What is wrong with Epic Material?

[MoogleEmpMog]

That may be so about 20th-level characters. But you're still limited at what you can do. 9th-level spells can only do so much. You can't slice off the top of a mountain and make it float in the air with 9th-level spells. Only epic spells can do that.

I see Epic play as breaking beyond those limitations. Can't naturally use death attack on undead? An epic feat solves the problem. It's not something you'll want to give out as a feat below 20th-level...the prerequisites would be TOO HIGH. At least if you peg it as an epic feat, you can give it prerequisites only epic characters can achieve. Skills is another thing. They can get really high at 20th-level alone. Something has to tell you "Well, if you managed to get it this high, here's what you can do."

Epic magic items do need a fix. But epic PrC and taking classes beyond 20th with the RAW is fine as is. I don't see where the problem is with that.

Again, I believe an Epic Level Handbook should give you the options to "go beyond". Want to jump 100 feet in a single bound WITHOUT magic, but with pure skill? Get epic level. Want to juggle several weapons while attacking with them during battle? Get epic level. Want to naturally be the fastest creature to move in D&D? (without magic) Get epic level.

Again, all of the things you're talking about (with the exception of using death attacks on Undead) are all done much, much better by games that are designed from the ground up.

Exalted is probably the best example, because it's explicitly designed for supra-mythic fantasy. Roughly translated into D&D terms, it 'starts' about 12th-14th level and goes well into Epic territory (I'm talking about Solar exalts here; others are generally weaker and cap out sooner). Slicing a mountaintop off? No problem. Using it as a projectile weapon? Doable. *Parrying it with your bare hand, without even having to roll for it, because you're just that cool?* That's what advanced Solars do. And, while Exalted is a crunchy and sometimes clunky system in its own right, Solars do that much, much more smoothly than, say, 35-45th level D&D characters, because the system is built from the ground up to handle that kind of capability, rather than having it kludged on after the fact.

HERO can also do "Epic" play faster and smoother (although in that, it's "Cosmic" play). In HERO's case, it's that the system scales better because of how it's designed mathematically. Cosmic play in HERO is not, or at least doesn't have to be, significantly more complex than 'heroic' play, which is pretty much normal, non- or barely magical action heroes.

Mutants & Masterminds is a lot faster and simpler than HERO and is d20-based, and handles cosmic/epic play much, much better than D&D because it scales more smoothly (though not quite as smoothly as HERO, IMO).

D&D, by the very nature of its system and its history, tends to give diminishing returns of fun vs. work as you advance in levels, and this is greatly exacerbated by the Epic rules. Also, Epic vs. non-Epic basically puts you into the territory of arbitrary distinctions.

Take the undead/death effects thing; it’s not a super ability (basically, you get to target Fort saves of creatures that have bad Fort saves), it just doesn’t make sense flavor-wise; death effects are powered by the same stuff undead are, so why does a death effect hurt them? Very rarely will it be more powerful than a non-death effect such as disintegrate, so you’re basically overcoming an odd flavor restriction at the cost of an epic feat.

Or +5 vs. +6 weapons. A +5 keen holy ghost touch long sword is almost always more useful than a +8 long sword, but you’re arbitrarily restricted from getting the latter ‘pre-Epic.’

As to the ‘non-magical’ superleaps and such… mechanically, these are pretty awful, being almost always worse than their magical equivalents. Fluff-wise, they pretty much ARE magical, because it’s certainly well beyond the laws of physics.

The only thing you can’t really do pre-Epic is affect a huge area (the mountaintop example), and there’s no mechanical reason to restrict this, either. I’d say either wish or miracle would cover these effects, and custom spell research could easily duplicate them.

 

[Remathilis]

The more I read on this, the more I think I want to revamp the EHL to scale akin to the rest of d20. The big problem is that there is this threshold (21st) that makes you [booming voice EPIC!!!! [/booming voice] and unlocks a bunch of new abilities magically. It doesn't jive with the monster/HD rules in the MM nor the deity rules in D&DG.

Personally, I think something akin to what what going to be the EPIC rules (read the front of the Forgotten Realms book for that) might have worked better...

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Has anybody considered rewriting the old high level and Immortals rules to D&D / d20?

 

[hong]

I felt that the Epic material was really poorly concieved. All it did was attempt to 'turn the dial up to 11' (and I mean that in every sense that it was used in Spinal Tap).

What would have been great would have been rules, material and ideas to support epic adventuring - conquering cities, leading armies, forging kingdoms, storming Hell... but all it contained was bigger attack bonuses, more damage, bigger saves, bigger spells. It wasn't even inspiring with that, either.

Of course, that was much, much easier to do than create rules and material for kingdom-level, epoch-shaking stuff, which was probably why they went that way. That, and it was an extension ad absurdum of the 'back to the dungeon' ethic of 3e.

It makes some sense. The basic idea seemed to be that if you've got all the way to 20th level by killing monsters and taking their stuff, you're not going to want to change direction completely to founding empires, religions, travelling to new planes of existence, etc. You're going to want to continue killing monsters and taking their stuff, but with more super powers. Now whether that assumption turned out to be valid, I have no idea. However, I don't consider it a bad assumption to make at the time.

In any case, you then have the other, mechanical problems with the ELH (which others have mentioned). So even from the viewpoint of new ways to kill monsters and take their stuff, it's not that great.

 

[GQuail]

Is it out yet? I know the bestiary is, I have that PDF. But it is the only PDF RPGNow has for them.

As mentioned in my earlier comment, Ascension (which is basically the PHB the project) is sort of lingering in an almost-done-state.

the original date given was 4th July last year, and pre-orders were tkane then, but I think it's only now reached a stage where the text is complete. People who pre-ordered have been getting updated PDFs as it's changed, but I have no idea when it's going to be properly released.

I definatly think it's worth a look, although to be honest you'll be waiting a while for it to be out and in your hand if you want to run a campaign with the full set. ;-)

 

[GQuail]

It makes some sense. The basic idea seemed to be that if you've got all the way to 20th level by killing monsters and taking their stuff, you're not going to want to change direction completely to founding empires, religions, travelling to new planes of existence, etc. You're going to want to continue killing monsters and taking their stuff, but with more super powers. Now whether that assumption turned out to be valid, I have no idea. However, I don't consider it a bad assumption to make at the time.

I think this is valid: I do appreciate that older editions made a clear "low level/high level" split in the very nature of the game, and even now the availability of spells adjusts the style of play as you level up (my current group is fighting a whole lot different at 12th level than they did at 2nd) but I don't think that having a game which purposefully changes genre or core principles at a certain levle is a good idea. As hong says, if you've been dungeon crawling for the past 20 levels then you must enjoy it; else, why would you want to play level 21? Why should the game be built around anything else?

 

[Kerrick]

It makes some sense. The basic idea seemed to be that if you've got all the way to 20th level by killing monsters and taking their stuff, you're not going to want to change direction completely to founding empires, religions, travelling to new planes of existence, etc. You're going to want to continue killing monsters and taking their stuff, but with more super powers. Now whether that assumption turned out to be valid, I have no idea. However, I don't consider it a bad assumption to make at the time.

It's not really a bad assumption... assuming everyone likes that style of play. Which is most definitely not the case. This isn't 1E anymore - you don't go from the town to the dungeon, kick open the door to the 10x10 room, kill the horde of orcs, take their loot, and go back to town to sell it. 3E was designed to take advantage of ALL styles of play, from pure hack 'n slash to pure RP (though I'll admit, it tends to lean more toward the former than the latter), but the epic rules weren't - it's just, like Plane said, "[d20] turned up to 11". And it's sad, really, because there's so much they could've done with it. The monsters, at least, showed some originality, but the rest just gives the feel of a total kludge system, something that's tacked on as an afterthought, instead of designed to mesh seamlessly with the existing rules.

I've played around with some aspects of the system, and I've played epic a few times. Our house rules include: all base classes are capped at L20, and all PrCs at max level (usually 10); saves/BAB continue normally; and we use a variant epic spell system.

Some folks over on the WotC epic boards have a project going to convert all the epic material in the SRD to 3.5, though I'm not sure that it's not a lost cause, considering how much "epic" material isn't epic anymore. If I were to go through and revise epic (say, make a a new ELH), I'd fix (in no particular order):

Feats - Start from the bottom up, ditch everything that got nerfed right off the bat (like the ones that are now in PHBII), get rid of the crap stuff after that (Great xxx, Craft Epic xxx, etc.), and work from the handful of truly decent feats that are left.

Magic items. The only reason they made epic items cost so freaking much was a) to keep them out of the hands of non-epics; and b) to keep up with the rampant increase in starting wealth. I did a graded pricing system that fixes the stupid pricing scheme; the rest can be fixed by creating some truly original magic items, instead of stuff that just increases bonuses of already existing items.

Artifacts. What in the name of all that's holy were they thinking? Those aren't artifacts - those are jumped-up magic items, some of which aren't even fit for being called epic! The stuff in the DMG is better than that. Ugh.

PrCs. Get some real, EPIC PrCs in there, instead of the uninspired crap they have. Now, I'll grant, some of those are decent... but they're not epic, at least not as written (Agent Retriever), and some are epic, but they just suck (Legendary Dreadnought).

Deities. Yes, deities. Give them the epic feats and magic items they deserve - they're long overdue.

Edit: Oh yeah, and get rid of the rampant immunities plaguing the system. I agree with Moogle here - the system needs to be adjusted from the ground up. Immunities at ALL levels need to go, because epic becomes nothing more than "everyone has a pile of immunities, rendering spellcasters nigh useless and forcing the fighters to hack away at the hit points". Okay, maybe not that bad, but immunities are definitely far more prevalent than they should be at epic - fear, crits, sneaks, energy, stupid high DR, poison, disease... what's the point, after awhile?

 

[hong]

It's not really a bad assumption... assuming everyone likes that style of play. Which is most definitely not the case.

Nobody said anything about assuming everyone likes that style of play. But the guiding principle behind 3E was going into the dungeon, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. There is no reason to abandon that principle just because you want to write a book that takes PCs beyond 20th level. If you didn't like that style of play before 20th level, you still won't like that style after 20th level; if you liked it before 20th level, you'll still like it after 20th. Either way, it makes no difference to the ELH.

 

[Crothian]

Has anybody considered rewriting the old high level and Immortals rules to D&D / d20?

Mongoose did an book on Immortals and Sword and Sorcery (advanced players guide maybe3...) had levels 21-30 for the core classes like the 2ed high level book.

 

[Aegir]

Little surprised Power of Faerun hasn't been mentioned here at all. Sure its designed with FR in mind, but the whole book deals specifically with using Leadership/Epic Leadership in order to found empires, forge armies, become a spiritual leader, etc.