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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreyICE" data-source="post: 6017163" data-attributes="member: 6684526">Well there's several issues on epic gaming that happen.  First, is the roleplaying aspect.  Death has become a joke, and minor problems have become downright trivial.  I'm just going to use articles here, because people other than me have explored this nicely:<a href="http://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/article-the-ten-commandments-of-epic/" target="_blank">Article: The Ten Commandments of Epic  Eternity Publishing</a>The second problem is the scaling math.  Basically, by epic tier, most things you know about EL encounters have to be thrown out.  Take an EL+4 solo and chuck it at your level 21 characters.  Chances are even if it's MM3/MV solo, it's getting locked down and shredded in short order.  There's just too much epic tier characters can do to a single monster that unless you just tweak the math to make it virtually impossible to hit, it's going down.  As a small example, an Epic Psion can:- Inflict -9 to defenses, every round- Inflict -11 to hit, every roundThey can also exploit paragon level tricks to send things 30-40 feet into the air, trivially.  That not worrying you?Fighters can daze a target using at-will attacks. That's the level of action denial that simply cannot be matched at lower tiers.  And you can't handle it with any amount of "+5 to saving throws" "Saving throws at the start of the turn" or "la de da 2 turns of actions."  Two turns of actions doesn't MATTER if those actions are taken at a -11 penalty to hit.  Solos take a short hop out the window.  They're useless.  Maybe if you throw 2-3 Solos at them you have a shot of an interesting encounter.   And that turns grindy.  In short, at epic tier, the level of action denial and raw damage is such that encounter design doesn't work like it used to.  Have three brutes in front of the squishy stuff?  Cool, that's tough in Heroic.  Not terrible in paragon.  In Epic?  Expect a striker to nova one for 300+ damage, the leader to allow him to add another 50-100 onto that or more (check out the char-op boards for some truly sick things leaders can do in Epic, including allow their entire party to move 8 squares and attack before the first round of combat begins).  Expect the controller to simply lock one down forever.  Watch the third one try and hit something and get teleported 10 squares away, knocked prone, and generally kicked out of combat.  This is partially a planning issue.  WotC intended epic-tier combat to last 8-10 rounds.  When they discovered no one LIKED 8-10 round combats when each round had multiple standard, move, and minor actions (hello 2 hour combats) they introduced a bunch of math fixes and other things to bump up characters chance to hit in Epic.  This resulted in epic level characters that actually felt EPIC (not country bumpkins who couldn't hit a damn thing).  It also resulted in conditionals and penalties that just went godtier.  Damage also went god tier.  In general, the following is true:- Solos are not actually a threat.  The eternity publishing site has rules for supersolos (which are basically phased fights, where each fight is a difficult solo encounter in its own right).  These aren't necessarily sufficient.  More tricks, such as limited invulnerability the PCs have to shut down mid fight, minion spawners, free healing, and more are necessary.  - Large packs of mobs are not actually a threat unless they have plentiful tricks.  In general, tricks are more necessary at epic level.  Nothing is going to get there by just doing damage and having defenses unless those defenses are so good that attacking them is pointless and the damage is so high that it's one-shotting people.  I don't have much experience, beyond one campaign that fell apart (don't use prepublished adventures, kids), but there's been a lot I've read on it, mostly because of how bad that was:<a href="http://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Eternity Publishing</a><a href="http://critical-hits.com/2011/09/22/why-im-starting-to-love-epic-4e-dd/" target="_blank">Why I’m Starting to Love Epic 4e D&D : Critical Hits</a>Baaasically you have to become a part time designer because none of WotC's epic level stuff actually works as they think it was supposed to work.</blockquote>

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