Rule of Three finally addresses an important epic tier question!

[Dungeoneer]

I've just read (well, skimmed) this entire thread and it's pretty interesting stuff. The question that a lot of this discussion raises in my mind is this:

Should Epic Tier be shorter?

I mean if Epic Tier is envisioned as the 'climax' of a D&D game it really doesn't make a lot of sense to stretch it over 10 levels, does it? The climax of a 100-minute movie usually lasts 10-15 minutes. The climax of a 200 page book might be 20 pages. Why should the climax of a D&D game last a full third of that game?

This is even more important if Epic Tier is envisioned as a series of big, set-piece encounters. You can only fight with a balor on the back of a dragon that is falling into a volcano so many times before it gets a little ridiculous.

Maybe the answer is that Epic Tier needs to be compressed down to about three levels. Or... maybe not?

 

[Incenjucar]

Think of it like the LotR trilogy movie.

The Hobbits are doing crazy stuff in the third movie that they would never be capable of in the first and which they were learning to do in the second, but they don't toss the ring until the very end. Works in Star Wars, too, and any other kind of story. Level 21 is when you realize the true size of the problem, and then you work toward the final chapter of conflict that is level 30. Level 30 is when you go to fight the emperor.

 

[S'mon]

The old 1e AD&D 'Epic' campaign I ran for Upper_Krust and some other players worked fine for long-term play, but as U_K has indicated it was very different in several respects from what WoTC has been putting out.

1. As he said, we didn't have long 100th level dungeon crawls. All fights tended to be either critical, or over very quickly.

2. Lots of political machinations and maneuvering, among both gods/demons and the mortal powers.

3. An emphasis on how the divine realm affected the mundane, and vice versa. Two of 100th-level lesser god Thrin's (U-K's PC) greatest threats were human mortal enemy Fighters ca 12th-16th level. But they were bad ass.

 

[Incenjucar]

Epic dungeons can be fine. It's all in the presentation.

 

[Aegeri]

I've got into a general state of running around 5 encounters per level at epic. I do make them a bit harder than I normally would at other tiers - but I agree that having 10 encounters a level seems a bit clumsy and not keeping the pace that epic seems to want.

 

[S'mon]

My advice here would be to keep it short, with maybe 3-4 Scripted Encounters and some potential Random Encounters.

Most of the really high level adventuring we did invloved maybe 3 combat encounters followed by dealing with the (often political) repercussions of what we had just done.

Thats not to say the capacity for longer Dungeon crawling didn't exist, but when the PCs are almost as powerful as the Demon Prince they are facing, then most of the guards on the way to the throne room are going to be like dropping sausages into a meatgrinder.

That reminds me of Thrin ploughing through the hordes of dergho- and yagno-daemons to reach the Time Gate (guarded by uber-Lolth and uber-Graz'zt) and recover the Sceptre of Eternity before the Red Wizards could completely obliterate your timeline. I have to say I didn't expect the daemons to drop *quite* so easily.

Perhaps you could give some more examples of stuff we did that you think would translate well in 4e?

 

[kaomera]

Howdy kaomera!

Hey! =]

Make sure that the actions of the PCs have an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else.

All good ideas (ok, Orcus turning Demogorgon's severed head into a demi-lich is straight-up better than good...), but if I'm going to meet the players' expectations (and the expectations that the game has suggested to them, IMO) then it just amounts to "punch Demogorgon in the face, adventures fall out". And that's cool, players like adventures - they may expect a magic item or three to also fall out, but regardless they'll be happy to have the adventures. If you try and make any of this stuff an actual problem without an easy solution (which in 4e basically means punching more stuff in the face), you run into problems. I feel like 4e leads players to believe that things should get easier and more convenient for their characters as they gain levels (after all, that's what being more powerful is about, right? Oh, that's a fantasy? Well, D&D is fantasy...)

My advice here would be to keep it short, with maybe 3-4 Scripted Encounters and some potential Random Encounters.

Most of the really high level adventuring we did invloved maybe 3 combat encounters followed by dealing with the (often political) repercussions of what we had just done.

Thats not to say the capacity for longer Dungeon crawling didn't exist, but when the PCs are almost as powerful as the Demon Prince they are facing, then most of the guards on the way to the throne room are going to be like dropping sausages into a meatgrinder.

As we have seen from WotC Epic Material, theres a gravitation towards Elite and Solo opponents at the higher levels. One of the annoying aspects of the E series adventures is that there is no verisimilitude given to the forces of Orcus in terms of composition. I remember vividly in one encounter there is this Vampire Lord who is more powerful than a Balor, but he's really just treated like any other mook even though he's basically a Demigod (in terms of power). In doing things this way, theres no real sense of progression, because no matter how powerful the PCs are, rather than having them cut down dozens of Glabrezu guards, instead the Glabrezu guards are just given extra levels to compensate (so you end up facing them in small numbers). So in a way, 4E has its own built in Level Scaling that you need to be wary of (a feature which ruins the Dragon Age videogame in my opinion).

S'mon touched on some cool stuff in this area as well.

See, what I'd think of as good epic play (and what, for me, would match up a lot more with the "source material") would be a small number of really big, cataclysmic fights; and not only dealing with the fallout afterward but also needing to do stuff beforehand to set up for the fight. I'm talking about fights that the PCs absolutely have no hope of winning without raising an army, discovering the secret name, uncovering the lost relic, performing the ritual, etc. So, ideally (for me) several mini-adventures before they can even get to the real fight. And I absolutely agree that the way 4e scales, and everything that comes out of that and other issues as far as player expectations, is the big monkeywrench in that plan.

I actually did a Review of E1 Death's Reach a few months ago. The E2 and E3 reviews are in the pipeline. E3 is probably my favourite of the bunch.

I'll have to take a look at that, thanx for the link.

 

[Upper_Krust]

That reminds me of Thrin ploughing through the hordes of dergho- and yagno-daemons to reach the Time Gate (guarded by uber-Lolth and uber-Graz'zt) and recover the Sceptre of Eternity before the Red Wizards could completely obliterate your timeline. I have to say I didn't expect the daemons to drop *quite* so easily.

Well Thrin was a min-maxed uber badass warrior with every twink in the game, I vaguely recall killing Druaga's 20 summoned Pit Fiends (which he hoped would soften me up) in a about 2 rounds and then killing Druaga in the following round.

Immortal Combat was incredibly brief. I don't recollect any significant monster lasting more than 2 rounds. Characters did high damage and had relatively low hit points...and almost never missed. I recall you had one Overgod with an AC -40 that I think amounts to the only being in the multiverse my character didn't hit on a 2+.

Of course the Ring of Vampiric Regeneration was clearly overpowered back in the day. Haste was also unbelievable, I mean I think I was pulling 14 attacks per round at one point!

Perhaps you could give some more examples of stuff we did that you think would translate well in 4e?

Well I'll have a think about it (my memory is probably foggy on the details).

I have been thinking that one way to represent the high damage of real world firearms to deities in 4E might be to devolve the monster rank but dramatically upscale the damage.

For instance a standard SWAT dude with a shotgun might be worth the XP of a (same level) standard creature but the hit points of a Minion. Dealing triple damage.

 

[Thraug]

As a question, which fantasy novel series would you say hit Epic tier?

Raymond E. Feist has had Pug pretty much at Epic tier for his past few series, and the level of stuff which is going on in the Midkemia books is very definitely epic (and alien invasion).

Cheers!

The 4th+ books of the Gord the Rogue series, by Gygax, definitely was set in the epic tier. I disliked these books for the same reasons I dislike playing/running epic tier campaigns as the (D&D) designers expect, and that is roaming the planes fighting demon and devil hoards, while traveling through floating escher cities made of brass and alternate realities. Just too goofy for my liking.

 

[Thraug]

Heroic 4e is the simplest tier, and to me, the most enjoyable. Things get pretty complicated at paragon, and combat takes progressively longer, especially with casual players playing once or twice a month, who don't really care to be time conscious about their turns, and pour over every power on their character sheet which is 4-5 pages long.....

I wholeheartedly agree with you! My current campaign is in mid Heroic and we're already seeing significant slowdown in combat and worst of all, keeping track of conditions, temp bonuses/penalties, ongoing powers, states, zones, is VERY taxing. We are all adults, 25+ year gaming vets, and most members of our group are smart folks with very technical occupations, but we find 4e combats are playing US more than we are enjoying the battle as a flowing struggle we can sink our narrative teeth into. We spend well over 90% of every combat doing crunch and tracking conditions and temporary bonuses and penalties. The helpers we used/tried, such as combat managers, condition tokens and cards, or other game aids have helped some, but we still find the amount of work involved in managing a single combat to be very demanding.

As a GM, I'm dreading what paragon brings and can't imagine what combats will be like in epic! 4e combats are about 4x more demanding than we would like. Waaay too many player options (dragging combat to a crawl), too many conditions to track, and tracking power-specific boons and penalties is brain numbing. My brain is crunched at work, I don't want to have to memorize or track 15 things a turn in a game when I come home. I can't imagine subjecting a non-gaming new player to 4e. Do they ever return for another session?