EL_Kabong's page

And the monk argument begins anew.

A primer for those who haven't heard how bad monks are.

Some of those points no longer apply in Pathfinder. But the point still stands, that monks need gear as much or more than the fighter.

Edit: Random thought from reading the stat blocks above.

Why do monks get their unarmed damage with gauntlets of strength but do not with ordinary gauntlets? :P

Yea, because nothings changed in the 9 years since that thread was made right ? With even just the supplemental material produced by wotc monks have become bananas when built right (and yes, there are ALOT of ways to build monks right, while also alot of ways to build them wrong).

Quote:

When making a full attack action, a hasted creature may make one extra attack with any weapon he is holding.

Worth noting the bolded part. If the monk is fighting unarmed, by RAW, he doesn't get an extra attack since he has no weapons.

Except that specifically MONKs are treated as armed while unarmed (or whichever is more beneficial to them), also monks can make their full unarmed attack string while holding a weapon with other body parts. So while being unarmed as a monk isn't the same as "holding" a weapon at that point you're just arguing semantics.

Gorbacz wrote:

This is a hot topic, so I'll try to give a quick answer before tinfoil hats and flamethrowers will be needed...

a) Official Paizo Psionics book is far off, as Paizo are still considering how to handle the matter.

b) Dreamscarred Press (the psionics specialized publisher) is doing a Pathfinderization of 3.5 psionics. It's in the works and progressing nicely.

Shoot! Didn't want to cause a riot. It was only my opinion.

That's ok, alot of people felt the same way about 1e psionics because they were obscenely broken beyond belief. 3e psionics wasent AS bad but still needed some refining, 3.5 balanced alot of it out very nicely, and then the complete psionics book just fubared up alot of it again.

One of the primary things i hate about 3.5 psionics is how they handle disciplines, they kept the automatic learning of powers listed under each discipline, but decided to castrate psionic access to powers of any of the other disciplines (even though items) and the only way to get one is through a feat.

Right now I use the 3e rule for disciplines where they don't restrict access to other discipline powers (you just have to burn power choices on them) however the casting stat for psions is still just int, not dependent on which disc you pick like 3e (where the stat related to the discipline dictated your casting stat). However aside from that I try to stick exclusively to the XPH, complete psionics has some decent stuff aside from the castration it preformed on the Astral Construct power, but for the most part it's kinda meh.

However if you stick with the s%@~ty highly restrictive 3.5 xph version of disciplines you're better off playing an ardent and getting all the benifits of being a psion with none of the downsides, and alot more in the way of powers.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

I don't think we can definitively state either way on that one. Maybe D&D is special, maybe it was just the first on the market, maybe it is special because it was first.

I don't think it's special because it was the first on the market, I think it's special because, for many gamers, it's the first tabletop RPG they played. So, in that case, it would be special because of a greater visibility/popularity. :)

This x 1000, this is the primary reason why alot of older games stay popular in any genre. Ranging from DnD tabletop to WoW with mmos (being the first mmo to really bring mmos into the mainstream it was the first alot of people played, and thus everything else will fall short, at least for the most part).

I'd say the worst thing for me is the holdovers for the sake of backwards compatibility, for example:

-the caster/non-caster divide
-the balance between attacks & defenses
-the ol' Christmas tree...

And other such things.

Well that's always been a problem with DnD, which they "fixed" to some extent with 4e but at the same time pretty much took away the individuality of every single class. This has to be done for the sake of "game balance" but when it comes to DnD the game balance is directly dictated by the DM and NOT the books. DnD was never ment to be balanced for one class compared to another, but on a party scale. And as a dm any imbalanced you find in the party you can remedy with dm intervention/tweaks to support whatever playstyle they chose to use, while still trying to keep things challenging and fun for everyone.

It is way to rules heavy.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game but honestly the more I have GM'd it the more I'm starting to like it.

alot more streamlined then standard 3.5, but yes dnd has always been more rules heavy then most other systems i've encountered. My personal favorite so far is everway, I have a friend who adapts it to whatever theme he wants to run (like say paranoia for instance) and things tend to be alot more fun. Although it takes a certain type of dm for these less rule heavy systems as well.

+1 for artefacts for the epic PCs (or at least some detailed guidelines for DM how to create and balance them). Something iconic belonging to them becoming an item of legends. Something being a material proof of their masters former greatness that could be used later. I thing it is a rewarding moment if the group encounters a well known item reminding them of their different PCs past achievments and lasting impact the've made upon the world (not that it can't be used with non-artefact items, but...).

Weapons of legacy has some starting examples on bumping up legacy items to epic levels and whatnot if you wanna start there.

What's really lacking is good support material for the GM. I'll be honest, even as an experienced GM of nearly 20 years I am intimidated by Epic levels. I admit designing encounters, building monsters, etc is a LOT of work for me. When the work of it outweighs the fun it starts to become a chore. Players don't always appreciate the work a GM puts into letting their characters shine and mop the floor with world shattering monsters.

--Vrock & Awe

Agreed, GM material is all that's necessary honestly (which includes things like adventures and baseline rules).

EL_Kabong wrote:

yw, oh and... KABONG!

I bet you did not think I knew who EK was did you lol.

Nah, I don't like to make assumptions ;) But ya never know nowadays.

poilbrun wrote:

EL_Kabong wrote:

Check out the "Immortals Handbook" set of books, right now their are only two, because the man writing them is doing it alone. However the two out right now are Immortals Handbook - Ascension, and Beastiary.

Thank for the heads-up, but I was already aware of it. You'll see me in a lot of the older threads (heck, my contribution is even acknowledge in the book), but unfortunately the designer has moved where I can't follow... 4e :-)

Well, Ascension is really more targeted to characters who have become gods than to those who are merely epic level. And is the guy who made them still doing anything at all? The website hasn't been updated since 2008, I haven't seen any releases since the two books mentioned, for ANY system, d20, 4e, or other.

yea I doubt he'll be doing any more, the downside of one person taking on such a large undertaking like that. And yea, ascension is targeted at making characters into gods rather then meerely epic level, however it and the beastiary provide good examples for developing higher end stuff like that. Especially since imo most characters(npc or otherwise) at the higher end epic levels are headed more or less towards ascension, with a few exceptions. Surviving to gain that much power is an epic feat in and of itself.

I wish Pathfinder could have kept the old domain abilities in addition to the new ones.

no reason it can't, ask your dm

Thank for the heads-up, but I was already aware of it. You'll see me in a lot of the older threads (heck, my contribution is even acknowledge in the book), but unfortunately the designer has moved where I can't follow... 4e :-)

Aye, my biggest gripe with 4e is what they've done to casters by normalizing everyone, otherwise from the standpoint of melee/archer type characters I think they really spiced it up on that side of the fence.

Thanks for the links EK. Much appreciated. Let me smash a guitar over your head to show my gratitude lol.

yw, oh and... KABONG!

EL_Kabong wrote:

Indeed, I have much faith that when paizo does get around to releasing their own epic material books for pathfinder that they'll be much higher caliber then the crap wotc hastily plopped out with the elh. Till then i'll stick with some of the quality 3rd party stuff i've found that addresses it.

Would you mind listing the third party supplemants. I also do not like the ELH and would like to see what other rpg companies have done with epic rules.

Right now the only ones im using are the Immortals handbooks, the primary website for their original site is a bit in shambles right now. But aside from that i've been having trouble digging up alot of stuff, I mostly use this as a jumping point for designing adventures and statting out monsters (assuming i don't use the ones contained within).

Only problem with them is im not sure if the proposed future releases will ever come out, right now it's just ascension and beastiary 1. It's one guy doing pretty much all the work as a second source of income so that probably explains alot, although it's very good stuff.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=55116
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3481&it=1

also a good source of info regarding player made epic stuff is over at the dicefreaks forums. They have one good campaign setting right now called Godspell and a good workup of hell that I prefer to the wizards one (although the wizards one was not bad either), and multiple others in the works that need some more dedicated bodies working on them.

http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/index.php

I actually think of Epic as traveling the planes, becoming demigods, fighting demon lords, etc.

I'd say that is definitely a good way to define epicness, but what if the heroes want something more? Does that just get delegated to "retiring" characters so the dm can start a new adventure instead of progressing the current one past his comfort zone? (had a few dm's in the past specifically like this)

Well, define "post 21 gameplay" in terms that suitably separate it from "pre 21 gameplay".

For me, I agree with Epic meaning accomplishments, which is relative to whatever campaign setting or world you are running. When the average human has 3-5 "concious" hp and a grand total of 15hp before "dead on impact", anything in the "15 points of damage, minimum" range is epic, because its something an average person simply can't do. The average person can not hit DC 30, AC 25 (barring the sillyness of the Nat20), nor make a DC 25 save (again, barring Nat20). The average person can not take 15 points of damage and live, nor can he deal it with a weapon. Any character who can do those things is approaching epic.

Once a character has experienced things that an average person can't even relate to, then they are even closer to epic. When the dragon that attacks isn't the first you've seen, when the shambling undead become an annoyance, when the great twisting plant monster makes you go "I was looking for a challenge", then your getting close. And after a certain point, you look back and go, "huh, I guess that was an epic adventure". And then it was.

Agreed

I've DMed 3.5 epic level play several times, with several groups. Overall, the ELH is a huge mass of great ideas, jumbled together like a hastily repackaged line of Christmas lights. But like many of the lights in a hastily repackaged line, a lot of whats in the book is just broken and does not work when you try to plug it in. Epic spells were an awesome concept, but had massive issues on both sides of the utility spectrum, from their abysmally long creation times to their effectively unlimited power levels (like the trick of 1rst Epic Spell: Epic Spellcraft boost. 2nd Epic Spell: OMGEFFECT that I couldn't do without epic spellcraft boost.)

Very true, and this is where epic play usually becomes tricky, because it requires alot more dm oversight from the ground up, Wotc had a horrible execution with their release of the ELH though like every DnD book all of the rules contained within are subject to the whims of the dm.

There is plenty of stuff pre 21 that's over the top broken class and feat wise from alot of the wizards core and supplements, but that's only at first glance. As an experienced dm you should know better then anyone that tailoring encounters to challenge or not challenge the party can balance out alot of things that seem broken at first glance.

Many gamers are casual, they don't read the books on the other 6 days of the week besides gamenight, they don't browse these forums on a daily basis. They don't either want or have the time to spend on learning literally a textbook's worth of material, and are content to just play their character and enjoy it. In my group, 3 of the 4 players are this way. I might be inclined to say its a girl vrs guy thing, but one of those 3 is a guy, so maybe not. All of us have children and jobs, I just happen to make my gaming knowledge a priority. Then again, I am the DM, so I kind of have to.

Indeed, although the breadth of knowledge they would need to absorb can be cut down pretty easy by narrowing the focus of their reading. Going through the ELH cover to cover isn't necessary to making an effective high level character (but obviously helps).

Epic, as in post 20 rules, is just adding another peak to the mountain of material for a player to deal with. I'm of the mind that Paizo will get to it when they have covered the "foothills" of things like Psionics, Modern, etc, before they move on to such a "mountaintop". And thats fine with me, they'll do it when they are ready, rather than when corporate demands it, and they'll do it in Paizo style, which is the main reason I will likely buy it, when that time comes.

Indeed, I have much faith that when paizo does get around to releasing their own epic material books for pathfinder that they'll be much higher caliber then the crap wotc hastily plopped out with the elh. Till then i'll stick with some of the quality 3rd party stuff i've found that addresses it.

Sometimes you WANT to instill fear in your Players, and used sparingly, fudging can do that. There is a reason GM/DMs get screens to roll behind :)

But it has to be used VERY sparingly, once or twice a campaign, if you don;t want it to get too obvious. Sounds like your DMs are overusing it. It happens with pre-gen adventures a lot, IMO, because they are designed to be universal, and different groups/players can come up with some novel ways of screwing with the AP as written. Once the GM gets a better hold on their party's abilities and weaknesses, they should tweak the encounters to challenge, but not counter, the party.

True, fudging I find is generally reserved for when players are blowing through things much easier then possible. However if you have to fudge things that also means that more preparation was needed on the dm side, while some of the previous posters noted that the games aren't designed with optimized characters in mind, it's still not an excuse for dm's not to prepare and bolster future challenges to BE a challenge after he's learned his parties capabilities and battle tactics.

For instance after the first game I ran the other night to kick off a new campaign I made a mental note of who my heavy hitters were and their strengths and weaknesses to look at the encounters they may face in the near future to tweak them as necessary and make them a challenge. Holding onto character sheets helps with this, and it's pretty much required for most "pre built" adventures, or even your own custom made ones unless you're playing with a long running group and you knew exactly how they would act when originally designing the encounters.

I hate the use of the word "epic" to mean past-20. "Epic" isn't a power level, it's a story type.

That's one context, however the context I was referring to when I started this thread was post 21 gameplay.

I won't go into details of previous posts, but the reason I would love to have epic rules is simply to have rules for everything in the game. When you are level 20, you know there are individuals still stronger than you, be they a few other mortals, or immortals such as demon lords or gods. How can you stat them if you don't have rules for them?Many settings imply that mortals can become gods, but very few assume that PCs will want to, and I never understood that.

Check out the "Immortals Handbook" set of books, right now their are only two, because the man writing them is doing it alone. However the two out right now are Immortals Handbook - Ascension, and Beastiary. Ascension marrys together the ELH and Deities and Demigods and gives a much more indepth look at whats involved with ascending to godhood, (and a few different examples on how to handle it, along with a seperate system for gaining divine rank or "god levels" ) along with a plethora of feats and a detailed look at many many many different portfolios and how to use/apply them along their positives and inherent negatives (no power is without sacrifice).

Obviously the beastiary is full of creatures, some very good examples of epic end stuff monster wise, along with some lower HD non epic versions of quite a few non epic versions of them as well if you want to incorporate a few into a lower end game easier.

The other big problem concerning epic play is having foes that will challenge a party of high level adventurers without being an auto TPK, I know there are a few other pieces of epic source out there, but thus far IH does it alot better then wizards, along with being alot more balanced right out of the box.

For El Kabong

Ah, so if someone disagrees with you they don't have a valid alternative perspective, they're just doing it wrong?

Nope, other viewpoints are valid, however those viewpoints coming from inexperience(ex. a few bad sessions) generally lack credibility and therefor validity. I've seen plenty of people that just to conclusions regarding epic play and in that instance yes they're doing it wrong, however if they have taken the time to gain some experience on the subject and still harbor a dislike for it then they're doing it right.

"If you don't like it you're bad at the game, stop your wrongbadfun!"

No

You seem to have come out swinging to eagerly defend epic play on a thread which has been quite balanced and not seen any real, strident criticism.
Hold your horses. We don't need to start taking sides and calling each other out, we can just have a sensible discussion.

We can have a sensible discussion, but usually that involves not taking things out of context like you did with the "If you don't like it you're bad at the game, stop your wrongbadfun!" assumption about me telling dm's being more organized equates to a more enjoyable game environment across all levels of play, after a few have made statements about going past 10 or 12 being to much of a headache to bother with.

Also as a side note, I've noticed one major complaint about epic play being imbalanced as characters start to grow by leaps and bounds. That's where being a DM comes into play, because even in epic levels the players are only ever going to be as imbalanced, or breeze through as many things without a challenge as you allow them to. Obviously as a good DM the goal isn't to have every fight running the high possibility of a TPK, but that's not to say they can't be a challenge either.

I think you will be barking up that tree a long time. There just isnt a market big enough for it. I cant even remember the last time I leveled higher than 12 and I know i am not alone. Not saying they shouldn't just that I dont think the demand is there. I have been wrong before.

It's not that the market's not there, it's that the amount of content for the "standard" dnd levels of 1-20 is much more fleshed out. Along with wizards not really putting much effort into their ELH and following content (epic insights column). Also for those who were asking what exactly denoted "epic" levels, it's everything lvl's 21+ basically.

Also like Morain said, designing epic level content is more time consuming due to more abilities and stat blocks(however you can always simplify things), although it also depends on your design philosophy when designing said content. If publishers published more of it, then more people would play it.

I find it funny (though not surprising) that most of the people that weigh in to bash epic level dnd play either had a one time bad experience with it because they had little understanding of it, or are just speculating on it based on what they've looked at and heard other people say.

Also as a side note id like to advise anyone who intends on giving epic lvl play a shot to NOT start your characters off at epic levels, at least not the first time you do it because players have no investment in them if they automatically start off at lvl 21 or higher. Which consequently runs a much higher risk of being a s@*#ty game since most players will get much less enjoyment out of something they spent a few hours making being leaps and bounds more powerful then what they might of been used to in the past if they're used to low teens play.

As for DM's who cry about things being more of a headache the higher you go, get more organized, being disorganized might not encumber your low lvl games much but being organized will make even the low level games more enjoyable.

But they'll eventually get around to it.

I'd hope so, you can only release so many adventures for the 1-20 range, I like how wizards recreated the new 4e for 1-30 play, but can't really stand how 4e is setup (if i wanted to play a boardgame id go play a boardgame).

And by needs more epic I do directly mean 21+ content adventure wise, so far all the adventure paths have been great, the only problem is that there are a gazillion adventures for people wanting to play lvl 1-15 in a prebuilt environment.

Quicksilver Hourglass (Dungeon magazine 123) for a lvl 30 party is fantastic, but short of that the area is pretty lacking.

The epic(21+) setting in D&D has always been a touchy issue, some people are under the strict and unwavering belief that nothing good can come of it, and that epic levels in D&D are an irredeemably terrible idea due to the much faster pace at which characters power levels start to ramp up compared with the 1-20 range.

Others I've talked to claim that it's just WAAAAAY to much work (though to be fair, the one's i've talked with don't really make anything of their own for the most part relating to D&D).

A big question that always comes up is "Well at that stage in the game, players are just so powerful that they can do anything they can imagine" Which is true and false at the same time, because they can really only do anything that the DM allows (which is one of the key deciding factors to running an epic game with a party globe trotting around the cosmos).

Wizards release of the old ELH was a start, but aside from that and a few articles from the epic insights column that ended back in 2006 they really gave that whole realm of play almost no support at all, leaving the epic development to 3rd parties like players and DM's on Dicefreaks and the Immortals handbook series(I know there are others, but this is one of the higher quality sources I've come across).

Paizo's 17th starting lvl adventure is a step in the right direction, and hopefully they'll continue on moving upwards and onwards developing higher end content (perhaps continuations of the 1-15 adventure paths from 15/16-30 would be an idea to start with).

Anyway, here's hoping, mainly because putting these higher end adventures out there will help more people get their feet wet(without having to spend all the effort creating an epic campaign themselves if they're overwhelmed initially by the prospect) with hopefully the same high quality adventures we've seen thus far from the pathfinder series.

Cheers!