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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kai Lord" data-source="post: 259062" data-attributes="member: 3570">For you, apparently.  I think it just comes down to your overall approach to the game right from the beginning.  It sounds like some people on this thread have first level kobolds coming up with weak little plans to foil first level characters, 5th level clerics trying to oppress communities inhabited by 5th level heroes, and so on.  I've never done that.  Low level characters in my campaigns are often caught up in grand schemes perpetuated by insanely powerful entities.  Like Tolkien or Dragonlance, they work their way up the challenge ladder as they approach their nemesis, but the "epic" situations and characters are there from the beginning.  No glass ceiling has ever existed in my campaigns.To avoid the cheesiness of always having characters fighting challenges or monsters that are catered to their exact levels, my worlds tend to have less of a linear nature.  Sometimes that means low, mid, or high level characters crossing paths with villains they *can't* fight, even if one of them is carrying a ridiculous artifact.Since I have always liked my campaigns to be cinematic, that has often meant describing wizards doing things far beyond what simple spell slots and material components allow, and up to now I've had to just make up their powers on the fly as I saw fit.  Rarely a problem, except that my impromptu abilities never benefited from actual playtesting before being plopped into the middle of an adventure.Tolkien isn't epic?  Sauron isn't a god, so tell me how to create him in the Core Rules.  Dragonlance?  Lets say I read the Legends trilogy and want to tell a story that features a wizard who advances so far in power he can summarily destroy all gods in the pantheon.  How do I do that with non-epic rules?  If I let on that the massive dragon terrorizing the town has one missing scale over his heart that would take a critical shot to hit, what non-epic character is going to take him out?  Epic Rules now finally make it possible to have stories that emulate what the game was supposed to be emulating all along.Epic Rules take a lot of the coolness out of magic items and puts it where it should be--the characters.  Bard didn't say, "Arrow of Dragon Slaying, you've been specially enchanted to kill dragons in one shot, fly now, and do the work for me!"  Nope, he pulled out his favorite black feathered arrow and bam, shot it right through Smaug's heart.  That's cool, and no fundamentally different than a level one ranger rolling a natural twenty and nailing a stirge.As for the swimming up waterfalls and walking on clouds, those are 100 DC skills, sure that might be getting into anime, but you're talking level 60 characters who can do hardly any other skill other than swimming up waterfalls.  Just because you can do something goofy within the context of the rules doesn't mean there need to be special chapters on it.  Personally I think those DC's were just thrown in to illustrate there really is no ceiling.  Nevertheless, the suggestions on what to do in your really are just a waste after a point.Technically you can have 1,000,000,000th leveled characters under the new rules.  I guarantee those campaigns will be very different than level 25 campaigns which are both "epic".  Where do you draw the line?  To me, suggestions on how to apply the rules to a 30th level campaign are as silly as those for a 500th level campaign.  If you don't know what epic campaigns are like, why would you want the ELH in the first place?  I think you'll see that what it does is provide rules for a lot of campaigns and story ideas that were already there in the first place.For your campaigns, there might very well be a difference.  But my campaigns are more akin to Tolkien and Dragonlance where killing enormous beasts with one shot from a nonmagical bow [Death of Enemies feat] and challenging the gods [Epic Spellcasting] are actual possibilities for those few who rise in sufficient skill and power.On this I wholeheartedly agree.  Totally useless information for me.I don't believe that "most" people would agree that doing things that heroes in books and movies have always done is such an alien concept to grasp.</blockquote>

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