Belegbeth said:
I don't understand this claim. If the designers of the ELH have "mistaken assumptions," how could the ELH itself not?
Simple. The ELH works well as an extrapolation of the core rules into levels beyond the 20 found in the core PHB. However, this assumes you embrace the style of play that high level D&D fosters and you bear in mind several facts.
First of all, high level D&D is not mythic, it is superheroic. The designers of the ELH and D&D in general have put themselves in the awkward position of trying to foster a mythic play style with rules that workd best for a more superheroic play style.
The designers and most DMs who were unhappy with the ELH rules assumed two things that are wrong.
1) That D&D can be used for mythic play.
2) That the ELH can be dropped into an existing campaign with no problem.
First of all, you cannot use D&D rules for mythic play over an extended period of time. The game breaks down without any balances on the PCs power. Mythic play is basically simulating stories like the Odyssey where the PCs are these great heroes doing these great things. Mythic play can work fine for more abstract systems like in Exalted, but not in a tactical system such as D&D which is predicated on the PCs having external checks to their power. Mythic play assumes that the PCs are the only epic level characters in the world. The D&D (d20) system is predicated on checks and balances. But if every NPC is 1st level and your PCs are 30th, how long do you think your campaign can last? Or how well can verisimilitude be maintained when the PCs are veritable gods compared to the vast majority of NPCs in the game world?
Not very, hence some of the dissatisfaction with the ELH. Part of this problems stems from the flawed NPC level demographics in the DMG. D&D epic level gaming fails if you follow those demographics.
To run a long term successful campaign into the epic levels requires a world built for it from the beginning.
This brings me to point 2. The designers and many DMs who bought the book assumed they could just tack it on to existing campaigns when the PCs reached those levels. Well, it doesn't work that way.
A campaign world can only function without breaking down in the presence of epic PCs if they are not the only epic PCs in the world. For an epic campaign to successfully work, most major NPCs should be epic from the very beginning of the campaign. The average town guard should be from 10 to 20th level. The BBEG should be something like a level 80 lich archmage or something. Only by completely rescaling the NPC level demographics can a campaign progress into epic levels and use the ELH without a problem.
This problem is especially exagerated by many DMs who prefer a 'low-power' game. By its very nature, D&D is high powered and high magic. Those low power DMs who don't feel comfortable with the way the game changes beyond level 15, certainly aren't going to be comfortable going into epic levels. Especially since doing so and not causing the game to break down requires them to completely rescale the NPC level demographics of their campaign world. Not an easy task for DMs who are used to a much smaller scale such as level 1-15, where the most powerful NPCs in the world do not exceed levels 15-20.
There is nothing wrong with campaigns that use an abbreviated level scale, but those campaigns cannot progress into epic levels without breaking down.
Many DMs and the designers did not consider the ramifications that epic level scaling has. It certainly cannot be tacked on to an existing campaign without some serious consideration from the DM.
