The Slow Death of Epic Tier

[Dausuul]

It doesn't quite eliminate the effect of big numbers. Under this system, a 1st-level skirmisher will have a 16+Con HP, 15 AC and an attack at +6 vs. AC; a 5th-level skirmisher has 48+Con HP, a 25 AC and an attack at +15 vs. AC; and a 15th-level skirmisher will have 248+Con HP, a 44 AC and an attack at +35 vs. AC. The scaling is still very dramatic from one end of the scale to another, it's just that there are half as many jumps that are individually twice as steep.

1e Lolth had 66 hp and an AC that topped out at -10. Her 4e equivalent has 1268 hp total and an AC that tops out at the equivalent of -41. Making her 4e equivalent "17th level" but not changing any of the mechanics makes it semantically different, but still poses the same basic dynamics of scale.

Barastrondo hits the nail on the head here. It's not about how many steps it takes to get to the top; it's about how high up the top is. I would be perfectly fine with 4E's 30-level span if the power differential weren't so immense.

My main issue with epic is that it requires me to conjure up a legion of insanely powerful foes who were previously not in evidence. Now, I usually have a few epic-level critters lurking about my campaign worlds; an ancient dragon here, a lich there, a pit fiend buried and sleeping under the earth. But epic tier demands that I supply enough of those creatures to populate an entire tier's worth of combats!

A glance at their stats (regardless of what number is written in the "level" space, or whether the monster is called "pit fiend" or "orc warchief") makes it obvious that such a confluence of mighty monsters would be enough to bring the campaign world to its knees if not for the PCs. So why didn't they do it before the PCs showed up? Why has it taken them this long to put in an appearance?

I can come up with answers to those questions, but it requires taking the campaign in a whole new direction. In any campaign world that is not already stocked with a zillion epic monsters (in which case the PCs likely spent most of heroic tier hiding under rocks), epic tier is more or less restricted to a) an army of super-powerful monsters has emerged from centuries-long slumber or confinement, or b) the PCs are required to adventure in another plane where there is an army of super-powerful monsters, or c) the PCs are suddenly doing far less fighting than previously.

 

[pemerton]

Crazy Jerome, what you describe is what counts (for me at least) as doing a lot of work.

Also: are PCs getting 2x hp per level, and +1 hit/check/defence per level? Or are these being given out at the normal rate, so top level PCs have only half (or so) of the hp and level-based bonsues that 30th level PCs have by the official rules?

I'm assuming the latter, because otherwise nothing has changed. But in this case, PCs will be pretty overpowered relative to their opponents, won't they? PCs will have epic-tier efects (stuns, bigger encounter and daily powers, ED resurrection abilities, etc) while they're fighting only 15th to 20th level monsters, which aren't designed to operate in a world of such epic effects. So more work will be required to redesign monsters.

Or have I misunderstood you?

Anyway, I agree that you could always try for refluffing - but unless you choose your monsters and your EDs/powers carefully, I don't know how far that will get you. The "return from death" epic features, in particular, seem to me to really force a very mythic feel onto the game. That said, I haven't actually tried this . . .

 

[pemerton]

My main issue with epic is that it requires me to conjure up a legion of insanely powerful foes who were previously not in evidence.

I see the situation somewhat differently, but the upshot is much the same.

I don't think we have to take the numbers if 4e literally. That is, something with 1000 hp isn't necessarily 10 times as tough/lucky as something with 100 hp. Mechanically, a PC with a +10 to hit will hit a monster with AC 26 only half as often as a monster with AC 21, but it doesn't follow that in the gameworld the first monster has armour/skin twice as resilient as the second. In the gameworld as it is actually revealed in the course of play it will be comparatively rarely that a single PC interacts simultaneously with these two monsters (lets say the PC is a 4th level fighter, the first monster an 8th level elite soldier built pre-MM2 and the second a 5th level soldier - this is a conceivable but infrequent encounter), and the statistical relation between the two ACs will be fairly unlikely to emerge at a much more fine-grained level than "Gee, that first guy was pretty tough".

So the numbers don't have to be taken to indicate the reality of the gameworld. But what they do do (unless a fair bit of work is done by the GM) is force a certain sequence of long-term play, as some monsters and other challenges (rough walls, shallow pits) become less and less mechanically suitable as challenges for the PCs, and others become more suitable.

And at this point, those new challenges have to be made to fit into the story of the campaign. Which might be difficult if they were not previously in evidence. Which is why I think that, if you want the game to go to Epic, you have to start building in the key themes - the gods, the mythically-grounded significance of the other planes, etc - from the start.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

My main issue with epic is that it requires me to conjure up a legion of insanely powerful foes who were previously not in evidence. Now, I usually have a few epic-level critters lurking about my campaign worlds; an ancient dragon here, a lich there, a pit fiend buried and sleeping under the earth. But epic tier demands that I supply enough of those creatures to populate an entire tier's worth of combats*!

Let's see if my English allow me to express what I want to say here....

Couldn't a solution be that the monsters scale with the PCs, in a sandbox like way? You have the terrible lich living in the tomb warrens. If the party engage him at paragon, he's x level. If they engage him at epic level, he's y level. And instead of thinking about why the lich didn't conquer the world while the pcs were rising to power, think about his power relative to the party and take the story from there..
The Orc king is a level 28 elite and his warriors are level 27 - because the adventure is about stopping the mother of all Orc invasions that will change the very past so that Orcs have always been the masters, etc. Who cares that the Orc King could have conquered the world before? So you don't need a supernatural army from the Planes - the Orcs are just as badass because the story needs it.

IMO, 4E already does this in that many monsters have heroic, paragon and epic versions. But it's still the same monster.

The dreaded Necromancer of the North with terrible plans that will lay the lands to waste is in reality a 8 level elite. Unless of course the party never engaged him until epic.

Of course, you make certain exceptions from time to time, where the mighty dragon of the Skeleton Caves really is a mighty dragon that will TPK any non-epic party trying to mess with it


Did any of this make any sense?


Edit: D'oh! Rereading pemerton's post, he's saying pretty much the same thing....

 

[Dausuul]

IMO, 4E already does this in that many monsters have heroic, paragon and epic versions. But it's still the same monster.

The dreaded Necromancer of the North with terrible plans that will lay the lands to waste is in reality a 8 level elite. Unless of course the party never engaged him until epic.

I believe I see what you're getting at here, and it's certainly a legitimate approach; if I understand you correctly, it's the idea that the stats in D&D do not reflect any fixed underlying reality. They are simply a way to handle the interaction of these PCs, with these monsters, at this moment in time.

From this point of view, it might be more accurate to say that the Necromancer of the North is neither a level 8 elite nor a level 29 solo; he is what he is within the game world, a purely narrative entity. His stats will be determined at the moment the party faces him, like a quantum waveform collapsing. (Or, more realistically, they will be determined the night before the party faces him, when the DM sits down to stat him out.)

Like I said, this is a legitimate approach, and it's one I flirted with to some extent when 4E was released. However, I've pulled back from it since, because it's massively counterintuitive and it sacrifices much of the usefulness of having rules in the first place.

Suppose the party hears that mind flayers have taken up residence under their home city. The PCs have fought mind flayers before. Now they need to decide what to do. Do they just shrug and say, "Let the city watch handle it?" Do they go after the flayers on their own? Or do they organize a militia and lead them into the tunnels?

If the rules are consistent--if they are at least a fair approximation of the underlying reality of the game world--then the players can answer these questions based on their own experience. They know that mind flayers gave them a tough fight in mid-Paragon and they were trouncing city watchmen at low Heroic, so asking the watch to handle it is tantamount to murder*. They also know that mind flayers have blast attacks and illusion powers that would make a low-level militia force more hindrance than help.

If, however, the rules are merely a transitory illusion, the players have no such capability. They are entirely dependent on the DM to frame the situation for them and evaluate their options. That puts an extra burden on the DM, reduces player agency, and slows down the game (since the players have to constantly ask "How does X stack up against Y?"). It also creates a lot of potential for immersion-breaking moments, when the players' instinctive expectation that AC 30 is AC 30 runs up against the reality that AC 30 is whatever the DM says it is at this moment in time.

And in the case of monster power levels, it seems like a bit of a Red Queen's Race. If monsters level up to keep pace with the PCs, then why are the PCs leveling up at all? Why not just stay the same level from start to finish and cut out all the number-crunching? If the problem is PCs getting bored with their abilities, just hand out new abilities without increasing the overall power level, E6-style.

[size=-2]*One could argue this is metagame thinking, but I disagree. It's players using the rules as a convenient shorthand for what their characters know about mind flayer combat capabilities. Metagaming happens when the players use their knowledge of the rulebooks in ways their characters could not possibly do, e.g., a player who's read the Monster Manual knowing the vulnerabilities of a monster her character has never heard of.[/size]

 

[Neonchameleon]

It's a question of scaling. For example, the earlier editions, once you got past name level, each new level that a PC gained added very little overall, with the exception of every other level for casters. You no longer got full hit dice every level, and the personal combat benefits tended to slow while the social benefits like stronghold founding were enabled. The difference between a 11th-level fighter and a 14th-level fighter was much slimmer than it was in 3e or 4e.

With one of the design goals of 3e being to make each level a more distinct power-up, the differences between levels became more pronounced. A 20th-level fighter has a lot more hit points and attack power in 3e than he did in 2e. In 4e, it becomes even more pronounced because ten more levels are added, with the same intent of making each one a notable power-up, plus the additional tier-wide powerups.

Definitely 3e increased the scaling, no argument there. But I think 4e has the most pronounced scaling of any version, with the potential exception of BECMI.

Care to justify how 4e has more pronounced scaling than 3e? My check of the numbers really doesn't justify this.

Hit points: A 4th edition character gains between 4 and 7 hp per level I think. (I can't remember if Wardens are 7 or 8). A 3rd edition character gains between d4+con and d12+con. Given that a high level wizard will have a +6 enhancement bonus to con - and is likely to have a con of 12 or higher (including tomes) on point buy, that's a low average of 6.5 hp per level. Despite a far lower starting hp, the wizard is actually gaining more hit points every level than almost every 4e class. (If anything I'd say 4e scaling is closer to AD&D name level scaling). Fighters meanwhile are gaining even more hit points every level.

For further wizard comparison, if a 4e wizard is bumping wisdom as his secondary stat with stat bumps (or just not con) then a 4e wizard gains 118 hit points over 29 levels, giving him a final hp total of 140 at level 30 if he had 22 hit points at level 1. A 3e wizard with a starting con of 12 has 5hp. At 20th level he has 51.5 hp from the dice. And assuming a +6 enhancement bonus and a +2 tome he gains 100hp from statics so just over 150 hit points. In 20 levels our 3e wizard overtook the level 30 wizard in terms of hit points despite having started with fewer than a quarter of his total.

To hit. On average a 4e PC gains +1 to hit every level. In 20 levels, a 3e Fighter gains +20 to hit. +5 (Magic sword +5) +3 (Belt of giant strength +6) + 2 (at least extra points in Str from level increases). And we're already at +30 in 20 levels before we've even thought about buffs or feats. Rogues are up to +25 in 20 levels by the same token. (More normally - they can't take Weapon Finesse until level 3).

In fact, just about every measure of offence and utility scales significantly faster in 3e than 4e. And spellcasters fastest of all. What doesn't scale so well are defences other than hit points. Which is why high level 3e combat is over in a couple of very involved rounds.

And this is confirmed by the xp math. 2 levels to double xp for 3e, 4 for 4e.

 

[Barastrondo]

Care to justify how 4e has more pronounced scaling than 3e? My check of the numbers really doesn't justify this.

Dausuul already beat ya to it upthread. I have recanted my heresy; I still think 4e has very pronounced scaling, but I'm quite willing to concede that 3e is a worthy rival at the very least, if not the outright winner in differences between 1st and max level mechanics.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Yeah, my example changes didn't really do what I was trying to do there. (I got some other ideas mixed in, which really don't have anything to do with this topic, and that threw the whole thing off. Suffice it to say that I think there would be some positive benefits to the "presentation" of condensing the existing mechanics down into 15 levels.)

However, I do think there are (at least) three distinct things affecting the feel of epic play, in 4E:

1. The sheer size of the numbers. This is purely psychological, and mainly what I was getting at with the example.
2. The scaling of actual power, which is mainly what you guys were talking about.
3. The fluff itself, which is also psychological, albeit in a different way that the size of the numbers.

I do think the scaling matters, especially since it is the only thing with a true mechanical effect. But compared to other versions of D&D, I don't see it as all that different. It still boils down to, "Is this encounter so much tougher than us that we are hosed, unless the DM pulls punches or otherwise bails us out?"

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again Ryujin!

Yup, you're right about the single theme being dead in the water. I figure that two though, carefully chosen for certain similarities in theme, might just do the trick. As you say though, it would be a near thing.

If you cherry pick two themes...and by cherry pick I mean take Undead and Demons as your themes, then you might just have enough monsters to make a single 9 encounter adventure without (too many) repeated monsters.

No other two themes have enough monsters for EVEN a single (one level spanning) adventure.

Which means that the idea of an Epic Tier-spanning Campaign Adventure Path is pure folly unless you fancy creating/re-skinning 90% of the monsters yourself.

Perhaps this would be a good direction of expansion for Dungeon Magazine to go in? It's nice to have the odd adventure, for those times when you're stuck for ideas, but having material to flesh out your own adventures is useful too.

In a way its the flip side to the Delve structure (itself a very useful format). With drop-in groups of monsters rather than drop-in areas.

Self-contained groups of maybe 8-12 stat-blocks.

...in fact this is exactly the way I have structured my Vampire Bestiary, with several major themes (occasionally with sub-themes*) and several minor themes.

*For instance Vampire Familiars would be a sub-theme of the major (classic) Vampire entry. While the Wight entry would represent a minor theme.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello there, interesting discussion.

Barastrondo hits the nail on the head here. It's not about how many steps it takes to get to the top; it's about how high up the top is. I would be perfectly fine with 4E's 30-level span if the power differential weren't so immense.

My main issue with epic is that it requires me to conjure up a legion of insanely powerful foes who were previously not in evidence. Now, I usually have a few epic-level critters lurking about my campaign worlds; an ancient dragon here, a lich there, a pit fiend buried and sleeping under the earth. But epic tier demands that I supply enough of those creatures to populate an entire tier's worth of combats!

Totally agree with this. But the solution lies as much in going 'sideways' as with the creation of more and more epic opponents.

Firstly, the built in Rank mechanic (Minion, Standard, Elite, Solo) means that something which may have been an Elite threat in the Paragon Tier may only be a Standard or Minion rank threat in the Epic Tier.

Secondly, beyond even minions, the game has the capacity for introducing Armies as opponents. So theoretically even hordes of goblins and legions of orcs could be a threat to epic characters.

Thirdly, the potential is there for Super-solo's to also take up more of the burden of challenges (I don't want to go into the subject myself at this juncture because it would mean explaining my rules for them, but I think they are definately part of the solution).

A glance at their stats (regardless of what number is written in the "level" space, or whether the monster is called "pit fiend" or "orc warchief") makes it obvious that such a confluence of mighty monsters would be enough to bring the campaign world to its knees if not for the PCs. So why didn't they do it before the PCs showed up? Why has it taken them this long to put in an appearance?

When you think about it, epic encounters only involve a handful of monsters. So its not like you have to say well suddenly there are 10,000 Pit Fiends and they all live next door, you just never noticed before.

So really you need:
A. Some epic tier monsters
B. Some re-ranked paragon tier monsters
C. Some NPCs
D. Some armies of heroic tier (or maybe paragon tier?) monsters
E. Throw in the odd super-solo monster

...of course the problem is you still need A, B, C, D and E created.

As regards demographics. If the assumption is that Level 20 is one in a million, then there should be about 1000 Epic Tier NPCs on a given world with a population of a billion.

21st = 512
22nd = 256
23rd = 128
24th = 64
25th = 32
26th = 16
27th = 8
28th = 4
29th = 2
30th = 1

The above assumes those with normal lifespans of course, and not monsters or monstrous NPCs.

I can come up with answers to those questions, but it requires taking the campaign in a whole new direction. In any campaign world that is not already stocked with a zillion epic monsters (in which case the PCs likely spent most of heroic tier hiding under rocks), epic tier is more or less restricted to a) an army of super-powerful monsters has emerged from centuries-long slumber or confinement, or b) the PCs are required to adventure in another plane where there is an army of super-powerful monsters, or c) the PCs are suddenly doing far less fighting than previously.

See above on why that may not necessarily be the case.