Baha well it's fine then, just making sure. I'm still interested in playing my god-like quarterstaff wielder.
Yep spotted that, and I think again the game if it ever gets past the problems I have found, will keep the 20th cap on a level, I know some give you + so should give higher spells but OMG the work
Ok Thanks all for showing your Interest the feed back has been great, and I found some things out.
Im going to go away and have a really good think about a way to do this, that will let players play and still get past some of the problems I can see. Lots of reading for me. But all good fun.
I will keep this thread up so you can post ideas and etc. But for now I need a lot more time to work on this.
Spugs
Yeah I would have had the same problem with the monks unarmed strike going to lvl 30. Also, as Tenro Asked, are we using epic lvl feats? I just ask because some of them get pretty over powered, but at lvl 40, the regular feats start to not do very much.
I don't mind not using epic level feats if you want to avoid some headache. this would encourage characters to expand laterally towards versatility rather than absolute power in one area. the problem with that is, if our characters are supposed to be elevated to god-like status, they should be "the best fighter ever" rather than "as good as the best fighter ever and as good as the best wizard ever". although, some ideas work better than others in this regard. such as, "the spell-slingingest bard ever (bard 20/sorceror 20)" etc.
as for psionics, as long as i get more power points, and the ability to augment powers past 20th manifester level, i'd be fine. i could take some feats to up my DCs to make them respectable.
when (a long way down the road) we actually get to equipment, you'll also have to decide if we are limited to +10 weapons and armor or if we can go higher.
Would you allow epic level progression for base classes?
Immunities and DR aren't too bad, there are plenty of things in the game that have no counter that is 'perfect'. Imprisonment comes to mind, Implosion is a close second. Part of the issue with any high level is that saves are basically, 'roll a 1 to fail' and hitting is about the same. Part of the fun, part of the problem. Leaving out Epic spells and abilities will help some - and there are only so many actions a player can take in a round no matter what powers they have.
I DMed a game where the villain summoned a balor, the party cast a 'save or die' spell, I rolled a one. The villain did it again the next round, and I rolled a one again. Life is like that sometime - they still talk about that stroke of monumental (un)luck.
It becomes more like superheroes where you slug it out for a while until someone's resources get low, then you teleport out. You then have to find a clever way to defeat people and it often involves trickery, deception, and out-witting that has nothing to do with spells and abilities. Resource management is a big issue - one way to weaken players is to make the problem 'time bound' - they need to stop the sacrifice by 'n' and they have these 20 combats with 10 balors each between here and there. People run out of spells and healing before they even make it to the end. Even battles with CR26-28 demon lords will still be hard due to limiting powers to lvl 9 spells and level 20 classes.
Near-deities should be super-hard to take out, even for other near-deities. Legends abound with deities fighting each other many many times and it's always a draw.
The interesting things are what happens out of combat at this level. And here divination spells are the big problems, as we all know murder mystery type adventures at higher levels are nearly impossible to make work due to this problem.
Now, if you let me play an iron golem (immune to most everything) with a lot of class levels...
Oh, one last point :)
The key is minions, I defy any party of 40th level players to walk into the throne room of a demon lord or prince of hell with all the attendants there and come out winning - they may not even escape.
Make that two, I lied:
And sounds spells, lots of sound spells - not much grants sonic immunity :)
"The army of low level bards surprises you. They cast..." That's probably one of the more amusing lines that will scare the high level party.
You may consider a house rule that immunity actually counts as immune from natural sources but against magic source with a caster level of twenty or higher counts as only DR 30 or 40.
So what would you do if the ability specificly states that it affects magic sources? for example monk become immune to disease including magical ones, so does that just reduce the effect or are they actually immune because the ability specifies it?
You may consider a house rule that immunity actually counts as immune from natural sources but against magic source with a caster level of twenty or higher counts as only DR 30 or 40.So what would you do if the ability specificly states that it affects magic sources? for example monk become immune to disease including magical ones, so does that just reduce the effect or are they actually immune because the ability specifies it?
i'd make it into a CURSE that acts like a disease. "immunity to curses" isn't something i have seen.
also, as we are aspiring godlings, i would say that our followers/students/etc need to be taken into consideration. also our prospective portfolios could be taken into consideration. for instance, instability in an area could weaken those with the Law domain, or something like that. likewise, something happening to our followers or temples could cause an issue. perhaps a fight where not only are we fighting a bad guy but also trying to keep his minions from killing our followers, or keep them from torching a city or temple, etc.
Yeah, that was the first question I asked back on page one. How would you handle combats? I could definitely make a basically invincible character with 41 points from the ARG and 40 class levels.
My 25th level character is already pretty hard to kill.
plus for the Good-aligned characters, there are always moral quandaries to consider... :D
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You may consider a house rule that immunity actually counts as immune from natural sources but against magic source with a caster level of twenty or higher counts as only DR 30 or 40.So what would you do if the ability specificly states that it affects magic sources? for example monk become immune to disease including magical ones, so does that just reduce the effect or are they actually immune because the ability specifies it?
I don't know about all types but disease is something I'm not to worried about for this rule.
Also I consider the rules being written for level 20 or less thus super crazy level should be able to break those rules as long as your methodology for such takes the 20 lvl benchmark into account.
A diety is assumed to be able to bypass just about any 9th level spell, so then anybeing for which a 9th level spell is marginal should be beginning to get similar options of ignoring things that lower mortals take for granted.
I have interest in this as well, i am thinking something along the lines of mystic thurge and the like, will think on it more latter, just wanted to show interest is all.
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I already have a character that was a god at one point and had to destroy an out of control anti-god weapon, giving up divine rank in the process. All at level twenty, so now just need to upgrade a few levels and my character is ready.
Finish off shadow dancer and sorcerer and add some reincarnated druid. Off course 3.5 didn't have bloodlines (fluff was originally a lycanthrope bloodline) so need to choose one of those, hmm, yep, this will be awesome.
Any spots still open? If so I would be interested in a fighter type. With 40 levels there is of course a massive amount of room to work with but I'm currently in a skype game where, as 19th level, my freind and I are the n00bs and going up against 44 HD creatures. The DM has designed level and spell progressions all the way up to 100th level (even though none of his players ever had a character make it to 100) and we are having an absolute blast.
Actually, I can see an idea or two the follows along fuglet's path of "demigods entering new realms" kind of a campaign. Yes, we would still be demigods in a world that has no gods, but what if some races/tribes/nations, etc. weren't too big on the competition.
David Weber is kind of doing this idea in a "new" series (it's up to I think 4 books and has been out a couple of years now), where a futuristic society is purposely regressed back several centuries to avoid an alien invasion. An android is brought to life to forward the technology back to previous levels, but it is fighting against the prevailing global religion (think extreme Catholicism, both the good (God is everywhere, watching out for you) and bad (senior clergy overtly rich and powerful, everyone gets the shaft)).
My thought is that, perhaps we play a campaign where our characters are on this new world, and are trying to establish ourselves, but one or more factions is trying to get rid of us. Our characters would lead armies into battle and try to "smite" the competition.
I know it sounds challenging, but at 40th level, what are you going to be fighting when there are no gods around? There are only just so many terrasques lying around :)
The more I think about it, the better it sounds to just have more spell slots after 20 instead of epic spells. More spell slots for meta magic past 9th. Gives you more power without all hell breakin loose.
Actually, I can see an idea or two the follows along fuglet's path of "demigods entering new realms" kind of a campaign. Yes, we would still be demigods in a world that has no gods, but what if some races/tribes/nations, etc. weren't too big on the competition.
David Weber is kind of doing this idea in a "new" series (it's up to I think 4 books and has been out a couple of years now), where a futuristic society is purposely regressed back several centuries to avoid an alien invasion. An android is brought to life to forward the technology back to previous levels, but it is fighting against the prevailing global religion (think extreme Catholicism, both the good (God is everywhere, watching out for you) and bad (senior clergy overtly rich and powerful, everyone gets the shaft)).
My thought is that, perhaps we play a campaign where our characters are on this new world, and are trying to establish ourselves, but one or more factions is trying to get rid of us. Our characters would lead armies into battle and try to "smite" the competition.
I know it sounds challenging, but at 40th level, what are you going to be fighting when there are no gods around? There are only just so many terrasques lying around :)
You know, I really like this concept. I think it would be perfect for this level of game. Also, I like the idea of just stepping through a portal to a new world similar to or like this.
After a brief search on the books I find that I like the idea even more.
+10
@shady-Motives I see you did not notice that this is a thread to discuss the rules of how to make characters, what those characters would be doing, and where it would be taking place.
It has been repeatedly stated that this is not a game invite and nobody is discussing character concepts before the mechanics of the game are determined.
We welcome any ideas you may have on the above.
*****
I am reading that series myself, and for the most part, enjoying it. Yes, the android is disgustingly powerful one-on-one. And she could even prepare to take on masses and win the battle. But such overt actions would lose her the war.
I would definitely enjoy a fantasy slant on such a game. Maybe the players are working to develop their own followers and in doing so, become gods to compete against the gods already there. The characters experience some temporal shift from the mainstream Golarion universe to this one. In such a situation, I would envision that the players have alignments of X/good as this universe does not have any good deities.
It's the classic good verses evil, where evil is already mainstream.
How do you explain light to a blind man that has never experienced it?
One option would allow for characters to be metallic dragons, though not all need be.
I have always wanted to be a silver dragon with levels in sorcerer. I feel that would make for a good character in a high level game concept like this. *drools*
Consider being the first silver dragon, establishing your breed in the new world (probably need to have your cohort as your mate).
Since in this scenario all of the players would be good, the temporal shift could be a planned event allowing the players to select who/what they are bringing with them.
Something else that would need to be considered is how the players would develop relevancy with most knowledge skills. History, nobility, geography, and local would all be penalized severely, for a while.
Depending on the player they could also potentially play the mate. It would have to be well planned though.
If not the cohort idea sounds good.
Yes my character concept is neutral but definitely no evil bent. Sees order and law as good thing but sees good and evil as unnecessary extremes
Excuse my rather presumptive approach to this and thank you for the correction fnord72. The post was made at the end of a very long, very busy day at work and my brain was a bit addled. I shall read every post and suggest my own ideas for something with much promise. See you in a bit. ;p
So what's the difference between a level 25 or 30 gestalt game and a level 40 non-gestalt?Grand Moff Vixen, I believe you and I both have level 25 characters in another game. Assuming a hard cap of 20th level on class abilities, what would you see differently if those level 25's were gestalt or if they were level 40? I can see more skill points, higher saves, but those are all power creep components. Your character is still going to cap out at a swift, move, and standard action, only have four base attacks, etc.
I am not certain I fully understand what you mean. Do you refer to the combat aspect of playing such a character? As in how much I could do (or little) in combat?
I suppose I should state the reasons why I want to play such a dragon.
Even if I don't add the sorcerer levels that wouldn't bother me as much. They still get spells to represent their affinity to magic.
Update: Ok everything is read and YES! I FOUND A POTENTIAL GAME OF LIMITLESS WORLD BUILDING TO UNLEASH MY-
Ok I'll stop there.
So instead of focusing on alignments since in Golarian there are multiple gods with the same alignment maybe we should consider the type of characters we would be playing. Then as the game progresses and we begin to gain a faint spark of divinity we could begin to ID domains that relate to the way we've played our character.
As for the world what if we stepped in as the Godswar was just finishing and the weary and beaten gods, not dead yet, felt a tug of familiarity as our characters arrived? Then with their last dying breath they cast what remained of their power into our characters?
As I'm typing this the idea for godhood is changing in my head. If we stepped into a world that just threw down their gods, what's going to us even if we manage to subjugate (cause thats what we would be doing) everyone and made them worship us? How would history not repeat itself with another war in 2000 years?
How about a reversion in time? Somewhere in the multiverse the Elder Ones reached out and altered history. Those that had barred their re-entry back into the multiverse were suddenly deprived of the power that had made them gods. But you can't completely wipe out divinity like that. So those beings that used to be gods were instead insanely powerful mortals who were fighting the suddenly ascendent Elder Ones in a war that they were losing that had been going on since the dawn of time?
But how can this be? They remember being gods. But they aren't right now. Now beings of incredible power (Elder Ones) are in the godly pantheon but the world is in so many ways wrong. As we fight to survive (and regain a bit of our lost divinity with each fight) we can rewrite what gods are supposed to be.
I've got the tip of idea in my head but I'm struggling to finish it. Any thoughts?
PS: If we don't do a 20 level cap I have tables for exp, spells, saves, attack and all that all the way up to level 100 that my current DM made. All based on Pathfinders suggestion for levels beyond 20.
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I think the GMs implications are better,
It's been a very long time since that war and thus the war with the gods is probably relegated to myth and the new powers have possibly become gods in all but name, likely with new "religions".
So the idea though isn't just what we fight, but how we establish ourselves and what portfolios we end up taking as our own.
I have some divine progressions made up to "slowly" become a god, all on paper right now but the idea is when we reach a certain level (25-30, somewhere in there or by how many followers we have) we gain a demi-divine rank, and some of main universal abilities of the gods become available in miniature and grow.
Abilities like being able to see everything within a mile would be gained as being able to see everything within a certain distance, per demi-divine rank.
Portfolios develop because when we can see so much we can focus only on certain things and what we choose to focus our senses on would in effect be our portfolios, which our ability to focus on more things and thus have more portfolios grows with our divine rank.
wow there are a lot of really good ideas on this thread. I wonder why we dont have more high level games going on.
@LazarX my personal preference is to cap classes at 20. Prestige classes can take someone up higher than that (but then they usually have rules on what happens). For a caster, I'd use the paizo suggestion i previously posted. So if I built a wizard 20, then went loremaster 10, My caster level would be 30. This would give me one spell slot of each level from 10 through 14. I would also have an additional 60 spell slot levels to split up as I saw fit (this works for spontaneous casters too). I could then take another class from 1-10 to get me up to 40 total.
Bab stops at 20 with four basic attacks. What I seem to recall was something like an epic bonus of +1 per odd level after that. Saves would be simpler if we are capping classes at 20, when you switch to another class, just keep using that progression.
So, I'm kind of confused how this doesn't favor spell casters? If you cap at 4 attacks, why would someone want to play a melee or ranged person who can only swing four times a round? Its not like they can increase there damage outside of more attacks and magic weapons. But by giving spell casters the option of using prestige classes to increase there level of spell casting, you can get pretty ridiculous like making Horrid Wilting 25d6 to every creature in a 60 foot radius from 3200 ft. away. Compare that to the lvl 30 fighter who can swing for 4 attacks each dealing 4d6+whatever extra enhancments his weapon has+Str. Yeah, he can deal close to the same damage to a single creature, but not from 2/3 of a mile away and not to as many creatures at the same time.
well thats when things like whirlwind attack come in.
i'm not saying that is equivalent to 25d6 horrid wilting though. but attacks were capped at 4 to keep people from rolling 100 attacks and slowing things down with calculation of hit and damage for each, not to mention damage types and DR and all that. sure, that can be streamlined, but still. not to mention you have your flurry of blows and dervishes and two weapon fighters that get much more than 4 attacks. additionally, since each of those additional attacks past 4 attacks are going to be at a -20 or more, they arent going to hit in most cases vs epic things that have +20 insight bonus to AC, etc.
in the epic games i have played, i only played a dedicated melee type in one of them (iaijutsu master/swordsage) and he had a lot more tricks than just melee up his sleeve. no spells or anything, but he was "pretty good" at sleight of hand, had some special maneuvers, dimension door SLA, etc. I still had fun even though the warmage was throwing insane spells out there. It's all about playing what you like. Hell, epic is where playing a non-combat character really becomes viable. You focus more on building and maintaining a nation, an organization, etc. (if you so choose). So for one wizard, 40d6 fireballs dont concern him when he could instead cast telepathic bond with 40 people and get some hive thinking going.
TL;DR: Epic favors spellcasters in almost every situation. Same can be said with Pre Epic (16-20). What is more important is what that player wants out of their character.
Is my character concept ok?
@lordzack, you must have missed the posts that this is not the time for character concepts.
@EntropyRules What Tenro said.
I am actually looking forward to the role play aspect of running macro scale events.
to help fill in some of the slots my char idea is on one of the evil lines, Someone that wants all the worlds troubles placed on him, if the people dont want to suffer they make offerings in hopes that it will keep ill fortune away, rather then giving offerings and getting good fortunes like what happens with good gods.
As well as being a multi spell caster, ie wizard cleric or something along those lines, build will vary on what the rules are that would be established.
Line of thinking is there can not truly be good without evil, Blame will always be around not matter what, so by taking the blame for things he will gain power, as well as the prayers would give him power as well.
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...Bab stops at 20 with four basic attacks. ..
I see a lot of people run screaming at the mention of gestalt.
...
First, Despite the 4 atks limit, BAB (and many other abilities) continue on the implied progression beyond 20,
Hit dice, base attack bonuses, and saving throws continue to increase at the same rate beyond 20th level, as appropriate for the class in question. Note that no character can have more than 4 attacks based on its base attack bonus...Class abilities that have a set, increasing rate, such as a barbarian's damage reduction, a fighter's bonus feats and weapon training, a paladin's smite evil, or a rogue's sneak attack continue to progress at the appropriate rate.
Next, the big difference between gestalt or not is the DC/bonus levels A 10/10 fighter/wiz will be using bonuses and DCs for 10th level encounters, with gestalt a 20th level fighter/wizard is using 20th level DCs and bonuses (also the spell slots and progressions of course are higher with gestalt) Gestalt does more to provides double the versatility and only 1.5 times the power (due to limits on actions per round, only 20 levels of skill points, non-stacking saves, etc)
A 10/10 ftr/wiz vs a 10 gestalt ftr/wiz, the gestalt would lose.
Someone asked why there aren't more epic level games out there? EASY. Because it will take multiple hours of work to create every single NPC and Monster that the PCs face or interact with, on top of the additional work of building a world from scratch since Golarion is not set up to deal with epic level characters.
In other words, you need a very skilled and experienced DM who's either unemployed and has no kids, or dedicates ALL their gaming time to creating/running one epic game. Even then it would be a daunting task to DM such a game.
true, true. Well, I am very excited for this game. I do worry about it being 40th level a bit, but the plot is quite interesting. Stepping into a brand new world as a being that was quite powerful in your previous world but not knowing much about the new one, except that there are forces that oppose you that you have yet to quite identify.
Or find a GM that is actually good at being spontaneous and knows the rules well enough to do so.
Just as rare. I for example know the rules pretty well, but am much less familiar with all the spells and abilities available past about 10th level since games so rarely reach that point.
Posting great interest as a LE Human-turned-Lich Oracle necromancer.
Given discussion over how levels will proceed I'll just say that my build we be likely Oracle of Bones 15 -> Agent of the Grave 5 -> Wizard for the rest.
Will be watching!
The idea of a game like this is really cool, and I hope there's a way to make it work.
A couple thoughts though:
First, if we are limiting it to 20 levels in a class, what about classes with companion? A wizards familiar will at least get some scaling HP, but what about a druids animal companion, a cavalier or paladins mount, a summoners eidolon etc? Without some form of scaling they run a very real risk of just outright dying in the opening salvos of a cr 40 encounter.
Second, while it might create some issues, maybe past 20hd it be better to get phantom levels? Instead of increasing saves/bab/HD instead we pick up new class abilities, some HP boosts, the occasional boost to saves or attack rolls, maybe some extra higher level spell slots for metamagic like what's been suggested? It seems to me like that would help level the playing field a little more between casters/non casters and keep the numbers slightly more manageable.
Makes me wish the Legendary Levels stuff was on the pfsrd site, the feats and all from that would work rather well I think.
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I think #1 is the general idea Spugly and other people want. These God-Slaves he's created are the new equivalent of Deities that will need to be dealt with/replaced in this new realm.
A fighter type would never make it to 40th level, they just don't have the juice. Swords are the weapons of mortals. Since most of their power comes from magical gear, it would require them to wield several artifact level items to keep up I'd imagine. Or have something like the divine ranks from 3.0's Deities and Demigods.
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I'm thinking that at 40th level it's going to be almost pure roleplay. Combats are going to be pointless, because they will go on forever and no one will win, unless there are extenuating circumstances in place. Just like in the legends, battles go on for days and there's rarely a clear winner without some sort of weakness being set up first.
Another interesting idea would be to create some sort of Achilles-heel mechanic. Each of the new wanna-be deities would have some sort of weakness. It could be a substance (Superman and Kryptonite) or it could be their love for a mortal (Hulk and Betty Ross). But that sort of thing makes super powerful characters more interesting.