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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5505572" data-attributes="member: 78116">You ran a single epic encounter and I ran an entire epic campaign, where players had time (months) to adjust to their powers and abilities - not just a single encounter. A single encounter is absolutely completely poor for judging anything - I've had encounters where I ground out the PCs as well while dealing considerable damage. I did so by being as abusive as possible with the rules - not because PHB characters weren't suitably powerful. People unused to epic tier and what they can do have a difficult time and struggle handling the options they have - players given several months to learn the system and build to that point? Entirely different.But a well prepared group that had been playing from level 16ish to level 28ish had no such issues. They were all PHB classes, with mostly a base of PHB options. I would estimate my 50+ epic encounters over that campaign, with my PCs having time to adjust to the power level over several months of play to your one encounter, is a much better gauge.None of the other things you mentioned were even remotely relevant at the time that campaign was going through its epic tier. In fact I didn't go to level 30 in that game because I just got sick of it and wanted to restart things. And because new and shiny options like the sorcerer and such were out.Mine did and given that other people had figured out that an Elven ranger with Blade Cascade (pre-errata of course) could one shot orcus - it didn't take a lot to see some things were damn good. Also the PHB still has some of the strongest core classes in the game in the Fighter, Cleric and Wizard. Conveniently these are iconic builds for DnD that a lot of players new to the system tried first. Early experience with epic 4E widely reported that it was daunting - fair enough as it was new - but that it felt long and grindy. Epic monsters and solos especially were quickly figured out to be far too weak to be competitive with PCs - especially epic level characters.So this argument is a wash to me.They did not become easy they already were.Edit: Now I mention it, a key point is that my party found it very hard at level 16 initially as well. I sort of threw them into the deep end of DnD and insisted "SWIM MY PLAYERS, TRY NOT TO DROWN". But by 4 levels they had figured out this high level play thing and believe me - they didn't struggle anymore and now I was the one in trouble. So honestly, I'm not going to give any credence to a "Well I ran a random one shot encounter at epic" argument. It's irrelevant, because it discounts that a group of PCs develop their tactics over time. My second epic game - for the record - was a maptools game that went from level 1 to level 30. Things were most difficult in heroic tier and got easier as time went on - only MM3 pulled things back. Bearing in mind that party got massacred by a whole host of direct nerfs due to the aggressive errata schedule as well. Much of that errata - hate to say this - on PHB powers and options.</blockquote>

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