die_kluge said:
It would seem that D&D changes scope, if you will, from the various level. From sort of Lord of the Rings-like from levels 1-5, then higher fantasy from levels 5-10, and then really high fantasy from 10-15, and then crazy, earth-shattering stuff from 15-20.
I think it's a mistake to assume that there are _no_ precedents or touchstones for what high-level 3E is like. Yes, you can do crazy stuff, but it's still crazy stuff with a theme. Regardless of what items there are, you're still probably not going to find grav tanks or orbital bombardment satellites in most D&D games....
I used to say that high-level 3E was a supers game, but then I realised this wasn't gaining me a lot of converts.
So now I've changed to saying that high-level 3E is a wuxia game, and in terms of the _effects_, it is. Characters in CTHD, Hero, Stormriders etc can fly, teleport, chuck around boom spells, and do a lot of the funky stuff that gets seen in D&D.
Mind you, perhaps because of my cultural background, I may have less of a problem mixing eastern and western fantasy tropes than some others. Even so, it's not like characters with powers that even the gods take notice of don't exist in western legend. Hercules is the canonical example of this; in Celtic myth, you have people like Cuchulain and others. Slaine is a modern take on the latter.
Assuming you don't mind this subgenre, the sticking point them becomes the extent to which you're willing to concentrate on the _effects_ in the game, while overlooking the mechanism by which those effects are generated. HERO makes the distinction between heroic and superheroic games. In the latter, characters pay for their powers via character points, and can generally be as wild as you want. In the latter, they get their powers via items. Since HERO is multigenre, the item may be a sniper rifle, a flaming sword, a portable supercomputer or whatever, but generally, a heroic game is more down-to-earth than a superheroic one.
High-level 3E is in the strange situation of trying to produce a superheroic game while using heroic mechanics. If it could be consistent one way or the other, a lot of angst would be rendered moot. Hence the market for games like Midnight, which produce consistency by sticking with heroic mechanics and removing superheroic effects (at least from the PC realm). Alternatively, you could go the other way, by introducing a superheroic mechanic via handwaves like imbued magic, friendly spirits, etc. The point is to provide the usual super powers, while reducing or lessening the emphasis on loot that standard 3E has.
IMC this is what I've done. The PCs have powers and buffs out the wazoo, but they've actually found not that much loot, relatively speaking. The last adventure netted them a cloak of dimension door, a +1 sword and some masterwork stuff (they're 10th-12th level). The adventure previous to that, they found nothing at all, and in fact used up a bunch of scrolls and an artifact-level item. A significant proportion of their powers is gained via imbued magic, which is pretty much an effects-based system.
Mind you, I haven't actually removed loot from the campaign entirely. This is because for a lot of people, including my players, finding stuff is _fun_. It's like the capstone on a tough encounter, to beable to find a trophy haul to take away. Getting rid of it entirely would be to remove a major component of the gaming experience.
