[Epic] What do you think?

[tauton_ikhnos]

Epic combat tends to be fast and ugly for us. Last real fight, before GM took break from campaign, 25th level party faced Mature Prismatic Dragon w/+5 levels of monk, elite ability score array, and maximum hit points. One party member died first round, another died second round, dragon died third round. Retreated for day, cast two True Ressurects, decided to rest before destroying the rest of its army and/or any mate it might have.

Of course, then GM's break occurred, so we still haven't even got treasure other than what we stripped in few rounds off corpse .

Side note: at least in our campaign, MDJ rarely used at all. Enemies want our items as much as we want theirs. Tends to be used only as last resort, and we work hard to make last resort a TOO LATE resort.

 

[reiella]

Side note: at least in our campaign, MDJ rarely used at all. Enemies want our items as much as we want theirs. Tends to be used only as last resort, and we work hard to make last resort a TOO LATE resort.

SLightly off-topic (As I'm getting really prone to doing).

I wouldn't suggest for DMs to worry too much about the destroying items aspect of MDJ. Depending on the party level, the Will save may be prohibitive enough to protect most of your valued equipment (And dependant on how much the spellcaster has ramped his DC too). I fear a couple other things alot more than that though .

1: It sucks to roll 98 Will Saves for all of the target's magic items. (Meta)
2: Epic level characters have a reasonable chance of carrying at least a minor artifact.
3: Close range with 30 ft burst can catch allies too.

[ Add ]
I can just hope my epic campaign goes as smoothly for the players.

I fear TPK a bit too much right now so I'm unsure. But at the same time I like creating Paragon Krakens with Whirlwind Attack, so I don't know .

 

[ashockney]

Have you had the opportunity to play epic yet?

Enc 3: I wouldn't let a limited wish create a permanent object but that's me.

Enc 4: I can't see the lich template right now, but as undead I would assume it can't take critical hits. I also think it's beyond the power of a wish, at least as a permanent change. On the other hand as a temporary one, great - not really seeing a problem with the smart use of a wish. We used a miracle recently to make everyone's weapons "ghost touch" for a while.

In our world, wished items/effects, are always temporary.

They are drawing on this power of the wish (from the SRD):
• Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item.
Which costs this:
When a wish creates or improves a magic item, you must pay twice the normal XP cost for crafting or improving the item, plus an additional 5,000 XP.

The powers/items are NEVER needed permanently. Just for the encounter in question.

Typically we've gone by the following guidelines:
• Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value.

As a rule of thumb for wish, this is about as tough as I'll let a wish get when it comes to temporarily duplicating the effects of an item. Limited wish is half that (12,250gpv).

So, they limited wished for a Golembane Scarab, which has the following power: A scarab enables its possessor to combat golems with weapons, unarmed attacks, or natural weapons as if those golems had no damage reduction. And, the cost on the thing is only: Price 2,500 gp.

They wished for the following enhancement to their weapon (from the sunblade, SRD):

Against Negative Energy Plane creatures or undead creatures, the sword deals double damage (and x3 on a critical hit instead of the usual x2).

The sunblade has a 50,335gpv, but that's with it being a +2/+4 weapon, and a granted "sunlight" power in addition to the ability to crit undead.

It's actually very similiar to your party using miracle to alter their weapons to ghost touch.

Wicked tough. But, well within the bounds, I think, without too much "house-ruling".

 

[The Souljourner]

I played in an Epic campaign last year for a while. Some problems we saw: Epic Spellcasting sucks ass. Takes a huge amount of XP and money (XP being the real problem, of course) just to make a spell that takes a ton of time and effort to cast. After taking it at 21st level with my cleric, and not using it for the entire first level, I traded it in for expanded spell capacity, since a 10th level slot was infinitely more useful.

Other than that... it was pretty cool. We also pretty much just tacitly agreed to ignore MDJ because it's way overpowered. Same with any of the other broken things... if you ignore them, they really do go away

-The Souljourner

 

[questionmark]

I recently posted with some questions about the sunblade and I was informed that you cannot crit undead.

 

[tauton_ikhnos]

I wouldn't suggest for DMs to worry too much about the destroying items aspect of MDJ. Depending on the party level, the Will save may be prohibitive enough to protect most of your valued equipment (And dependant on how much the spellcaster has ramped his DC too). I fear a couple other things alot more than that though .

Our wizard has INT 37 with all modifiers, and additional +7 to DCs from various sources, for net MDJ DC 39. A CR 30 prismatic dragon has a Will save +32, so 35% of the dragon's magic items will probably bite it. We want those . And of course, what we fought was CR 48 prismatic dragon, with 9th level spell DC around 53.

So just not worth chance of losing best items. REALLY not worth chance of losing artifact.

1: It sucks to roll 98 Will Saves for all of the target's magic items. (Meta)

We use spreadsheet. Rolls 98 in time it takes to cut-n-paste.

I fear TPK a bit too much right now so I'm unsure. But at the same time I like creating Paragon Krakens with Whirlwind Attack, so I don't know

That looks yummy.

 

[questionmark]

In the epic game i am running (currently lvl24) the morality of the pc's comes in to play more often. With so much power, it is easy for the PCs to lose their moral compasses. I also try to find a balnce between encounters thaat challenge the party and encounters that give them a chance to strutt their stuff. I also stress to involve them in the political aspect of adventuring. So far I think it is going well.

 

[James McMurray]

Sunblade: The weapon says "instead of the normal x2". That seems to indicate that it still can't crit undead. Is there a clarification on this from WotC anywhere? I'm nott rying to harp on it, I've got a character with a sun blade in an arena and am curious.

questionmark: Definitely. My current epic party started out as CG, CN, LN, LG, and NG. (I could be wrong about that last one, the character is pretty new). Their alignments are now CG, CE, LE, LG++, NG. The "++" means that character is really good (its the Vow of Poverty Monk mentioned in other threads). Of course, there's no divinations in the world right now, so its hard for teh good cleric to try to abandon or preach to the evil characters, since he doesn't know they're evil.

Check my sig for a link to the story if you're interested in reading about the trials and tribulations of an Epic party.

 

[ashockney]

They wished for the following enhancement to their weapon (from the sunblade, SRD):

Against Negative Energy Plane creatures or undead creatures, the sword deals double damage (and x3 on a critical hit instead of the usual x2).

Maybe I'm just dense. Please excuse me if this comes across as unclear.

The sword deals x2 damage vs. undead or negative energy plane creatures.
The sword deals x3 damage vs. undead or negative energy plane creatures on a critical hit.

Which part of that is unclear? I'm aware that undead can't be criticalled, but why would they have put this in if it wasn't intended to be an exception? I guess it could be more clear, since it is an "exception" to the general rule on undead not being critical hit.

Anyone else try their hand at epic? What do you think?

 

[Storminator]

Playing in an ECL25 game right now. Last night we whacked an avatar of Lolth. We needed her head for a material component for a spell.


Our DM ruled that we could Dimensional Anchor her (in violation of the rules). So we infiltrated the drow temple she was to appear in and started killing drow, waiting for the big bad to appear. She showed up and instantly saw thru all our disguises.

Our moonblade wielder dropped our artifact (62 buff spells at once...) and Shevaresh, elven god of vengence against the drow and recruit to our cause, started mowing down drow.


My unfettered/mageblade jumped on the avatar, quickened true strike, 2 handed power attack, ~80 points of damage. Power attacking is risky vs a 64 AC, as you're unlikely to hit much.

Avatar turns to beat the tar out of me, mostly succeeds, but sealed her fate there. That was her only action without one of our spellcasters having a readied counterspell up to stop either a Disjunction or Dispel or Greater Dispel, so she couldn't knock down the Anchor.

Massive drow priestess slaughter, killed a high priestess (which had a history with one of the PCs) and Soul Bound her to an artifact, and killed the avatar. One of our PCs hit 0 wound points, another got close, our sorcereress got 12 negative levels (most devastating single attack I've ever seen, empowered energy drain), and we used up our artifact.

And, since we brought in Shevaresh, we've ignited a god war, as we've broken the 'gods don't attack gods' rule. Now there's going to be a whole series of direct god reprisals.

In another note, we've house ruled Disjunction to be one day per caster level instead of permanent. There's an NPC that does MDJ twice before breakfast, and the whole party has been disjoined twice, along with numerous single PC disjoinings. It's really nasty. My PC is in utter terror of MDJ, with his +13 Will save (that's with a +5 item! )

PS