Rule of Three finally addresses an important epic tier question!

I don't know about novel series. But the Iliad probably counts.

I'd say Erickson's Malazan series is Epic tier by the final books - I don't know how stylistically similar to a typical 4e Epic tier campaign it would be, but those characters dally with gods and end up godlike themselves in a worlds-shaping event.
 

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Well, I would argue that the "you go to a very dangerous place and have a very dangerous boss fight" paradigm has elements in face-to-face play that it lacks in silicon-based play, and 4e takes advantage of these facets well. If I want more setting/situation theme as a focus - or even deliberately kicking theme for story - I use other systems than D&D. Some stuff I have read leads me to think D&D could maybe handle such play - but I still have to see it for myself.

I agree that D&D has very engaging tools for interesting boss fights, particularly in 4e. My point isn't that they're not fun to play, but rather that it's not always enough of a draw to say "You can beat up Orcus." It's one of those goals that can feel like someone else's idea of what you'd find interesting, sort of like how giant piles of treasure is a great motivator for many players but kind of off-message for the person who loves playing a humble paladin.

I've noted that one of the things that's kept me interested in D&D over the years is the fact that although it doesn't do not-D&D very well (and why should it?), it's actually quite useful for D&D mashups. There's maybe a reason that my recent games could be (in a very simplistic fashion) described as "D&D + Castlevania", "D&D + Assassin's Creed 2" or "D&D + Gormenghast." It's that desire to have a game wherein dashing swashbucklers may find themselves negotiating with riddling leucrotta in the rustic woods, but maybe aren't stabbing aboleths over a big pile of gold. Thematic D&D works pretty well in my experience, but it's something you get from limiting some palettes and expanding others: reducing the types of monsters you may run into, for instance, while expanding the possibilities and frequency of human and "demi-human" antagonists.

I agree that the character's motivations should be in the player's control, but if the player has no interest in playing Epic tier, I think it's a cop out to blame the character's motivations. There are ways to engage this sort of character to 'Epic' play - e.g. having turned the Thieves' Guild to good, s/he finds that the old, evil god of thieves' cult is still working against that goal. After putting them down a few times, it becomes clear that the real source of the trouble lies beyong this world - but if the problem is that the player doesn't want to engage in Epic play, the charater motivations seem highly unlikely to be the real reasons.

Apologies for being unclear. Really, I was posting from the point of view that a character's motivations are generally going to be designed so that the player can do what he or she enjoys. If a character is an affable rogue with a skeptical disinterest in the divine, the player is probably interested in reinforcing that archetype.

Now, in some cases you see characters who are designed with the explicit intention of evolving past an initial personality flaw. For instance, a character who starts out with a hardened heart, but the player is hoping for the character to eventually open up and have a strong romance. But at a total guess, this is probably not the majority.

Having said that, of course, the player has a perfect right to be uninterested in Epic play - but even so, the reasons might be worth examining.

Oh, totally agreed. I'm only speaking up for the possibility that the reasons they might have can also include a disinterest in some of the core assumptions of epic play -- for instance, that every player would be interested in fighting demon lords or saving the world regardless of what character they're playing.
 

Hoping that you don't mind a third party butting in - what you say there makes perfect sense to me. Whatever epic is, it isn't swords & sorcery. I've not run epic level D&D, but have run epic (as in over 20th level) Rolemaster, and in my experience to motivate plots and action at that level, and after so much play, world-shaking mythic and historical forces have to be brought into play. And I think that 4e only reinforces this, given the flavour of its epic monsters, epic powers and epic destinies.

To make the move from swords & sorcery to epic I think you would have to find a way of inserting, perhaps somewhere towards late paragon, otherworldy/mythic significance to what the PCs have been achieving in the gameworld up to that point. But players who signed on for swords & sorcery might justifiably feel that this was robbing them of what they'd achieved in the game for their PCs.

Well I was thinking of using the Viridian God-Emperor Hatulin Seheitt as the ultimate BBEG, but I haven't decided whether he'd be the 22nd level Human Insane Noble out of MM2, or some 30th level Solo demigod. In the source he's listed as 50th level!

Moorcock's Eternal Champion saga is swords & sorcery and certainly has 'Epic' themes, but the personal power of the Champion(s) probably fits better in the 4e Paragon Tier. He can stand against a manifested Chaos Lord on the battlefield, but to defeat them needs guile & maguffins, not just a smackdown. God-killing feels very S&S to me, but I don't disagree with you overall.
 

Hey there Aegeri! :)

Aegeri said:
1) More epic monsters and try to actually include them. It would be nice to get a "threats to the planes" book that covered all THREE tiers. Honestly there is enough room there for 40-50 monster blocks in the 20-30 range and it goes a long way. 13 and much of them being solos is just kicking a dood when he's down!

What I actually would love to see WotC doing (and if they don't I might) is run a competition along the lines of the Elder Evils (3.5E) book where people submit an Elder Evil entry of no more than 13 pages (with entries rounded up to 16 pages when art and maps are added).

Winning Entries

The 13 best entries are put into a 224 page book and each of the contributors is paid standard freelance page rate plus they get a free copy of the book.

Runners Up

Entries that are up to standard but fail to make the top 13 are given a free copy of the book and their work is used as a monthly EPIC D&D Insider Feature.

Competitors are limited to one entry. WotC could reserve the right to tweak the levels to gain a better spread across the epic tier (with the titular evils anywhere from Level 21-37)

What this would do is:

A. Create an interesting Epic Book, a must for epic tier fans.
B. Stir up some interest in Epic Material amongst the fans.
C. Generate some Epic material for D&D Insider.

What do people think of the idea?

Someone could maybe ask Mike Mearls about the possibility and see what he says about the likelihood of such a competition transpiring...?
 

Just a quick FYI:

Robert J Schwalb has been converting old monsters to 4e on his website, and quite a few come from the Epic Level Handbook.
 

Just a quick FYI:

Robert J Schwalb has been converting old monsters to 4e on his website, and quite a few come from the Epic Level Handbook.

I have actually mentioned this on his blog a couple of times and I feel this is something that the magazines should be publishing. Some of his conversions are simply excellent and would make fantastic dungeon content (better than some of what IS published in dungeon that is for sure). At least we got Jubilex, who is excellent and has great supporting fluff. Though again, there is the whole "demon" issue.
 

Wait what one of the best designers in the edition is designing where only a few people can see it? That seems like a tremendous waste of work, especially since he's someone who should be able to get through the publishing barriers rather quickly.

Following up Aegeri's statement though, I think we really need for epic to get some deep design considerations. In D&D, epic is mostly a theoretical place, while the lower levels are far more realized. We really could use some epic-level organizations along the lines of the Cult of Orcus, and maybe some truly new monster types.

I have zero personal experience with epic so far (or paragon :( ), so I'm not sure I could design them properly, but I can think of a half dozen novel creature types that would work great at epic. Really, every deity, primordial, and similarly-powerful being should have its own unique followers that can fill these roles. There are also all the gaps created by how narrowly the various planes have been used so far.
 

I enjoy Heroic tier play and will rarely take any of my parties above Lvl 12 or so. I like having fewer powers (and thus really like Essentials), fewer magic items, and like a "grittier" campaign.

With that said, I agree with the OP that there is little Epic support. Even I would love to see one book solely dedicated to Epic tier - for players and the DM. It would be a great read, probably provide lots of fluff, and help people like myself envision sceneries that might entice me to extend my game (still probably not epic, but much closer)
 

Just popping for two comments...

War of the burning sky is an excellent example of an epic adventure path. My group just reached epic levels and its fun!


As to 'rank and file' epic critters, one thing I use is scaling the same monster by type in order to keep pace with the PC.
For example, the Ragesian Master Archer is a level 3 Solo.
He is also a level 8 Elite, or a level 13 Standard, or a 18 Minion...

Still the same guy, just mechanically scaled to remain a viable threat. Just trade 5 levels for 1 shift in type.
This way you don't suddenly have 'new' epic critters running around, its the same critters...but more of them. Then throw in the BBG special epic boss for fun!



Sent from my SPH-M900 using Tapatalk
 

It's frequently a matter of doing something personal. I hate to invoke the specter of video games, but going to a very dangerous place and having a very dangerous boss fight is something I can get elsewhere.

<snip>

You have to let the players decide why they're interested in what they're interested in. You can't tell them that they should also care about the metaphysical, otherworldly aspects of their physical, worldly concerns because that's what epic level assumes.
I agree completely with your second paragraph. But I think that your first paragraph sells short what a fight with Orcus in the Abyss means - if it's just a very dangerous boss fight, in my view the GM has done something wrong.

What I think is missing to an extent from WotC (although they hint at it in the campaign outlines that they sketch in Underdark and The Plane Above), is an account of how epic D&D can speak to the personal concerns of the players (as developed and expressed through their PCs actions in the gameworld) while at the same time connecting to the metaphysical and otherworldly aspects of the game.

It's not as if there aren't other games that show how this can be done (eg Runequest, HeroWars/Quest). And of course I'm not saying that every player has to like it - to reiterate, I agree fully with your second paragraph that I've quoted. But I think if WotC put a bit more effort into explaining how the mythical can also be personal - and not just a Really Big Boss Fight - then they could make epic a lot more appealing to a wider range of players. They could make the mythical more clearly part of the D&D experience in the way that 4e appears to assume it will be (for me, this is a big departure from earlier editions).

If they're not interesetd in doing that - that is, if they don't have any conception of epic as something other than a bigger boss fight - then why bother including it in the game at all? (And I think they do have a richer conception of epic, as shown in Underdark, The Plane Above and Demonicon, but they haven't actually set out to explain it in their rulebooks.)

I would argue that the "you go to a very dangerous place and have a very dangerous boss fight" paradigm has elements in face-to-face play that it lacks in silicon-based play, and 4e takes advantage of these facets well.
True.

If I want more setting/situation theme as a focus - or even deliberately kicking theme for story - I use other systems than D&D. Some stuff I have read leads me to think D&D could maybe handle such play - but I still have to see it for myself.
This is what I think epic can be pitched as. Look at Underdark - there are excellent reasons for wanting to destroy Lolth, but if you do you risk freeing Tharizdun. And now look at The Plane Above, and the notion of journeying into Deep Myth (ie Heroquesting by another name) to restore some element of the world to rights. There are ideas in the published WotC stuff that show how epic adventuring can be linked to thinks that players (via their PCs) can personally engage with.

I'm not saying that this is going to be the greatest fiction ever written - I think D&D produces pretty hackneyed stories - but I think it does show how the problem that Barastrondo has identifed - of epic being too distant from the concerns that link the players to the gameworld - can be overcome. Not that there's any reason, in the abstract, why they should be overcome. But surely it's in WotC's interests, in publishing all this epic material, to try and overcome them and to get the game played at epic tier.

I agree that the character's motivations should be in the player's control, but if the player has no interest in playing Epic tier, I think it's a cop out to blame the character's motivations. There are ways to engage this sort of character to 'Epic' play - e.g. having turned the Thieves' Guild to good, s/he finds that the old, evil god of thieves' cult is still working against that goal. After putting them down a few times, it becomes clear that the real source of the trouble lies beyong this world - but if the problem is that the player doesn't want to engage in Epic play, the charater motivations seem highly unlikely to be the real reasons.

Having said that, of course, the player has a perfect right to be uninterested in Epic play - but even so, the reasons might be worth examining.
I agree with all this.

Oh, totally agreed. I'm only speaking up for the possibility that the reasons they might have can also include a disinterest in some of the core assumptions of epic play -- for instance, that every player would be interested in fighting demon lords or saving the world regardless of what character they're playing.
Another way to put my point, not in order to disagree but just to try to suggest a somewhat broader scope to what epic can mean - WotC's own published examples (in Underdark and The Plane Above) show that they have richer ideas in play than just "saving the world". Good support material for epic would develop this, and leverage it to address other questions like designing and running player-focused scenarios.

So I don't think DMs are necessarily scared, but I think many are uncomfortable. We realize that we have these varying quests that need to be weaved into the overall story and weaved in such a way as to make them appealing to all of the players.

<snip>

This is where support for epic tier can really come in handy, imo. Not just monsters (which would help a lot), but also advice on how to run it.
I think this would be useful stuff independently of its contribution to running epic tier. At the moment, for example, the DMG strongly encourages player-designed quests but gives the GM no advice on how to actually incorporate these into the game - all the adventure-building advice assumes a GM-directed rather than a player-directed approach to play.
 
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