The ELH is a great book (if you know how to use it)!

[BSF]

Dragonblade, I really cannot jump on your bandwagon that NPC's need to be scaled up. Think about it this way. If the local town has a mayor who is a 10th level Aristocrat, and the constable is an 8th level Warrior, they will easily be able to keep low level PC's pretty much in line. Of course, they can also keep the town safe from a band of orcs, or goblins or other similar challenges. Once you begin a scaling game, it gets obscene what you have to do to the typical low level challenges.

It can be done, but I have purposefully gone to a lot of effort to rationally explain why the book demographics are ludicrous. Frankly, I don't want a load of high level NPC's in my world. The PC's will eventually outstrip their peers. They will earn every little bit of personal power they wield. They will come to realize that they are damn near the top of the food chain and that their choices affect the lives of thousands of people. That will probably happen around 15th level. There will still be people with more power around at that point, but the PC's will begin to realize that their true peers are few and far between. They will also realize that dealing with their peer opponents will be challenging.

Call that Mythic if you want. Fine, whatever is cool.

By the time the PC's reach this point in their careers, they will be legends to one degree or another. If the game is in a wind-down point, we will retire the PC's and start off in another time period, in the same game world. The players have enjoyed this in the past. They like to hear what changes their exploits wrought on the world.

But if we are all still having fun, then they will begin to gear up towards Epic play. They will already know that their abilities far outstrip most everyone else, so they will be taking on challenges that they are driving forward. They will still be below 20th level when this starts.

I want this campaign to go into 20th+ levels. I am eagerly awaiting the Immortals Handbook so I can see if Upper_Krust has put together a system that works better for high level play. I was less than inspired by the ELH. The spell system is kludgy. The magic item progression is logical, but uninspired. The feats are mostly uninspired. There are some that I like. There are some that can be improved. The classes are meh quality. I understand a lot of the choices from a mechanical perspective, but it is clear the ELH is a bolt-on product. The general message is to just scale everything bigger. Bigger DC's, bigger BAB's (but slower than the first 20 levles), bigger AC's, bigger HD, bigger enhancements, etc.

It's a logical progression, but not terribly innovative. The ELH didn't break new ground. The spell seeds idea is terrific, but poorly implemented. Scaling NPC's is just a reaction to the scaling of the everything else. It doesn't solve any problems, it just drags the baseline up higher.

That is a temporary solution at best. All you are really doing is establishing the next level cap. OK, so common NPC's are 10th level. Strong NPC's are 20th. Powerful NPC's are 30th. What happens when the PC's want to go to 40th level? Did you need to plan your campaign world so the top NPC's were 50th, not 30th? You have simply changed the scale.

It is a stylistic difference in play. You clearly like different things than I do. That's cool. Diversity is a good thing overall. But please don't tell me that I don't understand how to use the ELH because I don't scale my NPC's up to accomodate the book.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Joshua!

And the concept is flawed to begin with, IMO. Anytime the modifier becomes larger than the range of the die roll, the game has issues with nonsensical probabilities. When they become, as in the ELH, two or three times the range of the die roll, the game flat out becomes absurd.

At which point it effectively ceases to be a game, and is instead a (poor) storytelling mechanism. The use of probability is important in creating tension, creating the feeling that no matter the odds the little guy might pull through.

This isn't the problem you are making out, and nothing to be wary of.

The bottom line is that there is always the 'Russian Roulette' 1 in 20 chance of success/failure.

But apart from that its very unlikely that the character will have this advantage in every department.

Obviously epic Fighters will be amazing combatants and rarely miss (as you would expect, entering kill zone of an epic fighter is akin to being dropped in a meat grinder) but the higher in power you ascend the wider the gulf between hit points and the actual damage dealt.

Even if you generally only need a '2' or more (on a d20) to hit in combat, every fight is still interesting, the random drama of attacking is replaced by the random drama of critical hits and damage.

Of course this is a very unlikely circumstance in 3rd Edition anyway unless you are always fighting inferior opponents.

 

[Styracosaurus]

......Think about it this way. If the local town has a mayor who is a 10th level Aristocrat, and the constable is an 8th level Warrior, they will easily be able to keep low level PC's pretty much in line. Of course, they can also keep the town safe from a band of orcs, or goblins or other similar challenges.....

This is exactly why Andy Griffith had to stay in Mayberry. Luckily, Otis was only a 3rd level drunk.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Personally I can't wait to run into this demographics problem myself. I think I'll just keep a 2x4 handy to hit my players over the head if they ask.

Some call that "back to basics" play. Gygax's +1 mace was really just a stout chunk of lumber.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I'm not sure if this is Dragonblade's point, but it's certainly mine.

In an Epic-based campaign (like the base-30 and base-40 settings inspired by Eberron and AU I mentioned before), the NPCs are scaled, the PCs are scaled, and, in effect, there are no low levels.

The weakest a PC can possibly be in an Eberron Age of Giants campaign is ECL 10ish - a hill giant with no class levels (note that I do not endorse the Savage Speicies take on giants, i.e. that, if PCs, they exist to be butchered by everything of a similar ECL). The mayor may be only a 3rd-level aristocrat... but he's also a cloud giant. Can he maul any 'low level' threats? Of course. Those threats, if they exist at all, can be found in uncivilized Sarlona and Khorvaire, home, perhaps, to those puny, squirming rat-monkeys called humans, elves and hobgoblins. The greatest heroes of those races might be able to sail to Xen'drik, the only civilized continent, as 12th-level characters - but their first 12 levels will probably be backstory only. That's for a base-40 campaign.

A PC in an Epic Arcana giant-dramojh war campaign could begin at 1st level, but he wouldn't be dealing with the main branch of the campaign until he reached 5th through 10th. Low level threats probably exist - goblins and beastmen taking advantage of the chaos of war to rob and plunder the survivors, for example - but not in the regions where Epic giants and their Epic eldritch draconic foes wage war. Near the front and in the great fortresses of what will become the Diamond Throne, PCs had better be what in normal D&D would be considered high level. That's for a base-30 campaign.

Let's look at a base-40 campaign not dealing with, say, giants. Of course, giants > other races, even dwarves, so there's something seriously wrong with this campaign.

In this world (base-40), a 'typical' adult NPC is around 8th-level. NPC classes probably aren't used, although they could be if you so wished. Regardless, the local lord is probably a Marshal 4/Noble 8 (Marshal from MiniHB, Noble from DLCS) and his guard captain a Paladin 13. The town guards? Fighter 4+1d6 each.

What about low-level PCs? Number one, they're probably very young. I mean, young adolescents, 13-ish, perhaps. What kind of 'worthy' foes can they face to reach 5th level and full participation against threats the town guard deals with? Many of the weaker monsters (dire rats, carrion crawlers, even ankheggs) are truly 'vermin' to this world - mom doesn't call the town guard when a carrion crawler gets in the garbage, she asks junior to get his friends together, grab some sticks, and beat the tar out of the beast. Even creatures like imps, though unquestionably dangerous, are weak enough that young adult PCs could defeat them. Running off to deal with the imp rather than telling 14-year-old (and 2nd-level) fighter Bob's (8th-level guard veteran) dad isn't wise... but it's adventurous, and Bob, along with his chums Sally the apprentice mage, Tom the halfling orphan rogue and Garek, dwarven acolyte-in-training, are adventurers in the making.

In Bob, Sally, Tom and Garek's base-40 world, they are talented but not unique children. By the time they're 20 (or the equivalent), they'll probably be at least 6th level - not a singular achievement, but above and beyond the usual young person. By the time they're 6th level, they'll have heard of 25th-level characters, like Sally's archmage tutor and the high priest of Moradin who once personally blessed Garek. They'll be a match for their counterparts, Thokk and Slagg the young, up-and-coming orcs who, being 7th-level barbarian/rangers and eager to prove themselves to High Chief Gutrog (orc Marshal 4/Barbarian 12/Warchief 10), terror of the steppe, intend to make a two-orc raid on outlying farms.

Could Sally's master or even the local guard captain wipe the floor with these two headstrong orcs? Sure. But why would they bother? The former is away on council of magi business, the latter has to coordinate the town's defenses against a pair of young adult red dragons living nearby, and anyway, both have days off in a world where they, too, are a far cry from the pinnacle of mortal prowess. If the four young adventurers-to-be from our example run across Thokk and Slagg, they're liable to get into quite the scuffle.

1,000 years from these events, 21st-level "Epic" heroes will marvel at the might of this base-40 era. They'll tremble at the thought of holding the sword of Robert the Dragonslayer (Bob to his friends), for this mighty artifict contains powers beyond the limits of modern mortal understanding. Imagine those Epic heroes' surprise if they knew that Bob's +6 Dragon-Dread longsword, Artifact to the modern age, was one of many produced during the mythical Orcwars to counter the legendary Warlord Slagg Scalebender's use of red dragon cavalry.

Obviously, a base-40 or even base-30 campaign will be higher-magic and higher-powered than a usual D&D campaign... but most of those campaigns recall such a higher-magic, higher-powered age. Why not try playing in it?

 

[BSF]

MoogleEmpMog,
You premise for a campaign situation is fine. I have a past age in my homebrew that I had hoped the ELH would help define. (Sadly, it does not.) However your campaign premise in this situation is that the PC's either start with LA characters, or they start as children and traditional low-level threats are akin to bug hunts. Sure, there is nothing wrong with Billy and his buddies going on the equivalent of a squirrel or rat hunt. Though there is nothing inherently right about it either.

It's a stylistic choice of play. I have one campaign idea that starts with the PC's as angels, so the LA is possible. But it is a campaign idea I have in my head and am not entirely sure it will ever come out. I like growing characters from the beginning. Even if it means going through the painful lower levels, I like to see what personality aspects crop up from those challenges.

Even with your example though, you are just changing the level cap for the game. For me, the issue isn't keeping the PC's with enough peerage through higher levels. After 12th level, PC's are on a scale of power that commoner NPC's can't grasp. I'm fine with that. I want ideas on how to transmute the game to something other than bigger everything as the PC's increase in level.

Perhaps the issue for me isn't just making challenges scale. That part is relatively easy. I will have to give it some thought to see if I can properly explain what I am thinking. Words seem to be failing me.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Personally, using LA+0 race characters in a base-40 game, I would play a brief 'childhood campaign' (maybe 2-4 sessions, with the PCs reaching 2nd or 3rd level). Then, I would skip forward 10 years and pick up with the characters at 8th or 10th level, where they begin their adult careers.

It's a stylistic choice of play. I have one campaign idea that starts with the PC's as angels, so the LA is possible. But it is a campaign idea I have in my head and am not entirely sure it will ever come out. I like growing characters from the beginning. Even if it means going through the painful lower levels, I like to see what personality aspects crop up from those challenges.

Well, I'm not as married to the PCs-start-at-first-level concept as a lot of D&D players and DMs seem to be. For my part, I often like to create characters with backstories that don't 'fit' into a single level and don't involve adventuring, so starting at a higher level doesn't bother me a bit.

An 'all-angel' campaign sounds very cool, BTW.

Even with your example though, you are just changing the level cap for the game. For me, the issue isn't keeping the PC's with enough peerage through higher levels. After 12th level, PC's are on a scale of power that commoner NPC's can't grasp. I'm fine with that. I want ideas on how to transmute the game to something other than bigger everything as the PC's increase in level.

Perhaps the issue for me isn't just making challenges scale. That part is relatively easy. I will have to give it some thought to see if I can properly explain what I am thinking. Words seem to be failing me.

I think I get where you're going. It's the distinction between 'mythic' and 'Epic' made earlier in this thread. I, and some others, enjoy the 'bigger everything' style of Epic. I can see how the ELH doesn't cater to the Epic = mythic style of play. It does cater to the style of Epic play I enjoy, Epic play where the world is itself Epic and the PCs, although eventually heroes, aren't necessarily The Heroes. At 30th level, they're elite - but so are the 30th-level Imperial Guard, so are the CR 30 soldiers of the Heavenly Host, so are the CR 30 dragonrider/dragon pairs of the orc high warchief. It's a style of play that I very much enjoy, and the style that the ELH does fairly well, albeit apparently despite itself.

One caveat - I only enjoy 'bigger everything' play for non-spellcasters. The presence of high-level spellcasters is baggage that comes with running or playing in a high-level standard D&D campaign, but it's not something I would otherwise seek out.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

To clarify my previous post. Many of you provided examples, that could apply to all of D&D. I'm looking for specific examples why playing at 20th level works fine, but going up to say 30th level with epic feats and magic, suddenly breaks the game.

It's not so much the feats and magic that break the game. It's the epic spellcasting rules and epic monsters that do. Our DM found that most of the monsters would trounce our 33rd level party. We ended the campaign because there wasn't much left, in his opinion, to fight except for gods and such..... But then he was the "hurry up and rush the party into epic levels" kind of DM. We wouldn't have had "armies" following us if most of the party hadn't taken Leadership and Epic Leadership. (mine was the only character, cleric, who didn't take either feat).

I've had someone on the epic board on WOTC that said that my epic cleric was "underpowered". That may be their opinion but it was the only epic PC I'd ever played...

 

[FireLance]

And the concept is flawed to begin with, IMO. Anytime the modifier becomes larger than the range of the die roll, the game has issues with nonsensical probabilities. When they become, as in the ELH, two or three times the range of the die roll, the game flat out becomes absurd. In fact, I find it ridiculous that you would argue that the DMG assumptions are "silly" because the world doesn't make sense that way, and yet you blithely ignore the absurdity of a lock that has a pick DC of 70. Or heck, even 50. Although, hey, the guy who can pick the DC 70 lock literally cannot fail to pick the DC 50 lock, because he has more skill points in Pick Lock than the DC!

I'm wondering whether a simple fix to this would be what I'm thinking of calling the rule of 10's. Any time a modifier reaches +10, it converts to a d20 roll instead. Thus, a rogue with an Open Lock modifier of +57 would roll 6d20+7 for his skill check instead of 1d20+57. A more mathematically precise conversion would be a "rule of 21" where each +21 converted to 2d20, but "rule of 10" sounds nicer.

Automatic success and failure can be eliminated with this system since 2 or more d20s would give sufficient variation that there is always a chance of suceeding or failing on practically all rolls. "Taking 10" is still possible (all d20's convert to a 10) and "Taking 20" is defined as the equivalent of "taking 10" +10.

Threats, critical hits and other effects that work off natural rolls may take more work, but one possibility is to designate a "primary die" to refer to.

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm wondering whether a simple fix to this would be what I'm thinking of calling the rule of 10's. Any time a modifier reaches +10, it converts to a d20 roll instead. Thus, a rogue with an Open Lock modifier of +57 would roll 6d20+7 for his skill check instead of 1d20+57. A more mathematically precise conversion would be a "rule of 21" where each +21 converted to 2d20, but "rule of 10" sounds nicer.

Automatic success and failure can be eliminated with this system since 2 or more d20s would give sufficient variation that there is always a chance of suceeding or failing on practically all rolls. "Taking 10" is still possible (all d20's convert to a 10) and "Taking 20" is defined as the equivalent of "taking 10" +10.

Threats, critical hits and other effects that work off natural rolls may take more work, but one possibility is to designate a "primary die" to refer to.

I've always figured that, for uber-high games, for every +2 to something, you use a d3 instead. (For strength especially) Makes things random again (Really, when you have a +50 modifier to damage, is the +1d4 from a dagger that interesting anymore? I'd much prefer 1d4+25d3.)

Especially works if you want to get in to DBZ-style power levels.