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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 3538341" data-attributes="member: 22882">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.</blockquote>

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