Rathan : Have you thought about preparing for entry into an EPIC Prestige Class? I've looked through the ELH, and
Legendary Dreadnought would be a fitting addition to your concept - Extra HP, Extra DR, extreme defensive AND offensive self buffs... and a bonus epic feat every 5 levels.
You'd need to be lvl 26 to get into it, but it's something you could start aiming for. You'd need Combat Reflexes and Improved Bull Rush as feats, so 4 more lvls of fighter could get you those, then a level of.. anything, really - and then your 26th lvl could be Legendary Dreadnought.
And yes, I do plan on the campaign getting that far.
Speaking of which, to Shayuri's comment on levelling:
[B said:
jemal[/B]]Your characters have all recently ascended to the height of mortal power, but due to the power of your bloodlines, you have the ability to go even further. As such, you've sought out the Elder Prophet, who has guided the bloodlines throughout the centuries. He informed you that as your ancestors before you, a quest must be completed to unlock your full potential. Deep in an ancient tomb lies an artifact of great evil. This artifact is in the possession of an evil warlord long dead, and the Elder has forseen that if this artifact is not destroyed within the month, the warlord will rise again, bringing his fel armies with him against the world. If you can stop this from happening, you will realize your true power.
The beginning of the campaign is going to be very slow for leveling, as part of the reason you're on the quest is to learn how to transcend the mortal boundaries.. Some of your characters have been stuck at twenty for some time: this quest is the only thing that can get you past the 'power cap'. You'll be gaining item & Bloodline power-ups, but until you've reached a certain point in the current quest , there will be no level ups. At that point you may gain up to two levels, depending on how I think your characters have grown.
The only potential problem that i see with this is the XP cost for Wish and epic spells.
We now get a 10,000XP pool to work with until next level - that's good for two regular castings of Wish. A "normal" character that needs to advance between 20-21 would need hundreds of thousands of XP, and thus if he/she chooses he/she can use all that XP towards spellcasting. On one hand we have free XP used as a resource and not tied to leveling. On the other, epic spells will be hard on the Spellcradt DC without an XP cost to midgitate the effects.
actually, advancing from level 20 to level 21 requires 20,000 XP. you HAVE hundreds of thousands total, but you cant' use enough XP to drop your character a level. Perhaps i should explain it this way:
By level 24 if you were to use 10,000 XP per level with my way, you would still be level 24, but have used 40,000 XP.
In a 'normal' xp system, if you used 40,000 xp while the party was levelling from 20-24, you would have 236,000 XP, and be only 1/4 of the way into lvl 22, while the rest of your party would have 276,000 XP and be lvl 24 characters.
As you can see, Spending the same amount of XP in a normal game as you can in my system would cut your levelling speed in half.
I've been thinking lately that I'm giving you guys far too much XP to play around with this way... unless you wanted to spend your XP on epic spells and wish instead of ever levelling again.