KarinsDad said:
What I don't like about using non-permanent spells or items to qualify for Epic Feats is that it allows characters to boost ALL of their ability scores such that they can qualify for many of the feats. This just feels wrong to me.
Well, in practice you can't really get all the ability scores up unless the character's starting stats are way above normal, or the game is handing out piles and piles of cash.
If you allow items to satisfy prerequisites, you can hit the 25s if you have a 14 to start with and sink 137,500 gp (book for inherent bonus) plus 36,000 gp (+6 enhancement bonus item) into the stat. Note that you can't have six 14s as a 28 or even a 32 point buy character.
173,500 is quite a large chunk of a level 20 character's starting wealth. If they're self- or party- crafted the cost is less, except the book maker is now spending 25,500 XP per stat that he's going to do this for (and 138 days!), which is in my experience prohibitive.
On top of that, you're using up an item slot, which is an often overlooked cost.
Doing it for multiple stats is even more resource-intensive, and there are certainly classes for whom you might want to qualify for feats based off of 4 or 5 stats (paladins for example.)
Note that settlement size GP limits essentially put a cap on what you can buy at around 300,000 gp. That means that you can't just waltz out and buy epic enhancement bonus items. Those will need to be found, crafted, or commissioned. I suspect in many games, you're not allowed to just pop over to the local planar metropolis, plunk down your cash, and buy an inherent bonus book already. We actually allowed this for a little while, and the game still didn't break.
It is I think, adequately difficult for characters to qualify for epic feats. At level 25, for example, I still haven't had the resources or the time to get my fighter's dex high enough to qualify for anything interesting from that stat. He's had to stick entirely to the strength chain, pretty much. While my constitution is now high enough to start looking at stuff like damage reduction or fast healing, the fact is even as a fighter I've only had 4 feat slots to spend, and those have gone to strength chain optoins. I think that's as designed. I would have loved to go for Epic Leadership too, but even with allowing item bonuses to help qualify, that feat is basically totally out of reach for me and my 10 starting charisma. There's no way to buy the +10 charisma item that I would need (300,000 gp limit!) and spending feats and level-up points on charisma as an alternative would be horribly inefficient for someone with the fighter's party role - plus we might hit level 32 (when I could qualify after spending 2 feats, 2 level up points, and spending the 173,500 gp and burning my cloak slot on charisma) in about the year 2010.
I think one thing that is overlooked sometimes in epic discussions is just how slow advancement gets at these levels. Putting requirements for things past level 30 or so is essentially the same thing as saying "you can never get this." Combats take much longer at epic levels, so you get in relatively fewer kills per session, and in my experience, the fact that epic adventures take sooooo much longer to write means that you get fewer sessions per year.
