Who thinks ELH is a good thing for the wrong reason?

[JacktheRabbit]

I do.

As soon as I heard that ELH would be added to the SRD I was happy.

Why?

Because that means next year will be Epic year. Every D20 company and its brother is going to fall over itself putting out epic crap I will have no interest in.

That means I will have a fairly long period of time where I can go out and purchase all the good products that are currently out that I have had no change to pick up so far.

 

[Ristamar]

I'm looking forward to the 'epic crap' since there's already plenty of 'non-epic crap' available...

 

[Hakkenshi]

I'm looking forward to the 'epic crap' since there's already plenty of 'non-epic crap' available...

How well-said!

I personally like the idea of epic levels, and I know that much as it has been so far for non-epic play, there will be good products and bad products, with most averaging in between those two extremes.

So I don't expect a huge difference, and I'll most likely find whatever epic adventures Bruce Cordell and Monte Cook write to be extremely entertaining.

That would be on par for the course.

 

[Desdichado]

The only reason I bought ELH was because it was on sale at buy.com for less than $14. I doubt I'll ever use it, although some parts (particularly the monster section) was pretty neat.

But really, if you don't play epic level play, what do you do with even great concept monsters like Infernals? Got me.

 

[Psion]

Well, I just hope that among those people "falling over each other" to put out "epic crap", someone brings more imagination to the table than the ELH does.

 

[Buttercup]

I also bought the ELH, but I'll probably never use it. I got it because I thought it might have some interesting stuff in it, and it did. But I'm not likely to purchase much supplemental material for epic level play. Perhaps an adventure module or two, just in case I someday want to run an epic game, but other than that, nothing. I prefer other sorts of sourcebooks.

 

[JeffB]

I'm with Psion here...The ELH to me seems very UN-epic...

In the first pargraph of the first chapter it mentions many of the classic epic heroes of fantasy and mythology. Unfortunately the ELH doesn't seem to me to be in that strain at all but simply bigger monsters to kill, more powers to get, and more powerful magic and artifacts to find..not very epic at all..just higher level typical D&D.

Epic to me is how heroes in Earthdawn and Glorantha are portrayed....or even Exalted.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

It struck me that an epic adventure is probably best closely tied to the abilities of the party playing it. The variation in possible abilities of the characters would, IMO, make it near impossible to write 'sensible' modules....

Still, be interesting to see if any of the publishers can come up with something like that, which actually hangs together properly.

Guess they'll be a lot of epic sourcebooks though. I wonder how many classes, levels and one off abilities Elminster will end up with? I'm fully expecting to see something like this in Dragon any day soon:

Elminster Wizard34398:Cleric3291:Fighter419:Archmage498324:Etc41387

Abilities:
Smokes pipe.
Immunity to absolutely everything.
Doesn't even look remotely like Gandalf (now we got rid of the hat)

 

[Wolfspider]

In the first pargraph of the first chapter it mentions many of the classic epic heroes of fantasy and mythology. Unfortunately the ELH doesn't seem to me to be in that strain at all but simply bigger monsters to kill, more powers to get, and more powerful magic and artifacts to find..not very epic at all..just higher level typical D&D.

I'm not so sure about that. Every one of those "bigger monsters" could easily have an epic (both in level and tone) campaign built around it.

I'm very pleased with the Epic Level Handbook. It gives me the rules I need to play at those power levels. As a life-long student of literature and mythology, I don't need a lot of fluffy guidelines on how to run an epic adventure.

 

[Numion]

It struck me that an epic adventure is probably best closely tied to the abilities of the party playing it. The variation in possible abilities of the characters would, IMO, make it near impossible to write 'sensible' modules....

Still, be interesting to see if any of the publishers can come up with something like that, which actually hangs together properly.

I'll second that. It would be very intresting to see a "module" for 40th level PCs. A killer one at that

EDIT: Name suggestion: Balls of Nightfang Spire