An 'Epic Levels' (or close to them) rant

[Von Ether]

Eberron tends to have lower level good guys with liberal NPC class levels to pump up the skill levels but keep the subpar to PCs. Evil NPC are a whole different matter, besides high level guys who tend to do conspiracies they also suggest that some more active villans be scaled
to the party. In essence, these villians are coming into their own just as PC are able to deal with them.

Judging from the reoccuring "NPCs have too low levels" thread on the WotC boards, it seems that there is vocal contingent of GM's who think the greatest threat to a good guy NPC isn't high level evil doers but his own players who will turn his world into "their own personal sandbox" if doesn't have epic-level kings to keep them in place.

I've had to run herd over such players before, they have my sympathy.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'm not concerned so much about epic rulers as the number of them. Did ALL of them go on adventures similar to the Illiad or Elminster's life? Even with the exp earned from ruling, I find it hard to justify giving near epic levels to all socially influencial NPC's, especially considering what players have to go through to get there.

IMC I use the "Vale of the HLC" concept. (High Level Character). When someone gets tough enough they end up claiming a couple of square miles that are big enough for their usage, small enough to defend, and not quite valuable enough to waste the effort on taking away from them. Dragons, druid groves, oracles, liches, high priests, etc wind up with a few thousand acres and a couple hundred villagers they either watch out for or dominate. Basically city-states owned by Baba Yaga, Koschei, the Morrigan, Beowulf, Smaug, etc.

Moderately large swaths of uninhabited land act as buffer zones between these regions and prevent the formation of large kingdoms. The two that exist are based on a) the ruling class having been adventuring knights of a good order (preferrably paladins) for some time prior to their ascending to power or b) that might makes right in a heavily honor-bound society with strict rules on ascension through combat challenges. Both results in rulers who are at least mid-level and have picked up both personal combat and organizational skills.

The setting has a plethora of haunted castles, forests "of no return" and wastelands and all are either the domain of a high level evil baddie or the remains of one. It also has oracles, druid groves, and dragons, each of whom claims a valley, mountain, or forest as their own with entry by invitation only.

So yes, I use lots of HLCs but few are adventuring currently. The good eventually get tired of dealing with the piddly stuff they really can't say no to but know that there are others who could get the job done and the evils either are content with their accomplishments and see nothing else worth the hassle of conquering or have focused on one or two other HLCs in a long term struggle.

Player characters are exceptional for being HLC adventurers, even amoung HLC adventurers. Of course, I've been loading them down with gifts of land from various people who want them in parts of those buffer zones as an extra line of defense.

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

I like this sort of discussion as well... Mostly, I enjoy seeing how other perceive the mechanics of such a 'free-form' RPG such as d20 D&D. I call it free-form because they really don't strongly inforce the idea of the what a character's strength and ability by measuring their level of experience.

I personally think that really, you have to determine how much XP you will give your characters, gauge how much you give them. Then you can determine how strong your party members will get and how quickly they get there. Now, considering there must be other adventuring parties and peoples, NPCs and monsters which will give them some form of challenge, then it's not hard to imagine that the NPCs that the characters meet will have an experience level equal to the PCs...if both sets of characters have been campaigning for the same length of time.

...what the hell did he just say?... well, roughly... you don't want your PCs walking into a kingdom and be able to take it over just because the DM thinks that all the soldiers in kingdom are level 3 and the best of the best of the king's personal guards are level 5. It leads to a serious problem of power-imbalance.

I personally like to imagine that at level 10, a character is considered to be fully trained, and is a master at their trade, class or profession. But level 20 is approaching seasoned master. Anything up to 10 I consider to be degrees of apprenticeship, from beginner, to junior and senior apprentice to graduate student, but still an apprentice.

Really, I think the key to thinking about the whole situation of the mechanics is...you pretty much want some NPCs to be easy, some to be a challenge, and some to be powerful enough that it would be a great challenge against the players. I like to use very powerful NPCs to force the PCs into situations where they aren't powerful enough to control the situation.

 

[S'mon]

...what the hell did he just say?... well, roughly... you don't want your PCs walking into a kingdom and be able to take it over just because the DM thinks that all the soldiers in kingdom are level 3 and the best of the best of the king's personal guards are level 5.

Well, sometimes you do want that. But the important point is This Day Will Come. No matter _what_ level you put the king's guards at, eventually the PCs will outclass them. Unless they're 20th and you cap PC levels at 20th, eventually the PCs will be able to conquer this kingdom, any kingdom, without breaking sweat.

I find the best approach is to ensure that PCs' horizons broaden as they grow in power, so that the major NPCs they are dealing with remain of comparable level; usually -4 to +4, at most roughly -8 to +8. Basically, give realms an EL. On this approach, while the GM knows that someday the PCs will be outclass the combined armies of the EL 12 County of Podunk, they won't do it at 5th level. And even if they can conquer Podunk easily, the EL 22 Empire of Scariness will still be there...

 

[frankthedm]

I was thinking about this the other day because of Star Wars.

SW3 Spoilers:

Spoiler

I was thinking, "Why is it that Obiwan beats Anakin? Anakin's more powerful, supposedly. Hm, must be because Obiwan is higher level. He has, after all, much more experience. Anakin must not be at the 'most powerful' level yet. But he gets on the Council -- the youngest person to do so. There must be Jedi with more experience than he, that aren't on the Council -- what makes him special? Well, he has natural power too, but he's still less experienced, so he's lower level."

Nope,

Spoiler

Anakin, running out of vitality points, tried to use the Tumble skill to not draw an AoO's from Obiwan while Jumping over Obiwan to gain a +1 to hit from high ground advantage and possibly allowing for a charge next round [+2 more to hit]. Obiwan blurts out in game not to do something so risky. Anakin Rolls good on his jump but fails his tumble roll by a point or two. Obi takes the AoO with his light sabre since he knows even a small hit bonus will give anakin a larger chance of defeating him by getting a hit through his Expertice. The slice hits, does high damage, dropping anakin to helpess condition

 

[Henry]

Judging from the reoccuring "NPCs have too low levels" thread on the WotC boards, it seems that there is vocal contingent of GM's who think the greatest threat to a good guy NPC isn't high level evil doers but his own players who will turn his world into "their own personal sandbox" if doesn't have epic-level kings to keep them in place.

I've had to run herd over such players before, they have my sympathy.

I've read those threads, and also Keith Bakers' suggestions on how a DM can challenge such players. Were I a PC attempting to do that very thing in his campaign, I'd be darned paranoid. VERY paranoid.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Monsters.

In a world where your average wilderness has two or three things each day that stand a solid chance of killing you dead if you don't kill them first, people gain levels pretty quickly.

Now, in the midst of gigantic cities, the kings don't need to be high level. It's more important to have a good Diplomacy score to control the competing factions, because you have high-level guards and captains and adventurers that want to defend you. But *someone* has to be able to tackle that rampaging red dragon, and it can't always be the PC's, in many worlds.

Different rates of monster encounters will yield different distributions. If, for example, there is only maybe three red dragons in the entire world, and goblins are unknown to the common villager, and kobolds are something not every miner has seen, you're going to have lower-levels, with a low-magic feel, where the exotic creatures are truly legendary and frightening. It gives a different feel to the setting, one where +1 swords are rare because their crafters are rare because the demand for them is rare because the most common threat is housecats, not ythraks.

The preponderance of high-level NPC's in my world is proportional to the proponderance of high-level threats. I think that's probably the easiest way to maintain verisimlitude.

 

[Arnwyn]

I'm not concerned so much about epic rulers as the number of them. Did ALL of them go on adventures similar to the Illiad or Elminster's life? Even with the exp earned from ruling, I find it hard to justify giving near epic levels to all socially influencial NPC's, especially considering what players have to go through to get there.

*shrug* And there's the rub - how is XP really earned?

My opinion (for how I run my game) is pretty much the same as Joe's. In a world where you live by the sword and where horrible monsters, demons, dopplegangers, and people who can throw a fireball by wiggling your nose exist (and a rather uncomfortable number have ill intentions) if you're in a position of power you'd better be personally 'powerful' as well, or you'll be offed fairly quickly.

I, personally, find campaign settings where those in power are low-level (and that campaign setting uses pretty much standard D&D rules) to be poorly conceived and not worth my time. But that's just me and my preferences.

 

[jmucchiello]

*shrug* And there's the rub - how is XP really earned?

Try this: If a diplomat averts a war that would have killed 50,000 peasents and soldiers, what is the EL of a 50,000 peasent encounter? If you give the party xp for circumventing a CR 10 trap, why not give the diplomat xp for circumventing an entire war.

Likewise, a trade negotiation worth 50,000 gp sounds like it would worth as much as whatever average encounter level is worth around 50,000 gp (SRD says its about an EL 18). Afterall, a negotiation where 10s of thousands of gold are being thrown about sounds like quite an experience. You might only reward 50% xp since a trade negotiation isn't usually life threatening. But it should still be worth a lot of xp at that level of gold.

This is probably the trend that bugs me the most. 21st level characters are ...well.. epic! Your lucky if three or for exist at the same time, much less in the same kingdom. This may simply be my perceptions though. YMMV

Yes, but that is an average over the life of the world, not a fixed limit. Maybe the world is having an age of heroes when there will be 10-20 epic characters running around at once and in a few centuries they'll die off and the number will fall to 0 for a millenia until another age of heroes arises. That's my perception. YMMV.

 

[Pants]

Therefore, all those important people must be [booming voice]EPIC[/booming voice] level if they have any high skill or social standing because by a strict use of numbers they'd have to be.

They don't HAVE to be, but it usually makes some more sense. Sure you COULD have a 1st level aristocrat as the High Overking of somesuch, but he's not going to be very good at his job, unless he has some skilled advisors helping him out. He'll most likely be continually out-talked, out-witted, and out-fought by more skilled adversaries.

I know that you're not a big fan of 'rules' per say, Shem, but I'd think that since you're playing a game that has rules, one of the best ways to play it would be to have the flavor of the game support the rules. A 90 year old women with 5 levels would logically be outwitted by an immortal fiend with sorcerous powers, barring extenuating circumstances of course.