The Slow Death of Epic Tier

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again SkyOdin!

The truth is that the distinction between truly powerful mortals and gods can be somewhat vague in non-monotheistic religions.

Thats because all power is relative.

Confusing the issue is that there are many grey areas between mortal human and god, such as demi-gods and mortal incarnations of gods.

Absolutely.

More than anything else though, epic heroes are supposed to be the strongest heroes who are capable of fighting off enemies that threaten the world as a whole. It isn't really possible to create a tier above that without weakening the basic premise of Epic Tier.

I disagree. How about an Immortal Tier where immortal heroes battle foes who threaten the universe/reality itself...?

I will generally agree with that, though it depends somewhat on the god. The term god is pretty broadly defined in polytheistic religions. I wouldn't put the god of a minor river on par with Zeus, for example. The protective god of a single house would likewise not really count as being very epic.

As you note, the lines are blurred.

This I definitely have to disagree with. There is no way I would put Arthur and Lancelot in separate tiers, to start with. The kind of adventures the Knights of the Round go on tend to be generally similar, and all of them are roughly the same overall strength. Saying that Lancelot gets to be Epic tier is rather arbitrary. I would peg them both as being Paragon tier.

The whole point of Lancelot (introduced later by the French) was that he's better than Arthur and that Arthur had to cheat (using Excalibur) to beat him.

Moreover, being Epic isn't about being the strongest in the world. It is about being powerful enough to significantly change the world. By my reckoning, Epic level heroes should only show up once every few centuries within a D&D world, and leave a lasting impact whenever they do. Merely being the strongest in the world isn't enough to be Epic.

Depends upon the narrative. You have to ask yourself how did those purporting to be the strongest in the world actually get to that position, what were their deeds?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think there are three choices:

1) You can run a game in an epic world, not unlike the Illiad (at least under certain interpretations), where gods and demi-gods are sometimes physically presents and impossible epic tasks are expected. That isn't to say that every kingdom has an epic ruler - an epic level king would be the exception. It's just that there is a meaningful population of unique epic heroes and monsters that common folk avoid tangling with. (Forgotten Realms games are probably best run with this perspective, although the tone of that world can be very inconsistent with it's power level.)

2) You can run a game in which epic threats are the rare exception. In this world, epic heroes are vanishingly rare and an epic threat is a major concern for everyone. A story line in this could end with a epic threat, but that would be the exception, not the rule and a failure in confronting the epic threat could have massive reverberations in the world. That isn't to say that non-epic stories can't take place at the same time, but a well-known epic threat could dominate the world's attention in the same way that, say, World War II dominated the world's attention in the early 1940s.

3) You can run a game in which there are many epic threats, but they are ghettoized to the outer planes (or some other arena). This is the D&D default, and it has the advantage of allowing writers to work on epic story for the default D&D world without having that story interfere with the generic heroic/paragon world. So, from WotC's perspective, this makes a lot of sense, but -- if you actually want to run a game with epic content -- this non-integrated structure seems worse to me than either of the other alternatives.

-KS

I think there are a lot of permutations of theme, tone, and relationship of epic play to the rest of the game and setting. Some combinations are likely to work better than others of course.

All of them IMHO generally involve epic play being tied to a fairly deep story is what I'm getting out of the whole discussion. You can run an epic tier dungeon crawl if you WANT, but it is a square peg for a round hole. Whatever the other elements present things need to regularly go 'over the top' in epic, that's where it likes to live.

Now, this may well mean that some settings aren't really ideally suited to at least some styles of epic play. Eberron has always struck me as a setting that is more attuned to low/mid level intrigue with maybe a topping of paragon level PCs going around reordering things they way they like them and/or running up against major powers of the world. It doesn't seem like a setting that readily admits of characters messing with the gears of creation much as those gears are pretty abstract at best. It doesn't have much of a good vs evil kind of dichotomy either, so exactly what ARE you fighting for at epic? One solution there would be having the evil come to you. The characters could do a decent epic run of "our little land against the big evil" or something. That could end with a touch of the big stuff, driving back an invasion from the evil dream land or whatever, with maybe a journey to one or another of the planes at the top of it, but instead of defeating some singular opponent it would be more like sealing a gate for 10,000 years or something.

 

[Ryujin]

IMHO an Epic dungeon crawl should play like a MC Escher painting or a tesseract. On that level, it's doable and reasonable.

 

[Sunseeker]

IMHO an Epic dungeon crawl should play like a MC Escher painting or a tesseract. On that level, it's doable and reasonable.

Thank you for such an amazing suggestion!

I think I'll work this in to a one-shot epic-tier battle.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello KidSnide!

This is actually one of the other problems with epic-level play. The vast majority of epic foes are extra-planar is nature. Although the outer planes can always be a threat to the PCs' homeland, epic-level play tends to involve the PCs leaving the locations and NPCs to which they have developed attachments. That's a major barrier for the games I tend to play/run.

I am curious as to why is it a barrier in your games?

While I agree with you that epic foes are perhaps too planar-centric, I don't see the big problem in that.

For instance, in the Star Wars Universe, it didn't hurt that there was no defacto 'home world', because the galaxy was a big place.

Maybe it was because in our own epic campaign we roleplayed across multiple different planets, that I don't have the same intrinsic attachment to any single world.

Related, I find the 21-30 nature of the epic tier to also be a little problematic. To my mind, a standard use of the epic tier should be as the last adventure to a campaign, not the last third. In a campaign arc that isn't supposed to end with fighting a demon prince / god, there's only so much epic gameplay to be had. However, it seems to me that epic destinies and the character generation rules would make a level 1-23 game a bit of a bummer for the players. Thoughts?

Why is the Epic Tier only the campaign-ender? I would have thought its where you unleash the 'super-powers' and crank the dials up to 11.

I did a lot of roleplaying in an epic campaign and it never grew stale, nor required continuous one-upmanship (of the scale) to sustain interest.

We had massive wars, demonic invasions, time travelling, duels between deities*, giant aliens trying to eat the planet (and the mad cult aiding them), cross-genre adventures (modern, sci-fi), undead empires, planar politics, alien wizards from the past, reawakening overgods, invading humans from another world, mega-dragons and loads of other escapades.

*and demigods.

So, in a nutshell, I disagree there is only so much epic gaming to be had.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Howdy Ryujin!

IMHO an Epic dungeon crawl should play like a MC Escher painting or a tesseract. On that level, it's doable and reasonable.

...if only I'd thought of that...

- A later encounter involves a demigod's (Escher-style) throne room where he controls the gravity...and he's a Skirmisher. Better hope you end the round on the same face he's upon.

 

[KidSnide]

This is actually one of the other problems with epic-level play. The vast majority of epic foes are extra-planar is nature. Although the outer planes can always be a threat to the PCs' homeland, epic-level play tends to involve the PCs leaving the locations and NPCs to which they have developed attachments. That's a major barrier for the games I tend to play/run.

I am curious as to why is it a barrier in your games?

While I agree with you that epic foes are perhaps too planar-centric, I don't see the big problem in that.

For instance, in the Star Wars Universe, it didn't hurt that there was no defacto 'home world', because the galaxy was a big place.

Maybe it was because in our own epic campaign we roleplayed across multiple different planets, that I don't have the same intrinsic attachment to any single world.

In my game, the extra-planar nature of epic foes is problematic because my game is about the PCs and their interaction with their world and its institutions. Their objectives are to change the world in ways they want and prevent it from being changed in ways they hate. Because success and failure is all about the repercussions, the game wouldn't have much meaning if it took place in a place where they weren't invested.

I don't think the Star Wars example applies here. In a Star Wars game, the galaxy is the game world. It's not about the planet -- it's about the scope of where the PCs have interests and connections. If you want to play a Planescape style game, the planar nature of epic foes isn't a problem at all. In fact epic foes are very nicely integrated into the Planescape gameworld (notwithstanding issues of edition conversion).

Why is the Epic Tier only the campaign-ender? I would have thought its where you unleash the 'super-powers' and crank the dials up to 11.

I did a lot of roleplaying in an epic campaign and it never grew stale, nor required continuous one-upmanship (of the scale) to sustain interest.

We had massive wars, demonic invasions, time travelling, duels between deities*, giant aliens trying to eat the planet (and the mad cult aiding them), cross-genre adventures (modern, sci-fi), undead empires, planar politics, alien wizards from the past, reawakening overgods, invading humans from another world, mega-dragons and loads of other escapades.

So, in a nutshell, I disagree there is only so much epic gaming to be had.

I don't think the epic tier is limited to the campaign ender for every game. I just think it's properly limited to the campaign ender for many games, and that's just because it's in the nature of the game. Your list of epic adventure themes is great, but it's a great list of a particular genre. If my game revolves around Court intrigue and the politics of a set list of nations, it's a major genre-busting curveball to introduce a giant alien trying to eat the planet.

To take a more specific example, I think it was a mistake (game design wise) for War of the Burning Sky to stretch from levels 1 to 30. I tend to think the foes at the end of that game are more appropriate for low-epic tier play, which makes sense if you consider that it was originally design to stretch from levels 1 to 20 in 3e. (Quick aside: WoBS isn't flawless, but it is fantastic.) Similarly, my 13-year campaign ended with a glorious time-travelling, demigod-fighting conclusion in which the PCs concluded the campaign by deciding to destroy their own planet. That's clearly epic play in my book, but it was only the last adventure. The existence of a single time-traveling, demi-god-making epic device had been the central focus of the campaign for almost a decade. It would have been totally bizarre to add a second or third epic threat on top of it.

So, yes, I agree that there's no limit to the amount of epic gaming you can do. But there is often a limit to how much epic gaming makes sense for a given campaign, and I don't think the current epic rules do a very good job of supporting those scenarios.

-KS

 

[Barastrondo]

In my game, the extra-planar nature of epic foes is problematic because my game is about the PCs and their interaction with their world and its institutions. Their objectives are to change the world in ways they want and prevent it from being changed in ways they hate. Because success and failure is all about the repercussions, the game wouldn't have much meaning if it took place in a place where they weren't invested.

Yeah, exactly. The obstacles I have with adopting epic gaming have nothing to do with world-spanning or multiplanar campaigns that are designed with epic-level play in mind from the beginning. I've pretty much run epic fantasy and it worked great: did a fantasy Champions game for several years, in a world designed to provide them with lots of antics.

The hiccups I have with 4e epic gaming in particular are entirely personal: they have to do with a world that the players are attached to, that was not built with epic-level gaming in mind from the very beginning. It was built back in 2e, and I have never been allowed to stop running it. (Not that I mind!) The places that the PCs call home don't jive well with epic-level play, and their character concepts are usually quite grounded. I know how to build a world designed for epic play; there's rather less support for integrating epic play with a more heroic/paragon-themed setting without changing the mood entirely, if that's even desirable.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've sometimes wondered if a bit of mechanical support for "increasing power brings increasing difficulties," wouldn't help here? Not that it would solve every issue, but might make some of the issues easier to manage. And I actually see this emerging in late heroic to early paragon. I've had no experience with 4E epic tier yet, but from what I read in this topic and elsewhere, I have no reason to expect that it wouldn't apply.

Anyway, a mechanic that would work should probably involve some kind of negative feedback from increasing power. Consider the older versions of Runequest, with increasing Size and Power making the character much more capable, but having more difficulties hiding, sneaking, etc--only on a more widespread basis. Think of that as something tied to character level, only with a more metaphysical scope.

For example, assume that character (and monster and magic item and spell) level directly correlates with how easy it is for other beings of similar power to know where you are, what you did, what you touched, etc. By the time you hit 30th level, every other being of 30th level or greater, can nearly always determine what you've done, if they care to spend some modest effort looking.

This has an effect, not unlike the "polite society" portrayed in the American Western. Everyone is armed, and everyone is prepared to use it, if you get snotty enough. So "killing Orcus" is terribly rude--and rude is the last thing you want to be. No, it's not enough to sneak in and kill him. You've got to make him "draw" first. You've got to make him give you cause, and in a way that everyone else knows about (and will bother to look).

Now, in the mythology (and similar stories) that I've enjoyed, this is seldom explicit. About the closest I can think to making it explicit is some of the Roger Zelazny stories. ("Lord of Light" is a particuarly good example.) But the above is often the tone. It's rather assumed that beings don't want to make a move because it leaves them open to threats from a dozen other beings that are watching.

So then what happens is that beings spend a lot of time trying to find ways to circumvent this fact of "relative power omniscience". They hire agents of significantly lesser power, often indirectly. They try to come up with ways to block discovery. They arrange for "threats" to present themselves to get their opponents to make a move first. And all the while, they meet in appropriately epic locations for social gatherings, where they all make catty comments to each other and watch for reactions.

The gods, of course, are distinct from merely powerful beings because they have developed effective ways to get around "relative power omniscience."

 

[Sunseeker]

Anyway, a mechanic that would work should probably involve some kind of negative feedback from increasing power. Consider the older versions of Runequest, with increasing Size and Power making the character much more capable, but having more difficulties hiding, sneaking, etc--only on a more widespread basis. Think of that as something tied to character level, only with a more metaphysical scope.

For example, assume that character (and monster and magic item and spell) level directly correlates with how easy it is for other beings of similar power to know where you are, what you did, what you touched, etc. By the time you hit 30th level, every other being of 30th level or greater, can nearly always determine what you've done, if they care to spend some modest effort looking.

That is, what I've always felt actually happens. At low levels, YOU run into the problems. Bandits, undead, wolves, and the usual assortment of critters that exist in the world.

As you level, foes become more of "I was wandering around and found them." to "I was wandering around...and they found me."

This has an effect, not unlike the "polite society" portrayed in the American Western. Everyone is armed, and everyone is prepared to use it, if you get snotty enough. So "killing Orcus" is terribly rude--and rude is the last thing you want to be. No, it's not enough to sneak in and kill him. You've got to make him "draw" first. You've got to make him give you cause, and in a way that everyone else knows about (and will bother to look).

As someone mentioned earlier, this is a great basis for getting characters involved in the story. Young Fred did all he could to save his love, but death(Orcus) still claimed her. Now Fred vows to destroy Orcus to save his love. Cheesy? Sure, but Orcus has "fired the first shot"(at least to fred's mind), and thus he now seeks to destroy him.

So then what happens is that beings spend a lot of time trying to find ways to circumvent this fact of "relative power omniscience". They hire agents of significantly lesser power, often indirectly. They try to come up with ways to block discovery. They arrange for "threats" to present themselves to get their opponents to make a move first. And all the while, they meet in appropriately epic locations for social gatherings, where they all make catty comments to each other and watch for reactions.

The gods, of course, are distinct from merely powerful beings because they have developed effective ways to get around "relative power omniscience."

I would disagree that the gods have gotten around this. Where adenturers are the "wild west", gods are pre-WWI europe. They have their Balkans, always tettering on the brink, threatening to bring down the whole. They have their "entangling alliances" that would cause the whole to come to war over the few.

They haven't really gotten over it, they've just gotten into a rut.

In fact, the very reasoning behind the limited number of Gods in early 4E, is as I recall, that they had a "World War of the Gods".