What is the Problem with Union!

[rounser]

I think the greatest flaw that lies in making an epic city work is in assuming that epic level characters are common enough to need their own city.

If we revise that to "relatively high level city, with the odd epic character" I think it makes more sense. As covered earlier in the thread, epic isn't epic without contrast to show that it's epic.

They are busy with their own agendas.

I think this only holds water for so long. Okay, so Elminster has left a sign on his door which says "Gone for holiday in The Happy Hunting Grounds. El." when the PCs fail in a critical quest and let Zhentarim occupy Shadowdale. Eventually he's going to come back and do something about it. He can't have an engaged signal 24/7....it's just too difficult to believe, and that's the final arbiter in such issues so far as I can see. So, "Save Shadowdale" adventures are a bit stuffed, really.

Are your epic level characters really worrying about where they are getting their fish!??

Alrighty, maybe they're not, but their servants might be.

Or an Epic Level Magician likes sushi so drains the sea bed of water, and sends children out to pick the fish up. The surplus after his sushi dinner they can keep. Its not that great a concern.

Don't they have better things to do? See the "busy with their own agendas" thing.

 

[green slime]

I think this only holds water for so long. Okay, so Elminster has left a sign on his door which says "Gone for holiday in The Happy Hunting Grounds. El." when the PCs fail in a critical quest and let Zhentarim occupy Shadowdale. Eventually he's going to come back and do something about it. He can't have an engaged signal 24/7....it's just too difficult to believe, and that's the final arbiter in such issues so far as I can see. So, "Save Shadowdale" adventures are a bit stuffed, really.

How? Does the CEO worry about the bugs I put in the code? Is he going to come down here and smack me upside my head? Now if it threatened the entire existance of the company, then maybe some more attention would be paid. But that's the way life works. I don't worry about ants until they appear in my kitchen.

If the Zhentarim occupy Shadowdale? Whoppdeefrickin-doo. Seriously. What are they going to do to his house? Probably nothing, if they are smart. Sure El might get round to giving them a hiding if he got irritated enough. But probably a whole lot of other people will have suffered needlessly before that comes to pass.

Like I said, the same complaint you make of Elminster can be said of any Celestial or Divinity in the game. Why bother with heroes? Sooner or later that bad dude is going to meet his comeuppance at the hand of something or other.

The fact is, any semi-intelligent, living thing, has a list of priorities. As far as your pc's know, Elminster's priorities are way,way beyond their concerns. Its not about holidaying in the happy hunting grounds, rather its so far beneath his concern, it barely registers. I don't see the CEO of GM handling a local labour dispute. He is probably more concerned about the quality of sand in the bunker on the 17th hole.

Don't they have better things to do? See the "busy with their own agendas" thing.

Didn't you read? The wizard likes sushi. Its on his agenda. Still has little enslaved kiddiewinkles to go and pick the fish up. Probably has some simulacrum actually cast the spell in question.

 

[rounser]

If the Zhentarim occupy Shadowdale? Whoppdeefrickin-doo. Seriously. What are they going to do to his house? Probably nothing, if they are smart. Sure El might get round to giving them a hiding if he got irritated enough. But probably a whole lot of other people will have suffered needlessly before that comes to pass.

Yeah, but he'll eventually be around to set things aright, regardless of damage done in the meantime. It's his home, and contains people and things he cares about, after all. If he intervenes, which he must eventually do (lest the players be forced to save versus disbelief), the best a DM can arrange is that he ends up fried like the witch of Shadowdale....but the kind of opposition that managed to do that can't be conjured up out of the blue if 5th level PCs fail against villains of a CR far lower than required to do that. And then there's Elminster's Deus Ex Machina or some such cheaty spell to ensure that he comes back...

Didn't you read? The wizard likes sushi. Its on his agenda. Still has little enslaved kiddiewinkles to go and pick the fish up. Probably has some simulacrum actually cast the spell in question.

Such a mage definitely has time to boot the Zhentarim out of Shadowdale, then.

 

[wingsandsword]

It does feel like a knock-off of Sigil.

Within the entire, established D&D cosmology and multiverse, if there was a demiplane city that was populated by hundreds, or thousands of 20th+ level characters, where even the petty shopkeepers were 15th level Experts and Adepts, the poor beggars are 14th level commoners, and the typical city guard is powerful enough to defeat entire armies on the battlefield, where there is an assassins guild with poisons that can kill you so bad that True Ressurection and Wish can't bring you back (one bit of hooey from the ELH I thought was just plain stupid), all meant to be a hub of commerce and adventuring on the planes, I'd have thought it would have been mentioned by now.

It all sounds so over-the-top, like one too many expansions in an MMORPG as they try to come up with new places for ever high level characters to go and fit in.

Everything Union was supposed to do could be filled by Sigil: Hub of planar commerce, society and travel, meeting point for heroes from across myriad worlds, surreal city that could have countless adventures unto itself, and place where high level or epic level characters could use their abilities but not utterly overpower and ruin the town.

We already have Sigil, The City of Brass, The City of Glass, The Sixteen Gate Towns, & Dis. I could even accept a demiplane city named Union run by the Arcane (now Mercane) as a part of it (and I did throw it in to my last campaign as just another planar city, albeit a wealthy one), but not as The Epic! City.

I am of the mind that 20th+ level characters should be somewhat rare, powerful and influential. Major planar metropolises may only have a handful (and with that in mind, the major players in my version of Sigil tend to be in the 20th to 30th range in level). Entire adventuring parties of Epic characters are very rare, and known ones should be able to be counted on one hand (going back to the MMORPG analogy, like uber-guilds on a server)

 

[Ozmar]

Or the Halfling cat-burglar who lives in a small second story apartment and is level 34.

Man, I bet that guy feels like a loser!

"Here I am, level 34, and what do I have to show for it? A dingy 2nd-level apartment! I'm such a worthless punk." He then procedes to steal a billion gold pieces of artifacts from the pharoh-god of the demiplane of traps, and then drinks himself into a stupor at his favorite Union tavern.

Poor shlub.

 

[Ripzerai]

I could even accept a demiplane city named Union run by the Arcane (now Mercane) as a part of it (and I did throw it in to my last campaign as just another planar city, albeit a wealthy one), but not as The Epic! City.

That's how I feel.

I actually quite like Union's appearance and layout, and I like the idea of a demiplane where the mercanes have created a trading city. I like the rotating portal, and I like a lot of the organizations and NPCs associated with Union.

I'd just ignore everything about epic levels. Sure, there are a few epic characters in the city, but no more than in any other planar metropolis of similar population.

I'm willing to credit mercanes with a lot - creating a demiplane, buying and selling entire worlds, preventing fiends and rogue deities from conquering them through their connections and magical power - but I don't think they'd rationally need to waste money on so many 15th level guards, let alone epic ones. No more high-level characters than other cities of its size, thank you very much.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I think the greatest flaw that lies in making an epic city work is in assuming that epic level characters are common enough to need their own city.

If such a thing were to come about in the world, the epic city would be like Asgard or Olympus or Underhill or The Land Far West or something. Something distant, untouchable, unreachable, and, above all, inhabited by people everyone knows are better than them, who do things far beyond the common ken.

An epic city can't work on economics and organizations. It has to work on a godly scale, not a mortal one.

QFT.

 

[rounser]

I think the greatest flaw that lies in making an epic city work is in assuming that epic level characters are common enough to need their own city.

How about an epic hamlet, then?

Thing is, by the time those NPCs have brought their followers and retainers, sycophants and those looking to them for protection, you'll have a town (not an epic town, but one with epic characters in it), and eventually maybe a city. Not an epic city, but a city with a handful of epic characters.

Eventually you end up with the distribution described in the DMG...which I suppose proves your point.

 

[I'm A Banana]

How about an epic hamlet, then?

Thing is, by the time those NPCs have brought their followers and retainers, sycophants and those looking to them for protection, you'll have a town (not an epic town, but one with epic characters in it), and eventually maybe a city. Not an epic city, but a city with a handful of epic characters.

Eventually you end up with the distribution described in the DMG...which I suppose proves your point.

Heh, neat. I could see that kind of working, epic characters as epicenters for vast kingdoms of people somehow related/enslaved/loyal to them. High King Magnificent is going to be the focus of many factions, not just one High King Magnificent among many.

And once every hundred years, King Magnificent goes to the Land Beyond Time to meet with his fellow epic adventurers (all five of them) to discuss the threats facing all of reality.

Again, I think the biggest design flaw in the ELH is the assumption that characters will do the same things at levels 20+ as they did through 1-20. Heck, even assuming you'll be doing the same thing at level 15 as you were doing at level 5 is a stretch.

 

[Staffan]

Again, I think the biggest design flaw in the ELH is the assumption that characters will do the same things at levels 20+ as they did through 1-20. Heck, even assuming you'll be doing the same thing at level 15 as you were doing at level 5 is a stretch.

That was one of the cool things about the Mentzer edition of D&D. Since it was organized into four boxed sets, each of these boxes assumed that by the time you got to it, you would start to change the focus of your campaign. Basic (1-3) was exclusively about dungeon-crawling, Expert (4-14) added wilderness adventures (which are more dangerous because things aren't organized in neat levels - nothing says you can't run into a dragon while walking through the forest), Companion (15-25) added rulership of domains, and the Master rules had you trying to achieve Immortality and exploring other planes. Sure, you would still be doing some of the old stuff but there was new stuff to keep things interesting as well.