| veekie |
The current Epic Level rules are a mess.
The way to make the game more mythic in scope is not to make it more bloated with math.
So if Paizo does an "Epic Level" book, it will probably be a complete re-do. With that in mind, I'm very curious to hear what people think about the idea of play beyond level 20.
What are you looking for conceptually?
What are you looking for mechanically?
If you're skeptical, what can we do that might get you to give this one a try?
Any deal breakers?
Conceptually, Epic should begin with continent spanning adventures, where what the characters do should impact their home world globally(or on a planar adventure, regionally, due to the scale of things making a local threat on an Outer Plane approximately a regional one on the Material Plane), which graduates to interplanar and then multi planar threats. The first part serves as a time of transition, before they move on to become cosmic movers and shakers. An addendum to that is that dungeon crawls need to adapt to fit, most characters of that tier should have abilities that can bypass or obliterate the 'channeling' mechanism of dungeon walls(Any reasonably damaging attack that ignores hardness would do, notably those using Tome Of Battle manuevers against walls, but on demand teleportation works too, and thats something nearly all high level outsiders already possess).
Mechanically, size matters. While a 20th level character can significantly influence a battlefield, the vast majority of abilities, melee, magic, or otherwise, are limited to the same tactical scales as they were at level 1-10. Spell areas are still the same old 30ft/60ft/120ft, depending on their shapes, while tactical movement speeds are similarly limited, barring magic items(which are likewise limited) and teleportation. I'd like to see some of these expanded for epic.
For Melee, melee based epic foes tend to be extremely large with massive HD and physical ability scores, something which basically limits melee based characters to direct damage, as many of their special maneuvers simply don't work with modifiers of that variety. They'd need means of overcoming that without rules abuses, while the melee based foes could do with more interesting special abilities instead of 3 digit attack bonuses and hit dice in the eighties. Of course, more attack options should be available, even semi-magical(though not in a sense where antimagic gets in it's way), anime-like moves. If a level 6+ warrior is already larger than life, and 10-20 is supposed to be superheroic, epic battles should be, for lack of a better word, epic.
For Magic, extend the pre-epic magic system to fit, make the lower level spells at will if necessary to reduce bookkeeping, but extend the magic system instead of junking it for something completely different. Spells, as mentioned above, should be epic in scope and scale, though the former may be a difficult task, considering how much spell levels 1-9 already cover, hopefully more interesting things than wide area, high magnitude direct damage can be provided. The existing Epic Spellcasting should be made a DM's tool to help design appropriate new spells in general(which I expect, many DMs, in epic games or not, would appreciate), not as a player's mainstay, as it's inherently breakable.
Ranged weapon users, both for archery and thrown weapons, suffer from the existing wind effect rules, which render them completely harmless if the appropriate wind is provided. I'd suggest revamping the environment rules for wind to provide a scaling penalty, rather than an outright 'archery fails' declaration. Other than that, most of the same things as the Melee section applies.
Epic Feats should not be eclipsed by pre epic feats and should be at least interesting, giving new options that the character didn't have before. A feat for +1 to attack bonus/AC/ability score or a 1/day spell-like ability don't do either, especially when they are outshone by some minor magic items at that point.
Other issues that come into play at epic is the divergence of bonus sizes, and hence, the resulting overspecialisation. Echoing the others who have already posted on that subject, saves and attack bonus increases need to remain consistent. Fighter 20/wizard 20 and Wizard 20/Fighter 20 should have the same class based bonuses, but at the same time, the necessary numeric caps would also have them sharing the same attack bonus as a Fighter 40, or attack bonuses would diverge too drastically for those with 3/4 BAB to continue hitting reliably enough in combat. As is, ability score divergence already make that a tricky matter, as there can easily be a 20 point difference in a character's highest and lowest ability scores. How to make that work though...I have no idea.
Another thing is the magic item costing. The 10x modifier is a completely arbitrary and unnecessary way of keeping epic equipment out of the hands of pre epic characters, and leads to epic characters adorned with a christmas tree's worth of pre epic AC increasing baubles. The price difference between a +6 Ring of Protection and a +5 encourages players to instead buy a +5 item of every common AC bonus type. Silly ensues. Let it scale more smoothly.
And finally, dice rolling. High level spellcasters already encounter this problem fairly frequently. 20d6 is cumbersome to those without a digital roller, and scaling that up to epic is essentially a math session. Likewise for continued extra attack increases, for example Two Weapon fighters, and Manyshot archers. I'd suggest at least partially replacing multiple dice damage rolls with a smaller damage roll, and a static bonus (for example, 20d6 becoming 5d6+60). Multiple attacks need a solution as well, possibly using a single roll for multiple attacks, and applying a penalty to that roll for it's iteratives, so instead of 1d20+20/1d20+15/1d20+10/1d20+5, you have 1d20+20, with a -5 penalty applied to each target after the first.
Deal breakers, though, clunkiness is the biggest one, the last point being on how to work around that. Needing a digital aid just to make the rolls happen fast enough is too much for an epic game, as is the complicated math of making an epic spell(with the current system) not suck.