroic 4e is the simplest tier, and to me, the most enjoyable. Things get pretty complicated at paragon, and combat takes progressively longer, especially with casual players playing once or twice a month, who don't really care to be time conscious about their turns, and pour over every power on their character sheet which is 4-5 pages long (yes, that's just the powers section) to decide what they are going to do for their standard action, and repeat the process if they have a minor action left. And then they decide to spend an action point, and then they read their PP action point feature, and then realize they should have spent their action point before other actions so the benefit would apply to their previous attacks, and want to rewind and do that. I really don't care to deal with this category of casual player in epic tier, and as much as I like to introduce new people to D&D, they are about half of my player base.

Corollary, again due to the fact that I particularly enjoy heroic levels, I am more than dismayed at the "must have" options that keep cropping up in early heroic. In that simple environment, I want a wealth of options that are meaningful, not a narrow subset of "very good/hard to pass up" options I feel obliged to choose from.

I'm highly unlikely to play or run epic. As such, I couldn't care less if epic gets support or not. I understand the desire is there for some of the more hardcore players. But I would be much happier if that time was spent on some of the heroic feat issues and math feat issues.

 

[Aegeri]

Whereas I believe the more likely scenario is that casual players and DMs just DON'T WANT to run Epic, regardless of the support available or not.

When Wizards asked the same question to their audience at DDXP, around 90% of the audience raised their hand. I mean the people who go to DDXP are probably the "hardcore" as you put it, but at the same time even many of them wouldn't bother running epic right now. We've had plenty of threads on this and epic tier support is well wanted - but many simply won't run epic without it. Exactly what I've been saying is the problem and it's one that Wizards are creating with their self-fulfilling prophecy. They've left the tier to die and now nobody takes an interest in it, except the odd freak like myself. The irony is that the mechanical complexity of epic has gone down immensely for DMs, simply because epic tier creatures aren't inherently useless anymore.

In my case, I've got away with running two epic games because both were planar and both had demons. Demons are the most common enemy type in 4E - hell you can run a game with demons game from 1-30 almost. The problem was if I want anything outside of demons that isn't an elite/solo? It simply doesn't exist and it is time to make that yourself. And traps. And hazards. And planar maps and locations (unless again, you REALLY like demons). This is where epic tier entirely fails - especially compared to heroic/paragon. Unless you REALLY like demons - I can't emphasize this point enough - you are boned for rank and file monsters. You're going to have to create a huge majority of your own monsters. In SoH I would estimate I made 70% of my monsters and I didn't have MM3 (which added many epic RFs) and Demonomicon (which just massively expanded the amount of demons in the game). 70% is an obscene number - but it's what I had to do or fill every encounter with solos/elites.

Also I feel that heroic is becoming oversaturated. Heroic Tier Del- sorry, I mean Dungeon has billions of heroic frigging low level adventures in it. If you can't find something that suits your campaign out of the billions available, I would actually be surprised. Not to mention you have H1/2/3, HS1, HS2, Reavers of Harkenfold, the Monster Vault Adventure, the Red Box Adventure and such forth. Paragon tier would almost suffer the same problem as epic tier, if it wasn't for the fact you have such diverse monsters and other things available for it. In other words it is being largely ignored by wizards in some ways, but at least it gets basic rank and file monsters. Epic tier right now doesn't even get rank and file monster support anymore with all indications from MV.

Paragon also enjoyed the excellent DMG2 and I still maintain a DMG3 on epic is warranted. Not to mention such a books existence is single handedly justified the INSTANT they publish all the new monster creation guidelines in it. That would be all they have to do and a DMG3 would automatically be a worthwhile book for just about anyone. It's not even like the principles behind writing epic stories and planning to run an epic campaign aren't things useful for heroic/paragon tiers.

 

[Riastlin]

Whereas I believe the more likely scenario is that casual players and DMs just DON'T WANT to run Epic, regardless of the support available or not.

I dunno. every group is different I know, but the players I've always talked with have always wanted to go to epic tiers. Heroic tier is fun, but it can get monotonous after a while. I like Apple Cinammon Cheerios, but don't want them every day for breakfast.

To me, I think the bigger issue is that a lot of people do not want to run epic as it currently exists, but would love to run epic (at least running a campaign to conclusion at epic) if there were sufficient resources. For the people I talk to, its about finishing the characters' stories. In this sense Epic is kinda like the last season or so of Lost. Sure, the series is good without the last season, but if you'd been watching from day 1 then you likely also wanted to see how it ended.

I do get the issues with the increasingly complex characters, and battles become even more complex (particularly as more interrupts occur), but I think even those issues can largely be ironed out as the group continues to play. A 20th level character that the player has been playing since level 1 is a lot smoother and easier to run than a 20th level character for a campaign that started at level 20, even if the character sheets are exactly the same.

As I said, every player and every group is different, I don't dispute that. For me though, an adult with a family, job, non-gaming friends, etc. who has very limited time (and thus I hardly consider myself hard core), its actually much more suited to a casual approach to continue along with the same campaign, even into epic, than it would be to keep starting over in heroic tier. Every time you start over you have to come up with a new story, new NPCs, new locales, etc., unless you are simply wanting to play a battle simulator. If you are more interested in story (which doesn't necessarily make you hardcore), the more casual approach is often to continue on with the same story rather than starting over.

/shrug I've submitted my feedback to WotC, I can only hope it helps.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Corollary, again due to the fact that I particularly enjoy heroic levels, I am more than dismayed at the "must have" options that keep cropping up in early heroic. In that simple environment, I want a wealth of options that are meaningful, not a narrow subset of "very good/hard to pass up" options I feel obliged to choose from.

I've noticed that, too. There are a huge number of feats for Heroic, but some stand out as so much better than the others (and having no meaningful preqs) that there's little choice but to take them. Real choice is defered to higher Heroic. At Paragon, and Epic, there are new, smaller, bunches of 'must-have' feats, with little preq beyond being 11th or 21st.

Even so, the many generic must-haves at Heroic should create an interest in getting to higher level, where real choices begin becoming available.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, it's not like WoTC is alone on this matter. Even Paizo which 'fixed' 3.5 cops out on their adventure paths at level 15 no?

Home brewing is likley to be the only practical solution to this problem for quite a while.

 

[Aegeri]

Well, it's not like WoTC is alone on this matter. Even Paizo which 'fixed' 3.5 cops out on their adventure paths at level 15 no?

Home brewing is likley to be the only practical solution to this problem for quite a while.

While I may complain about my experiences with 4E at epic, let's face it 4E epic has nothing on how miserable and utterly nightmarish high level 3.x was. I still have horrible nightmares about the one epic campaign of 3rd I was dumb enough to run. If players know anything about how spellcasters work by epic levels, it's a complete nightmare to even make the barest semblance of an encounter challenging (without massive cheating). I also ran Savage Tide and my parties Wizard one shot demogorgon without even the barest hint of a fight. Just no way I could make that DC.

Even at 4Es worst it was nowhere near that bad (except the infamous Blade Cascade/Eternal Trickster Ranger - quickly fixed as opposed to being an inherent part of the game).

4E requires me to make a lot of monsters, but at least the rules for making monsters in 4E aren't written in pudding. So while 70% of my own stuff is ridiculously high, at least it worked and it didn't feel like me making all my own creatures to my PCs (they frequently couldn't tell if my monsters were from wizards or not).

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, with most groups starting out at 1st level (or low levels) IMO, it is a long slog to get to Epic play, and a lot of things can kill a campaign before the magic 30, or even the more magical 21 in this case.

But I would like to see more support. Adventures, or locales and such the would support that level of play. I just think WOTC has never really 'gotten' high level play. In 3.5 I believe some designer said (no link available) they did not think people would play long enough to reach high level, so they did not worry too much about it.

Most WOTC products look like that to me. Great for 10 levels, and meh for the rest.