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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kai Lord" data-source="post: 259328" data-attributes="member: 3570">I was clear on your position, which is why I showed where ELH game mechanics would be necessary to emulate those settings you listed.  I think maybe you're getting hung up on that "Union" city nonsense listed in the book.  I don't see an Epic campaign as one featuring whole cities of 30th level characters and Epic monsters will hardly show up on any wandering monster chart I use.The campaign is just the campaign.  Period.  There will be "epic" elements and non-epic elements.  And by "epic" I'm referring specifically the ELH rules.No, I really don't know what you mean.  I once had a player who had just read the first six Dragonlance books tell me he wanted to play a mage that challenged the gods like Raistlin did.  He started at first level, played through the Test of High Sorcery, then I had him whisked away to a little pocket realm of shadow people and other bizarre creatures created by a black-robed wizard named Zorgar.  The player's character apprenticed under Zorgar and learned that his master was aspiring to challenge Takhisis, not with the intent of destroying all the other gods, but to just rule in her place.  He knew what Raistlin was going to do, so he groomed the PC to become powerful enough to engage Raistlin at the exact moment of Raistlin and Takhisis' showdown at the end of the Legends series.Long story short, Zorgar and the PC interrupted the Tak/Raist battle, Zorgar destroyed Tak and the PC took out Raistlin.  Zorgar became the new god of evil and the PC was named demigod of evil dragons and retired his character.  This was an entire campaign where the PC worked his way up to the power levels of his adversaries and prevailed.  Are you going to tell me that that campaign was more "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" than Dragonlance?  No way.The lion share of that particular campaign was the intrigue and advancement in the shadow realm, with the whole "gods battle" only occuring during the last session of the entire campaign.  The thing was, I had absolutely NO RULES for it, and had to improvise everything.I'm really curious as to why you consider Raistlin disqualified as a PC.  Because he wasn't Lawful Good?  I'm serious.  The guy is full-on ELH material.Lets see.  In your opinion, Tolkien equals "standard" fantasy while ELH does not.  Sauron, a Tolkien character, can only be created using ELH rules, but that doesn't mean anything.  Okay...And the ELH makes heroism in "the game" more like "the novels."  I find that an odd thing to complain about, or perhaps more accurately, use to claim that D&D emulating "novel-style heroics" is "non-standard fantasy."We at least agree that its great for giving game mechanics to the Big Bad Boss without the PC's crying fowl.  But there's a lot in D&D that's already against "standard" fantasy.  How many fantasy stories feature characters that can teleport at will?  Think of how wildly different LOTR would be if Gandalf had access to all the spells in the Player's Handbook.  But that doesn't keep DM's from coming up with ways to counter the players' abilities and still run campaigns that would make great books.  Dragonlance isn't so different from LOTR thematically, but the DL characters have wildly more varied and dramatic tools at their disposal than the Fellowship had.  Yet even you equate it with "standard" fantasy fare.There are also rules for making half-dragon vampire PC's.  Such wonkiness doesn't make 3E anymore "non-standard" than the ELH.But you've obviously recognized the inspirational "fodder" for some of the outlandish fringe elements of the ELH:  Crouching Tiger, Princess Mononoke, etc.  Hell any game with a 15th level monk gets into Crouching Tiger territory.I guess I just don't see the difference between a non-epic campaign where the PC's can cast Wish or Miracle one or more times per day vs. an epic one where they can kill dragons with one arrow or cause undead to crumble within 15 feet of them.If you aren't dealing with magic-users, epic-level is simply more "cinematic" than non-epic and virtually indistinguishable thematically.  Magic-users can throw a monkey wrench into many a DM's campaign, but they do that in non-epic adventures already.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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