Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5772883" data-attributes="member: 8461">I'm as fierce an edition partisan as the next Pathfinder supporter, but even I have to admit that 3E epic/divine material was awful, and that 4E did handle it better.In regards to the issue with classes, I think that part of the major problem with epic design in both 3E and 4E both is that, with the introduction of class-specific abilities, any extension of a given class's table with additional levels requires that those classes have new, original abilities added (3E tried to eschew this in favor of simply increasing abilities that granted a numerical bonus or a flat benefit, and the results were boring as hell). That's a ridiculously huge amount of work that's required...and that volume grows as new classes come out, and the range of epic material increases (in terms of how high you can level).Now add in more universal class functions, such as feats, to that, alongside things like epic skill uses, and the characters' side of designing for epic materials rapidly becomes a burden that's damn-near impossible to bear.This is why 1E had no issues with letting certain race/class combinations level infinitely; there was none of that to deal with.All of that, plus spells, magic items, monsters, etc. makes it so that, while I'm disappointed that U_K became burned out on 3E epic design, I'm not surprised by it (nor that Paizo really doesn't want to go there). Ditto for what U_K says above about 4E classes; it's easier to design for something that doesn't extend into infinity, but while the 4E classes don't need to be stretched very far, they are very broad in terms of variable powers. So it's a different problem that still leads to excessive requirements when increasing their playable levels.I do like the idea of updating Ascension for Pathfinder, and the Epic Bestiary as well, but it wouldn't be so simple as changing the domains and a few specific 3.5->PF instances of the rules (and the domains, particularly with the Advanced Player's Guide's sub-domain rules, don't seem like they'd be cakewalk to convert).The entire issue of leveling beyond 20 would need to be addressed (I suppose you could keep the default assumptions from the Epic Level Handbook, but I don't recommend it), such as the XP tables in all three degrees of advancement, the rate of BAB and save progressions, the aforementioned class abilities, etc. Plus any revisions made to Ascension itself (not to mention that Pathfinder handles Challenge Ratings slightly differently than 3.5).I'd love to see it happen, but it's not something that I think would be easy or quick. That said, U_K, if you do want to go that route, you know I'm right there with you.EDIT: For what it's worth, one company has released a Pathfinder-compatible supplement for epic-level gaming (though they've renamed it "legendary" rather than "epic"). It's called <a href="http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=98208" target="_blank">Legendary levels</a>, and my thoughts on it are in the review there.</blockquote>

Verification