Castles of Crystal, Wars of Genocide!

[ashockney]

Well stated Shark.

Reaper, please don't forget that diparaging remarks and "flames" are disrespectful not only to the the ones you direct them at, but also to everyone else who is forced to read them in order to post on a very interesting topic such as this one.

So, having plowed through all that, I can finally now come down to post my thoughts on...

It has occured to me that many people are apprehensive about epic level play. I don't really see why there is so much trepidation, for it seems to flow naturally from the rules.

First, from 12th to 20th level, using the core rules, the wheels fall off. The game dosen't appear to be as well playtested and the monsters are prepared adequately for the types of challengse that players can bring (with the exception of Dragons). Even the beloved Tarrasque has a couple of glaring weaknesses. So, in regards to your thought that high level play "flows from the rules" I disagree. I haven't even gotten to Epic, and it's falling apart.

So, the DM is left holding the bag and forced to develop new game material (monsters, magic, spells, prestige classes and abilities) to deal with the many glaring holes. This is a cause for trepidation, particularly when the DM's primary hindrance to gaming is TIME. A lack thereof, to gather with friends, and to develop said material.

It bears repeating that the campaign world plays a rather significant role in "logical storytelling" when it comes to EPIC play. Where did all these threats come from???? I have historically played in the Forgotten Realms. They did themselves a real dis-service on two fronts. One, they made the first problem even worse by putting out some great new "crunchy" material that's really tough for high level...PLAYERS!!! So in other words, the guys that were already too tough, and unbalanced just got more stuff, which means I have to account for that as well in all my re-working, if I'm going to be "inclusive" of all the FR materials in my Forgotten Realms. Great. Secondly, the FR is a world that thrives on its balance. Throw in a handful of EPIC PC's, who are working together, and you've got a real mess on your hands. These guys can systematically go from threat to threat around the world, "tipping the scales" and joining up with the other "EPIC" powerhouses that exist to defeat evil once and for all. Sure, it'd be fun to do once, but then what???

Lastly, and I'm not the first to touch on this, is the utter lack of good systems to support what people really would enjoy from an EPIC campaign. This would require REALLY EPIC events. Wars. Plagues. Ruling Countries. Save the world. And so on. What kinds of rules "flow from our existing system" to address these. Somewhere between nothing and not much.

By the way, when you're keeping track of all of your different ratings from around the world, how many countries x how many ratings x how many diplomatic points x how many turns? How do you keep track of it all?

I think the re-occuring theme through it all is TIME. 5th Level. Dungeon Mag, or crack the MM open to a CR 5, and I tell a little ditty about how the local tavernmaster's wife was horribly disfigured by a miscast spell, and the mayor has asked the help of someone to retrieve the "necessary components" to return her to her "beautiful (in the eye of the beholder)" state. Done. If I'm going to sit down with the King of Arboria, the Grand-duke of Viscony, the High Magister of Mystra, and the head of the largest mercenary guild in the North...how does one prepare for such a module?

Before I go off an leave the wrong impression, I do want to address that we HAVE been inspired by SHARK and others, and ARE running a completely re-vamped version of the Forgotten Realms and taking into Epic Levels. But it's a hell of a lotta work, we're using three or four DM's (in a seven player group), and we are still sorely lacking particularly in the areas of mass-combat system, an effective and interesting diplomacy system, a host of Epic Prestige Classes, and a system to "factor in" the roleplaying demands on such highly influential PC's. I welcome anyone's feedback and help on all of the above.

 

[Ace]

I find this a facinating discussion, even the falme'y bits of it.

While I agree with reapersaurus that the world is a D&D variant that doesn't invalidate SHARKS assumptions. To the contrary I find what I read of Valorea a masterpiece of internal consistancy.

I do have a question though, how is epic play feasible for someone like me who runs a humano-centric world.
Getting an army of 10000 beastmen and a 1000 ogres is an impossibility in my world. While there are beastmen and ogres I doubt there are that many in the whole of the the continent

Also I noticed that in Valorea you can field an army of thousands of 10th level and up characters. What kind of life do people lead that they could get 45000xp on a regular basis!

This is dozens of and dozens of encounters at many different CR--- If life is that dangerous how would anyone live long enough to do anything?

The most common assumptions (boy do I love that word) seem to be that a a year of life is between cr1-cr4 from what I piece together (Sean Reynolds, other homebrew sites) at that rate a tenth level charcter (not an adventurer mind you) would be in his 60's or 70's!

If those assumptions don't apply how do you do XP?

And a last related question, what are civilians in your world like?
Is the life faced by say a merchant on the frontier area dangerous enough that a typical merchant encountered is 3/5 exp/war or something like that.

My understanding leads me to fell that Valorea is sort of like Texas, everything is bigger.

Its not so much that Valorea is a world set for Epic Adventuring, its thta the whole scale is different. An Adventure involving a pack of 5th level guys is like a anventure for 2nd level types in other games

While most games are ending at 20th level, this is midlevel on SHARK world.

Am I correct in this guess or is there something I am missing here.

 

[Zenon]

Let's see, who wants to come to a West Coast SHARKCON in 2003?

We could make it for say, a four day weekend in July or August? How would that sound? We could pony up and nail down several suites at a major hotel, get some group discounts, then bring in some good ale, fine cigars, and have a weekend or more of cool gaming! This gaming event would be hosted by me, and feature a series of different game scenarios set for different levels of characters all within my campaign, and offering that special SHARK flavour!

Do you think we could do it for $600.00 a piece for four or five days? I mean, I realise it could be kind of steep, but at the same time, imagine myself, you, MMADSEN, Dragonblade, Leopold, King Stannis, Quickbeam, Snoweel, Zenon, Mark of Creative Mountain, Joshua Dyal, Teflon Billy, and probably at least a dozen others, plus my wife and gang of friends here, plus the assortment of wives and girldriends that everyone else brings. It could be very cool, huh? What do you think?SHARK

Woo-hoo! SHARKCON 2003!

That would be pretty interesting. If you're serious about it, put me on the list to keep informed about it and I'll see what I can do about attending such a gathering (no promises though, as much as I would like to make them).

Reapersaurus - take deep breaths and let them out slow, everyone does it different. No need to jump all over anyone even though you and SHARK don't see eye to eye.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Zenon: It will be great to have you attend Zenon, and I am looking forward very much to meeting you! Such an event will be great I am sure!

Ashockney: Ok, my friend, you have some great questions and observations here! Hmmm...well, I would say that when I said "it flows naturally from the rules" I meant it in the sense that the tools *are* there for you to use and build with. I would agree though, that there are some tools that are, as you mentioned, "non-existent to barely there." To some degree, I think there is room for criticism there, especially in regards to rules for a social environment, mass combat, diplomacy, economics, and nuances to magic systems. All of these areas just well, lets just say they're very weak, heh?

I will also agree that there is a good degree of work cut out for the Game Master to address the issues and topics that aggressive and bold adventurers raise when they get to the 12-20 and beyond range. Indeed, the rules cover timid, straight-laced characters pretty well, but if you've got an aggressive, resource-intensive group like I have, or am myself, for example, there are going to be problems that just simply need to be addressed.

True, I have made an extensive effort to address these issues. I suppose that I am used to it however, as 20 years ago when I really began forging my campaign world, I began with D&D, soon transitioned the world to accomodate Warhammer Fantasy, and then adapted the world to the Rolemaster Standard System. Then, in recent years, I have revised it for 3rd Edition D&D. The real genius of my initial game design is that I foresaw that I would want to make changes, so I initially designed it to be open-ended and modular in format. One of these preconditions was that while I was considering making my own game system, I wanted the best things of six different game systems, all combined into one. That never quite happened, but I did want to make my world of unimaginable epic scale, big, bold, and absolutely fantastic enough that I could literally do just about anything I wanted, and I also wanted the world to be big enough to accomodate the dreams and visions of any of my players! If someone wanted to become the emperor of a continent spanning empire, they could do that; If I wanted an undead empire that presented a continental threat, I had the room for it; If I wanted two or three huge empires to have a war that lasted for 1200 years and unleashed magical armageddon, entirely devastating three huge continets, well, I could do that, too. And so on. I created the world to in a sense from the beginning to embrace epic campaigns. So in that regard, I think it is correct to say that one has to plan for an epic campaign when the players are at 1st level. It isn't that you have to throw the whole world at them at that level, but the players must be made aware of an epic, sweeping environment.

The question as to what about these higher level people, and why didn't they save the world when we were fighting the lich or whatever at 12th level? Well, as my notes above, the lich that the player fight at 12th level is powerful, but he isn't necessarily trying to conquer the world, yet. Or he's in the process of gaining that power. The epic level characters are in fact fighting liches capable of conquering the world. I suppose it's a question of scale. For example, in my campaign, there are numerous threats at all different levels, at all times. It isn't like everyone at the top knows everything, and can be everywhere and take care of everything, because they can't. In addition, "level" per se, is an individual assessment of power and skill, as opposed to some kind of title or job, if that makes sense? Dragonblade made some comments earlier that are quite instructive in that regard. For example, in the Vallorean Empire, lets suppose the Legates of the Legions are all 40th level Fighters. Well, why don't they go into the Caves of Chaos and defeat the dragon, or the lich, or whatever? Well, unlike the player characters, for example, the Legates or Generals, are in command of 10,000 of the empire's best troops, and are entirely responsible for them. In addition, they are responsible for keeping the border safe from accross the border where tribes of beastmen numbering in the hundreds of thousands wait, always making probing attacks, waiting for the day when they can pour into the soft meat of the Vallorean Empire's heartland and kill, burn, and rape with impunity! That dream of course, is restrained by the presence of armies of legions, all well led and well-equipped, and commanded by tough, razor sharp generals, like the 40th level Fighters that actually command them.

Does that make sense? I mean, yes, there are a lot of epic level characters for example, but it isn't like they don't have numerous threats and responsibilities to look after. And, at least in my campaign, even if there is a good number of them, they are still a relatively small number, and there is just far more going on than even they can handle effectively. Thus, there is a need for lower level characters at all times. In another thread, I mentioned how there is a high attrition and turnover rate for high level characters, as well as lower level characters, at least in my campaign. In my world, people die, and often it is a bloody, grim death. Dragons win. The giant champion came out on top. The heroes that went after the Necromancer Fire Giant, well, they failed. They got cought with their pants down, and they got hammered. So, who's next? To be certain, there are heroes and champions who live, and are still alive, and do many great things. I have a whole stable of NPC heroes who are involved in missions all the time, and often succeed. They have managed to make it so that even in the few occasions they have failed in their mission, they have managed to escape with their lives. Now, having said that, I also have whole rosters of high level characters that, unlike in Forgotten Realms, die frequently, and have high attrition rates. In all the wars, special missions, demonic incursions, dragon raids, and so on, epic level heroes die all the time. Thus, there is always in that sense, someone in power who is looking on with interest the next crop of 12th-20th level characters, because epic level characters are not inexhaustible, and they aren't invincible. The same could be said for even lower level characters. I think that a Game Master can run epic level campaigns, but the scale of the game has to open up to accomadate a broad enough reality that can actually "contain" the epic level characters, if you will.

Otherwise, you do get what you mentioned, I think to some degree at least. High level characters can come to a point of dangerous dominance. However, even with that, I personally have created a different response. As players reach higher levels, it is important and significant, on a number of levels, but in the "Big Scheme" of things, on a world the size of Jupiter, is there really necessarily anything deeply special about someone who is 12th, or 15th, or 20th level? Not really. In addition, and maybe this is something else that makes my campaign world different, is that what determines the "specialness" of a particular character, for example, has far more to do with who they are as people, than what precise character level they happen to be. The world doesn't notice that one character is a 25th level fighter, and this other fighter over here is a 30th level fighter for example. Certainly, the deeds that a character may do to reach those levels may be known, but the actual title of a certain level isn't really consciously embraced. In addition, in a world the size of Jupiter, with millions and millions of creatures, there is an inexhaustible supply of such monsters and creatures. There are forests for example, that are untouched by human explorers. Within those depths of ancient wood, grow enormous populations of beastmen, monsters, dragons, and so on. Another example: In my campaign, there are huge wars going on between enormous human kingdoms and kingdoms of orcs and goblins that are fought three continents away from the continent where most of the campaign action takes place. For all intents and purposes, those kingdoms might as well be on another world, but nonetheless they are there, and what goes on there does have some effect through trade and so on with their neighbors and trading partners, even if they are one, two, or three continents away. However, there are great champions on that continent that live, fight and die, all without the player characters ever even knowing they exist. That's because I have created a driving, epic world that lives beyond the players consciousness. It isn't that the players aren't special, or powerful, for they indeed are, but the world is still bigger than them, and unless they become an emperor, or some great king, of do something of vast, epic scale, much of the world not only will take little notice of them, but much of the world may have heard very little of them. The world doesn't wait with baited breath for what six people sitting in a tavern somewhere are going to do this spring, regardless of how high a level they are. The world just has more important things to do.

Well, I'll write more in a bit.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Ace: Ok, I'm back. Ace, my friend, in addition to some of the above commentary, tell me if I manage to answer all of your questions here. If not, remind me.

Now, epic level play can easily be had in a human-dominated world. Just like in my own campaign though, you have to change the scale of things. In some ways, its kind of like this: Epic level characters are stompers; You have to realise that at epic levels, though lower level people can effect the characters, there is a basement that just is beyond the pale. I believe that level is about 10th. What does that mean? Well, unless you want your epic level heroes to always be fighting against ever-increasingly epic-level enemies, something has to change. If your world is the standard type where 90% of everyone is below 4th level, where does that leave you? Do you see the problem? Do you realise that 20th level characters don't get any experience points for anything below if I recall properly--12th level? In a similar way, though I have a good number of epic level characters in the campaign, I don't have to always threaten them with 30th, 40th, or 50th level characters. No, because groups of 14th, 16th, 18th or 20th level characters can still be quite dangerous.

Now, beyond this point, there are some other considerations. The reason that you have to think *big* is to be able to have more options, greater numbers of anything and everything, and big enough to grow new possibilities for an epic campaign. If the continents are small or few, then the balance of power is easily upset, and the campaign can easily go to hell with the actions or failures of a small group of people. By enlarging everything, and changing the scale, this tendency is muted, blunted, and in the end made impossible. This greater scope allows for greater numbers of creatures, or in your case human warriors, or whoever, to form a threat, rather than just merely increasing the level of an opponent again and again. For example; in my campaign, I have some characters that range in the 20-30th level range. Indeed, they are ferocious. But I don't have to always threaten them with a bunch of 30th level characters in order to challenge them. They have retinues by the way, and would make swift work of any opposing small group of six to 12 30th level characters. Because I don't necessarily want to build continuously large groups of ever increasingly higher level opponents, it is much easier to simply create enemy forces of a thousand or two thousand 12th level and up creatures. Or whatever number feels right for the situation in the scenario. The key here is that these forces are equipped well, and cooperate well. They have numerous lower-level magic items, but lots of basic cooperation, and decent basic skills and abilities. There's no need to always up the armament of the enemy forces in order to compete with the player characters.

For example, in this situation, the 12th level and up forces, say a few thousand, all have decent enough magic items. However, it is by far their cooperation and tactics that will make the epic level party suffer severely, and even potentially die. No need for great fireworks. You see, in a realistic environment, the players are not going to have the perfect knowledge to know everything. Don't give them an hour to figure everything out to the last detail. No one in real combat has that luxury. Use tactics, let the enemy cooperate and plan, and have some experience in fighting powerful, highly magical enemies. In the hail of coordianted arrows, along with the simulataneous berzerker charges, while a dozen or more human wizards of moderately powerful level concentrate their attacks on one player character after another, believe me, the players will make mistakes, they will be confused, and they will start to suffer, and they will learn to fear their mortality, for they will feel the shadow of death in such a wild, lethal, confusing environment. Keep the players off balance, and always needing to make decisions quickly, and move, move, move. The enemy isn't stupid, and they are always moving, attacking from different angles, with different kinds of forces, never allowing the player characters to focus and concentrate their attention and their abilities on just one area, or just one unit.

Keeping these things in mind, large numbers of even considerably lower level humans can really make the players sweat. In the process, they will have gained a great deal of respect for rather normal military forces in your world, and they will have a huge ego identity of believing themselves invincible severely curtailed. They will not have the arrogance to think that only a dragon, lich, or demon prince can defeat them. It is in such environments that they will learn that the broader world moves, makes progress, and advances, just like they do. The world is not static, but dynamic.

Now, you might say, well, how can one have such larger numbers of higher level people? Well, I have several assumptions that you can work with;

(1) The world itself is bigger, so there is more land, animals, resources, everything--to support larger populations of everything.

(2) I assume the magic of the game is followed through with some consistency on a larger, societal level: the use of magic from the wizards and clerics for example ultimately results in larger human and other populations, that are not only larger in number, greatly so, but also superior in health, lifespan, and some additional factors as well.

(3) Lower level characters don't accurately represent a an appropriately skilled and experienced adult in virtually any walk of life. Perhaps only beggars, the destitute, teenagers, the very unskilled, would really ever remain less than 4th or 5th level for very long. Relatively quickly, most skilled, experienced adults, would be in the 6th-12th level range. The better, of course, would be even higher. Notice here how the consistency leads into the other issue dealt with above?

These assumptions go into making vastly larger populations that are overall quite superior to the typical medieval standard, and while they also serve to represent a more experienced and skilled population that I think are more consistent with the concepts of the game, these assumptions also happen to forge a foundation on which you can make a more diverse, challenging environment for characters of all types, from levels 20 and above.

Let me know what you think my friend.

 

[mmadsen]

Glaring Holes

First, from 12th to 20th level, using the core rules, the wheels fall off. The game dosen't appear to be as well playtested and the monsters are prepared adequately for the types of challengse that players can bring (with the exception of Dragons)....So, in regards to your thought that high level play "flows from the rules" I disagree. I haven't even gotten to Epic, and it's falling apart.

So, the DM is left holding the bag and forced to develop new game material (monsters, magic, spells, prestige classes and abilities) to deal with the many glaring holes.

I don't disagree, but could you give some examples of the "glaring holes" you've found?

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Good question mmadsen! Oh, and Ace, I might also suggest that you review Dragonblade's posts--there are several, close together, as he plays in my campaign, and does a fine job of describing an environment where his two 40th level characters, along with the other player characters, along with their cohorts and followers--encountered a very challenging environment.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[ashockney]

I don't disagree, but could you give some examples of the "glaring holes" you've found?

Pretty much how I spelled it out in the parenthesis. I'll elaborate for your edification.

Monsters - The CR's don't seem to adequately challenge a party starting above say 12th level, and getting progressively worse as you go. To whit, see MM2, the Adventure Path modules, and all high level Dungeon crawls. In each instance they've either "advanced" the creatures or created all new creatures from scratch. This is all additional work for the DM, unless you're going to run straight from the above sources.

Spells - Things don't add up in the top levels. Some schools have great high level spells, others have almost none (ie, Div 8th level). There doesn't seem to be a good balance among the spells either. Not like in the lower levels. Meteor Swarm, for example, should easily be capable of dealing 24d6 AoE, and target one creature who gets no save in that area of effect. Otherwise, compared to Abi-Dalzim's and others, this spell is a joke. Plus insta-kill, nuff said there. The DM must figure this out for themselves and balance accordingly.

Magic - You ever realize how much treasure the charts call for in the DMG for high level characters. With that much flying around, the PC's are going to find the loopholes and exploit them, especially since they built in the capacity with to do it with meta-magic item build feats. Everyone in the party have Boots of Haste and Potions of Stoneskin? What a pain in the rear. The DM is left to balance this out.


Prestige Classes - Templar, Tribal Protector, Frenzied Berserker, Deepwood Sniper, Dragon Disciple, Archmage, Incantatrix, Holy Liberator, Red Wizard of Thay, and Shadowdancer. Anyone ever run a game with these classes? Good luck! This one's on the DM as well to sort through.

Abilities - Compare mid level Barb/Paladin/Ranger with Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or Wizard. Blech! Compare Bard with anything. Blech, Blech! Figure out how to make the monk a viable character that doesn't either totally dominate because he's untouchable or get annihalated by a well-built BBEG! D'oh! You said you want to play a what? Troll/Ogre/Half-giant/Half-celestial/Shadovar? What's the ECL supposed to be? Which source? Please pass the DM some tums...

Then, as Shark pointed out. There is the lack of any really good supplemental material yet on empire building, diplomacy, how "real life" interacts and influences adventuring, mass combat (war), and economics in a fantasy world.

I sometimes feel like I'm coming across overly harsh. This is NOT intended as an indictment! I respect the decisions of WOTC to include the material in the Core Rulebooks they did, and I don't even know how any of the above type supplemental material would sell if it ever did see print? I have to think we are certainly a bit on the "fringe" when it comes to being so demanding of a game system.

 

[mmadsen]

Lastly, and I'm not the first to touch on this, is the utter lack of good systems to support what people really would enjoy from an EPIC campaign. This would require REALLY EPIC events. Wars. Plagues. Ruling Countries. Save the world. And so on. What kinds of rules "flow from our existing system" to address these. Somewhere between nothing and not much.

Well said. I hope the new, expanded DMG touches on some of these topics. (And I wish they'd publish a hardback Birthright book. I hear Birthright handled a lot of these topics fairly well.)

I think the re-occuring theme through it all is TIME. 5th Level. Dungeon Mag, or crack the MM open to a CR 5, and I tell a little ditty about how the local tavernmaster's wife was horribly disfigured by a miscast spell, and the mayor has asked the help of someone to retrieve the "necessary components" to return her to her "beautiful (in the eye of the beholder)" state. Done.

Actually, to go off on a tangent, D&D doesn't provide many hooks for that either. After all, spells don't get miscast in D&D -- not by the book at any rate -- and you certainly don't get any guidance on "necessary components" for magical cures. Remove Curse! Poof! You're fine! End of story. (Same with poisons and diseases.)

 

[Ace]

Thank you for the feedback SHARK!

I have a "period" in my game history in which there is an obscene amount of magic about and I was wondering how I would ever play anything there

I have gotten many good hints from this thread and I appreciate them.

Of especial value to me were the notes on level assumptions and the structural layout of Epic Challeneges.

Personally I am still uncomfortable with making wide spread changes to my level layout, IE I still feel 5th level is fairly experienced
Second I simply lack the skillls (or the time/interest to build them) as a DM
I am of the conclusion that Epic Adventuring wouldn't be appropriate IMC

 

[mmadsen]

My understanding leads me to fell that Valorea is sort of like Texas, everything is bigger.

Well put, Ace! It's a magical, Imperial Roman Texas.