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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 247065" data-attributes="member: 2486">I'm fascinated by Epic Level campaigns, but I'm slightly more skeptical about ever playing them...I suppose all of us have the fascination with the extreme.  I am a high-level gamer (well, usually DM, but never mind).  I enjoy interacting (or watching my players interact with) potent characters.  Not normally kill them, but marshall forces, manipulate factions, pull strings and engage in the kind of intrigues impossible at low-level.  A high-level campaign should be more than a hackmatch, it should be a battle of wits between the 'good' and the 'bad'- perhaps half of that finding out which is which.  Epic-levels extend the scope.  Powerful artifacts needing to be retrieved and destroyed.  Double-edged swords abound.  Each major action of the PCs has a massive effect on the lives of millions.  The denouement to my last campaign was the battle over an artifact which would grant its wielder godhood, in a godless world (i.e. supreme power).  The enemy leader's first gamibt was: 'Stand down.  If you fight- and lose, I shall kill half the population of this world.  How many score thousand innocents will have shed blood for your arrogance, in daring to fight me.  You may prevail, but the odds are against you: and what price those odds are.  If you stand down, I shall spare them.'That: the major decisions that players have to make, is what makes EL campaigns enjoyable, not 'I hack Thor into little pieces'.But what makes it potentially unplayable?  The d20 system.  The d20 system has only a given range.  When the modifier get larger than the around 20, the d20 system breaks down.  The randomness fades.  This need not be a problem.  For intrigue-based campaigns, this is hardly ever a problem (although someone with Bluff+100 may throw this.)  Combat becomes more infrequent.  The fact that no one can save against the 100 Int wizard with Ultimate Spell Focus should fade.  Otherwise, I fear greatly.  After all, look at the Epic Level Spells.  DC 500?  So a Spellcraft of +499 is guaranteed, but +479 is impossible- I see little real difference between the two, but the d20 system imposes a huge difference.  ELC can work: if the d20 fades into the background, if combat is restricted to denouements and climaxes and the scope (worlds) becomes truly epic.  A 50th level dungeon hack just wouldn't do it.</blockquote>

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