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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 5514107" data-attributes="member: 38357">I re-considered my choice of the word "need" a bit before I hit submit on that post; I don't think you need any particular set of stuff, or whatever, either. However, it's what the system is more or less telling the players to do. I think that should tend to be helped along with the new design ethos - part of the problem is that individual components previously have tended to range from poor (trap choices) to good+ individually, but the really great stuff was only great because you managed to fit a few things together. And there are still too many "feat tax" options.The issue with feats (in particular) is less one of a "perfect storm" than it is that 4e is yet another game with such a reliance on "leveling" that it's hard to actually fill out your concept at level 1... Or at any level far too often. After I've dug through the "tax" options and the choices that the other players are going to complain if I don't take (and as I prefer to play Leaders, but would prefer not to have to heal I may see that more than some) I don't feel like I have have the "slots" left to get all of what I want. And that gets worse if I have the character planned out in advance, as now my concept includes a paragon path that I can't take until I hit level 11, etc. And if you don't have your character planned out in advance, it's far too easy to fall into the "traps". (And I'm not a big fan of "splatbook retrains" - the last time I tried that I ended up with two players deciding to jettison their current PCs and re-roll completely, because folding in the new "cool stuff" basically wrecked their character concepts.)I also don't think "survival at level 8" is really the issue (I'm not sure how much of an issue it is at all, 4e characters are very survivable, even at lower levels). Games peter out within 4 or 5 levels simply because managing everyone's schedules is difficult, and then someone loses interest and stops showing up and everything ends up unraveling. Players want "advancement", they want more power for their characters, and they want the survivability and convenience that comes along with it. But they also want challenge, and (to get back on-topic a bit) they want an "epic feel" at epic levels (and before that too, a bit). To me it seems like you don't get that epic feel without stripping away some of the invincibility, both to danger and to having to take responsibility / make tough choices, that is part of why players want higher-level PCs in the first place.To me the issue of epic matching up with any particular source material (novels or whatever) is that RPGs are just too different of a medium. "Appropriately leveled encounters" or even a completely epic character (and not a character that has very heroic-tier frailties but is epic in one or more specific areas) just don't really show up in the books I've read. And the quasi-epic characters have big responsibilities, often just unleashing their power is fraught with consequence. In contrast epic 4e PCs saunter out and punch Demogorgon in the faces - or at least that's what I've found that players want. They want to just keep running dungeons, but they want that "epic feel", and I think the two are just pretty much mutually exclusive.Maybe I just haven't been reading the right adventures; I think someone mentioned E1 as being good, maybe I'll track that down and give it a look. I think that if WotC was going to publish epic material that would be useful to me it would need to include both a "tutorial adventure", with copious sidebars of "why we did this thing that we did and why we did it that way", and also at least as important would be some advice on epic play (and maybe epic character design) for players.</blockquote>

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