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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6160846" data-attributes="member: 42582">My campaign is well into 22nd level. We've had trouble convening a session for the past few weeks, but the PCs should reach 23rd next session.During the PCs first extended rest at Epic (which came after their first use of Epic powers - as discussed in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?335974-I-ran-my-first-Epic-session-last-Sunday" target="_blank">this thread</a>, the PCs had quite a few encounters at Epic tier before they got a chance to rest), I narrated a series of "Epic Dreams" (described in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?335974-I-ran-my-first-Epic-session-last-Sunday/page2&p=6125246&viewfull=1#post6125246" target="_blank">this post</a>). I think I got the idea from module E1. I used this for a mixture of backstory dumping (eg about the Lattice of Heaven and Erathis's purposes in having the invoker/wizard/divine philosopher/sage of ages remake the Rod of 7 Parts, which also relates to the demonskin adpet who has runes of the Queen of Chaos burned into his demonskin robes and the inside of his eyelids), foreshadowing (eg establishing more context and information for Ometh, a dubious exarch of the Raven Queen whom the paladin/questing knight/marshall of Letherna has in his sites) and setting up some discussion among the players (eg the balance between law and chaos, death as transition vs death as stasis, etc).I am expecting these story elements to play a fairly big role in shaping how things unfold - decisions are going to have to be made about the whole law vs chaos thing, for instance - and I am also anticipating a degree of intraparty conflict. One player hasn't yet made his epic destiny public, and I won't post it here, but needless to say it is fairly appropriate to a drow chaos sorcerer who is a demon-hating demonskin adept and a Chan-revering primordial adept who dreams of overthrowing Lolth and undoing the sundering of the elves, and who in the meantime makes do with an elementally admixtured resoundingly thunderous storm-marked Blazing Starfall as his at-will. (Also, once the PCs get to 26th there will be no more hiding this destiny - at least once per day it will have a notcieable transformative effect!) That same player, however, is trying hard at both the ingame and out-of-character level to put forward the idea of a compromise "middle way" between absolute law/stasis and unbridled chaos, so as to avoid a party split.Oddly enough the dwarven fighter/cleric/warpriest/eternal defender - the only notionally good PC in the party - is more sympathetic to the drow than to any other PC, mostly because the others all revere the Raven Queen to some extent at least. So the clash between the eternal defender, committed to life, and the demigod and marshall of Letherna who revere death, may grow. Especially if choices have to be made about what to do with dead souls and their fate, which is likely given (i) the Lattice of Heaven issue, and (ii) the fact that the paladin/marshall is on a quest to free the Soul Abattoir from Torog.I don't know how much this helps answer your question.(Much more ground-level colour, rather than dramatic theme: when the PCs met Zirithian, the former knight of Lolth and now a vampire would-be exarch of Orcus, I made sure that Zirithian greeted the paladin/marshall as one knight of death to another. Even though that sort of colour doesn't really effect action resolution directly (though it can trigger stuff, such as in this case a debate between PC and NPC), it helps establish the feel of the game during play, and I certainly do my best to draw on PPs, EDs etc for this sort of colour as I'm running the game.)I tweaked one ED: the secret one conferred a linguistic benefit that the PC was already getting from his theme, so I substituted knowledge of a ritual in its place (to complement the rituals he already has from his Mark of Storms). Now I think of it, the same player also has a slight tweak on his Primordial Adpet theme, to make it fit Chan, the queen of good air elementals.I also helped another player with a custom Theme - an undead hunter, modelled roughly on the Primordial Adept but buffing Perception and Endurance, and as his attack power giving him a radiant blast.I can see where the outrage is coming from, but also your point. I think it speaks to a deeper issue in D&D which 4e really brings to the fore: the player can send signals (via choice of class, race, theme, PP, ED etc), but ultimately the GM has control on the framing of situations in response to those signals. (It's not quite like Burning Wheel, for instance, where you can buy your nemesis at game's start with build points, and the GM is more-or-less obliged to send you up against said nemesis as part of the game's expectations. Even if Orcus is your PC's nemesis, you won't be facing him until 30th level or so, and in the meantime the GM has to send related but different challenges your way.)This puts a degree of demand on the GM which inevitably means that some options may open up but other be closed off even if the PC would want the mechanical benefits.My approach (based on a sample size of one campaign) is to treat it a bit like a wishlist - if the player wants to be a demonskin adept, and lets me know, I'll drop in demons for the PC to skin and make robes from. Or a slightly different example - the +6 to all knowledge skills for the deva sage of ages was narrated as him recovering many more of his memories of a thousand lifetimes. But I'd have doubts about a player who makes no effort to link his/her PC to a kingdom, or an Arthur-style legend, and then just wants to become a Legendary Sovereign at 21st. If the player wants to be a Legendary Sovereign, let me know so I can set it up! That's the "responsibility" aspect of the player-side option. For a player who doesn't want that sort of responsibility than I think one of the more story-light EDs is more appropriate, like Destined Scion or even Demigod. It's not as if these are mechanically weak, either!</blockquote>

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