obviously you have not played at epic levels or at least not very wellHere's some easy epic rules for you, that when you boil them down, equate to what most epic rules consist of:
When epic enters combat with non-epic, epic wins.
When epic enters combat with epic, winner of initiative wins.
Non-combat? What's that?Using 3.5 Epic rules, it's much closer to:
Epic vs non-Epic, Epic wins.
Epic vs Epic, most prepared wins.The results of Epic combat using the 3.5 rules was generally 90% preparation, research, and planning, and 10% actual combat.
I agreed
I want it, but I don't want them (Paizo) to feel rushed. I can wait.
This!...
It's no secret that the d20 system starts to fall apart in epic content. Some f the optional rules like armor as DR open the door towards a first step that can potentially help with adjusting the problems to smooth out the transition (i.e. more armor types+the armor as DR thing). I'd rather wait & see a functional epic content implementation than one similar to 3.5's where things got progressively worse the further you go. Plus, they already somewhat account for it later, a lot of class stuff where you get something every Y levels after level X lacks the "up to level 20" that mostof 3.5 had.
These days, I very often tend to hand-wave combats after a round or two. In the last game, they were squared off against 7 star-spawn of Cthulhu, ranging from CR31 to CR37 due to various things like the pseudonatural and paragon templates. It was certainly under-CRed for the party, but it ended up being tougher than normal due to the resilience of the star-spawn and the toughness of the paragon and pseudonatural templates.
After about three rounds of combat, all of the PCs were still up, though one wizard was still stunned by the star-spawn's overwhelming mind (luckily for him he'd gone incorporeal before getting nailed), one of the star-spawn was down (but regenerating under the surface of the swamp), several of the star-spawn were buried under a maximized bombardment, and the PCs were mostly unharmed but having trouble due to the spawn's combination of Stunning Strike and the full Improved Rapidstrike tree.
At that point I simply hand-waved the remainder of the combat; there was little reason to drag it out once the end was visible; this let the players get on to what they really wanted to do - investigate the ruined shrine the things were guarding.
I do run combats all the way to the end if they're interesting; sometimes a combat that I think will be a blast ends up as a dud, and other times one that I intend to be a throwaway turns out to be really cool. It's often hard to tell ahead of time.
This is pretty much how I see combats in an epic game. If they're interesting, we'll play it out to the last. It's all a gamble, to be honest, and sometimes, you just need to be flexible to allow the plot to continue (unless, you don't believe in a plot). My table has had more fun with the story being told than the combats we have sometimes.
At that point I simply hand-waved the remainder of the combat; there was little reason to drag it out once the end was visible; this let the players get on to what they really wanted to do - investigate the ruined shrine the things were guarding.I do run combats all the way to the end if they're interesting; sometimes a combat that I think will be a blast ends up as a dud, and other times one that I intend to be a throwaway turns out to be really cool. It's often hard to tell ahead of time.
My experience is that without a strong plot, a high-level game will fall apart quickly; there's only so much interesting combat to be had, and combat gets old very fast.
Plus, the players like flexing their muscle in other ways than combat; very often they're happier when they're using their power in non-combat ways - they recently had a great time teleporting in several tons of raw materials to the dwarves who had been isolated on a remote island for several millenia and have never seen actually fresh-cut lumber.
The same for me as well; if there's no strong plot, then the game is dead. I ran a high level game once that I'd love to bring back for my new table where all the planes of existence were in crisis. It involved them going from Universe to Universe, dimension to dimension, trying to track down who or what was threatening to destroy all planes of life. That was an awesome game; there was even an audience with the Lady herself.
Oh, Her. Y'see, there's a quiet rumor that she hasn't actually been seen in some time. And that's not a good thing.
I think my players have forgotten that one; they've been preoccupied ... but soon enough they'll be getting a reminder, I'm sure ....