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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 246012" data-attributes="member: 537">One could also say that all this stuff happens off-stage, just like you never see normal people eating, crapping, and doing other biological things. Smaug, for instance, never had a problem finding food even after he was the only living thing left alive in the Lonely Mountain. In fact, I think it was Tolkien who said something along the lines of fantasy being like a stage show; knowing all the secrets spoils the fun. I've probably mangled that in at least six places, but you get the drift: thinking too hard about fantasy is bad.Back to Epic level: I still don't really see the point of it, besides doubling the level cap to 40th (and probably doubling the DM's workload as well). That doesn't count as a mission statement in my eyes.What _is_ an epic character anyway? A superhero? You're already a superhero in D&D by the time you hit 10-15th level. You can jump off cliffs, wade through hordes of mooks, fly, teleport, kill people with a touch, and raise them from the dead. Well, maybe not _all_ at once, but the point remains the same: even before you hit 20th level, you're already breaking all the typical fantasy tropes that we know from non-D&D sources.I like to think of D&D as representing four distinct genres:levels 1-5: Realistic, or as much as it can be when magic is around. By and large, characters are vulnerable to much the same things as the people around them, and you don't need to change the world to accomodate them.6-10: Heroic. You can pull off those 1-in-1e6 chances (taking the One Ring into Mordor, deposing snake cults singlehandedly, etc). Most western fantasy novels, movies, etc top out at this point.11-15: Superheroic. You can do utterly fantastic things, as mentioned above. Anime and wuxia is probably around this level, except for stuff like DBZ and Slayers.16-20: 4-color. The troubles of one 3rd-rate planet orbiting a 4th-rate star in a 5th-rate galaxy are below you. It's time to tour the planes, baby!So even without the ELH, you can already do funky stuff. Adding even more funky stuff doesn't seem like that big a deal.</blockquote>

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