What's wrong with high-level/epic play?

[ashockney]

Here's a few thoughts on high level play I've posted before from this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ng-numbers-game-quick-easy-2.html#post2142377

How bad does it get? There are 49 conditions that affect combat and 144 modifiers to those conditions. You can't remember all of that in your head? Come on!
That's not even factoring in types of attacks, # of attacks, attack bonuses, armor classes and armor class modifiers, damage, and damage modifiers. I think you get the exponentially worse picture. There are some big opportunities to improve it. (For my fellow analysts and managers out there, yes, I actually process mapped D&D combat.)

Suggestions: well, first and foremost, make sure your group is committed to making this work. It will truely need to be a team effort. Everyone will have to do a little more work to make things go more smoothly. Second, I've found an excel spreadsheet to be a DM's good friend. Finally, I recommend talking to your group about combining and limiting the hundreds of effects that can become a real pain to keep track of at this level. For example, what if all morale, luck, sacred, divine, competence, and size bonuses were combined into a more generic "buff" bonus, and these bonuses generally lasted for 1 combat. It makes life a lot simpler for everyone. It's not like the party or the DM will be lacking for ways, but it prevents everyone from being forced to cast 12 different spells and do hours of research to find that one optimal combination, and keep track of each modifier separately. Same thing goes for the myriad of defensive capabilities - armor class, resistances, immunities, cover, concealment, displacement, blinking, and damage reduction. It will become very complex, very quickly if it hasn't already. Streamline this as much as possible, using the same "simplicity" approach as with buffing. Near the end of the campaign, and as you enter epic, there should be pretty standard "defense arrays" available to your players, when in various states of preparedness.

 

[Runestar]

Saves are an interesting point - at high lv/epic gameplay, the PCs can expect to be virtually immune to just about every effect in the game.

Freedom of movement counters grapple
Heroes' feast counters fear/poison
Mindblank counters any mind-affecting effect
Soulfire counters death effects
Fortification grants immunity to crits
Ring of evasion if you can manage a good reflex save (eg: via moment of prescience, or mind before thought)
Greater spell immunity for anything which slips through the cracks, such as blasphemy.
Disease generally isn't an issue since you should be able to come up with a solution within the incubation time.

Saves generally don't work against monsters because their sheer amount of racial HD usually means obscene saves (even for their poor save), unless you are a shadowcraft wizard (in which case your spells have a greater effect when they make their saves). Direct damage won't scale fast enough to keep up with their hp, leaving battlefield control...

If you are interested, here is a brief summary of what you ideally want when becoming epic, so you don't end up over-nerfing your PCs when you do your revision. I can post the longer version if anyone is interested.

Guidelines for a 21st level PC

Short version:

• Attacks - to hit AC 40, touch AC 15, flat footed AC 37.
• Attacks vs paragons - to hit AC 50, touch 42, flat-footed 41.
• Armor Class - 47
• Hit points - 183 (tanks or melee-ers should exceed this as much as they can manage! Double would be good)
• Special Ability save DCs - 35.
• Skills - +50 for effective skill use (where opposed checks are involved).
• Damage - 96hp/round minimum.
• Saves - +26 for your worst save.

 

[ashockney]

Also, you can see many ideas fleshed out in this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/93424-i-hate-math-4.html
(sorry, it's long...)

Here was the culminating point:
So, I tried out some new stuff for high level play at Origins this weekend. Here it is in a nutshell:

Use average rolls (for attack and damage). (fixes the iterative attack/mods)
Use a simplified "buff" system.

Ta dum!

There's a bunch of sub-rules to these rules (and I mean a BUNCH!), but the long and short of it, is what you see above. All you really need to play high level D&D (I ran at 14th level) is a 20 sided die! Make a small number of calculations in advance, and you're off to the races. Get your game on, focus on the tactics on the board, and focus on your characters and their roleplaying.

Feedback I received was generally positive. I had a rules-lawyer and dedicated character optimizer at my table (twice) who indicated that they felt it was a little oversimplified, but got what I was trying to do. In the category of "smashing success" I had two 14 year olds (one male and one female) sit at our table. Neither had ever seen the character before Sunday, and both ACTIVELY participated in the combats, role-played their characters, and enjoyed the adventure. I asked if they felt they could continue playing at this level, to which they both responded, "oh, yeah." That is it!

We also completed the entire adventure in 3:45 min. That's a 14th level adventure, with four encounters, completed with characters most had never seen before, in less than four hours. There were two character deaths (huzzah!), and there was one combat that pitted the six player characters against 5 Fire Giants, 6 Elite Fire Giants, 3 Hell Hounds, and King Snurre himself (with his 3 pet "uber" hell hounds). How long do you think this combat would normally take? 24 combatants, 14th level. We did it in an hour or less.

 

[Runestar]

This is partly why I like the maneuver system of tome of battle. Instead of having to roll for 5+ attacks for my fighter (and expecting the last 2 to miss), I can just concentrate on rolling one good attack for my warblade (typically either diamond nightmare blade or strike of precise clarity). And if you went with weapon supremacy, you can take 10 on that attack roll, meaning that with a high enough attack modifier, you will always hit, so you don't even have to bother rolling.

Steady concentration lets me take 10 on my concentration checks (namely the diamond mind save boosters). So I can just declare that save as auto-succeed. And that aura of law lets me take 11 once/round.

While taking chance out of the equation seems like it might expedite things, does it seem like it would make combat less fun?

 

[Ydars]

As DM, the only way I could run high level D&D 3.5E was by having the PCs and all the monsters in excel spreadsheets. That way, I could instantly calculate buffs/debuffs. I also used the rule that 1d6 = 3 damage etc. I also used the rule that rnd/lvl spells= 1 encounter duration.

Set-up was therefore a little more time consuming, but having everyone's stats in excel really makes things work well.

 

[Noumenon]

So, I tried out some new stuff for high level play at Origins this weekend. Here it is in a nutshell:

Use average rolls (for attack and damage). (fixes the iterative attack/mods)
Use a simplified "buff" system.

Ta dum!

There's a bunch of sub-rules to these rules (and I mean a BUNCH!), but the long and short of it, is what you see above.

ashockney, I wanted to see the sub-rules. I read several pages of that thread, and found some cool spreadsheets and stuff, but it's really long. Did you ever collect all the sub-rules into one post anywhere?

Edited to add: I know there must be a post like that, because I made it as far as this one that lists every pitfall of high level/epic play.

 

[Kerrick]

You'd think this would be the first thing they thought of when they proposed their system. The first obvious thing to do would be to give them the d20 when they hit +10, not +20, so that their average result would be the same.

Yeah, that was the version I saw here - 1d20 for every +10, not +20.

Here's a few thoughts on high level play I've posted before from this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ng-numbers-game-quick-easy-2.html#post2142377

I'll check that out later when I have a chance. Do you have a copy of that spreadsheet somewhere?

If you are interested, here is a brief summary of what you ideally want when becoming epic, so you don't end up over-nerfing your PCs when you do your revision. I can post the longer version if anyone is interested.

Guidelines for a 21st level PC

Short version:

Attacks - to hit AC 40, touch AC 15, flat footed AC 37.
Attacks vs paragons - to hit AC 50, touch 42, flat-footed 41.
Armor Class - 47
Hit points - 183 (tanks or melee-ers should exceed this as much as they can manage! Double would be good)
Special Ability save DCs - 35.
Skills - +50 for effective skill use (where opposed checks are involved).
Damage - 96hp/round minimum.
Saves - +26 for your worst save.

.... Wow. +26 for a low save?? I have a L45 PC I rolled up for a high-level playtest, and her low saves aren't even that high!

Please recall, the title of the thread is a direct quote from one of my players, at Origins, one year ago. They were even in the same adventure. This year, I had two young teenagers at the table, actively participating. We also completed the entire adventure in 3:45 min. That's a 14th level adventure, with four encounters, completed with characters most had never seen before, in less than four hours. There were two character deaths (huzzah!), and there was one combat that pitted the six player characters agains 5 Fire Giants, 6 Elite Fire Giants, 3 Hell Hounds, and King Snurre himself (with his 3 pet "uber" hell hounds). How long do you thing this combat would normally take? 24 combatants, 14th level. We did it in an hour or less.

That's truly impressive. I remember one epic combat we had where there were 6-7 PCs vs. a single creature (a really nasty homebrew creation with several thousand hp); the fight took the better part of an hour, even though it lasted onlt 5-6 rounds game time. I was playing a dual-wielding rogue type with 4 attacks with each hand... god, that got out of hand quickly. I was rolling attacks and damage beforehand (the DM told us the AC so we could do so), so I didn't slow things down personally, but that was a LOT of dice rolling, and not something I want to do ever again.

 

[ashockney]

ashockney, I wanted to see the sub-rules. I read several pages of that thread, and found some cool spreadsheets and stuff, but it's really long. Did you ever collect all the sub-rules into one post anywhere?

Edited to add: I know there must be a post like that, because I made it as far as this one that lists every pitfall of high level/epic play.

I didn't collect them into one POST anywhere, but this effort was a fluid one. So, the rules continued to change as new materials were introduced to the game. Tome of Battle changed my thinking SIGNIFICANTLY, and then ultimately ended up pointing me in the direction of 4e, which largely has solutions to ALL of the pitfalls outlined.

I have several versions of the "rules" that I used, captured in different formats. What exactly are you looking for?

 

[ashockney]

I'll check that out later when I have a chance. Do you have a copy of that spreadsheet somewhere?


.... Wow. +26 for a low save?? I have a L45 PC I rolled up for a high-level playtest, and her low saves aren't even that high!


That's truly impressive. I remember one epic combat we had where there were 6-7 PCs vs. a single creature (a really nasty homebrew creation with several thousand hp); the fight took the better part of an hour, even though it lasted onlt 5-6 rounds game time. I was playing a dual-wielding rogue type with 4 attacks with each hand... god, that got out of hand quickly. I was rolling attacks and damage beforehand (the DM told us the AC so we could do so), so I didn't slow things down personally, but that was a LOT of dice rolling, and not something I want to do ever again.

Thanks for the positive feedback. Which spreadsheet are you looking for, the one that added up all the attack rolls and damage for me? It's not much other than excel with formulas to do the math. I'd be happy to share, I have several good examples, including most of my "revisit" to the most popular 1e modules. Is there one you prefer? Or if you plan to be at Origins or Gen Con, I'd be happy to run a game with you.

(PS - if your players don't have saves in the 20's and 30's in epic, they're just not trying...)

 

[Kerrick]

Thanks for the positive feedback. Which spreadsheet are you looking for, the one that added up all the attack rolls and damage for me?

I was referring to the one you did laying out all the combat stuff.

(PS - if your players don't have saves in the 20's and 30's in epic, they're just not trying...)

That was MY PC, actually. And yeah, I probably wasn't - I'm not a min-maxer.

Thanks for posting that link to the other thread; it was quite enlightening. I burned through all 15 pages (though the last 5 were a bit off-topic). The main point I got was:

Combat is where most high-level play bogs down. The sheer number of bonuses (the application and removal thereof and whether or not they stack), situtational modifiers, and feats adds a whole level of complexity.

To a lesser degree, it becomes harder to plan for a party, but a DM who's been playing with a group since low levels (preferably L1) should know them well enough to provide a reasonable challenge and plan for contingencies.

Along with this, players should be conversant enough with their characters (if not the rules as a whole) that they can avoid slowing down play. It's ridiculous to assume that everyone will know what Rule X will do if you don't use it some or all the time, but if it applies to your PC, you should.