Epic Destinies and Earth Giants

[Voss]

What surprises me is that Earth Titans only have a strenght of 23. Quite low for a creature that is huge...

It does seem low. I understand why, but the paradigm shift is significant. Apparently your warrior-type characters are supposed to really wrestle giants and win. Since you can have a character with a 23 strength at 12th level and a 24 at 16th, you really can.

In some ways its a nice change from the stupidly large numbers in 3e to keep things 'realistic', despite the huge effect they had on the math. Its rather interesting to compare the two stat-blocks. A first edition stat block would add something as well. The 4e giant has more hit points, and has a much better defense against non-fort spells. Still not great, but a wizard won't have a 75% chance of charming one anymore.

 

[TheLordWinter]

So on the subject of the epic destiny, I feel like I've read that somewhere before... I got almost a "strange" feeling from it. Perhaps I should see a "Doctor." A "Strange Doctor." Almost, perhaps, a "Doctor Strange" as it were.

That was subtle in the utmost.

As for the giants, there is a point of reference in the picture. Note that the hill giants are standing astride a fence, likely of approximately four feet in height (based upon a vague knowledge of fence heights) so I'd say the hill giants are looking to be about twenty feet tall, and the earth titan is probably thirty to forty, based on how much taller he is than them.

I really hope Earth Shock is left in, without it this brute doesn't have much going for him. I like giants increasing in size (I always felt D&D giants, particularly those who topped out at ten feet, were really not all that giant) but I just don't feel like these guys are doing much more than their 3.5 counterparts. A hill giant certainly couldn't do something interesting and unique each round for five rounds.

Hopefully we'll see some more entries which really spice up the giants in the actual Monsterous Manual, maybe a Hill Giant Shaman who grants them a different ability set, ala the Gnollish Demonic Scourge.

 

[Satori5000]

I see no problem with the epic destinies. Even if after the books come out and you still dont like the destinies presented, 4e seems like such an easy system to understand, it wouldnt be hard to sit down with your DM and come up with one of your own. And if you like the destinies, but not the flavor text, change it. Its just flavor text, you can change that to fit your campaigns or ideas.

 

[That One Guy]

The archmage was... meh? One of my old players from 3.x would've loved that epic destiny... it's essentially what he wanted in and out of character. But, I personally liked the 3.5 epic destinies listed in that DDI article. They seemed more... universal. If there are focused ones like archmage... okay... whatever... but I hope there are awesomely widely applicable epic destinies (I originally wrote awesomely widely applicable EDs... but... it just sounds wrong).

I didn't read the giants article. Perhaps later... although with reading most people's posts, maybe not.

(I'm glad enworld's back. Good times)

 

[Voss]

I see no problem with the epic destinies. Even if after the books come out and you still dont like the destinies presented, 4e seems like such an easy system to understand, it wouldnt be hard to sit down with your DM and come up with one of your own. And if you like the destinies, but not the flavor text, change it. Its just flavor text, you can change that to fit your campaigns or ideas.

It just seems unnecessary. The abilities are nice, and are logical conclusions to the power progression, but the [booming voice]DESTINY QUEST[/booming voice] and 'immortality' bits are more than a little campy. They don't really add anything to what should be an exciting concluding arc to the campaign in its own right. Yes, yes, your last quest is amazingly 'epic' and important and at the end you retire the characters and do something else... but I'm not struck with any real need to inject this level of Bad Fantasy Stereotypes directly into the mechanics or a campaign.

'Course, I mostly blame them for using 'epic' in the first place. Movies ads and videogames have applied it to pretty much everything that has been released in the last decade, making it essentially meaningless. Particularly since they're using it in the modern sense, and not the classic literary sense.

 

[Dragonblade]

Finally we come to a couple of things in 4e that I actually dislike. Giants and Titans should have really high Strength scores. A 23 is too low. They should 30 or more. And since attacks and defences can be divorced from stats with 4e monster design, I don't see the problem with this.

This is one of the same issues I had back in 2e with STR 25. A Storm Giant in 2e wasn't even strong enough to do a pull up. The strength for such massive creatures should be much higher. I'm not much of a simulationist, but this is one of those areas where I will give a nod to simulationism.

My other issue is with Epic Destinies. Mechanically they have really toned everything down. I mean the projection of your spirit when you die is really cool and I like the fact that at epic, the game doesn't take such an exponential jump like the power curve did in prior editions.

However, I don't like the enforced ending. One of the things I actually did like about 3rd editions epic levels was the open ended advancement. I think one of the first house rules I come up with for 4e, is a way to reconfigure the retraining rules so that even 30th level PCs can be played and still experience some kind of mechanical character growth or change over time.

I also think there is a disconnect between the fluff and the mechanics. Other than the cool epic power, I don't feel there is a really big difference between a 30th level PC and a 20th level PC. For all the talk about departing the mortal realm, I expected the characters to be a bit more godlike. I actually prefer that PCs are not godlike, but still, the fluff doesn't fit.

 

[malcolm_n]

I was awefully surprised that archmage was an epic destiny and not a paragon path. I guess an archmage is on par with a demigod...

That being the case, I wonder which other seemingly nonepic epic destinies we'll see. As long as a sorcerer can be a dragon disciple and eventually become a real dragon, I'm good.

some stuff

I agree with you moderately here. Just to kinda put it out there, I'm considering letting 30th level characters obtain additional power options and similar like "Ability points" in FFXI. When you reach the end cap, you can buy bonus things, you get one point every time you earn the same experience you would have from 25th to 26th level (ballpark figure here). You can buy a new at-will/skill with 1, encounter/ability point/feat with 2, daily with 3, and class feature with 4.
Bare in mind you'd still need the prereqs for any paragon path or epic destiny powers you purchase.

In the end, it would give your character unending supply of power choices and of course break the game, but that's what the original epic rules did, so cheers to you for having an additional 6 encounter powers.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Cautiously happy about the Epic Destinies - in terms of worrying about whether or not you like them, how many campaigns actually went to 30th and beyond in 3e anyway? I can imagine that many campaigns will simply never need those rules.

 

[Jer]

So, after you finish your epic quest, you're done with the game as a single player.

But, you can still go on a Random Awesome Individual Demiplane.

Neat!

Where do they come up with these ideas?

From the D&D Master Set - published in 1984 I think.

Seriously - this entire entry on Epic Destinies completely brought back memories of reading through the "Immortality Paths" section of the Master Set when I was a wee bairn. Back then there were only 4 of them, they were tightly structured, and the only new powers you got were from whatever artifacts were built into your particular path, but the flavor of the Immortality Paths is all right there in that epic destinies excerpt - including the suggestion that once you're done your character exits the "mortal plane" in some manner and is retired but that if the rest of your group wasn't done with their Path yet you would stick around in a "mortal" form until they were finished before going off to your reward.

Yet another notch that makes me think that the folks involved in this edition have a lot of love for the BECMI boxed sets - which I count as a good thing. Stuff like this makes me want to own these books...

 

[The B#]

It looks like hill giants make better artillery than brutes. The sweep is also disappointing because it's an encounter power. It would be far more potent if it could recharge.

Honestly, this really could be taken by a party of lvl 1 pcs. The young black dragon packs way more of a punch as a lvl 4 solo (though, to be fair that is worth a whopping 75 more xp)