The Slow Death of Epic Tier

[Plane Sailing]

Also, I question the absence of real temporal influence. I think the End Game of AD&D is a good one, and it's time for the developers to give us something else to do besides kill monsters for 18 levels.

I agree. It was my biggest beef from 3.0e onwards.

 

[defendi]

I just finished a campaign and we ended with all the characters level 30. They left the world for the first time (not counting little demi-planes in the world) in the last adventure. They were all pretty satisfied. I essentially put them in a situation where they were the only ones who could save the world, pretty standard stuff, but also brought up a lot of epic events in their past through newly-remembered memories.

Essentially, it was epic tier because they were fighting an epic goal (the fall of everything) and they were uncovering an epic past (did they allow everything to fall once before). I also had all of their personal stories climax at the same time, as X character found out how Y prophecy applied to them and Z character had to choose between getting his wish and fighting his greatest enemy or sacrifice his life (and his dream) holding off a hoard and save the party. Meanwhile another character was trying to redeem the soul of a 10,000-year-old Demon. Epic is about making it feel epic, I think, not about pigeon-holed locations. (Scenary and visuals help, though)

Things were getting easier at the end, but I didn't mind, especially in that last adventure. I've challenged them enough and (at least at the end) there SHOULD be periods where they feel awesome and unstoppable. Ironically, the hardest battle they fought was 30 minions from a poorly defensible position, in that last adventure. It is more difficult to challenge them at the highest levels. I didn't stop trying, but I stopped worrying if I failed at level 30.

 

[Dausuul]

My campaign ran from level 1 up to level 14, then went on break for a while and recently resumed. When we came back, I was fired up to go all the way to 30th--and then I started planning out encounters, and realized I was already struggling to find reasonable threats.

When we started this campaign, I created a campaign setting that was, IMO, ideally designed for heroic-tier adventures: A world in the grip of an ice age, where the PCs would go on long treks through tundra and snowy pine forests and icelocked mountains, battling white wolves and orc marauders and lurking trolls, and dealing with the dangers of the wintry environment. And in Heroic tier, it went smashingly.

But now the PCs have outleveled the wolves and orcs, and trolls won't last much longer. I'm sending them on a jaunt to the Abyss for a bit, but it kind of defeats the point of having an interesting setting if they never get to adventure in it. By sending the party into the most dangerous parts of the game world (the white wastes of the north where the lord of winter reigns), I think I can squeeze out enough challenges to take them to level 20. After that, I'm done. The plans I had for epic tier will have to be shelved.

(I have an idea to address the issue: PCs no longer get a 1/2 level bonus to attacks, defenses, and skills. Monster stats remain unchanged*. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to wait till next campaign to implement it, and even then I expect a lot of whining... my players have gotten totally hooked on the Character Builder. Hey, Wizards, I don't suppose we could get a "no half level bonus" option in the CB?)

[size=-2]*I crunched some numbers on how this would affect monster threat level and came up with this: Treat the party as being 2/3 of their actual level when calculating XP budget, and 1/2 their actual level when choosing monsters to fight. So an 18th-level party would have a 12th-level XP budget, which I would fill out with monsters around 9th level or so. Hence, as the PCs level up, they tend to face larger numbers of foes.[/size]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

During my time as an AD&D player and GM, 7th level was the notional--though not explicit--beginning of the Second Phase of your character.

You'd survived the early levels, when you could die from a single hit, and you were now expected to build a stronghold and attract followers. People showed up out of nowhere because they'd heard of you and wanted to serve and aid you. You were famous!

By the time you were about 13th level, you were now legitimately "high level" and could do some astonishing stuff.

I think 18th level was about as high as anyone expected to get, and in almost 30 years of play I've never seen a character who naturally reached 18th level.

I think WotC seriously miscalculated when they expected people to reach even 20th level. I know their reasoning, and it was sound.

It's not a question of continuous play, it's a question of continually playing the same characters without something happen that causes people to say "let's start a new game!"

So I think compressing the tiers down so you go through all three in 18 levels is probably better. Also, I question the absence of real temporal influence. I think the End Game of AD&D is a good one, and it's time for the developers to give us something else to do besides kill monsters for 18 levels.

I would say you can't equate AD&D and 4e levels with each other though. AD&D level advancement was generally pretty slow. The first 3-5 levels could go moderately fast if the DM chose but they could also last a LONG time (in the last 2e campaign I ran we played something like 48 sessions over more than a year and the PCs had reached 8th level). I'd consider levels 1-5 to be roughly equivalent to heroic, and 6th-12th roughly equivalent to paragon myself. Once you went past 12th level things pretty much broke down with AD&D. A good smart party at that point could defeat all but the most stacked combat situations and had enough magic to bypass or trivialize most anything else.

So what you basically had was maybe a good 100-150 sessions of play for a 1e/2e campaign. Then maybe if you were into playing the highest levels you might do another 50 sessions getting to 18th level, but the DM will be very hard pressed to make them really challenging.

With 4e you have a good solid 30 levels that should probably run you 50-100 sessions to play through at standard advancement rates, maybe less. Groups that liked to restart at 12th in the old days may well want to restart at 20th now. The main difference is advancement is a bit faster through the whole campaign and there are more levels, so they come quicker. In the old days you might only level every 6-10 sessions, while in 4e it seems to be designed for a 2-3 session per level rate.

If by 'end game' of AD&D you mean getting to Name Level, getting followers, and building a stronghold (or whatever). It was a decent goal, but personally I don't recall too many games I have run where people took advantage of it. Some did, but it isn't that interesting for a lot of players. Beyond that the high level game in AD&D was for me at least not that interesting. Once the Magic User has 7th level spells things tend to get pretty wonky and unplayable. You can have fun with it, but it is pretty hard to put together a story line that will hold together well. There were also VERY few monsters that were any kind of challenge in AD&D past 12th level.

Honestly though, 18 levels vs 30? I think it is sort of 6 of one and half-dozen of the other.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Interesting discussion, some very good points raised by Aegeri.

To respond to the main points raised in the initial article:

1. The damages were all wrong for Epic until MM3/MV...SOLVED (by WotC).

2. DMing Epic requires a bit more forethought...UNDERSTOOD; but a DMG3 (with a focus on epic play) still would have been nice.

3. Lack of Epic Fluff...UNDERSTOOD. One possible problem with an epic tier campaign is the propensity for changes to the campaign world are something DM's might not want to address. The DM might have put a lot of effort into creating a given city and its NPC's. But in an epic campaign, cities; countries and even worlds can, and probably will, get destroyed. DMs need to embrace this possibility. My suggestion would be to have multiple campaign worlds running concurrently (or at least visited), so you probably want a fast and loose approach. This seems why most epic campaigns take to the planes...basically for fear of breaking the world.

4. Solo Monster design still a problem...SOLVED (by me in my new book the Vampire Bestiary - which is about 5 weeks away from release...yes shameless plug). But monster design overall has been getting better from WotC.

Preview: Vampire Bestiary « Eternity Publishing

5. Epic Material very sparse...UNDERSTOOD (I'm working on several epic projects; the first of which, following the Vampire Bestiary release, is an adventure trilogy under the umbrella title of Against the Reptile God...Part 1 is called The Serpent Riders. A Delve style adventure for Levels 25-28. It has 4 delves and all new, all epic monsters.

Preview: Against the Reptile God « Eternity Publishing

5b. Genericism of Epic Campaigns...UNDERSTOOD. The main constraint to epic campaigns are the lack of epic foes. If you want to have a big campaign threat its almost certainly got to be demonic in nature, because no other faction or race has enough variety of epic opponents to actually sustain anything more than a Delve, let alone a full adventure or lengthy campaign. I am working on an epic tier (and immortal tier) monster book that vastly expands Angels & Devils (also incorporating fallen angels, lots of new abominations and so forth). It should have enough options to build a feasible alternative to demons at the epic tier.

6. More of the same simply with bigger numbers...SOLVED. I have long pondered what does, or what would, make Epic gaming unique. I have a few solutions I'll be incorporating into future books.

- Armies: Epic campaigns should involve great battles, either between armies; or between powerful characters and armies. I have developed some very simple rules for this.

- Super-bosses: We all know that the Tarrasque is the poor man's Godzilla. But how can the rules cover monsters that are as big as a castle, big as a city, big as a planet, big as a universe even...!?!? Well, now you can, because I've got some simple rules for them that will blow your cotton socks off!

- Legendary Abilities: Having the strength of Hercules; the speed of Hermes or the wisdom of Athena should mean something other than a better to hit bonus...right? Soon you'll be able to impress your friends with reality bending Legendary Ability Scores...and yeah, monsters can get them too.

I'd be very curious to hear what epic gamers are looking for specifically: Adventures? Monsters? New Rules? All of the Above?

 

[Ryujin]

My campaign ran from level 1 up to level 14, then went on break for a while and recently resumed. When we came back, I was fired up to go all the way to 30th--and then I started planning out encounters, and realized I was already struggling to find reasonable threats.

When we started this campaign, I created a campaign setting that was, IMO, ideally designed for heroic-tier adventures: A world in the grip of an ice age, where the PCs would go on long treks through tundra and snowy pine forests and icelocked mountains, battling white wolves and orc marauders and lurking trolls, and dealing with the dangers of the wintry environment. And in Heroic tier, it went smashingly.

But now the PCs have outleveled the wolves and orcs, and trolls won't last much longer. I'm sending them on a jaunt to the Abyss for a bit, but it kind of defeats the point of having an interesting setting if they never get to adventure in it. By sending the party into the most dangerous parts of the game world (the white wastes of the north where the lord of winter reigns), I think I can squeeze out enough challenges to take them to level 20. After that, I'm done. The plans I had for epic tier will have to be shelved.

(I have an idea to address the issue: PCs no longer get a 1/2 level bonus to attacks, defenses, and skills. Monster stats remain unchanged*. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to wait till next campaign to implement it, and even then I expect a lot of whining... my players have gotten totally hooked on the Character Builder. Hey, Wizards, I don't suppose we could get a "no half level bonus" option in the CB?)

[size=-2]*I crunched some numbers on how this would affect monster threat level and came up with this: Treat the party as being 2/3 of their actual level when calculating XP budget, and 1/2 their actual level when choosing monsters to fight. So an 18th-level party would have a 12th-level XP budget, which I would fill out with monsters around 9th level or so. Hence, as the PCs level up, they tend to face larger numbers of foes.[/size]

I've always liked the idea of an Ice Age world. Thing is, you don't have to stop there. Heroic and through mid-Paragon tiers you can be dealing with the world, as it is. Upper Paragon can be dealing with the magical powers that keep it in eternal Winter. Epic can be bringing the world out of cold storage, and back to Summer.

Ever read "The Ice Schooner" by Michael Moorcock?

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Interesting discussion, some very good points raised by Aegeri.

Hey U_K -- you posted a lot of stuff about Epic level play back in the old days of 3.x, didn't you? 2000-2001-ish? I'd love to hear more extensive comments from you in Epic support in 4e vs 3.x.

 

[Aegeri]

What I really need are encounter maps that reflect what epic needs: Zany terrain, scenarios and similar. A dungeon delve with various rooms and corridors isn't cutting it. Things like the floating islands of flesh over a sea of blood from the Abyssal dragon scenario in Draconomicon, or invading the corpse of a dead god in the astral from Open Grave are perfect examples of what I think of (about).

And then basically filling out epic monsters in angels (perfect candidates for epic tier antagonists OR allies - depending on various gods), devils, new creatures of any stripe (Aberrations would be perfect as well) and such forth. Also epic 4E is in a unique position in that Wizards could add so much new and novel to DnD if they felt like it.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey U_K

Howdy Prestadigitalis!

-- you posted a lot of stuff about Epic level play back in the old days of 3.x, didn't you? 2000-2001-ish?

Yes. Since then I have released two 3.5 Epic Books under the OGL:

Immortals Handbook: Epic Bestiary ~ Volume One

Immortals Handbook - EPIC BESTIARY: Volume One - Eternity Publishing | RPGNow.com

Forgive the cover on the above, I really should have changed that to the print cover:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Immortals-Handbook-Epic-Bestiary-One/dp/1905471610]Amazon.com: Immortals Handbook: Epic Bestiary - Volume One (D20) (9781905471614): Craig Cochrane: Books[/ame]


Immortals Handbook: Ascension

Immortals Handbook: ASCENSION - Eternity Publishing | RPGNow.com

I also have my 3E website...

Immortality

...and my shiny new 4E website...

Eternity Publishing

I'd love to hear more extensive comments from you in Epic support in 4e vs 3.x.

I will come back here and post a bit later (and reply to Aegeri too). I have just realised I am late for an appointment.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What I really need are encounter maps that reflect what epic needs: Zany terrain, scenarios and similar. A dungeon delve with various rooms and corridors isn't cutting it. Things like the floating islands of flesh over a sea of blood from the Abyssal dragon scenario in Draconomicon, or invading the corpse of a dead god in the astral from Open Grave are perfect examples of what I think of (about).

And then basically filling out epic monsters in angels (perfect candidates for epic tier antagonists OR allies - depending on various gods), devils, new creatures of any stripe (Aberrations would be perfect as well) and such forth. Also epic 4E is in a unique position in that Wizards could add so much new and novel to DnD if they felt like it.

I think there are a lot of POTENTIAL epic level opponents. A Dragon War would work for instance (already been done with SoW). Any of the epic level races introduced in MM3 could be fleshed out or some of them could be welded together into a single threat. The Elemental Princes could supply a good epic foe. Certainly anything beyond demons or dragons is likely going to involve some monster design, but I don't think 'canned' epic monsters are generally the best idea anyway.

Wizards could add a lot of unique stuff, but there is SO MUCH stuff out there already. I think the best approach would be to create a setting designed specifically for epic play. Epic necessarily involves at least world shaking events, so you need a really solid and more detailed cosmology to pull it off. FR/Eberron/DS are too vague about the relationship of the world to the greater powers generally. There is an outline, but nothing much in the way of plot. I know meta-plot has a bad rep, but that's a fan issue really, not anything wrong with it conceptually. A setting with a STRONG meta-plot can hook your epic characters in and make them the center of the show. It just has to be done carefully.

I do overall think epic is too long. 10 levels, probably 30 sessions, is going to take at least 6 months for most any group to play through. That seems like a long time in general to sustain that kind of story line.