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I have never run a group all the way up to epic levels, but I'd like to run an epic game sometime, maybe a single adventure over a few session. As a DM, I feel the need to ask advice from anyone who has experience with epic play:
I'm assuming levels 17-20 constitutes epic play. Is that a fair assessment?
Should I assume that any epic party has access to raise dead/resurrection relatively easily? If I want to make particular threats seem more urgent, is givin the antagonists a resurrection-proof means of killing considered cheap? Is it something that should be done only occasionally in the game?
Should I assume the party has a quick way to deal with any poison or disease? Will such afflictions basically only matter for the length of a combat? (sometimes not even that?)
What kind of damage can an epic melee character put out? How about an epic caster? How much healing power can an epic healer lay out?
What constitutes a mook at that level? By this I mean an antagonist who can credibly threaten a PC, but will be easy to dispatch.
If I take Lower CR monsters and give them class levels to bump them up to epic status, will that more likely to make for interesting challenges or long boring fights?
Does combat take forever?
What constitutes an epic-level skill challenge?
I have never run a group all the way up to epic levels, but I'd like to run an epic game sometime, maybe a single adventure over a few session. As a DM, I feel the need to ask advice from anyone who has experience with epic play:
I'm assuming levels 17-20 constitutes epic play. Is that a fair assessment?
Some would say that it's 20+ but I agree with you personally.
I am running a game that's currently at 18th level (a player is journalling his experiences in the "To Slay the Immortal" thread down in Campaign Journals; we switched to full-on Pathfinder about halfway through).
Should I assume that any epic party has access to raise dead/resurrection relatively easily? If I want to make particular threats seem more urgent, is givin the antagonists a resurrection-proof means of killing considered cheap? Is it something that should be done only occasionally in the game?
This is really up to you--and to a degree, the party build. And remember they need pretty damned expensive diamonds for those spells to work---not that they can't afford it, but diamonds that big are hard to find.
I do not run an excessively deadly game. I think we've had one person die, and one person almost die but was brought back on the spot with breath of life. A lot of folks have entered the negatives but managed not to hit the magic number. Of course, with high level games, there's always that chance someone does an insane roll and just wipes someone right out.
I personally do it this way: they have a well prepared cleric (of death, no less). Should they die, she can probably bring them back. This is, indeed, one of the perks of being some of the most legendary heroes in the world.
However, the goddess of life and death doesn't like people being resurrected willy nilly. The more it happens, the more likely they will have to do something to appease the goddess. So there's always a little uncertainty--or understanding that even if you come back, it's not necessarily a get out of jail free card.
But you know, I'm answering this question the wrong way. I think, and forgive me if I'm wrong, what you're asking is -- "how do I make my PCs feel challenged and appropriately threatened?"
And the answer, REALLY, is make sure there are OTHER consequences to loss besides death. If you fail to get through the horde of demons, your beloved queen dies. Or the orphanage blows up. Or your lucky rabbits foot gets disintegrated. Or the country explodes into civil war. (It's high level--consequences of failure can be pretty huge.) The incentives that bring epic characters into the fray are usually big ones with high stakes. The narrative should do its job in keeping the players motivated, threat of death or no.
Should I assume the party has a quick way to deal with any poison or disease? Will such afflictions basically only matter for the length of a combat? (sometimes not even that?)
This depends on the party build and access to resources to a degree. Some of your players may be immune to these things by these levels as well. I consider poison and disease to be hindrances--and remember, if someone DOES get diseased, the cure disease spell only gives a bonus to healing someone, it doesn't do it instantly, so there's always a chance of failure, however small (IIRC)--but no, they're not huge hindrances, and shouldn't be at that level. There are some things that should be truly feared--mummy rot from an advanced HD mummy, for example.
What kind of damage can an epic melee character put out? How about an epic caster? How much healing power can an epic healer lay out?
You're looking at 50-150 damage depending. More on crits and outstanding efforts, less when a character is out of their niche (rogue can't get off sneak attack). "Epic healers" have mass heal which insta-heals 150 hp to everybody (and harms undead the same). But limited castings thereof. Again... sorry this is repetitive... it depends on party build. What I would say is this: most monsters' CRs are accurate. An appropriate CR encounter will provide a good challenge to most parties, in my personal experience.
However, you're also often dealing with monsters that have spell resistance, DR (though DR becomes easy to bypass at these levels, so DR is kind of moot), fast healing, and their own ways to heal themselves.
What constitutes a mook at that level? By this I mean an antagonist who can credibly threaten a PC, but will be easy to dispatch.
My mooks are 10-11th level. YMMV. A PC can smash one of them to pieces with little effort, but several of them on a balcony hurling mass damage weapons at them...
If I take Lower CR monsters and give them class levels to bump them up to epic status, will that more likely to make for interesting challenges or long boring fights?
This is an annoying answer, but it depends on how you build them.
I DO recommend boosting lower CR monsters to give yourself a wider pool of potential challenges, because the selection of high CR creatures is rather paltry (though better with the Bestiary 2 now out).
What I find makes the best fights are groups of lower CR monsters--for example, four CR 14 monsters = a CR 18 fight. This is often better than 1 CR 18 monster, because that way if a monster gets one-shotted, there are still creatures to fight, and better battlefield tactics can be used.
Does combat take forever?
I find it takes no longer than lower level combat often, but then I've also seen some damn long fights at low levels.
The MOST IMPORTANT THING is making sure the players REALLY know how their characters work, so they're not staring at their character sheet when their turn comes around trying to figure out what to do. This is especially challenging for spellcasters, but worth it.
YOU also need to be sure to be prepared and make sure you really know your monsters' stat blocks. Which I admit I still struggle with when I have a monster that has a billion spell-like abilities (and most high CR enemies have a billion spell-like abilities) and I'm trying to figure out quickly what they do and which to use.
If everyone knows their tactics and their abilities, it rolls forward pretty well. It helps to do things like roll all attack rolls first, etc. For you, make sure you have your monsters' initiatives ready.
What constitutes an epic-level skill challenge?
Stop a civil war.
Convince the king that the rift to hell is about to open in his backyard.I don't know if that's the kind of thing you're looking for.
For skill uses... one of the things I enjoyed was once--ONCE, mind, this is not the kind of thing you do all the time--is I threw an antimagic field in the middle of a chasm--to see how the party would contrive getting across without the use of magic. They were going to go into a difficult underdark area and they needed to think on their feet. They came up with a pretty cool use of craft (carpentry) and knowledge (engineering). This is NOT the kind of thing you do all the time---high level PCs need to be able to use their cool abilities (and honestly, I think one of the party's oversights is none of them had teleport at the time for some reason) and use them often (and I have--much of the world has been traversed by various fly and wind walk and other spells)---it should be a matter of a very rare event to shake things up and try something different, not preventing PCs from doing what they do.
Generally speaking--for a fun high level campaign, IMO you need a strong story with a lot of tense situations, not just something where there's combat after combat after combat. Combat absolutely should be an element, and sometimes a big one, but they should be involved in BIG things--wars, assassinations, planar rifts---where skills can and should be used, and moreover, tons of roleplaying, especially where the PCs' obvious power and clout can have both positive and negative results. As you say, the PCs are EPIC and should be treated as such.
I have never run a group all the way up to epic levels, but I'd like to run an epic game sometime, maybe a single adventure over a few session. As a DM, I feel the need to ask advice from anyone who has experience with epic play:
I'm assuming levels 17-20 constitutes epic play. Is that a fair assessment?
In normal parlance, epic level play is 21st or higher, due to the 3.0 Epic Level Handbook (ELH) working with characters of these levels. In terms of "epic play", well, play can be "epic" at any level. But let's stick with the ELH definition for now.
Should I assume that any epic party has access to raise dead/resurrection relatively easily? If I want to make particular threats seem more urgent, is givin the antagonists a resurrection-proof means of killing considered cheap? Is it something that should be done only occasionally in the game?
A party is likely to have ready access to revival magic unless you're running a campaign that is low-magic, in which case depending on the definition of low magic, maybe not.
Urgent does not equal resurrection-proof. Urgent means something has to be done quickly. Resurrection-proofing only makes it more difficult to revive someone. If the PCs know that they're facing an attack that is hard to come back from, the only urgency is in removing it. I'd only do it occasionally in an ongoing campaign, but in a one-shot it may add tension. Then again, you can add tension without permanently slaughtering people. You'll have to decide what works best.
Should I assume the party has a quick way to deal with any poison or disease? Will such afflictions basically only matter for the length of a combat? (sometimes not even that?)
Disease and poison are minor inconveniences at this level. The spells to remove them showed up long ago. Sure, there's a caster level check involved, but you'll need to find ways to increase the save DCs just to get the PCs to have to deal with them. At this point, status ailments need to be stronger, such as dazing, stunning, confusion, petrification, etc. to make a difference. Some poisons may act fast enough to matter, but since it doesn't take long to remove them and the PC has to fail a save first, it's not likely to make much difference.
What kind of damage can an epic melee character put out? How about an epic caster? How much healing power can an epic healer lay out?
Damage will vary based on the degree of optimization of the melee character, what source books are in use, and the players themselves. We don't deal tons of damage per round (I'm one of Deathquaker's players) in a consistent manner, so instead we manage to outlast our opponents as we whittle them down.
For healing, mass heal hits multiple targets for 10 points/caster level. A high-level cleric can throw 4 or 5 of these by 21st level, no problem, but have no other 9th level spells. They can have a ridiculous number of heal spells for 150 a pop. This doesn't account for magic items or channel energy or spontaneous casting. The cleric can probably put someone back on their feet quickly, let's put it that way.
What constitutes a mook at that level? By this I mean an antagonist who can credibly threaten a PC, but will be easy to dispatch.
I'd say at 17th, mooks are around CR 10 or 10th level. They can be a bit higher, or even a bit lower if they have some strategic advantages (hard to reach, buff spells, hostile terrain, etc.). Maybe as a rule of thumb, knock about 7 or 8 levels off of the average party level and treat monsters with that CR as appropriate mooks.
If I take Lower CR monsters and give them class levels to bump them up to epic status, will that more likely to make for interesting challenges or long boring fights?
Adding class levels will complicate your monsters if you use classes with many abilities (monks, rogues, rangers, paladins...everyone, pretty much) and even more so with spellcasters, if only in knowing what spells the creature has available. It can certainly add some variety and spice to battle; no one expects trolls to be great spellcasters but you find the occasional shaman, but when you've got to deal with succubi bards and enchantresses, horned devil fighters, or a babau with ranger levels and favored enemy (the PCs), things can get really fun. "Boring" is a subjective term; if your players are having fun, you're doing it right. To know what they like, ask them!
Does combat take forever?
Combat at higher levels has more options. After all, fighters know more combat feats, rogues have more talents, wizards have more spells, everyone has more magic items. So combat can take longer. But it doesn't always. It can be the same length of time. At our table, we spend time when it's not our turn looking over spells and planning our options, but we may not know exactly what we're going to do until we get there.
What constitutes an epic-level skill challenge?
Skill challenge is a 4E term IIRC; there is therefore no Pathfinder equivalent. For skills, the PCs can likely make any non-opposed skill check at this point, just because they've got the ranks needed and ability scores to boost a routine check into the 40s. I wouldn't worry about skills much here and just call for checks as needed.
I think that sums things up. For the record, we've lost 2 people to deaths: the halfling shadowdancer failed to find a trap, which killed him, and my cleric got blasted by javelins of lightning (from mooks) then ripped apart by an advanced glabrezu. We've had everyone go to death's door or die except the elf arcane archer (Deathquaker: hint hint :) ). And we're normally fairly cautious and good with tactics. In some games, that would be one session. Our campaign has gone on for over 2 years. So you'll find that things vary from one campaign or session to the next. If things worked the same in every game, everyone would just look up what to know and expect on the Interwebz and we wouldn't be here discussing this :)
To know what they like, ask them!
This is probably the best advice offered so far. Player communication is always important, all the more so when things are high level.
We've had everyone go to death's door or die except the elf arcane archer (Deathquaker: hint hint :) ).
The meleers are doing too good a job of distracting me from aiming at the distant target. I will bear this in mind. That said, I do know he's taken some pretty bad hits before, just SOMEONE keeps insisting on healing the PC that I manage to injure badly. *sigh* An evil overlord's work is never done...
Also, that was a plain old glabrezu at the time, I hadn't remembered to add the template for that fight.
So you'll find that things vary from one campaign or session to the next. If things worked the same in every game, everyone would just look up what to know and expect on the Interwebz and we wouldn't be here discussing this :)
Yep. And all the more reason to pay attention to your PCs' party build and players' play style. The party I run have no real heavy hitters, save in specific circumstances (the cleric vs undead, the rogue in a great flanking position, the EK when he crits), but they are extraordinarily well rounded and all the players are 10x better tacticians than I am (I imagine I keep them entertained with my bubbly personality and pretty face). A party with an uber-tank and a batman wizard would probably wipe the floor with some of the encounters my party has struggled with in an instant---but on the other hand, the min maxers would suffer mightily in situations where the well-rounded guerilla crew just slides right through.
The meleers are doing too good a job of distracting me from aiming at the distant target. I will bear this in mind. That said, I do know he's taken some pretty bad hits before, just SOMEONE keeps insisting on healing the PC that I manage to injure badly. *sigh* An evil overlord's work is never done...Also, that was a plain old glabrezu at the time, I hadn't remembered to add the template for that fight.
Yes, our melee people (the shadowdancer and EK) are very distracting, especially the halfling with his propensity for going all over the battlefield to hit people, including through the shadows, up the walls, on the ceiling.... And as the cleric, and one who won't last a round in melee, I have to find something to do every round of battle, which means spellcasting. That often means healing as high CR monsters deal out enough punishment in one full attack to either drop one of us or come close. Not my fault your critters can't quite finish one of us off a round. No, wait, that's not what I meant...!
Even more embarrassing on my part, to be cut in half by a plain CR 13 glabrezu. Hey, wait a minute....
Yep. And all the more reason to pay attention to your PCs' party build and players' play style. The party I run have no real heavy hitters, save in specific circumstances (the cleric vs undead, the rogue in a great flanking position, the EK when he crits), but they are extraordinarily well rounded and all the players are 10x better tacticians than I am (I imagine I keep them entertained with my bubbly personality and pretty face).
Actually, it's entertaining because you give us an incredibly interesting game world to play in, complete with different plots to get involved in if we like, and the opportunity to actually put our character backgrounds to use, which I in particular enjoy. My time in the spotlight should now be done or nearly so, meaning someone else like the EK should be up to bat, or the AA. Bubbly personality and pretty face are just the icing on the cake :)
The real point here is that the party build is going to make a big difference in how things play out. For us, big heavy melee types are our bane, as we can't stand and trade blows with them. But we can handle a variety of opposition pretty well. This kind of thing will apply at any level, but it's important not to forget these things when working with epic rules.
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Thanks for all of the input so far!
Some more fodder for discussion:
The reason I picked out 17-20 as epic levels is because the majority of Paizo's adventure paths top out around 16th level or lower. Basically I want to design something that would be a good follow-on to an adventure path that ends around 16-17.
On the subject of a resurrection-proof demise, my concern is whether players encountering that kind of danger would consider it "cheap" or "DM cheating" so-to-speak. After all, assuming they've fought their way up through over a dozen levels in order to earn the ability to laugh at death, it might seem like taking something away from the PCs to pull out that kind of danger too often. The consensus I'm hearing is that such dangers should show up, but not every time there's a fight/challenge.
Regarding mooks: even at low levels, I like running large fights where there are lots of little guys zipping around but the problem with that is bookkeeping - if I've got 20-30 goblins or orcs on the table, and the PCs aren't doing enough damage to one-shot them, then it becomes a matter of keeping track of which goblins have how many hit points remaining. Usually it's not too bad if the mooks have 5-10 HP apiece, but when the mooks have 40-60 hit points each... well, I'm a bit wary.
I prefer multiple opponents to single opponents (Single opponents almost always get dogpiled and done over quickly, unless they have some kind of terrain or tactical advantage) but the idea of 50 orcs with class levels sounds like a nightmare encounter to run. :P (I know there are more CR appropriate monsters you can run in multiples - it's just an example)
When I ask about appropriate skill challenges, I'm really asking about what kind of DC ratings I should be looking at for a 17-20th level character. I'm thinking at that level, most PCs are going to have +27 to +30 on their skills, so DCs need to be up around 40-50?
I've also been dealing with epic play for a few years, so I'll throw my two cents in. Worth nowhere near as much as Neil's 98 cents, but it's all I got.
I have never run a group all the way up to epic levels, but I'd like to run an epic game sometime, maybe a single adventure over a few session. As a DM, I feel the need to ask advice from anyone who has experience with epic play
Well, the biggest issue I'd see with an epic game that runs for a few sessions is the buy-in on the part of the players. A player who's making a level 25 wizard to play for 3 games is going to end up with a very different character than a player who brings a wizard up to 25th level through a natural progression - usually this is how you see the hyper-optimized high-level characters. In the game I run, every once in a while a new player comes in for a game or two, and their characters are far less 'real' because they're optimizing a high-level build.
I'm assuming levels 17-20 constitutes epic play. Is that a fair assessment?Epic level is levels 21 plus. Levels 17 to 20 could be considered tranisitional levels since 20 is normally the end of the game. Epic characters have been handled in different ways and there were options as well in the various manuals. I have played it as the characters reaching legendary status which is good and bad. It is good because most individual things on their homeworld can't harm them thought coordinated groups could, but it also means they are noobs in a much bigger game. Not only might they become pawns to world spanning powers but also out in the planes as well.
Right. It's all how technical you want to get. Technically "epic" is level 21 or higher or CR 21 or higher. The big issue for you is whether you're going to use only core rules, or are going to pull in other materials. Since there is no epic level Pathfinder support, you're looking at third-party stuff or the Epic Level Handbook, or just using tons of existing Pathfinder stuff.
Should I assume that any epic party has access to raise dead/resurrection relatively easily? If I want to make particular threats seem more urgent, is givin the antagonists a resurrection-proof means of killing considered cheap? Is it something that should be done only occasionally in the game?Raise Dead and the rest should be easily accessible for the party. Some casters can also set up "get out of death free" spells like contingencies that heal damage, whisk them away if hurt badly, Astral Projection, Lichdom, etc. That said, there are ways around this. Certain spells and attacks kill the soul itself or can steal it away. Certain demons and devils, etc., can steal away even powerful characters and hold them prisoner body and all forever. Some sources list souls as being a source of wealth in the infernal regions and powerful characters in particular would be status possessions.
It all depends on how you want to run your game, but at very high levels, the random nature of things means that spells, effects and combat can very suddenly get deadly. A vorpal sword will kill someone on one hit out of 20, and a hasted full-progression fighter is attacking 5 times around, which means he's likely to take someone's head off every 4-5 rounds.
Note that depending on the source material you use, material components sometimes get irrelevant - like if you use the Ignore Material Components feat from the Epic Level Handbook. Thus, though true resurrection takes 10 minutes to cast, it no longer requires a giant diamond.
Should I assume the party has a quick way to deal with any poison or disease? Will such afflictions basically only matter for the length of a combat? (sometimes not even that?)Most diseases and even poisons would mean little to epic characters. Healing them would also be fairly easy, provided it wasn't some epic level thing or custom made for the characters.
It all depends. In the WoTC splatbooks and the Epic Level Handbook, there's poisons that ignore magical defenses, that affect creatures immune to poison, etc. But in general, most characters will be immune most of the time. Doesn't mean you can't drop an advanced megapede on them and make 'em make DC 45 saves vs. poison every once in a while, but I like things to make sense, so it's not something they see every day. And a disjunction is a great way to get rid of that pesky hero's feast that they're likely to eat every morning.
What kind of damage can an epic melee character put out? How about an epic caster? How much healing power can an epic healer lay out? What constitutes a mook at that level? By this I mean an antagonist who can credibly threaten a PC, but will be easy to dispatch. Does combat take forever?I'm not really sure about the damage they can dish out since I've never crunched the numbers. However, I have had epic characters run over things that were dire threats to them at level 15.
I've never really bothered with the numbers either, but I know that the fighter in my group is insane; I always laugh at the threads that complain how fighters are outmatched by wizards. Each has their purpose, and sometimes a fighter who can dish out 1,000 points of damage in a round is way more useful than a wizard. Especially when the wizard can't overcome SR. But the short of it is that all of those things depend on character build and spell selection.
I've found that any combat can take forever, even at low levels where you're looking at very low damage output. In general, epic combats are more complicated, but at both high and low level they're not what the groups I play with are mostly interested in. Yeah, they're fun, but they're not the core of the game - the story and the characters' interaction with the world is the core - it's just that that interaction is very different at high vs. low level.
It's a learning experience, and takes practice, and I mean for you the GM. I know it took me a while to figure out how to balance things. The main thing that's different for me is that when I'm designing low-level adventures, I always try to think of 2-3 ways to 'solve' the problems. At high levels, I never bother - the characters have incredible resources.
The rest is getting into a much debated part about epic levels: what makes a challenge. You could go up against increasingly powerful monsters. This makes sense because certainly they exist, but in what numbers? Another way to handle it is to give the characters epic tasks. This would something like helping stop a demonic invasion of a world where they will be dealing with huge numbers of normal level...If I take Lower CR monsters and give them class levels to bump them up to epic status, will that more likely to make for interesting challenges or long boring fights?
What constitutes an epic-level skill challenge?
I do a lot of all of the above, though I think you'll find in general that templates are easier to add than class levels - class levels are a lot of work.
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Now for some general advice.
- Keep treasure low. Absurdly low. The more the characters turn into christmas trees of magic items, the more ridiculous everything gets.
- Make sure there's time pressure. If an epic party can do the "rest for days between encounters" thing, then nothing is a challenge, because a fully armed and operational epic party is very powerful. But if there's a volcano about to explode and they have to infiltrate the evil temple at its base that contains an artifact they need and they only have 3 hours to do it, they just have to suck it up and work with limiited resources.
- Have a plot. And I don't just mean for an encounter, I mean for the whole shebang. They need to have something to do - a sandbox adventure is virtually impossible to set up for epic level characters, because they can go virtually anywhere at any time. So they need to have a reason to go to a specific place at a specific time.
- Start at a lower level. If you really really want to play epic, have them start at level 8 or 10 and go up 4 levels per session - even that way they'll need to make real choices about their character, rather than cherry-picking a bunch of stuff. And that way they still get the feelling of acquiring all those cool capstone abilities.
- Make information into treasure. If they don't know what's going on, and they have to figure it out, that's definitely a challenge for any level character. It's not like they can beat the facts out of their opponents - often their opponents won't know either. That way each piece of information becomes more valuable than gold.
Without spending pages detailing the campaign I'm running, I'll just comment on the current thread (one of many). We've been playing since 2006, and the party ranges in level from about 50-60.
The overarching plot line is that their realm (as in the prime material plane) is falling apart because the vast machines that keep it from being absorbed by the elemental planes were damaged about 5,000 years ago and the effects have finally come to a head. They had no idea this is what was going on (though now they've mostly figured it out); all they knew was that the weather was going to hell in their kingdom. So they've spent this time trying to piece together what's going on and why.
Last game, they just cleared out the ancestral tomb of one of the characters, which was inhabited by the ghost of an ancient clan chieftain, and three banshees, his former wives. Thus, they didn't want to level the tomb, and in fact the character needed to defeat the chieftain in one-on-one combat in order to claim his legacy (a legacy item as per Weapons of Legacy). The three banshees just wanted to stop the lot of them. One was an advanced banshee sorcerer 18.
This game, they will head for an abandoned dwarven city in the mountains, one that was ruined in the cataclysm 5,000 years ago. They are going there to look for further information about the ancient machines, which they now partially know how to repair. From there, they will go to see something buried in the mountains that they know is an ancient vault, and which they suspect contains an imprisoned elder brain. They're right about the elder brain, they have no idea that the city is abandoned because it is inhabited by the grand mother of all mu-spores and its spawn. They also have no idea that one of the cyclops tribes in the area, encouraged by Denizens of Leng, believes the mu-spores to be emissaries of the Far Realsm, and that they need to deal with that whole mess.
Meanwhile, while they search and investigate, the plains of fire, air, water and earth are continuing to encroach upon the boundaries of the material plane.
What I'm getting at is that there's a balancing act - the players need to accomplish things, but there also needs to be things that they can't quite get to and other things that they are unaware of. Obviously, in a three or four session game, the plot will be less involved, but the same principles still hold - define a story arc, weave threads into it, and set the initial ball in motion.
The reason I picked out 17-20 as epic levels is because the majority of Paizo's adventure paths top out around 16th level or lower. Basically I want to design something that would be a good follow-on to an adventure path that ends around 16-17.
Call it "Legendary" instead of "Epic" so people don't get confused, maybe?
On the subject of a resurrection-proof demise, my concern is whether players encountering that kind of danger would consider it "cheap" or "DM cheating" so-to-speak. After all, assuming they've fought their way up through over a dozen levels in order to earn the ability to laugh at death, it might seem like taking something away from the PCs to pull out that kind of danger too often. The consensus I'm hearing is that such dangers should show up, but not every time there's a fight/challenge.
Yes, and if you're worried if players consider something cheap, again--ask them. The best feedback you can get is from them.
Regarding mooks: even at low levels, I like running large fights where there are lots of little guys zipping around but the problem with that is bookkeeping - if I've got 20-30 goblins or orcs on the table, and the PCs aren't doing enough damage to one-shot them, then it becomes a matter of keeping track of which goblins have how many hit points remaining. Usually it's not too bad if the mooks have 5-10 HP apiece, but when the mooks have 40-60 hit points each... well, I'm a bit wary.
What I would suggest--if you're swarming your PCs with lots of "mooks"--assign a hit target rather than track HP. Assume, say, if your best damage healers hit the mook's AC, that they will take out a mook spellcaster in one shot, a mook fighter in three. Or something like that--tweak as you see fit. After all, it's exactly the same principle that you're applying to the goblins. You know that your melee-strong 5th level fighter will likely kill a Goblin Warrior 1 in one hit. Your melee-strong 20th level fighter will likely kill a Goblin Warrior 11 in one hit (or maybe 2). The numbers go up, but the likelihoods are about the same. Since they're mooks, the point is you shouldn't need to be tracking things too deeply.
I prefer multiple opponents to single opponents (Single opponents almost always get dogpiled and done over quickly, unless they have some kind of terrain or tactical advantage) but the idea of 50 orcs with class levels sounds like a nightmare encounter to run. :P (I know there are more CR appropriate monsters you can run in multiples - it's just an example)
I find two to six combatants a good number. Following the game's guidelines, you can safely--if you can track everything--go up to 16 (16 of one challenge rating equals CR +8, so 16 CR 10 Monsters is a CR 18 Encounter).
If you want to go with massive hordes, make "Mobs" -- Gargantuan sized clusters of Small-Medium sized creatures that work similarly to Swarms--that way you can treat 50 orcs as a single creature, mechanically speaking, for example. If you can find it, the 3.x book Cityscape has guidelines on how to build them.
When I ask about appropriate skill challenges, I'm really asking about what kind of DC ratings I should be looking at for a 17-20th level character. I'm thinking at that level, most PCs are going to have +27 to +30 on their skills, so DCs need to be up around 40-50?
Yes. A 1st level character's DC 10 is going to be a 17th level character's DC 30. Experts on a given ability will not even need to roll unless, yes, it's about DC 40-50. Note that most traps don't have DCs higher than 30 so I mostly use them as window dressing (though some can still hurt).
Interestingly, there still can be lowish challenges---someone who never put ranks in Acrobatics might still struggle over difficult terrain (at least until someone casts freedom of movement or the like on them--but sometimes these things aren't always anticipated).
I removed a post that was the opposite of constructive.
I agree have them start lower and work up so they have to pick and learn to use the abilities they have
Should I assume the party has a quick way to deal with any poison or disease? Will such afflictions basically only matter for the length of a combat? (sometimes not even that?)
Disjunction was mentioned to deal with Heroes' Feast. Good idea.
What kind of damage can an epic melee character put out? How about an epic caster? How much healing power can an epic healer lay out?
The cleric is the one to watch. The cleric is devastating in offence, and can heal just about anything. Fortunate Fate (from Spell Compendium) can seriously draw out the fight.
Try to identify the weakest characters, and make sure they have magic items to keep them alive, as balance problems escalate at epic levels.
What constitutes a mook at that level? By this I mean an antagonist who can credibly threaten a PC, but will be easy to dispatch.
I tried same-CR critters with a quarter of the hit points, thus reducing the CR by 2 (my guesstimate). Worked nicely.
This could give you trouble story-wise (Orcus mooks anyone?), so some creative descriptions and a good grip on the story is important.Story is important at all levels of play, but perhaps more so at epic levels because the system work against you.
If I take Lower CR monsters and give them class levels to bump them up to epic status, will that more likely to make for interesting challenges or long boring fights?
Low CR monsters with class levels often make short boring fights, and the numbercrunching is mindnumbing. You'll easily end up with critters with dozens of options, all of them useless.
Use the paragon template (from ELH) when you can, or eyeball the stats based on table 1-1 in the Bestiary (page 291).IMO is high level monster design the one point where 4e really shines.
Classed npcs are difficult, as they usually are underpowered, loaded with lowpowered items, has lots of options, without being a real challange for the characters. Eyeball and recycle what you can, dont invest too much work in this. Epic fights are all about monster bosses.
Does combat take forever?
No. The characters are very powerful and blast through just about anything. Watch out for the beforementioned Fortunate Fate.
From what I'm hearing in this thread, the trick to designing new high-level antagonists is to make something out of whole cloth rather than leveling up something else according to the existing rules.
I almost never make things from scratch, and I'm regularly building opponents as high as CR60. And even the "from scratch" ones are really just using templates pretty heavily. I think I can count on one hand the times creatures had abilities that I just "added."
But you're talking a lot lower level than I'm talking.
At the levels you're talking about, 17-20, existing creatures should do just fine - there's plenty of antagonists in the two Bestiarys, never mind the Adventure Paths, etc.
And if you get bored of those, just mine Tome of Horrors (there's more than one of 'em) and the Advanced Bestiary, which is nothing but templates.
I was so very happy to discover that Tome of Horrors II had Cenobites in it. Of course, they're called N'gathau, but ... they're Cenobites.
And for a little variety, give an existing monster a couple levels in a class - not much, but giving somethign a couple levels of rogue, for example, so that it's got sneak attack, or giving something oracle levels so that it has earth glide can really mix things up without bumping the EL very much.