Argyle King
Legend
Not currently playing 4E, but the D&D group is wanting to pick it back up for our next game.
D&D 4E Anyone playing 4e at the moment?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
For my part, "epicness" doesn't really need to be magical (though it is almost always supernatural--more on that later), nor does it need to mess with physics per se. An epic-type adventure needs to stretch the bounds of what seems possible or achievable, usually by going up against fantastical forces, thinking of a clever solution to a previously insoluble problem, or breaking a previously inviolable rule/pattern at a very grand scale. "Mythic" fits into a similar boat, but doesn't (to my mind) require quite as much...scale or breadth as "epic" does. You can have a "mythic" adventure as a child exploring the woods behind your grandmother's house, but not really an "epic" one in the usual sense. (It could be epic from a young child's perspective, but that's because they don't really have a well-calibrated sense of scale yet. To a five-year-old, neighbor's houses are enigmatic domains of wonder and mystery.)
As an example, one of my favorite bits of lore from the 4e World Axis setting is that Bahamut is building divine arcology-ships in order to house the many souls that aren't allowed to go to the heaven they should have gone to. (This problem was caused by the Dawn War destroying the Lattice of Heaven, and several distinct sets of deities merging their divine domains in order to protect themselves.) That's a pretty cool thing all on its own, Bahamut literally calling together some of the greatest artisans, living and dead, to try to fix a problem no other deity is particularly concerned about. That's a pretty much textbook epic backdrop.
But it gets better! See, the 4e version of Kord isn't just some layabout STRONK BOI who likes to challenge people to contests of strength or whatever. He's actually a lot more like Batman: moody, brooding, CRAZY-prepared (though others see it as just crazy or rather paranoid), extremely determined, and disinclined to work with the team when he thinks he knows better. And one particular hypothetical scenario has Kord, or at least agents of Kord, hijack the first completed ark-ship, implicitly trying to get the jump on the Dusk War, but almost surely both triggering that war and wrecking most of reality in the process. This then leads to a desperate chase and struggle to stop Kord (or his agents) from setting reality on fire in their efforts to protect things.
That's an "epic" adventure--one with vast scope, a problem that looks potentially insoluble, tools and allies that are nearly too vast for the human mind to wrap around, and the pretty clear expectation of truly awesome, as in actually inspiring awe, scenes and events.
Lyxen
Great Old One
It seems like it, but to do that, I'm pretty sure that you have also epic magic and therefore strange physics. I'm not saying that they are needed, I'm saying that they usually are consequences of epic plots in the D&D universes.
Just as the reverse, it's not because you have epic paths (which actually are totally bland and technical in 4e) that you generate epicness.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
I played a session yesterday, online. It was the second session but the first with combat.
Our party has no spellcasters and we all have high Charisma scores
The slowed condition hurts more than I remember.
Our party has no spellcasters and we all have high Charisma scores
The slowed condition hurts more than I remember.@Garthanos
In my experience of 4e D&D, the key to Epic is that the mechanics (mostly) stay the same, and mathematically robust, while the fiction scales up.
So (and picking some examples from my own play experience) the mechanical framework for resolving a trek across the Abyss to Mal Arundak, and then for breaking through the besieging demon hordes to enter that fortress, is no different from the framework for travelling through a forest and passing through goblin attackers to enter a homestead - in both cases its a skill challenge that interfaces with a combat encounter.
In the Heroic tier event, the combat is with single goblins, some on wolves; in the Epic tier event, its with Gargantuan swarms of demons.
At Epic, the framework for an ad-hoc action declaration in combat is no different from Heroic tier - it's just that instead of the action being a paladin of the Raven Queen speaking a prayer to gain combat advantage against a wight, it's a sorcerer calling on his ability to manipulate chaos to seal the Abyss.
And whereas at Paragon tier the social skill challenge is to expose a wicked advisor in front of the Baron, at Epic tier it's to persuade Yan-C-Bin to leave the PCs alone as they set about holding off the Dusk War.
@Manbearcat has pointed to some of the mechanical elements that support this: solving the daily resources issue, skill challenges, keywords. Others include intra-party mechanical balance of effectiveness; the (closely related) relative uniformity of PC builds, which allows powers, healing surges, action points and the like to serve as a common currency in non-combat resolution that interfaces directly with combat resource expenditure; the fact that magic items are part of all this and don't break the game; and - in combat - the use of PC depth of resources to counter numerical growth in NPC/creature hit points and damage output, which gives a feeling of Epic PCs "pulling out all the stops" against these (seemingly) impossible odds.
I think it's a pretty remarkable design achievement.
In my experience of 4e D&D, the key to Epic is that the mechanics (mostly) stay the same, and mathematically robust, while the fiction scales up.
So (and picking some examples from my own play experience) the mechanical framework for resolving a trek across the Abyss to Mal Arundak, and then for breaking through the besieging demon hordes to enter that fortress, is no different from the framework for travelling through a forest and passing through goblin attackers to enter a homestead - in both cases its a skill challenge that interfaces with a combat encounter.
In the Heroic tier event, the combat is with single goblins, some on wolves; in the Epic tier event, its with Gargantuan swarms of demons.
At Epic, the framework for an ad-hoc action declaration in combat is no different from Heroic tier - it's just that instead of the action being a paladin of the Raven Queen speaking a prayer to gain combat advantage against a wight, it's a sorcerer calling on his ability to manipulate chaos to seal the Abyss.
And whereas at Paragon tier the social skill challenge is to expose a wicked advisor in front of the Baron, at Epic tier it's to persuade Yan-C-Bin to leave the PCs alone as they set about holding off the Dusk War.
@Manbearcat has pointed to some of the mechanical elements that support this: solving the daily resources issue, skill challenges, keywords. Others include intra-party mechanical balance of effectiveness; the (closely related) relative uniformity of PC builds, which allows powers, healing surges, action points and the like to serve as a common currency in non-combat resolution that interfaces directly with combat resource expenditure; the fact that magic items are part of all this and don't break the game; and - in combat - the use of PC depth of resources to counter numerical growth in NPC/creature hit points and damage output, which gives a feeling of Epic PCs "pulling out all the stops" against these (seemingly) impossible odds.
I think it's a pretty remarkable design achievement.
Lyxen
Great Old One
It would be, for me, if it felt that way, but it did not, not for our groups. It just felt the same mechanistic way but with bigger numbers.
Again, YMMV and I know that it was at least a good thing that they envisioned such a path, I just think that in the end they did so much to restrict the openness of the possibilities of a fantasy world that true epicness never took its flight for us.
I don't really know what this means.
The numbers being bigger is neither here nor there - HeroQuest revised can do Heroic-tier stuff or Epic-tier stuff using the same numbers. In 4e D&D there are two rationales (beyond tradition) for growing the numbers: (1) to help imbue a sense of scaling, given the pre-packaged game elements in the form of monster, trap and treasure lists; (2) to allow the change I described in the relationship between PCs and NPC/creatures (ie an increase in PC "depth" in contrast to a relatively greater degree of NPC/creature hit point and damage scaling).
Here, too, I don't know what "restrictions" you have in mind. The fundamental difference between (say) a 20th level 4e Fighter and a 20th level AD&D or 3E fighter is that the former character has build elements - powers, healing surges, action points - that can be used as currency in a skill check or skill challenge, and that feed directly (via the combat action resolution mechanics) into combat resolution.
Lyxen
Great Old One
It's still on the same grid, it's still the same kind of effects, just affecting more squares with bigger damage.
And what I'm saying is that this does not work, because you just do more damage to monsters with bigger hit points, so the overall effect is null. There are very few powers (compared to spells in other editions), they are all geared towards combat, and they mostly look the same from one class to the next, in addition to being totally bland, I gave examples in previous posts).
And my AD&D fighter is not stuck two dimensionally on a grid where flying just means that he evades AoO, using the same powers as mostly any other class, and being constrained as well in the items he owns and how they work. The visions of playing are completely different from level 1 to lvl 20, whereas in 4e, it's still the same grid, the background does not even matter...
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think this is where 4e, at least in terms of D&D editions, is so stark a contrast, and a positive one, to other editions. There is no pretense at all that there even IS such a thing as 'physics'. There is game. Whenever 4e deploys something into its milieu it is don as a way of introducing some good game play. When I say 'game play' I don't mean simply 'mechanics', I mean the whole general play. The cosmology exists to be playable, the power system (A/E/D/U) to be playable, etc. and how those result in a 'cool' story that you can play through matters. Even where it might fail, at least it tried. A lot of 5e, for example, strikes me as "damn whether it will actually play well or not, this MUST be in the game!" bleh. I'll take the 4e approach every time, and IMHO sticking with it inevitably leads in the direction of better and better results.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
And this is why running Epic 4e is so awesome, because the thematics of WA cosmology work to produce this kind of result. GW cosmology OTOH is exactly the opposite. The GW has always existed, alignment is immutable and forever, the balance cannot be upset, you are all just less than ants in an endless infinite cosmology where everything you can possibly do is ultimately without significance. Which one creates the exciting stories? It sure isn't GW. I mean, you can do fun things in GW, but you have to subvert it, or else the tone is just a lot less epic, overall. I never understood what GW gives you in return. AFAICT it exists because it was an idea that EGG drew on the back of a napkin once in 1974.
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