What are people doing with the epic handbook?

[Wonger]

People, run a balanced campaign for 7 years before you buy the book. Useless? Yeah, if you launched your campaign last week it should be a coaster - but once you have earned your way to 20th, where do you go? You go to the ELH!

About 8 months after 20th level was breached, my group had 4 23rd level characters. The system in the ELH has proven to work amazingly well - of course it is a power boost, but it is in line with the feel of the adventures they were undertaking. The rogue has 11d6 of lingering damage - brutal? Yes. Overpowered for a 23rd level character who is in charge of his own massive thieves guild and has battled a dozen dragons in his years? No. The wizard has a 10th level spell slot which he uses to maximize and quicken fireballs and such - brutal? Absolutely. Overpowered for a 23rd level character who is in the 13th level of his prestige class, sits on the ruling council of the strongest arcane organization in the campaign? No.

The feats are great. The things you can do with epic skills are great. The monsters are great (and a necessity) and the magic items are perfect and appropriately priced in the Stratusphere. I found the epic city (Union?) to be somewhat silly, but maybe it is useful to somebody else.

Epic campaigns aren't for everyone (especially low magic grim and gritty types) - there's a million threads about that. The PCs by this point are more like superheroes and sessions take longer to do anything. But, if you run something inline with the "default" 3rd Edition fantasy, the transition to epic levels can be quite smooth with the ELH. At least it has been in my experience - of course all things are better with a good DM, and you almost need an outstanding DM to run an epic game.

I think it is one of the best books in my library and no I do not work for Wizards! I do wish there was more epic material out there - especially adventures. Hellstone Deep from Monkey God is pretty close, and Bastion of Broken Souls is nearly there - I did not run the couple of epic ones in Dungeon, but they looked decent. My one gripe is the 3.5 half-inclusion/partial-revision/crappy-pdf-update approach they took. The epic players would certainly like a revised ELH, but there are no such plans, so we wind up flipping between books and a pdf and trying to keep it all straight.

 

[Felon]

I wonder if a revised Epic Level Handbook is going to be produced?

Well, anything's possible--we're seeing revised versions of the splatbooks, the Psi Handbook, and the Manual of the Planes (albeit with enough new content to dodge the label "revised"), after all). But the 3.5 DMG actually co-opted most of the relevant content. And they can't revise that.

 

[afreed]

Monsters

2. Any interesting epic sourcebooks/rules/material?

This approaches a plug, since I worked on the product, but the Inner Circle is putting out a PDF of epic-level monsters. Legends of Avadnu should be out within a week. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the e-book section.) That page count listed is out of date, but since I'm not doing layout, I can't say what the final will be...around 30 pages, most likely.

There's also a preview available.

 

[DragonLancer]

I picked the ELH up cheap on EBay, but other than the monsters I don't use it. Theres no way I would run an Epic game, its far too silly (no offence to those who like it) and OTT.

 

[ph0rk]

we went epic in our last campaign, went to 30. That much power gets old fast

*yawn* coupla quickened meteor swarms.

splat splat splat

(with 3.0 haste)

Uh, meteor swarm the giant uberfiendish dog, quickened meteor swarm the lich-thingy, and a maze on that nasty-looking fighter type.

*sit and flip through spellbook*


Not that it has to play that way, but epic rules ruin the combat, imho.

If its more of a fluffy intrigue type game, I imagine some of the things you could do with the higher skill caps would be neat; but its hard to think of a concept that wouldn't work just as well at 12th level or so.

 

[Pants]

We ran the really crappy adventure in the book (did anyone get past that dragon?) and that was our one and only epic adventure.

Oh, yea gods that adventure is HORRIBLE! Horriblé, Horriblé, Horriblé!

...and not providing any reason it hadn't been overrun by fiends or warring deities yet

*cougheveryoneis40thlevelcough*

Errr... back on topic:
I haven't run Epic games yet and I don't intend to anytime soon. However, if one of my gaming compatriots were to try and do so, I wouldn't be adverse to playing an Epic character... I just don't want to DM it.

The monsters are pretty damn awesome though, most are just campaign hooks waiting to happen.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

By the time our group gets to 20th I'm pretty sure they'll want to start over at 1st, not keep going ad nausium.

I think the Epic concept is okay for a brief campaign or couple adventures, then it's back to the normal levels.

To me, the Epic was just "we made it b/c we could" on the part of WotC. It really doesn't seem to have caught on (just like the ol' Immortal rules from the basic set). My copy sits on a shelf and has never even been cracked open (I bought it as part of a package deal for cheap).

 

[Gothmog]

Used it as toilet paper, but it wasn't even good for that.

Seriously, this is the WORST book for D&D, even more useless than the Hero Builder's Guidebook. I can't ever see myself using anything out of the ELH- its just too over the top and munchkiny for my tastes. I regret the purchase of it (and I got it for $14 too off buy.com). When or if one of my campaigns ever gets to 20th level, I'll probably retire the group, or make up some alt rules of my own if they insist on playing past that.

 

[pogre]

Seems there are a lot of grievances about the ELH. Frankly, I'm amazed people find it too over the top considering the splat books that preceeded it.

I think the spells in the book have the core of a great idea, but they do require a heavy handed DM for sure. The ELH presents a perfectly legitimate set of options for higher level play.

Here are the thoughts of a DM who runs an epic game I love reading about:

I think one of the problems that people have with the epic spell system (and, oddly, I don't any more) is that they see it in terms of building an effect from the ground upwards - in many ways it is almost impossible to resist min-maxing with it. It should be more of a:

"This is the effect I want to achieve, how can I justify it in terms of the epic system?"

Game balance - in its conventional sense - does not work at epic levels, plain and simple. It becomes much more of an intuitive exercise for the DM.

I'm looking forward to another of my campaigns going into these legendary levels. I always looked at these epic levels as the stuff myths were born out of...

I ran a campaign from 1st through 24th level and my players loved it. It was a ton of work for me, but I really believe the game changes radically around 12-13th level anyway. I personally and am not crazy about how a lot of the mechanics work in the upper levels, but the ELH seemed like a logical extension of the rules to me. I'm just not sure what people were looking for - what else were they going to give us?

I completely ignored the setting stuff - just not my cup of tea and certainly something that does not fit within my campaign's cosmos.

I guess my players have not had enough of being "too powerful" to grow bored with the idea of epic levels. I am quite certain they are looking forward to getting there again.

 

[Khayman]

I bought a copy.

It sat.

Sat some more.

Moved it to a box.


Sold it on e-bay 2 months later.

I'll second that. Had as much use for the thing as a raging case of smallpox. Less, maybe.