Is the Force Dragon unhittable?

[jgbrowning]

reading this thread makes me wonder..

how is playing epic levels any fun?

joe b.
*if he cant use his fingers to add, he ain't play'en*

 

[Corinth]

What's the armor & natural armor bonus for a Force Dragon?

 

[wolff96]

Yes, I'm assuming you can make them.

There are precedents in the Epic Level Handbook for various bonus types -- the staff that grants an Insight Bonus to spellcraft to cast epic level spells, for example.

If the bonus type isn't listed with a cost, then you will have to work backwords to derive it, as Victim pointed out.

Oh, and Oops... that should have been a "Sacred" bonus, not a "Divine" bonus. I'll fix that.

 

[Numion]

reading this thread makes me wonder..

how is playing epic levels any fun?

Haven't you ever wanted to say to the DM: "I roll.. 15, for a total of 104! Do I hit?"

After the joy of that line wears off, I don't know.

 

[Umarth]

Level 19 cleric/1 Divine Disciple with a stick they picked up off the ground.
+20 BAB with Divine Power (BAB)
+20 True Strike (Domain Spell) (insight)
+20 Str of 51 (natural 18, +5 for lvls, +20str domain, +4 Righteous might, +4 rage)
+5 Greater Magic Weapon
+1 Bless (moral) (lvl 1)
+1 Guidence (competance) (lvl 0)
+2 Charge (charge)
+1 Higher Ground (unnamed)
+4 Divine Favor (Luck 1st)
+1 Weapon Focus
-1 Size
+74 to hit

Here is a lvl 20 char that can pick up a stick and smack him on a 14 or better.

I'll admit he can't do this every round but then he is 23 lvls lower than the suggested for the CR and he only has a stick to hit it with. I'd come up with an epic lvl character but I don't have the ELH.

 

[Victim]

The Force Dragon has 64 natural AC, and 22 deflection. In theory, it could add haste, Epic Mage Armor, etc, etc to its AC as well. However, 40th level characters with Epic Dispeling or whatever they called the +40 max one can automatically knock down or counter his spells with it. I can easily imagine a group dispeling it, and then having the casters save their haste actions for counterspells. If you're planning on doing enough damage to remove a few throusand HP, then the Heal spell ruins your day - enemies might counterspell just to prevent the Heal.

I don't know if Epic levels are any fun. Never played them. However, I don't really think so. With a range of 20 random possibilities but huge bonuses, most actions will fall into either the impossible or trivial camp. Some things are cool, like the Legendary Dreadnought character I made who can probably demolish an army singlehandedly. But it's not cool that you have to find more than +20 in weird bonuses from things that are barely mentioned in the books. Also, cool items are very expensive compared to effective ones. The mega abomination item I made is less than 2 million. Bracers of Relentless Might cost more than 4 million. Which one lets our character hit the force dragon?

However, epic adventures might be really fun, if wild and over the top. But there are lots of good ideas in the Epic book too. Most of the Epic feats are cool, and I plan on letting level 12+ start taking some of them.

 

[mmu1]

I don't know if Epic levels are any fun. Never played them. However, I don't really think so. With a range of 20 random possibilities but huge bonuses, most actions will fall into either the impossible or trivial camp.

*Marks out a large circle with salt, lights a number of candles around the perimeter, sprinkles the place with holy water and begins to pray in a hope of keeping the freaks with 125th level characters away.*

I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't have fun fighting most of the things in the ELH... My major problems with it are that:
a) It just doesn't seem different enough than "low"-level combat,
b) What is a gap between spellcasters and non-spellcasters at high levels becomes a freakin' Grand Canyon at Epic levels,
c) The absolute reliance on magic and equipment makes improvisation and multiple approaches to fighting something extremely difficult, and
d) As you say, and this is directly related to how badly you need magic or special equipment, too many situations end up having binary outcomes, because the size of the bonus is so much bigger than the size of the random die.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

However, epic adventures might be really fun, if wild and over the top. But there are lots of good ideas in the Epic book too. Most of the Epic feats are cool, and I plan on letting level 12+ start taking some of them.

Personally I found a lot of the epic feats to be rather un-epic. And I'd let a player get them as soon as they had the pre-reqs other than being epic. The few epic feats that were more epic in my mind I'd either not add or apply a level pre-req your 12 sounds good.

 

[FlimFlam]

And the point remains that most real 40th level PCs that actually advanced to Epic levels instead of being created as 40th level characters, were role-played and not roll-played, and didn't have some twinky combination of classes couldn't hope to touch this thing.

CR is a steaming pile of doo, especially at Epic levels.

Oh, yeah, Metalsmith: I don't believe Brilliant Energy affects natural armor.

If you are playing a level 40 character, chances are you didn't "role-play" to get that hight. At this point, isn't all just about hack-and-slash anyway?

 

[ashockney]

Still not quite there...

I think we're getting pretty close.

You get those bonuses by looking at existing existing items and effects and

So, we can make up some stuff that doesn't exist yet, but they've clearly laid the groundwork for in the DMG and ELH. Ok, I buy that. That goes along the same lines as casting a Persistent Divine Favor and/or a Divine Favor item on an Epic character. Therefore, a combination of items/spells that grant Sacred (not divine, whew!), Competence, Morale, Luck, and Insight bonuses will get you the extra +10 to +20 we were missing. Especially by 40th level, and your 13mm GPV value expected.

Cool, anyone else have suggestions besides this? Is there anything else we missed?

Haven't you ever wanted to say to the DM: "I roll.. 15, for a total of 104! Do I

Not nearly as much as I, the DM, have wanted to say, "No. Not even close."

as it stands both Weapon Focus and Epic Weapon Focus provide unnamed bonuss, and therefore they should stack. Note that they do not have the 'this overlaps' caveat that things like Epic Spell Focus do.

I stand corrected. My bad. Total mis-read.

begins to pray in a hope of keeping the freaks with 125th level characters away.

Heh. Brings all new meaning to the Gen Con/Origins "bring your highest character" killer dungeon crawls, doesn't it?

I'm really looking forward to running and playing in the Epic realm. We have characters that have achieved "near epic" status ranging in level from 16th - 26th, in campaigns over the last ten years who people loved to play, but that flat out had to be retired because there weren't any challenges left. How great to potentially bring 1st, 2nd, and now 3rd Edition heroes out of retirement to take on a new generation of challenges! Woo-hoo!

Ok, so nobody's mentioned the very simple way of hitting this thing, which I'm sure my players will try to avoid, which are the Epic feats Great Strength and Epic Prowess. These stackable feats (A 40th Epic Fighter could have 17 such feats) add either a +1 to BAB that stacks or a +1 to strength that stacks. That's well within range of striking distance on the force dragon, but I was assuming that players would want to come up with more creative solutions.

One of my players came up with this (thanks to Bo):

40th Ranger (+30 BAB), using Dread Bow (+14) and Dread Arrows (+14), with Bracers of Archery (+2), feats of WF, EWF, and PBS (+4), twinked out Dex (+17), Divine Favor (+6), Pale Green Ioun Stone (+1) = +88 to hit with first attack, how convenient.