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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 1725575" data-attributes="member: 13098">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.</blockquote>

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