Again, the dawn war literally pits adventuring parties of deities against single primordials on many occasions. In rare cases, super-badass gods like bane and io take on a primordial alone, but most of the time, they're actually cooperating in groups to defeat them.
The fact that since then deities have been built as end-game epic tier threats doesn't really seem to be the problem- what alterative are you after? That deities are lower tier threats? That a party of mid-epic heroes should take on an entire pantheon, possily while it's guarding a chest full of astral diamonds in a 100 by 100 mile square room?
If anything what you seem to be proposing makes epic tier less epic, not more. I'm not saying fighting a pantheon would not make a cool finale, but I don't see the appeal of what you're proposing. How does it make the epic tier better?
If you want your epic tier pcs to be demigods and go around haveing thorlike adventures, they can do that. If you want your giants at war with the gods, they are literally a plotline away- and just fyi, the primordials are not all bound, many of them just retreated into the elemental chaos. The setting presents the resurgence of the dawn war as a clear potential plotline- it's just not the only plotline they offer support for.
There's a lot of interpretation going on here, but that's not going to lead to solid, functional changes that can be made to make epic tier better. You might read 4e's cosmos a certain way, but building on that intrerpretation is not going to get to the kind of concrete changes that are needed.
I think fixing epic tier is a lot more about the kinds of plotlines, and themes that are dealt with, the stakes of the battles that are fought, and the sheer epic
euppedness of battles.
A lot of the time, that's all lacking, I agree. But that said, if there's only place they have made progress, it's in monster design- and they're headed in the right direction there. Arguing that gods should be tones down or something is not going to get a better sort of epic tier play.
Again, the real problem is the stakes, and the themes, and the feel of the adventures. At epic tier, pcs are still being led around by the nose- and frankly that's something they should have left behind them by mid paragon at the latest. The result is the 'same old same old' feel that is a big part of why epic tier falls flat.
, here's the worst example I can think of- IIRC the first 4e dungeon mag adventure path, the one about orcus vs the raven queen. IIRC in the first epic tier adventure, you travel to the damn shadowfell, to the palace of the raven queen, during this huge cosmic struggle, and what does she do?
She sends you on a
ing fetch quest. 'Go fetch the magical black sphere or some
' she says, 'only then can i trust you or uh, something'. And off you go to featch the damn doodad for what is probably literally the 20th time if you've been playing from level one.
That's the kind of garbage that ruins epic tier. Each tier should be dramatically different, in a real sense. The problem isn't that the otehr tiers are not like the fun of heroic tier- the problem is that they're not different enough.
Generally, i'd lay out the tiers like this. I don't even suceed at this myself a lot of the time, but this is what i try to aim for:
Heroic: Be a hero, kick in doors, enter a big bad world where a lot of stuff is pretty scary still, and there's a lot of
you don't understand. Triumph despite this, by the skin of your teeth,
bruce willis in diehard style. Spend a lot of time going 'oh
' and running after or away from various objectives. But with setbacks and plot twists and jerk npcs stabbing you in the back, you're still gaining ground.
Paragon: Now you are starting to run
. People don't tell you what to do, well, not if they don't want your +3 boot in their ass. All those problems you faced, back in the day? It's time to solve them, for real, by changing the world and gaining real power. Not jsut physical power, but political power, land, title, influence, favours, all of it. And it can be a pain in the ass, and it can be dangerous, and it can corrupt you, but it's worth it to actually change things for the better- or just for yourself. Nations, armies, churches, peoples, ideas- these are the weapons you learn to wield.
Epic: Epic tier is when worldly matters begin to fall away, but not the way you think. It's not like they aren't important anymore, but the higher your vantage point becomes, the more differently you view everything. When you start to understand how thigns really work, everything changes.
You might realise that your efforts to bring peace to the land are corrupting the gods of war, because these days the people who pray to him aren't fighting for their families of homes- but for money, plunder, and glory. Or maybe the gods just don't like you stepping on their turf- apart from one rather dark fellow who insists that this is your time, that he's here to start the apocalypse that is nesecary for you and your allies to replace the stagnant old celestial order. Or maybe the gods are just automatons, celestial mechanisms that mindlessly channel the concepts and porfolios they represent- and their keepers are looking to add a few shiny new cogs to the machine. Or maybe you just decide to wage a cosmos-wide war on the dark god you swore vengance on- only to find that doing so much threaten the very nature of reality, or set the great spirits of the world against you.
The epic tier is about the laws of the cosmos, how things work, and how the heroes choose to abide by them, or rebel and seek to change them.
