First, this thread is NOT a debate on whether or not you want/like/need Epic rules, etc.
For those of you that DO use Epic rules, or plan to use them in Pathfinder - how are you planning on doing so?
Initially I was thinking I would just use the Epic rules as is, but then I heard somewhere about a few alternative solutions. One thing I have been thinking of is hard-capping the base classes at 20, but stacking as desired.
In other words, if you progress beyond Fighter 20, you could take levels in Rogue (or whatever), and just multiclass as normal.
Any thoughts?
In past Epic games (3.5 days), our GM helped everyone homebrew a kind of ‘prestige class’ for our characters. Some examples (from what I can remember off the top of my head)…
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Monk learned ‘The Way of Ahpen Maipetong’ from some ancient scrolls we found. The training made his base speed and dexterity ridiculous. Learning new katas gave him antigravity and time abilities.
Bard’s became a half-silver dragon when her magical heritage was ‘awoken’ by the return of her true birth-mother. She gained a fly speed, improved perceptions, charisma and intelligence, natural attacks, a breath weapon, magical immunities, and enhanced social skills.
Druid established her own grove complete with a circle of apprentices to tend to it and the surrounding wilderness. A spiritual link allowed her to draw power from the grove, enhancing her spells, skills and her twin-tigers animal companions’ abilities. As her wisdom grew, she learned to how to speak with any living creature and to judge a creature's motives and honesty.
Barbarian became ‘Earth Touched ’ after some RP with some ‘earth spirits’. His arms, legs and bones slowly turned to stone increasing his strength, constitution and AC. He gained a burrow speed and tremorsense, teleport through earth/stone and eventually, immunities to practically everything.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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In past Epic games (3.5 days), our GM helped everyone homebrew a kind of ‘prestige class’ for our characters. Some examples (from what I can remember off the top of my head)… followed by cool stuff
I had a DM do something similar in a campaign back in my AD&D days. Once you hit your cap, we adventured for abilities and powers. We would give him an idea of what we wanted and work towards those goals. If we wanted to pass the level cap, we had to earn demigod status by doing an epic quest for a major god or defeating an existing demigod.
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Slow Progression: For every 1,600,000 XP earned past level 20, the character gains a feat.
Medium Progression: For every 1,200,000 XP earned past level 20, the character gains a feat.
Fast Progression: For every 800,000 XP earned past level 20, the character gains a feat.
There would be some feats added with the pre-requisite of 20th level. Stuff like adding +1 to your BAB (fighter only), enhance sneak attack damage, etc.
Basically, it would be a flattening of the power curve, instead of having it skyrocket like most epic rulesets I've seen.
Well, one of my motivations for asking was this:
I have a PC party that, while not 'epic', themselves is high enough level that epic level threats are beginning to crop up. One of the upcoming threats is an NPC as opposed to a monster and I was going to build her with class levels.
Adding 20 levels of fighter was the easy part. Before I added any levels of Rogue - I was checking in to see how others might do it.
I am thinking that I am just going to add the levels straight across.
Since it sounds like you're looking at 'low' epic (levels 21-30), I'd say it's really up to you but there's no reason not to follow existing progressions and make, for example, a 26th-level fighter with BAB +26 who has armor training 5, another 3 bonus feats, bravery +6 and weapon training 6. His base saves would be Fort +15/Ref +8/Will +8.
Note that you should cap iterative attacks at 4, and I'd recommend doing what the ELH did - how ever many iterative attacks a character has at level 20 is the max they get ever. That lets fighters (and other full BAB progression classes) still be the king of the martial hill.
Now, if you were going to go much higher for the levels, I'd say you'd need to do more to avoid drastic disparities in saves (and *maybe* BAB, but that's not as relevant), but I see little reason to give a hard cap at 20. Most of the classes have abilities that have an easy-to-follow progression as level increases; there's no reason this would have to stop at level 20. The same is true for prestige classes.
The only thing I would advise against is creating a progression for singular abilities (for example, a unique ability at level 11 should not show up again at 22).
How do I handle epic?
Not good.
I basicly finish the adventure path and keep promising to get back to the characters. I never do.