Why the assumption that epic levels are purely optional?

[Krelios]

The rules for players (PHB) go to 20th level. The DMG provides a method for players to go beyond that, so it's inherantly a DM option. Not to mention the Epic rules are really bad as they are right now (why should a Wiz20/Ftr20 have a much worse BAB than a Ftr20/Wiz20?). I've never seen a good set of rules for Epic level play, and they've been optional since they were first introduced back in 2nd ed.

 

[Toras]

Really? To some extent, I've found that combat speed up with high level to epic exchanges, and with some care and preperation we can run through combats relatively quickly. Also, if you have been taking a character through epic, you get to know his numbers quickly.

 

[Mystery Man]

Really? To some extent, I've found that combat speed up with high level to epic exchanges, and with some care and preperation we can run through combats relatively quickly. Also, if you have been taking a character through epic, you get to know his numbers quickly.

I find this to bo true as well. Sometimes, there are even less rounds than a first level combat. Less "swing and a miss" type stuff.

 

[kigmatzomat]

IME the epic combat only takes huge amounts of time if there are lots of "unwritten rules" at the table. Save-or-dies suck at lower levels but to a party with access to True Res it's a nuisance on par with Hold Person; the victim misses a fight but not the whole shebang. Tactics that incapacitate a foe briefly can allow coup de graces and quickly end fights. Destruction is the only thing that really scares the PCs since it destroys the soul.

Fights typically last as long as I intend them to, barring player genius/idiocy. I choose monsters (or template them up) that fit what I want out of a fight. Sometimes that's 3 bloody rounds of horror (monster has high BAB/attacks, low HP) or a fight to exhaustion (attacks on par with party, craploads of defenses & hps). The only problem I have is the inconsistent manner in which WotC applies the Epic rules.

 

[Toras]

I will admit that I do not agree with everything in the epic rules as it was written. We largely bipassed this by simply having people buy the expanded spell compacity feats (gaining access to 10th, 11th, and on spells, and simply designing spells to fit that point)

Taking that and Union (shudder) with a grain of salt, I think that the epic rules could take a bit of tweaking but their basic ideas are ones that can be made to work.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I'm not sure I'd word that quite so strongly, but in general I agree. Having run a campaign from 1st to 28th, I think I can safely say that high and then epic-level play offers rewards for a dm and gamers who are interested in it. It's also very true that the transition to Epic is far less work than the transition from low/mid-levels to high ones.

QFT.

However, I do think that by higher levels, you're getting into a pace of play that doesn't really resemble the high-fantasy genre that D&D cleaves to at low- to mid-levels. High-level D&D PCs don't resemble Conan or Aragorn so much as they do superheroes, demigods, or swirling balls of exploding anime character. It's not so much the raw damage output as the sheer array and power of movement, information-gathering, and "rebooting" capacity that changes the game. This is the major problem I have with high/epic-level D&D; the fact that designing adventures starts looking like some unholy combination of an exercise in Philip K. Dick pastiche and a four-dimensional geometry exercise.

Another issue with epic is, to a certain extent, tedium; putting one challenge after another in the path of your PCs starts to get a bit boring, especially when your great wyrm red dragons become paragon Colossal+ advanced age category 20 great wyrms, and your beholders become pseudonatural elder orb Sor25s, etc. From a narrative point of view, it seems a bit anticlimactic for either (a) your big bad world-eating monster to go from a threat to a speedbump or (b) all the monsters to simply move up in power with the PCs while serving the same purpose.

I'd also have to say that huge, "epic" story arcs, world-shaking threats, and powerful foes are quite possible at sub-epic levels. What seems to get really complicated at epic levels are the pacing and the mechanics. I shudder at the thought of actually *running* a combat featuring a deity or one of those insane cosmic entities on Dicefreaks. Epic entities can take days of game and real time to strategize properly.

That said, I quite liked running my last campaign, which ran to 21st-22nd level, and I could have found things to occupy my PCs further.

I would also posit that as much as I enjoyed Epic, I think the Epic magic system is a complete and utter waste of time and we constantly wrestled with it but largely ignored it.

Um, yeah.

 

[Dragonblade]

I'll tentatively agree with the OP.

Because the epic rules are core, one would expect them to be the basic assumption, and thus predict campaigns to go into them, even as they project that campaigns go into the 15th or 10th level. This means that the core rules should be designed with the epic rules in mind, that the core campaign shold assume the use of the epic rules, and that the things that are the most powerful in D&D (like the demon lords) should make good use of those rules.

That they don't is a tragedy. It's like designing fire characters that didn't make use of the game's rules for subtypes and energy types. You have a usable tool for depicting extremely powerful, world-shaping, beyond-mortal powers. Those rules have an appropriate use. It's not an entirely common use, but to ignore a rule just because it's not a common circumstance...I mean, how often does the turning radius for flying creatures of manueverability (good) come up? But the rules are there, and they should either be used for what they are designed for or redesigned so that they are useful, but not ignored.

That many people don't play higher levels is an effect rather than a cause.

Great observation. I completely agree.

 

[Storyteller01]

True it goes to 20, but it never states that 20th is the end. Aren't all three of the core books considered required for the game to be played? If so, the epic rules are always there.

The reason I'm pursuing this is because the epic level rules seem to be vanishing into the ether, yet the designers must have thought they were essential to consider adding them to the 3.5 DMG, at the expense of things such as 0-level multiclassing, for example. They often get lumped in with psionics as an "option", yet psionics don't get a few pages in a core book.

That could be because most games don't make it to 20th level unless it starts there first. You get some info, but the likelyhood of using it is nil.

 

[DM_Matt]

Maybe if the ELH wasnt so bad and was actually updates for 3.5, more games would play a bit beyond 20 and people wouldnt consider it so optional.

 

[Storyteller01]

This sums it up. Most DMs give up at teen-level play because they have to do something different: think. Up to 10th level they can run a knee-jerk game with no problems.

This is a rather rude assessment. Many campaigns end or get sidelined either because previous goals were met or players/DM's want to do something different/have come up with new ideas.

The nature of the game doesn't really allow DM's to not think about their campaigns.