Alright, I have been playing D&D since the red basic D&D box set came out, and over the years have played in and ran several high level games. In 3.x I had to go through the epic level handbook and practically redo everything as it is possibly the most “broken” set of D&D rules I’ve ever seen.
Anyway, since I moved to pathfinder I have been doing lower level campaigns but one of them is getting close to 20th level and on top of that I also have an old on-going epic level campaign that I may be dusting off again soon depending how things go with friends of mine. This has prompted me to look over and consider the rules available for high level play in pathfinder.
With the increase to the strength of the core classes in pathfinder, prestige classes and multi-classing are far better option imho then continuing to advance in a class that has hit 20th level, you gain more abilities and new abilities rather then simply bumping existing one up occasionally. Some classes, mostly pure spell casters, feel this less then others but even then it’s still there and I really wanted to make high level play more interesting.
To that end I created the following rules. I’m including them here for people to look at, comment on, and if you’re so inclined, use. Understand that these rules are still new, I’m only just beginning to play test them, and high level play always requires some judgment calls to be made by the GM, these rules are no exception. That said I think I had a few good ideas on how to solve the issue of no new abilities and dead levels :)
In any case here is the link:
Revel's Rules for Beyond 20th Level
Note - If I update these rules in the future I will provide a link later on this thread.
+2 BAB huh. Can't say I like the idea of that, but I have nothing to back it up lol. What led you do decide +2 BAB as a 'high level bonus' ?
I't's for rogues, cleric's and other 3/4 BAB classes that want to be able to focus on melee, etc. As levels increase, the difference between attack and armor class can stretch out for the classes that don't have a BAB equal to their level. Eventually, a level appropriate encounter could be hard for them to hit and if they are built for melee... well that'd kind of suck xP
All of the "high level" bonus are simply meant to shore up problems that can crop up in high level play.
As to the spell casting "whoops" I forgot I meant to check that. it used to be 1/2 their level in 3rd edition, as I mentioned I've been playing for a while, so I sometimes confuse which is which x.x
Alright, I have been playing D&D since the red basic D&D box set came out, and over the years have played in and ran several high level games. In 3.x I had to go through the epic level handbook and practically redo everything as it is possibly the most “broken” set of D&D rules I’ve ever seen.
Ah, that old chestnut. Well, to each their own :)
Alright, I have been playing D&D since the red basic D&D box set came out, and over the years have played in and ran several high level games. In 3.x I had to go through the epic level handbook and practically redo everything as it is possibly the most “broken” set of D&D rules I’ve ever seen.Ah, that old chestnut. Well, to each their own :)
I felt it had a lot of good ideas but I found a lot of the feats, etc. to be poorly balanced so I went through them all allowing, disallowing or modifying a lot of it.
Mind you, I'm not saying it wasn't worth picking up, I just think it could've been done a lot better. I had to go through and make more changes to that book then I ever have any other. But as you said "to each their own" :)
Just curious, do you still have that modified epic feats document lying around? I'm wondering which feats you modified and how you did so. (Frankly I was vastly underwhelmed by most of the martial feats.)
Yes and no, I used to go through the new feats and spells in any new supplement I got and add them to a list if I allowed them. That list also included the prerequisites for the feat which was the most common thing I changed. If I actually rewrote it I'd place it in a word document but as I said most were merely changes to prerequisites.
I almost certainly have it though it'd be on a backup disk currently and would include feats from other books as well as custom feats. I set most of it aside when stating pathfinder as I wanted to get a feel for the rules and see what changes paizo had decided to make first, but since then I have added some back in that I liked.
Something I feel I need to mention, especially with a few of the comments above. Realize that when I say something is “broken” I do not necessarily mean it’s too powerful. I know the boards here often seem to treat that as being the case (from what I’ve read anyway). But, being broken simply means it hasn’t been balanced well and can be to weak or to strong. In the case of the epic level handbook I found both to be the true, at least for me, but opinions will vary.
Below is essentially how I personally would break down the ELH I’m putting it in a spoiler tag to try and not derail my own thread xP
Skills – Some of these were cool others were just silly, honestly forgery +50 you forge a perfect copy of a document, including handwriting, that you haven’t even seen… seriously?
Feats – These were all over the board, to strong, to weak, to silly, ridiculously high prerequisites or just fine. For example, I like penetrate damage reduction but blinding speed while kind of neat, since it was not magical haste, was to weak since it had a stiff dex requirement of 25 and because it could only be used for a maximum of 5 rounds a day.
As far as an example of two strong, vorpal strike let you behead your opponents with you hands, no saving throw. Keep on mind that I had other house rules as well that allowed characters to move and get multiple attacks. Thus a monk with flurry would likely vorpal nearly every round.
Spells – Now this was the worst section of the entire book, some of the epic spells you can make are ridiculously powerful for the level you could make them.
Magic items – Didn’t care one way or the other about this section, I long ago made a pricing scheme for magic items that allowed for pretty much everything in here already as well as a lot more. I may have gotten a few ideas but otherwise found it to be irrelevant.
Monsters – One of my favorite sections though I treat the CR’s as suggested and often incorrect, not usually by a lot but enough that they can’t be trusted.
Incidentally, what did you think of the rules I came up with, or should I ask? xP