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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5606335" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, but I think there are a lot of ways to make Epic 'way out there'. I agree, it should be way out there. Honestly I think with vanilla 4e it kinda isn't as much way out there as it probably should be anyway.  Right. It bears thinking on. A few different possibilities exist I guess. One would be Mike's concept of making highly skilled characters capable of amazing feats with their trained skills ala skill powers or something similar. I'd imagine there would also be SOME degree of progression. You'd be able to become specialized, or there would be a tier based +2 or something to your skill bonus. Something that would not blow the variation too far out of proportion but would bump things just enough that say a lock you'd have no hope of picking at level 1 would be within your capabilities at level 30 or whatever. Anyway, I don't know. I suspect no system is perfect. I don't mean to imply that in terms of how you design a monster to be appropriate in different kinds of situations can't vary. There simply isn't a necessity to have a specific formula of 'soloness' because that primarily exists so you can have lots of hit points and action economy on a monster that is still hittable and doesn't have too high an attack bonus of its own. That aspect is dealt with automatically. Now, you are free to make a dragon that has the needed characteristics to take on 5 PCs by itself, but it doesn't need a special hit point progression etc. Feel free to call it a solo, and the game probably would still do that. I think it would be a bit more flexible in what you could do with it though than current monsters. I can understand the logic of why 4e did what it did. I just see a lot of issues with it too and wonder if it was really worth it.People are always wanting more crunch (and more fluff too for that matter). I don't think any game design is going to remove that desire, but a good generalized one can do away with a lot of redundancies. Things that only exist to make numbers line up, things that exist in 12 different variations simply because of other oddities of the rules, etc. I think careful enough game design could eliminate a lot of that, using 4e as a guide and seeing where the issues cropped up and avoiding them. One thing I'd note on feats. Powers aren't such a big issue. The fact that there are 8000 of them is a bit silly IMHO but at any one time you only have at worst a few to deal with. During play you have the ones you've picked, and during character leveling/design you have the ones for your class at a given level. Feats on the other hand are nightmarish, you really have to know all of them in order to decide intelligently and for any given character at each even level you are faced with selecting the right one out of probably 2000 of them that are potentially valid. It is a ghastly horrible design which predictably promptly exploded as soon as they loaded 4e up with cruft.Frankly I am not entirely convinced that the MOAR OPTIONS concept is really actually that good an idea in the long run for the game, neither the players nor the developers/owners. 1e AD&D existed for 12 years with an output of 1 book every 2-3 years and maybe 3-4 modules a year. TSR obviously made decent money off that game for a LONG time. If it were up to me, that's the way I'd be going, maybe 1 new system book a year, some setting stuff, some adventures, leave the rest of the optional/marginal stuff to Dragon articles and have CB block it all unless you enable it. In any case I think they seriously need to reevaluate the long term playability of a game that is almost unplayable without digital aids. I am all for online tools, but a basic character should be doable in 5 minutes with paper and pencil.</blockquote>

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