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Epic content.... yes it does get a little crazy.
Do I think it works? no.
Do I think we need it? yes.
Do I care what level you think the game should end? No.
Do I agree with E6 as the solution? No.The solution? E20
No advancement past 20, only a feat buy system.
3.0 epic feats would be retooled to be used
You're not the first to suggest this.
E6/E20? Can someone provide some source material to explain what these are?
Can't provide a link, but basically they are systems where character levelling stops at level 6 or 20, and after that they only gain feats and certain other things.
I tried to find the original post for e6 Dungeons and Dragons but this is the best I can find, but it works well.
E6 Dungeons and Dragons Sourcebook
Alternatively here was someone's adaptation on the forum for Pathfinder.
I don't think that's the solution, at least for my E# system is terrible, I prefer ELH rules to that. I trust in Paizo to do a better job for a 20+ level system than E20
by the way who think that the epic spell system is broken because I don't, its more if anyone can post your spell for a review that would be great
I like epic spells because it provides a framework for making world-shaping spells, which help define the details of my campaign settings. I mean, if I want to change the way dragons operate in the world, I can just make stuff up ... OR design an epic spell used by some ancient god which made things the way they are. I prefer the spell, since it also lets my setting mesh with other settings such as Faerun or Golarion.
See, I think the E# system is a great idea, in theory (even came up with a few variants myself before I'd ever heard of 'em - disclosure: I've still never read the "official" stuff on it), I just ALSO like ways around it.
For example, in one home brew of mine, I've created a hard limit that (most) mortals can't pass beyond 6th level (I'd originally gotten the idea for an older campaign setting that I pirated a lot for the linked one). However, the key word there is "mortal". Find a way to become immortal (I call it "nascent" immortality) and bam level cap is bypassed (there are also a few other workarounds and I list several of them). However, there's a second level cap: twenty-four. There are other ways around this. After that, the sky's the limit, although other restrictions come into play (such as deities being incorporeal).
Anyway - that's just one setting, but it gives the idea: I'm a big fan of hard level caps... and I'm also a big fan of ways of bypassing these hard level caps.
In another campaign that's effectively NPC-classes only (slightly modified), I made it an E20 (again, long before I knew that term) world, except once you got to 20th, you began working to gestalt until you gained all the traits of a 20HD outsider - best BAB, d8, best saves, and 8+INT mod skills (slowly increasing based on XP gains at a rate of my own devising), at which point you were able to "ascend" past 20th and into epic.
Anyway, I'd have no problem with level caps, as long as there was also a valid way to remove them. I'm used to the ELH and its craziness... I can handle things getting a little wonky beyond the caps, just so long as there's a valid set of rules.
EDIT: and yeah, I had it that divine salient abilities were basically epic spells - deities crafted their own divine salient abilities, and that's what the results were. I love the system in theory and many applications.
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id like to see 10th level spell slots and such, but since you can do some crazy things with 9th level spells, id like to see a system that instead, the 10th level and up spell slots allow you to metamagic higher level spells, and you can combine spells together but they cant go over the number of the spell slot, for instance, 2 5th level spells. also you would limit what level spells they can combine and how many they could combine from the get go. for instance, 21st and 22nd level you can combine up to 5th level spells and no more than 2. at 23rd and 24th level you can combine up to 6th level spells and no more than 3, etc.
just brainstorming
What spell can be considered one level higher than wish and gate?
like i said, the higher spell slots would only be used for metamagicing and combining. personally, i dont think there should be more than wish, miracle, and the like. but this is a way that i see epic spells being. besides, in golarion, there are plenty of uber spells that must be ninth level that have been used by non epic npcs, like Razmirs ashing of an entire city. hes only a 19th level sorcerer. what ninth level spell did he use?
What spell can be considered one level higher than wish and gate?
Here's a little number I dreamed up to justify a connection between wizardry and demon pacts in my setting.
Soul Eating Matrix of Ibbn Gaza
This ritual connects the fabric of this plane to that of the Abyss, and manifests as a permanent 300' wide geometric design scrawled with various arcane writings in Abyssal.
To complete the 6 hour ritual of chanting, 531 HD worth of humanoids must be sacrificed in the span of 1 hour, during a rare celestial event.
This creates the following effects:
Wiz1 @ 2 bound non-Demons
Wiz2 @ 4 bound non-Demons
Wiz3 @ 8 bound non-Demons
...
Wiz20 @ 1,048,576 bound non-Demons
Mountain of Carrion
This is effectively a mix between a Genius Loci and an army of 36 HD Demonic Devourers. It is terrain, not an individual monster. But as soon as you're close enough (at most 300' away, but they usually wait until you're closer, for many zones to attack), you're faced with one 36HD devourer, per 15' square that is in range, called a zone of carrion. Killing a zone of carrion turns it into a 15' section of undead tissue with hardness 3 and 46 hitpoints, that becomes another fully powered zone of carrion within an hour. If disintegrated, or the 15' cube of tissue is somehow destroyed, it takes ten minutes to refill. One can theoretically "dig" through the Mountain of Carrion in this way. However, destroying the zone of carrion and then the tissue creates a 15' square niche, whose walls, floor and ceiling are yet more zones of carrion. It would take incredible effort to reach the center of the Soul Eating Matrix of Ibbn Gaza, especially since the Mountain effectively regenerates, by being constantly fed more and more souls; each person killed for a demon pact feeds their soul to the matrix, which fuels the mountain's recovery.
The demon princes owe everything to the Mountain of Carrion, and thus always assign some representatives to ensure it is secure and well-stocked with victims and wand-making materials.
What spell can be considered one level higher than wish and gate?
A true wish? because wish its not equal to omnipotence, and practically the majority of epic spells are are more powerful than wish or gate. Like example a spell that create an ice age or summon ten dragons.
Actually this is one of the reasons because I don't like the E# system you don't get 10+ levels spell or other cool abilities only more feats, that is practically the same as ELH but worse
What spell can be considered one level higher than wish and gate?
Summon Monster X. Mass raise dead. Greater contingency. Take any Epic spell ever designed using the 3.0 rules, and I'm sure you could convert it into an appropriate 10+ spell slot.
Not to mention, a lot of the "greater effects" of the wish spell could make reasonable 10+ level spells if you removed the expensive material component.
I'd really like to see Paizo do a book for high-level PCs that included epic feats, 10th+ level spells, rules for immortality and divine ascension, and things like that.
What spell can be considered one level higher than wish and gate?Summon Monster X. Mass raise dead. Greater contingency. Take any Epic spell ever designed using the 3.0 rules, and I'm sure you could convert it into an appropriate 10+ spell slot.
Not to mention, a lot of the "greater effects" of the wish spell could make reasonable 10+ level spells if you removed the expensive material component.
I'd really like to see Paizo do a book for high-level PCs that included epic feats, 10th+ level spells, rules for immortality and divine ascension, and things like that.
+1 You are not the only one, maybe on 2013
Do we even know what's slated for 2012? Have they already stated no epic level in 2012?
Do we even know what's slated for 2012? Have they already stated no epic level in 2012?
Unfortunately something like that. Paizo published only three books per year in the line of rules and for 2012 are Advanced Races Guide, Ultimate Equipment and Bestiary 4 (because there are always a bestiary per year)
I'd really like to see Paizo do a book for high-level PCs that included epic feats, 10th+ level spells, rules for immortality and divine ascension, and things like that.Then again, the use of such a book is questionable at best. PFS play by it's nature can't handle that level of power ...
Who said anything about PFS? I think they've got the right idea in limiting PFS to relatively low level - difficulty of creating scenarios for an arbitrary set of 4-6 characters increases non-linearly with level.
... and any GM worth his or her salt would have come up with their own custom rules tailored for the play style of the group.
I disagree. My rule for my own campaign is no house rules rather than to design a set of house rules, and I've been running a campaign using that strategy since 2006.
Then again that may just mean I'm not worth my salt.
If epic play is nothing more than scaling up power, than it devolves into nothing more than rocket tag. The real question which WOTC never answered in the ELH, is how to keep that devolution from happening.
Plot. People keep thinking epic adventures are all about epic fights.
You have absolutely totally missed the point of my posts. Maybe I can't communicate my thoughts clearly enough, but try reading them again until your question becomes radically different.Accessing those magics on the other hand, is another affair altogether.So you would grant an epic level character access to those spells X times per day?
Is that a no?
Heheh
Depends on the level of the character - if it were me the big bottleneck for the characters would be finding the spells in the first place.
Kind of like the ELH epic spellcasting rules. I don't forbid the use of the epic spellcasting rules, but time and cash pressure keeps them off the table anyways.