PHB2 Making Epic Rules Irrelevant?

[Someone]

Making Epic Spells less powerful than normal spells within a combat setting is not strange?

I was talking about your last post: it isn´t strange that the epic spell was such a wimp, since epic spellcasting rules work that way, favoring "ritual" casting and working against fast, damaging spells. Of course, it´s strange that epic combat spells are less effective than non-epic spells.

(Also not saying that the rules of epic spellcasting are good: It was a factual commentary on the RAW)

 

[KarinsDad]

Pathetic.

What are you complaining about?

You were Epically Scared followed by Epically Disappointed. Sounds like the Epic spell worked.

 

[Nail]

What are you complaining about?

You were Epically Scared followed by Epically Disappointed. Sounds like the Epic spell worked.

ROTFL!!!!




:\

.....I guess I shouldn't complain. Our PCs made it through okay.

 

[Nail]

(Also not saying that the rules of epic spellcasting are good: It was a factual commentary on the RAW)

Ah => Got it. My mistake.

 

[Kalshane]

My experience with epic level play was pretty disappointing. We got up to 24th level and ultimately everything was so powerful (PCs and monsters both) that whoever won initiative tended to kill their opponent before the opponent got to act. It felt like 1st level play with less missing and more dice.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Epic play is .... different.

IMO the epic magic is moot at less than ~35th level. Casters between 21-35 should get the epic metamagics and whatnot that increase the die caps, areas, ranges, etc. Early epic magic (35-50th level) seems only useful for getting past the non-epic spells that have no way to be bypassed; divinations that punch through mind-blank, for instance.

At higher levels....meh. It gives you a nuke to fire off when you have an opponent in a known area. Mass summons, eathquakes that can level fortresses, creating snowstorms in summer, etc. They don't take out the epic BBEG in most cases but smite so many minions that their threat is limited to their immediate presence.

Combat gets trickier. The creatures have so freakin' many specials, attacks and BAB that it really is just like 1st level all over again. I don't like the long, drawn-out slugfests so I'm leaning more and more towards crafting my own epic critters that have fewer hitpoints and more fast healing. They still have several hundred hp to survive non-epic foes and fast-healing 10 means that it heals 100hp/min, enough to appear invulnerable to almost any non-epic foe. Templates are a great way to get those epic CRs without adding hit dice.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Not strange, since the epic spellcasting system doesn´t like combat spells. Increasing damage and decreasing casting time is expensive in points, but you can get big bonuses for increasing casting time, having a lot of helpers contributing with high-level spell slots and suffering damage (which isn´t a serious drawback if you can heal after casting)

Not to mention that you can only cast a few epic spells per day. You're left to rely on your regular spells whose DCs don't scale well against epic level creatures.

 

[Jdvn1]

Or maybe WOTC think the epic rules were a bad idea ? After all, the average Dragon or Solar in the MM use standard rules, why must players use another system ?

WotC is in the (good) practice of not requiring you to have some expansion books in order to use other expansion books.

So, if you don't own the ELH, WotC isn't going to make you buy it so that you can run MM creatures. On the other hand, if you have the ELH, it's very easy to "epic-up" pertinent MM creatures.

There is one exception that I can think of (CP [Complete Psionic], but that's totally unusable without the XPH).