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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5394330" data-attributes="member: 82106">The "why haven't the epic level threats long since overtaken the world" sort of question is just one of those many observations about a D&D style world that is never going to really be answered. Trying to rationalize how such a world works never leads anywhere terribly profitable. The other thing is it isn't a question that is somehow unique to epic tier. You could imagine that a high heroic tier threat MIGHT be restrained by the existence in the ordinary course of things of other figures in the world that are capable of standing up to them, but you're already FAR beyond the level of what 95% of the ordinary (non-PC) population of the world has ANY hope of dealing with mechanically. The town guard is going to handle a couple ogres? Really? I doubt it. Certainly not by fighting them!Any kind of paragon tier threat is already at the kind of power level where it is hardly credible that they have much to fear except each other, a very rare one in a million kind of NPC, or the player characters when they reach those levels. This would be especially true in a world where paragon is effectively the top of the heap and epic level play isn't contemplated. In other words any real attempt to rationalize such a world, regardless of which tiers you use, is pretty much doomed to failure. The only options are the same kinds of options you have in epic tier. The threat is growing, the threat is located far away, the PCs awaken the threat, the threat is restrained by some kind of plot device, etc. If you really look at it all tiers of play beyond low levels pretty much organize around these kinds of plot devices. Look at the venerable B2 module, Keep on the Borderlands. The monsters are located off in a 'dungeon' some ways away from civilization. They have a balance of power there which serves to help explain why none of them presents a direct threat to the keep. Being a first level module the threats can also be minor enough that the PCs aren't needed to keep it in check, the keep is well enough defended to repel an attack by the orcs or goblins. In a campaign this kind of scenario will be repeated over and over. Beyond this low level however there is just not likely to be much logic for why it works except repeated use of these same types of plot devices. Very quickly the monsters far outstrip the keep analog (a town, city, kingdom, world, what have you). This is really close to the totality of the real difference between lower and higher level play in this sense. At no point beyond low heroic tier does this world make much sense except as a setting in which the PCs can do their thing. Logic simply has to be set aside.Note that nothing in all of this is peculiar to 4e. This is why I say there is really no huge material difference between 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e in this respect. We could have had this exact discussion (heck I HAVE had this exact discussion) in the era of each of these editions. It goes the same way. You have a limited set of viable plot devices you can use to make it believable enough to work as a story but you will ALWAYS need them.Certainly you can come up with systems like GURPS, or to take it the the extreme CoC, where PC power curves are quite flat and you won't generally run into this sort of issue, but you also have real problems creating a truly epic feeling story. CoC characters NEVER EVER directly face a Great Old One. If they do it is the disastrous finale of a campaign or else the DM is going to introduce a deus ex machina to resolve the situation because the PCs are utterly out of their league. It is in other words a totally different type of game, certainly not heroic fantasy in the vein that D&D is designed for. GURPS is somewhat more in the middle but still not nearly as suitable to an epic feel as 4e is.I think the upshot of what I'm saying is that 4e has the tools to do epic. Epic is just a highly constrained kind of mode of play that really admits of only a limited possible group of overall story devices to make it work. Even then these are not really unique to this tier, they are just exemplified in a more extreme way. If a group really isn't interested in those kinds of stories and devices then playing epic 4e is likely to disappoint them. I don't think any twiddling around with the rules is going to substantially change that. This is why I brought up earlier editions in the first place. Even with some substantially different mechanics the issues are still the same. Once you have designed a game like this to have a big jump in power levels over character lifetime the same basic issues will always arise. Note the difference with the super hero genre in general. Super heroes rarely change radically in power level. Superman was ALWAYS Superman and always will be. Lex Luthor will always be a worthy opponent, they are on similar power levels. It isn't a setup where there is a progression. Thus it has a whole different set of plot and story dynamics.In terms of the need to flesh out various themes in 4e epic monster lineups, yes you will need to do that. The thing is I'm not really sure 4e left that to the DM accidentally. I'm not at all sure it is really again unique to 4e either. The 1e MM had around 300 monsters in it. VERY few of them are really going to be challenging to 12+ level PCs. There certainly wasn't enough material to supply all the material for a whole high level campaign arc. Look at the GDQ module series. It contained a vast number of new monsters. In fact practically everything in it was new beyond the G series. I think 4e supplies a core for each of a number of themes and simple resource constraints on what WotC can supply dictates that you WILL have to fill that out with reskinning, new monsters, etc. Using one of the themed books like Open Grave or Demonomicon you have what you need pretty much. There are a bunch of main opponents and their core henchmen available in each book, plus a modest variety of base types and variations for mooks, plus a number of templates and such that can be used to round out the mix. Notice how DMG2 introduced monster themes to go along with templates. This is exactly WHY (well it goes even further than that, but filling out epic is a big part of it).</blockquote>

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