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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hardhead" data-source="post: 2009996" data-attributes="member: 2844">Oh dear god, the attrocity that is the ELH should never have been allowed in print.I ask you: what kind of madman would it take to unleash such a horror unto the role-playing populace?  Especially one so looked forward to by the RPG community in general?When I first heard about it, I was excited.  I wanted my players to get to epic levels.  I waited with bated breath, and snatched it up the moment it was released.  But woe was me, for I spent $40 on a paperweight, for all I will be using it.  I've had it for months and months now, so this isn't a knee-jerk reaction.  Indeed, I still liked it upon first reading.  But the more I've used it, the more I've hated it.  Indeed, I think this makes my review very valid. It's written not just after reading the book, but playing with it *extensively*.  I think know what I'm talking about here.  Anyway, let's talk about it's many shortcomings on a point by point basis.  I'll address the problems as they appear in the book.CHAPTER 1: EPIC CLASSES: The basic classes are mostly-balanced, except that the attack and save progressions go all screwey.  Specifically, BAB is the same for all classes.  Though this is an obvious attempt to fix another problem I'll discuss later, it causes some serious problems.  For instance, a character who took 20 levels of fighter, then 20 levels of Wizard will have a better BAB than one who took 20 levels of wizard before taking 20 levels of fighter.STILL CHAPTER 1: EPIC PrCs:  These are amazingly better than just continuing a regular class or PrC into epic levels, which I guess is the ultimate continuation of the arms race d20 has become in so many products, with each author trying to make his options the best/most powerful.  PrCs are better than base classes, for the most part, and Epic PrCs are just as much better than PrCs.  I mean, I'd hate for the basic classes like "fighter" to be viable for a character's whole career!  Then you wouldn't need as many supplements to further escalate the arm's race!CHAPTER 1: EPIC SKILLS:  This is, amazingly enough, pretty well done.  It's the one part of the book I use.  It just has new and higher save DCs.  Nothing exciting or ground-breaking, which is probably why it's the one part of the book that works.ALMOST DONE WITH CHAPTER 1: EPIC FEATS:  These vary so much in power that it's laughable.  Epic Dodge lets you automatically, with no roll, negate one attack against you every round, for instance.  Powerful?  God, yes.  OTOH, Beast Wild Shape lets you wildshape into a beast.  And we all know how many powerful beasts there are at epic levels (hint: none).  Legendary Climber let's you ignore penalties for scaling walls at normal speed.  Why is this even an epic feat?  Epic Spell Focus gives you a +6 to your DCs.  Yes, +6!  Armor Skin gives you a +2 Natural Armor bonus, as if any epic character would be caught dead with anything less than an Amulet of Natural Armor +5 (note: the feat specifically says it doesn't stack with natural armor from items).  Most eigth level characters would find this feat useless.  On the other end of the power scale, Mighty Rage increases your barbarian rage bonus from +4 to +8.  OK, I think that's enough examples.CHAPTER 2: EPIC SPELLS:  They've completly scrapped the D&D magic system in the epic spells.  Now you've got a big mix-and-match table that lets you make your own spells, and you have to make Spellcraft checks to cast them.  It's a neat idea, but flawed in execution.  First of all, all of them require a Spellcraft check of 24 and the appropriate Knowledge skill (Nature for Druids, Religion for Clerics, Arcana for Wiz/Sorcs) at 24 ranks.  Of course, this completly hoses Sorcerers (as if they needed further hosing!).  Most Sorcs have average-ish intelligence, and get two, maybe three skill points per level.  If your campaign is going epic, almost, if not *all* of a sorc's skill points have to be tied up between these two skills.  And gods forbid you didn't design your sorc with epic levels in mind from the begining.  Oh, and the epic spell examples they provide are dumb.  There's one called Vengeful Eye of God that you'd have to be 80th level or something to cast, and one called Let Go of Me that doesn't even deserve to be Epic (more like 6th or 7th).  Plus, it has a dumb name for a epic spell.CHAPTER 3: EPIC CAMPAIGNS:  Just general advice on running epic games.  Probably would be useful if you were masochistic enough to try it.  A lot of this is rehashed stuff from the DMG, but with an epic twist.  They kinda-sorta suggest you errata Time Stop.  Or, at least, suggest that you interpret it "strictly."  Oddly, they don't actually tell you if this is the canon interpretation.  I think the reason is it's not, but the writers thought Time Stop was still way broken anyway.  CHAPTER 4: EPIC MAGIC ITEMS:  OK, here I'm going to talk about the problem with AC.  In D&D, you rely more and more on magical AC boosting gear as you level up.  This trend continues in the ELH, but the magic items continue to fall behind.  I challenge you to build a 40th level fighter.  Now, see what his AC is, even outfitted with the best gear in the book.  I bet it's barely within five of his to-hit.  If that.  So he'd only miss himself (or another similarly outfitted character) on a roll of a 1.  The gear just doesn't scale up well.CHAPTER 5: MONSTERS:  Same AC problem here.  Let's take a look at the first monster, the Anaxim, a CR 22 creature.  It has an AC of 37.  It has a to-hit of 40.  Soooo.  If two Anaxims were to fight, one would only miss the other on a roll of a 1.  It only gets worse as the CR gets higher.  Basically, when two characters are figting in a melee, they only roll d20s to see if they get a critical threat and to make sure they didn't roll a 1.  Just to assure you I'm not taking a bad example, lets' look at the next several creatures:Atropal:  AC 51, Attack +49 (OK, this one misses itself on a 1 or 2).Chicimec: AC 39, Attack +39Dream Larva: AC 52, Attack +56Hecatoncheires: AC 70 Attack +71You get the idea.CHAPTER 6: EPIC SETTING: This is the bit I've read the least, and it seems to be well done, flavor wise, though since it draws from the rest of the book, it's as flawed mechanically as the rest.  One gripe: Why is the City of Union in there?  Why not just detail the city of Sigil, from 2e Planescape.  Gods know Sigil would have plenty of epic characters running around, and Union is just a big rip-off of Sigil (look, another city with bunches of portals and epic characters running about).  Why not make 2e Planescape fans a bit happy instead of creating such a similar city?  On the other hand, I'm glad the corrupting touch of this book did not screw up my favorite setting.  So maybe it's for the best.APPENDIXES, EPIC NPCS OF GREYHAWK AND FAERUN:  Nothing big here, except many characters were mysteriously leveled up.  Mordenkainen, for instance, has gained three levels in the one year since he was last stated.  He's going to be more powerful than Eleminster in another few years, at this rate.  Also, they detail the Cat Lord that was killed during the Something Wild adventure way back in 2e.  He was replaced with a new, female Cat Lord.  I'm surprised they didn't catch this, but then, the quality control was much more lax elsewhere, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise.Well, that's my review.  Comments welcome.</blockquote>

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