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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5388822" data-attributes="member: 54710">I think the biggest failure of the epic tier in 4e is the assumption by WotC that the epic-level play should feel like heroic and paragon level play.  To my mind, dungeon crawling is a distinctly heroic mode of play, but the 4e design assumption is that dungeon crawling is the game -- at all tiers.  To have a good epic level game, you need epic-style game constructs.  For example, I'd like to see:* Mass Combat - not the sort of mass combat where the players have dozens of units to control, but the sort of mass combat in which the armies are the terrain and the PCs can cause their front line to advance by destroying key enemies (leaders or swarms of soldiers).* Super-Solos - I want to see enemies that are adventures, not just encounters.  There should be creatures big enough to be the terrain.  There should be creatures you have to fight in multi aspects (Lolth and some of the Sorcerer-Kings are good steps in this direction), but defeating a deity should be more than a single stat block.  Fighting a deity should take multiple encounters as the PCs have to destroy different aspects of the deity's power.  I find it a little appalling that Voltemort is so much harder to kill than the demon prince of undead.* Changes in Mobility and Terrain - The 4e designers correctly noted that flying seriously changes the nature of combat, but their solution (to minimize it) undercut the nature of epic level play.  Epic level characters should all be able to move around in epic ways -- flying boots, super jump, teleportation or the like.  Epic level maps shouldn't be continuous walls and passages.  An epic encounter should have some areas distances of special terrain that impassible or deadly to mere mortals (chasms, lava, razor-bamboo, take your pick).  The limit to "dungeon-appropriate distances" in epic-level powers and equipment is yet another failure of imagination.Ultimately, I think the idea that "epic is core" in 4e is mostly illusory.  There are rules for creating characters of levels 21-30, but there isn't actually all that much support in the rules for playing characters (or writing adventures) that actually feel "epic."-KS</blockquote>

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