NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6284555" data-attributes="member: 2656">I think there is an awful lot of room between a straightforward epic hack and slash game and a total paradigm shift at epic.  Plenty of room for various shades of nuance, depending on referee and player preferences.The 4e epic advice says that epic PCs can aspire to kill a demon prince or god, but it should be a quest spanning the entire epic tier, where the mystery of how to permanently is solved, any requisite artifacts, relics, allies, powers etc are assembled, and the final confrontation should probably be the capstone of the campaign. i.e, One does not simply kill Orcus.Beyond that, how complex and demanding the plot is has to be customised to the players concerned. I have found that trying to force unwelcome plot elements down players throats is unlikely to work out well (the selfsame plot elements may work great for different players). Myself, I tend to run an onion-like plot structure, the inner layers of which are increasingly complex. However I don't force the entire onion on the players, it's up to them to engage with the various plots and cut into the onion to a depth both they and I are comfortable with. Nor do I punish them for their tastes and preferences, even if they stick to the straightforward outer layers and avoid the crunchy centre.In paragon and epic tiers the players gain access to increasingly better tools for engaging the inner layers of the onion plot, should they wish to.In my game, should the PCs aspire to killing a mythic entity e..g. Orcus, as well as the quest referrred to above, the PCs will learn that there are campaign-changing consequences for slaying such an entity, who often are also a metaphorical embodiment of particular concepts. For instance, the slayer may be obliged to take Orcus's place in whole or in part, rendering straightforward assassination less useful. A prospective demigod sponsored by the Raven Queen or other death god could have the slaying be a significant part of their ascention, channelling Orcus's power more productively. There are lots of other possibilities.In my 4e campaign my current PCs are at 17th level, approaching epic levels. During the paragon tier most of the PCs have accumulated by their choices mystical connections, titles, prophesies which invest them with potential higher than their mere class abilities, and should inform their choices of epic destiny. It is also a way of keeping the scale in tight focus and personal in higher tiers, as the PCs are tagged as significant if they don't go to relevant NPCs, some of the NPCs will sooner or later come to them (like it or not). But I don't need to transform my game into a Starcraft RPG.</blockquote>

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