CRGreathouse said:
What versions of feats are we using? The versions in the ELH/original 3.5 SRD, or the versions reprinted later? For example, Armor Skin was knocked down to +1 in some supplement (Complete Warrior?)... do we use it as +2 or +1? Likewise for other modified feats.
Using anything beyond the listed sources will result in the users needing to have these sources to play - which is something we wish to avoid. I strongly suggest keeping to the feats as listed in the SRD/ELH.
DM-Rocco:
I must confess I am not very pleased with the introduction. I just don't see how it is relevant to the storyline we agreed on - IIRC, the characters were in fact sent by the gods to climb on the Spire at level 20 as the initial scene, they were certainly not the god's opponents.
I don't mind playing god's opponents at all, but this is just not the storyline we agreed on. If you want to change the storyline to "Beyond God and Devil" (a la "beyond good and evil"), I would be very happy to explore this theme. But it needs to be stated and a storyline worked out.
I also am not sure that our characters can take on gods one-on-one. If using the Faiths & Pantheon stats, I'm pretty sure we can't - I'll work on that and keep you posted.
As for the mechanical technicalities, I would order the explanations the other way around.
Here is my version of your text. It's more formal, I'm afraid - that's just my style of writing. But note how I ordered it differently, I think the order in my version is better (then again, I have been known to err).
Introduction
The winds buffeted horribly this high up the Spire. By rights, they should have thrown the old Wizard to an impossibly long plummet, bereft of his magic as he was. But the wizened old man did not reach level 100 without some cunning. “Forward! Up!” he bellowed at the great beast he rode, though he doubted it could hear him over the wind's howl. Prodding it forward, he slowly made his way up the Spire at the center of the Heartlands, climbed the very heart of the multiverse. Haggard, cold, and wind-shorn he reached his destination. The No-Priest was already waiting for him at the top.
“You look uncomfortable” the No-Priest chuckled. “Unbuckle and come sit with me, enjoy the view.”
The Wizard frowned. “We have work to do, this is no silly matter.”
“Come now,” the No-Priest was smiling, but there was a hint of steel in his eyes. “You should at least take one last look at what you're about to destroy.”
They sat upon the Spire, watching the Heartlands below them spreading out into the horizon, into all the planes of existence. Above them the lights of Sigil were just barely visible, but they could almost see the fine net of portals it wove, poised like spider at the center of the multiverse.
After a long time, the Wizard shifted. “Come on” he said, “we have a multiverse to destory.”
Upon the spire at the center of everything, where even a God's power is quelled, the two impossibly wove their spell, and the foundations of existence begun to crumble.
It's The End Of The Cosmos As We Know It is a Dungeons and Dragons adventure for level 100 characters, with a prelude for level 20 or higher characters that will culminate in increasing the character's level to 100. It is not set in any particular world, and could be easily worked into any campaign where the Spire may exist. Although it is designed to be usable as part of an ongoing campaign,it is primarily designed as a one-shot adventure. The adventure can be run with your own characters, but the pregenerated characters that were used in playtest are provided and recommended. During the adventure the characters should gain enough XP to raise several levels, and downtime will be provided for the manufacture of magic items or spell research. The whole adventure is designed to take about [??] 4 to 6 hour sessions to complete.
__This adventure uses the epic level rules as defined in the
System Reference Document, which are a mixture of the rules in the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide and additional content from the 3.0 Epic Level Handbook (ELH). It was necessary to impose some further guidelines and interpretations, within these rules, as otherwise the variability in power level is too extreme to accommodate (see Character Creation, below).
__In addition to the core and epic rules, the adventure uses rules from Deities and Demigods, Faiths and Pantheons, and a few additions from the Book of Vile Darkness, the Book of Exalted Deeds, and the Epic Insights section from Wizards of the Coast's website. Faiths and Pantheons is all but required for the statistics of some deities, but for the most part the portions used from the other books can be understood without them or fairly easily replaced.
__This is a one-shot adventure, produced with no intention of making a sequel. As such, it accepts the epic rules as they are, without making compromises or changes that may enhance a longer campaign. If you are interested in continuing play in high epic levels, the Immortals Handbook from UpperKrust and CRGreathouse should make for fine reading material if it is published in your lifetime.
Preparation
To play this adventure, you must have access to the core and epic rules. Access to Deities and Demigods, Faiths and Pantheons, The Book of Exalted Deeds, The Book of Vile Darkness, and the occasional other sourcebook used can be useful, but lack of these books can be circumvented with less or more work.
__The adventure may begin with “lowly” level 20 characters, but turns to level 100 fairly quickly. The players can use the pregenerated characters, which are provided at level 20 and 100, or create their own characters. Making a level 100 character is great fun, but very time consuming. Make sure that you are conversant with the epic rules before setting down to make one, and be prepared to dedicate four hours or more to character generation. It is imperative that the characters will be created in accordance with the character creation guidelines below, or the adventure will need to be retrofitted on the fly to accommodate them.
Character Creation
In order to create an adventure for level 100 characters, you have to impose some limits during character creation. The variability is otherwise so high that no single adventure would be able to match the party's capabilities. Even with the following limitations you can easily “brake” the game, so when creating a character try to keep her capabilities in line with the pregenerated characters provided. Significantly more or less powerful characters would require the DM to significantly modify the adventure to fit the party, which at this power level entails a lot of work. You should be especially leery of exploiting “combos” or loopholes to achieve optimal tactics; this is especially true for spellcasters. With the right choice of spells and feats, for example, a level 100 wizard can do in excess of 1,000,000 hit points of damage in one round. The adventure does
not cater to such power levels.
__The primary statistics that the adventure is built to expect are as follows:
* HP should be around 3000 for front-line combatants, 1000 to 2000 for secondary combatants and other characters.
* An AC of 60 is needed to have any chance of being useful against even non-combatants. ACs of 100 to 110 are needed to function in combat, with 150 or so needed for a decent chance to evade attacks from front-line combatants.
* An Attack bonus of +100 or so is needed for secondary combatants, and frontliners can reach +140 or so.
* The adventure assumes that most characters will have 50% concealment, and that they will be able to overcome most sources of concealment.
* Saving throws are assumed to be around +100, with +70 or so being weak and +135 or so being possible.
* Spell DCs of non-epic spells reach 70 or so, so saving throws against non-epic spells will often succeed. Monsters are designed and chosen with this in mind.
* Skills are assumed to reach up to +200 to +300 in the character's focus. The adventure tries to make use of all skills, including Knowledge and Perform skills, Diplomacy and Bluff, Sense Motive, Hide and Move Silently, Listen and Spot, Search and Disable Device, Open Lock, Spellcraft, Concentration, Climb and Jump, and more.
* A reasonable optimal damage/round output is around 1000 hp/round, around 3000 hp/round is deadly and below 500 hp/weak is weak.
The pregenerated characters do not use Level Adjusted races or templates. Some of these may be problematic at high levels, in particular the Paragon, Monster of Legend, or Magister templates. Consider carefully before allowing non-PHB races or templates whether their effect at level 100 is problematic; this is often the case with templates that improve based on HD.
__Only the core and epic rules were used for the pregenerated characters. You may include other material, the exemplars were kept core mainly for simplicity. Of course, we strongly discourage including material that is not balanced by Level Adjustment, such as divine ranks and some 3.0 templates.
Here are the rules for actually making your level 100 character:
Choose your Ability Scores from the Elite Array, or use a 30 point buy (DMG, page ??). All abilities automatically benefit from a +5 inherent bonus across the board. A character may be of any age.
__Your character may have one base class, one prestige class, and one epic prestige class. This is just to keep things simple for both the player and the DM. You should avoid dipping into several classes to cherry pick class special abilities, if you enter a class pursue it to a significant amount (usually to its non-epic end, at least). Cherry picking will just increase your power beyond what's appropriate for your level, and unbalance the adventure. You are limited to the core and epic rules and classes unless your DM says otherwise; think carefully before allowing non-core classes.
__When calculating skill ranks keep a close eye on your Intelligence. Skill ranks are not retroactive. You can decide when your character gets his +5 inherent bonus to Intelligence, but it can't be before level 15.
__Use average rolls for hit points (maximum at level 1) and other variables. There is a lot of die rolling, the adventure is designed for average die rolls. (In fact, there is so many die that it's not reasonable that you'll get a significantly different result from rolling them.)
__Do not take the Leadership feat. The main problem with this is the cohort, as running two high-epic PCs is very difficult. Note that we do have one pregenerated character with this feat - his cohort was intentionally made as an epic commoner to alleviate this problem (and for fun).
__You have 250,000,000 gp to purchase personal gear. (A level 100 character should actually have 277,777,770 gp; assume the rest goes to the inherent bonuses, supporting a few kingdoms, and so on.) All magic items in the DMG and the ELH are allowed. Custom magic items can, and should, be created to fit the character; use the following guidelines:
* No single item should exceed a 50,000,000 gp market price.
* Increasing an ability score is capped at a +30 enhancement bonus. Only enhancement (and inherent) bonuses are allowed.
* Skills increases are capped at +100 competence. Only competence bonuses are allowed.
* Weapons are capped at a +50 total bonus equivalent, with up to +25 enhancement bonus and +25 in special abilities.
* Spell Resistance is capped at 112. SR items cost x10, like other epic items and not like the Mantle of Spell Resistance suggests.
* No custom item should not provide divine, sacred, morale, or other miscellaneous bonuses; leave those to spells. Armor class should be increased by armor (and enhancement), shield (and enhancement), natural armor (and enhancement), and deflection bonuses; saves should be increased with resistance bonuses; and so on.
You can deviate from these guidelines, but try not to stray too far. For example, the epic commoner has a multitude of epic classes, but that's because there is no Epic Commoner class. The most important thing is to keep the characters within the expected power level of the adventure.
__When designing PC epic spells, keep their power level in mind. In general, mitigating factors should
not be used. The exception are weak spells, such as Energy or Destroy spells, that need the boost, and cases where it is thematically appropriate and not overpowering. Some seeds should not be used to their extreme (e.g. Armor and Fortify).
The fastest way to generate a level 100 character is as follows:
* Make a single-classed level 20 character, using the Elite Array (15,14,13,12,10,8) and the core-rules only, with no gear.
* Add a +40 epic bonus to your base attack (but do not increase iterative attacks!) and saves.
* Add 20 level-based ability increases, and a +5 inherent bonus to each ability score.
* Add 27 epic (or non-epic, if you choose) feats, plus more based on your class: 40 for an epic Fighter, 26 for a Cleric or Paladin, 20 for a Rouge or Wizard or Sorcerer, ... This can take time; to speed it up, you can focus on taking one or two types of stacking feats (such as Improved Spell Capacity or Improved Sneak Attack) and only take a few other feats to complement it; this will lower the number of choices, and hence the time.
* Add your class's special abilities. Rouges add +50d6 sneak attack and +30 against traps, ...
* Set aside 250,000,000 gp and whittle it away by acquiring magic items. Set your sights on the power levels described above. This can take a lot of time, so if you want to keep things simple just focus on getting ability score enhancement, competence, resistance, natural armor, and deflection bonuses to bring you to the needed power level, add in a weapon or two, and a mantle of SR 112, ring of universal energy immunity, and shield of greater reflection. You're set.
* Decide on when your Int was raised and by how much, if at all, and calculate skill ranks appropriately. Allocate skill ranks according to your class skill list.
Put it all together, and congratulations – you have a (single-classed) level 100 character in a (relatively) short time.
Why play/design a 100th level module?
It has been asked many time of us, “Why would you play a 100th level module?” For us the answer is simple: because we can. The module originally started as a conversion of the original 100th level module H4 - The Throne of Bloodstone. H4 was designed under first edition rules, where the main difference between a 20th level player and a 100th level player was hit points. It quickly became clear that the module could never be converted into 3.5 for one main reason, hit points are the lest of things that a 100th level 3.5 character gains over 80 epic levels.
__We quickly came together as a group of PCs and DMs to design 3.5s version of a 100th level module.
__This module is not for everyone. Many have told us that they would never play in such a module, however, many who have said they would not play in a 100th level module also stated that they don’t play D&D above level 9 because the game gets too crazy for them. If you like low magic or low level gaming, then this module is not for you. If you love stories of Gods and mortals who can do fantastic feat, then this may be for you. The ELH has many skills, feats and spells that can’t be used until much higher levels. This module is designed to exploit the seldom-used abilities of the ELH and push the limits of the game to the max.
