Ideas for post-epic leveling?

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

This may get moved to House-rules eventually, but I think General is more appropriate, since it involves a few things..



I'm curious if Any other D20 systems than the the D&D DMG have dealt with post 20th level, or how anyone else deals with it locally.

While I understand the idea of stopping people from getting 6 attacks, by limiting BAB, I strongly dislike that it makes the pre-20 levels so crucial..

We've been running a weekly campaign for about 2 years, and PCs are hitting 9th level now.. But we're running into some problems in these levels matter so much. With heavy multiclassing, they Need to try to maximize, and carefully choose these next levels, since once they hit 20, everything is different....

They need as many fighter levels as possibible now, since BAB gets normalized, but special abilites later is good, since they still get those.

I understand their logic, but it's frustrating. 20th level shouldn't be such a big deal.. It's been that way since D&D standard, but with the ease of multiclassing these days, it shouldn't be such a big deal...
If people took 20 levels in a class, and 5 in another, it's not So horrible, is it?

How have other people dealt with Post-20, cruncy-bits wise?

Can just limiting BAB work? Do any other books deal with this?

-C

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Don't worry about it.

Seriously. If melee is your strong suit, you're probably taking PrCs that have good BAB anyway. Then again, if you're on a middle BAB, and taking PrCs, most of those will have middle BAB too, which is annoying, but you can live with it. You have to work to not get three attacks.

The more important thing I found is saves. Multiclassing actually improves them markedly, if you do it right.

Brad

 

[Alzrius]

E1ven, while I understand your frustration, I still think that the rationale for standardizing BAB and saves makes sense.

If the class-specific rate of increase for BAB and saves was kept after twentieth level, the gap widens exponentially. By, say, 40th level, all else being equal. You have Fighters who don't even need to roll to hit an AC that a Wizard could only hit on a natural 20. Eventually the disparity becomes so great that a party where the characters are the same level have wildly different abilities in terms of weapon combat and what they can save against. The current system is better in this regard.

 

[Crothian]

If you want to see how another system handles it, the only other published post 20 level system I have seen is in Sword And Sorcery's Advanced Players Guide. They take a more simplistic view, only going up to 30th level. They have the level progression slow down, and offer new class abilities for each of the core classes for levels 21-30. They do not have epic spells or any spells above 9th level. They don't have epic feats or epic prestige classes.

 

[Zappo]

They don't need to take as many fighter levels as possible - only fighters do. For example, for spellcasters, spellcasting levels are much more important.

 

[the Jester]

I've run one of my current groups (originally) from 1st level to epic levels, and the epic slowdown in BAB and save bonuses is a good thing. As Alzrius points out, without it a lot of things get silly otherwise. What's a challenging AC if the party cleric and monk need a natural 20 to hit what the fighter only misses on a 1?

 

[Aesmael]

I don't think the complaint here is against the slowdown of advancement in these areas so much as it is against level twenty determining the number of attacks per round a character will get, ever. To me, at least, it seems strange that a character might have their first twenty levels a wizard, say, and then decide to take up fighting later in life (maybe they mastered every spell in the world and got bored?), but they could take twenty, thirty, a hundred and sixty levels of fighter, and not have the same number of attacks per round as a straight lvl 20 fighter.

If that was the issue, I agree that it is puzzling. I don't mind the slowing of advancement and I don't mind (right this moment anyway) the idea that a character can have a maximum of five attacks per round. It just seems odd that a character's number of attacks becomes set at twentieth level.

Saves were not mentioned in the original post (which does not preclude them from being discussed, of course).