Dragonblade
Adventurer
This is purely a thought exercise since I don't have a campaign anywhere near epic level at this point in time. But my thought is what if the players want to keep playing their characters at level 30. What could I do as DM to allow them to continue to level and gain some benefit from doing so, but without breaking the game?
So here is what I came up with. First of all, I wanted to leave the math alone. Levels beyond 30 never give you more HPs, boost stats, increase your attack bonus or anything like that with one exception. All stats increase by 1 at level 31, level 41, and so on. No stat can ever exceed 30.
What you do is in essence is start over as a level 1 character in a different class. You gain all the class features and powers of that class, a feat, and everything as if you were a level 1 PC. You would then manage and keep track of these powers separately from those of your primary class. You would then level up normally as far as gaining powers, feats, and paragon paths go. At level 51 you could then choose an additional epic destiny and so on. At level 61, the process would repeat and the player could choose a third class and so on ad infinitum.
I would predict that most players would likely pick a second class they have some synergy with since their primary attack stat in their second class might be too low otherwise. For example, a Paladin would choose Fighter, or Cleric since they would already have a high enough STR, CHA, or WIS to be pretty effective in their new class right off the bat. But probably wouldn't pick Wizard since they probably used INT as a dump stat and it would be too low otherwise. At least for now. Eventually they could pick it and do well.
So what challenges would such mythic characters face? Well, since all these beyond epic characters get is a bigger suite of powers and a stat boost that will top out at +10, you can still run most epic level encounters and monsters without really needing to change anything. Characters might get a little tougher by having more encounter powers and dailies to expend but most epic level threats will still be as viable as they were before.
However, if you really wanted to change the range of the game, and get full use out of the entire gamut of monsters in the MM, is you might also adopt the house rule that I have seen before where you remove all 1/2 level bonuses from the PCs and all monsters. That way no matter what level the PCs are, you still have an entire Monster Manual full of foes you can use. Sure those heroic level monsters might go down a bit faster against a level 60 PC with multiple dailies to spare, but thats ok since the PC is level 60 after all. And you can always tweak monster defenses and HP to make them tougher.
Thoughts? Comments?
So here is what I came up with. First of all, I wanted to leave the math alone. Levels beyond 30 never give you more HPs, boost stats, increase your attack bonus or anything like that with one exception. All stats increase by 1 at level 31, level 41, and so on. No stat can ever exceed 30.
What you do is in essence is start over as a level 1 character in a different class. You gain all the class features and powers of that class, a feat, and everything as if you were a level 1 PC. You would then manage and keep track of these powers separately from those of your primary class. You would then level up normally as far as gaining powers, feats, and paragon paths go. At level 51 you could then choose an additional epic destiny and so on. At level 61, the process would repeat and the player could choose a third class and so on ad infinitum.
I would predict that most players would likely pick a second class they have some synergy with since their primary attack stat in their second class might be too low otherwise. For example, a Paladin would choose Fighter, or Cleric since they would already have a high enough STR, CHA, or WIS to be pretty effective in their new class right off the bat. But probably wouldn't pick Wizard since they probably used INT as a dump stat and it would be too low otherwise. At least for now. Eventually they could pick it and do well.
So what challenges would such mythic characters face? Well, since all these beyond epic characters get is a bigger suite of powers and a stat boost that will top out at +10, you can still run most epic level encounters and monsters without really needing to change anything. Characters might get a little tougher by having more encounter powers and dailies to expend but most epic level threats will still be as viable as they were before.
However, if you really wanted to change the range of the game, and get full use out of the entire gamut of monsters in the MM, is you might also adopt the house rule that I have seen before where you remove all 1/2 level bonuses from the PCs and all monsters. That way no matter what level the PCs are, you still have an entire Monster Manual full of foes you can use. Sure those heroic level monsters might go down a bit faster against a level 60 PC with multiple dailies to spare, but thats ok since the PC is level 60 after all. And you can always tweak monster defenses and HP to make them tougher.
Thoughts? Comments?
