When should characters start facing epic encounters?

[Dagger75]

My group of 3 characters, Level 19 Cleric, level 19 Druid, level 17 Barbarian.

I had them fight a Winterwight and an 18th Level Human Fighter.

Now the the Winterwight has 20/+6 DR and 10/- Icy Hardness. The Barbarian if he rolled an 8 would do 1 point of damage to the winterwight.

Well they punked the fighter pretty quick, the winterwight is another story. What saved them is it is undead. I saw 3 Heals and 2 Mass Heals and a few miracles thrown at this beast.

It killed the barbarian in a few rounds round (he failed a bunch of DC 35 Fort saves or lose -2 con). The cleric barely got through the SR. The druid made it through once. I think they finally healed it then got the flamestrike through, the divine damage killed him.

Very Nasty. Hope that helps.

3 Hours till Two Towers

 

[Berk]

3 Hours till Two Towers

2 hours and time to go and get on line =o) =o)

 

[Orryn Emrys]

As my group recently started into the late teens in levels, I finally began constructing them encounters involving some of the campaign's greatest villains... epic-level NPC's that have remained in the background for the entirety of the previous four years of campaigning. Fortunately, I 'd never bothered actually writing up the bad guys until after the epic-level handbook came out. Consequentially, some of the PCs' most recent encounters have been extremely challenging... but extremely climactic as well.

The heroes' most recent encounter, with a party of six ranging from 17th to 19th level, pitched them against a (somewhat over-confident) 25th-level wizard and his cronies. The backdrop was a pitched battle between the heroes' and villain's armies, allowing me to use some epic-level magic to affect the entire field of battle, during which the PC's ended up confronting the magus directly. The battle was a near thing, but it's rare that I get to see my group so intensely caught up in the scene.

In conclusion, I'd say that the odds were heavily stacked against the PC's in terms of sheer combatative potency, but judicious use and abuse of the villain's capabilities allowed me to realistically exhaust some of his power prior to the confrontation without weakening him significantly enough to make the players feel that they had an advantage. And the villain fully intended to capture some a couple of them for his master. Fortunately, my players seem to be really good at thinking on their feet... two were imprisoned, another mazed, but the villain was neatly skewered in round four.

 

[the Jester]

You're kidding, right?

I'd lower the EPL just for that; sor/wiz multiclasses are a disaster in power terms, and can severely weaken a party overall.

I pointed this out to him when he first made the character, but his concept was the guy who never ran out of spells (albeit low-level ones). He's a gnome and he made a wizard not illusionist, so he can't even break the split-level paradigm without suffering xp penalties.

The spell penetration issue came up extensively in the last game and afterward he vowed he was gonna take spell penetration as his next feat...