I have a friend who came up to me the other day saying that he knew someone who was planning on making his first campaign module and requested that the two people playing it play as level 50 characters. Upon hearing this, I immediately gave my opinion about the matter while explaining that Pathfinder was not designed for level 50 characters. Though I started to wonder, if you were given the option to create a level 50 character (On the presumption that you can't go above level 20 for any one specific class so it would require you to at least take three classes) what kind of character build would you do?
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Level 20 wizard, level 20 cleric, level 10 mystic theurge? All of the spells.
All. Of. Them.
Do you just keep stacking things like bab and saves and hit points? I guess I'd go pretty nuts, its going to be a rediculous game anyway.
Depending on the Materials Allowed, I'd do something like Summoner 20/Dragon Rider 20/Talented Monk 10
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Half-Giant Fighter (Archer) 20, Monk (Sohei) 19, Wizard (any) 1, Arcane Archer 10
You will be using a large sized Gravity Bow enhanced bow, coupled with Enlarge Person, and will proceed to flurry of arrows every single round for 4d6 base arrow damage, preferably with some critical themed feats from your fighter levels. Suggest adding appropriate Banes and other dice stacking weapon abilities.
Pair that with custom magic items on each of your body slots that provide overlapping permanent displacement and fickle winds;, greater spell immunity against dispel, greater dispel, limited wish, and AMF; contingency spells with greater dispel to trigger if hit with a wish or disjunction.
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I'm just gonna be that guy and say level 50 commoner.
Bob the Average Farmer with his +12 Icy Burst Beer Mug and Decanter of Endless Ale.
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I'm just gonna be that guy and say level 50 commoner.
Bob the Average Farmer with his +12 Icy Burst Beer Mug and Decanter of Endless Ale.
+6 Pitchfork of Poking Angrily
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As someone who's played quite a bit of ELH campaigns: it can be incredibly fun and it allowed a unique twist on DnD. The spell-designing system alone was fantastic, as I completely adore character customization and design.
That being said, I've encountered few products that allowed for as much abuse by players as the ELH.
Stuff I've seen/done:
1) A Psion with the Leadership feat to get an army of psions who once per week casted a spell ('Bigsby's Big Bada Brain Boost') that boosted his Intelligence by 40, resulting in ungodly amounts of power points.
2) A Druid with an awakened monkey druids as a animal companion, a cohort and followers, each of which also had awakened monkey druids as animal companions, cohorts etc.... All of which assisted in his non-combat spellcasting, resulting in unbelievably powerful spells.
3) Rogues that are simply undetectable, without using invisibility (as there are spells against that). Simply ungodly Hide&Move Silent (Stealth in PF), that made it impossible for anyone who didn't have epic-level specialization in Spot&Listen (Perception in PF) to ever notice them. One prestige class even made you forget he ever existed!
4) Diplomancers (characters completely devoted to Diplomacy and Bluff) that were able to get any single person to be fanatically devoted to them unless they had epic-level specialization in Sense Motive.
The ELH was usable and allowed for unique and incredibly fun campaigns, as long as the players had enough wisdom to avoid abusing it and cooperated with the DM/GM
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The last half of that last sentence is a mighty big proviso.
Yup. It's probably best to see the ELH as a set of guidelines instead of a rulebook.
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I've seen games go above 50th level with the epic level handbook, which works seamlessly with PF.It's hard to find something more amusing than someone saying that the Epic Level Handbook works "seamlessly" with Pathfinder, when it didn't even work well with 3.0, and only got a half-hearted smattering of updates for 3.5 because it was clear that WOTC had washed it's hands of it by then.1. Have you ever actually used it? I don't wanna sound paranoid, but there are a lot of people who go on the internet and complain about epic levels without having played them...
2. It was useable in 3.0 and 3.5. Now what in the 3.5->PF conversion would cause it to stop working in PF? Almost nothing in it is really affected by the changes in PF aside from specific class features (which it is really obvious how to alter...)
Alright, I'll bite. I have played in a high-level 3E campaign that (unfortunately) utilized ELH. The campaign reached epic levels during the transition to 3.5, but we were still using 3.0 for a while. The minute we went epic, it all started to come apart. Now, we had optimized characters (my paladin's lowest stat was his INT 16) with a lot of "oomph" at our disposal, yet all level-appropriate encounters were just too hard. All of them. Even CR 21 monsters had ACs, saves and SR way beyond our reach. TPK in out second combat, and even the first one had been a close call (only the druid survived, but he managed to teleport our bodies to safety).
Okay, let's skip a year or two into the future, and some of the players could "resurrect" their epic PCs into another high-level campaign. We were using 3.5, so this time it would different, right? Nope, TPK in our second combat... again.
It wasn't that high-level play isn't wonky enough as is, but ELH took it to another level. It's hard to qualify for most feats, unless every PC gets nice inherent bonuses -- and even then, don't even dream of it without 20-25 PB or getting lucky with your dice. DC 200-350 Spellcraft checks to create epic spells... huh? And even the weakest ones are DC 40-80? Checks to walk on clouds require +90 skill modifier, and still regularly fail? What's the point in including them as examples, then?
Maybe ELH works better at level 40+, but it sure as h*** didn't work with optimized PCs at levels 21-22. It *might* work marginally better with Pathfinder PCs, who're more resourceful and tougher than their 3E counterparts, but I doubt it.
If you ask me, Mythic Rules do all that ELH strove to do, only in a lot more reasonable and elegant fashion.
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For me, Epic was the most fun part of the game, and for what I have seen most of the problems with Epic came from 1) Problems inner to the core, and 2) Houserules or bad rulings. ELH wasn't as bad as some people want to believe.
I have been working in a conversion to Pathfinder here
Designing high levels modules are different that low levels, instead of offering few options and trying to figure out what PCs are going to do, you make the most hardest badass awesome stuff you can pull out and let the PCs guess how to pass it, they have plenty resources and options to solve anything. In some way is easier to make such a module because you don't need to worry of a lot things.
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High level play stops being balanced way before Epic Levels get involved, so I have a hard time swallowing that "rocket tag" is what's wrong with ELH, when it was already a problem at level 15. ;P
Let's keep the character's coming guys
I...have never heard of that one before:) I am now very curious as to the nature of this Bigsby's Big Bada Brain Boost power...do you mind sharing more?
I'm a bit fuzzy on the specifics but what it basically came down to was to obtain a cabal of psions through Leadership based in private demiplane academy and designing a custom Epic spell that utilized cooperative casting. I set the duration to 10 days or something and then simply calculated what the maximum INT enhancement bonus could be to 1 or 2 people. I probably included some safeguards but I can't remember much more.
The most important thing was this kind of spell was a lot more powerful for psionic characters than for others, since they are more flexible in spell/PP usage.Concerning both the ELH as well as high-level characters and play in general
The thing about Leadership and the skills thing, as well as instagibbing, is that you have to remember that power level comes down to specialization and setting up combos. As you level, enemies become stronger as well, meaning that the relative power level should mostly remain the same. A theoretical vanilla fighter has an equal chance against a vanilla monster at level 6 as at level 16. The power comes from the fact that players specialize in certain areas, such as skills, feats, spells, etc.. to such a degree that an enemy would have to be a Jack of All Trades Gish Mary Sue to be able to keep up. A player that spent all of his skill points, feats and magic items on Stealth sacrificed e.g. his combat ability to become so strong in one specific area that a more generalized or otherwise specialized opponent is simply unable to see him. This is not helped by the fact that the base ability scores do not scale with level as spells, feats and skills do (which is why the martial classes are overpowered at levels ~1-5 and the casters at levels ~12-20).
Players also find combos between abilities, feats, classes, spells, items etc... to further enhance certain abilities. This is also something that escalates at further levels, as there are more resources available.
The ELH was quite simply a logical extension of this. It allowed for a further degree of specialization and provided greater resources, which resulted in a quadratic increase in power for most classes. Leadership is a great example. Leadership is in most cases not incredibly overpowered at level 8. Level 1 followers? Whoop-dee-doo, they can't contribute much. A level 6 cohort? He'll die at the earliest breeze.
A level 18 cohort and the resources to maintain a keep or series of workshops for your followers is another matter entirely.
Epic levels are a prime example of a (Technological? Magical? Magitech?) Singularity, like the one that has been envisioned IRL. The more resources are available, the more quadratic power level in specialized areas will grow and the more unrecognizable the game will be (a RL biotechnologist has 'powers' that are unrecognizable for a pre1900s person but cannot for example design a smartphone).
Epic levels were a different game (which I suspect was designed for characters that were epically build from the ground up). The biggest problems for me were that all non-damaging spell effects came down to hit-or-miss immunities, the fact that sneak attack and criticals became worthless due to heavy fortification and, most importantly, that every martial class was well... outclassed in martial combat by clerics and druids with the right spell selection (I [i]loathed/i] the spell Divine Power as a fighter at higher levels).
TL:DR
The ELH is the (semi-)logical extension of the quadratic power level of players (and casters especially) due to more resources and possibilities for specialization, resulting in a Singularity. As a result, the game often became unrecognizable to pre-Singularity play. While not a problem for some, this makes the game unplayable for others (I loved it, incidentally, I'm a transhumanist myself).
It's kinda like Exalted in some ways and, while I never played it, it's kinda what I imagine Mage: The Awakening is like.
Let's keep the character's coming guys
Ah, sorry, might've gone a bit off topic there. The point I was trying to make still stands though: the game undergoes a Singularity at approximately level 13-17 and becomes a radically different, almost unrecognizable, game at level ~21-29.
I would never, ever, ever, ever recommend playing above level 13-15 as a less experienced player.Try to get access to Miracle and Wish and try to mix classes and prestige classes that have stacking CLs.
Make a character that has 20 levels of either Druid, Cleric or Oracle, to get all those nice combat-buff spells and abilities make them better at martial combat that martial characters. Possibly then go full-on arcane caster all the way.
Alternatively, mix Magus and Arcane Caster, I suspect you can do some delicious things with Spell Strike and the like.
Skill monkeys are ungodly with sufficient specialization. Bards might be the most powerful due to sheer overwhelming skills.
If allowed, Psionic characters are incredible, due to the non-Vancian magic system.
Stay away from anything with Sneak Attack, focus on criticals, illusionists, necromancers, enchanters and anything else that inflicts status effects, as everyone will be immune to it anyway.
Just look through the highest-end defensive items and spells in the game and imagine a game in which every single enemy has access to those. Conjurors might also be rather weak, since the summoned creatures are not levelled appropriately.
In general, try to make characters that get numerical bonuses to attacks, skills and such, since there are few ways to get immunity against attacks and most forms of damage. Avoid status effects and instakill attacks, since there are/were quite a lot of immunities to those. Avoid magical effects like Invisibility, which have counters, but focus on the equivalent of Stealth.
Try to fill all imaginable bases and specialize in a few areas that are scalable.
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I know next to nothing of Mythic PF so I'll keep to pre-Mythic PF stuff.
Specific builds:
Overlord of the Arcane/Divine
Any primary caster class + 3x a prestige class with full spell progression.
Kinda speaks for itself, CL 50!.
Avatar of Nethys
Cleric/Oracle 20; Wizard/Sorcerer/Witch 20; Mystic Theurge 10
Caster level 30 on both Divine and Arcane spells? Hell yeah. Not just because of access to Divine and Arcane spells but due to the fact you have a CL 30 in each class.
Additionally, you can cast Miracle and Wish simultaneously 1/day, which is just fantastic.
Sonata of Nethys
Cleric/Oracle 10; Wizard/Sorcerer/Witch 10; Mystic Theurge 10; Bard 20.
Caster level 20 in both Divine and Arcane spells and a skill monkey to boot? I'd probably play this class, just because you can excel in anything in the game.
Rage of Heavens
Oracle 13, Barbarian 20, Rage Prophet 10, .... 7?
Ragecaster: When using moment of clarity, he adds his barbarian level to his caster level. Yeah, Ragecaster makes you a GOD. Caster level 40 when the max CL is generally 20? Yes please!
Not sure what to fill the last 7 levels with though. Possibly something that gives immunity to fatigue so you can rage-cycle or Monk for the WIS to AC and abilities.
[Edit]: ah, a Lame Oracle is already immune to fatigue. So 7 levels of Monk? Maybe get 7 levels of Commoner just to mock the rest of the party?
What point buy do you get? And how much money do you get for Stat boosters?
I would go Hexcrafter Magus 10, with Broad Study Arcana(actually you only need 6 levels of Magus), now you can eitcher Wizard or Cleric or Oracle 20. And be able to Spell Strike and cast 9th level Spells.
Last but not least decide if you want to pick 20 lvls of a Combat class or a class with a Spell list you left out.
Oracle 20/Sorcerer 20/Magus 10 will work well here
One extremely Broad Study Combo would be Paladin 20/Sorcerer 13/Disciple 10/Magus 7 -- > Cast as 20 Sorcerer and can Spellstrike with them, gets all the Paladin goodness and immunities, and has his Dragon forms ready.
Also nice: Scarred Witchdoctor 20/Invulnerable Rager Barbarian 20/Magus 10
again Broad Study to cast your full spell list as a Magus.
Another way would be Sorcerer or Wizard 13/Arcane Archer 10/Fighter 20/Magus 7
Sounds like they will be rolling 4d6 and omitting the lowest roll and re-rolling if total is below 10. I am unsure of the starting money and I don't know how that is going to be implemented.
I was in only one Epic Campaign and we only made it to like level 26 or so. To be honest... we where pretty crazy at level 20. Level 26 really didn't take it that much farther. The DM was pretty good at controlling the game and presenting a challenge though. It worked for us. But again... we only made it to 26 before Real Life caused our group to split up.
I'm not sure how we'll it would work, but I'd like to try. Probably the only game where an endless item of wish would be reasonable. Relatively speaking anyway.
I think wiz 20, Druid 20, ranger 10.
Or wiz30 Druid 20 depending on when the diminishing returns happen.
Yeah, I'd go with Cleric 20/Wizard 20/Mythic Theurge 10. Taking care to grab the Cleric levels first to optimized my saves and BAB.
Because a 50th-level game is doomed to be broken from the very start, so might as well break it in style!
Or a Druid 20/Scarred Witch 20/Mythic Theurge 10, for slightly less game-breaking build. That'd should be fun.
All I can say that it's very clear that you've never played Mage, in either it's original or it's NWOD forms.
I didn't mean in power levels or mechanics but in the sense that the focus of the game is on spellcasters (since martial classes simply aren't as good at what they do as spellcasters with certain spells are) and that (as I understood so in Mage) magic is not defined by premade spells anymore but the system is designed to make customized spells.
Reality bends to your whim in a way you want it to do, not in a way that was specified to the details by a game designer.Anyway back to topic.
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To quote The Dungeon Bastard, "You're talking epic level play here. If you don't drop 600 points of damage every time you fart, you're not playing right."
So I'm getting a general consensus on the 20 Wizard/20 Cleric/10 Mystic Theurge. Nothing else to top that?
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3 Wizard/ 10 Cleric/ 3 Rogue/ 4 Fighter/ 10 Arcane Trickster / 10 Mystic Theurge / 10 Dragon Disciple
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3 Wizard/ 10 Cleric/ 3 Rogue/ 4 Fighter/ 10 Arcane Trickster / 10 Mystic Theurge / 10 Dragon Disciple
That's pretty badass.
So I'm getting a general consensus on the 20 Wizard/20 Cleric/10 Mystic Theurge. Nothing else to top that?
That fully depends on whether or not the caster level of 20 levels of a core/base class stacks with the progression of a prestige class. In other words, whether that build would have a CL of 20 or 30 in each class.
When a new mystic theurge level is gained, the character gains new spells per day as if he had also gained a level in any one arcane spellcasting class he belonged to before he added the prestige class and any one divine spellcasting class he belonged to previously. He does not, however, gain other benefits a character of that class would have gained. This essentially means that he adds the level of mystic theurge to the level of whatever other arcane spellcasting class and divine spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day, spells known, and caster level accordingly
If your max level in any class is 20, RAW would indicate that the Mystic Theurge would not stack with wizard or cleric. That would mean you waste 10 by taking Mystic Theurge or approximately 20 by taking 10 levels in cleric and wizard.
20 Monk/ 10 Druid/ 10 Sorcerer/ 10 Mystic Theurge
or
20 Ninja/ 17 Rogue/ 3 Wizard/ 10 Arcane Trickster
20 Monk/ 10 Druid/ 10 Sorcerer/ 10 Mystic Theurge
or
20 Ninja/ 17 Rogue/ 3 Wizard/ 10 Arcane Trickster
Ninja is an alternate class of rogue, you can't take levels in both as essentially all ninjas already count as rogues.
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Yep, that's badwrongfun right there.
I don't know, burt i think rogues major magic can fix that
I have a friend who came up to me the other day saying that he knew someone who was planning on making his first campaign module and requested that the two people playing it play as level 50 characters. Upon hearing this, I immediately gave my opinion about the matter while explaining that Pathfinder was not designed for level 50 characters. Though I started to wonder, if you were given the option to create a level 50 character (On the presumption that you can't go above level 20 for any one specific class so it would require you to at least take three classes) what kind of character build would you do?
I'm actually curious as to what your friend's friend was thinking. Did that person play D&D 3.x/Pathfinder before? And how did your conversation go?
I'd go with 20 levels in martial classes (20 levels in Fighter maybe with a dip in Barbarian?), 20 levels in Ninja so you can be completely undetectable. Level dips in bard, druid, cleric and wizard so I can every spell in the game on my spell list, and use my unbelievably-fantastic Wealth By Level to spam scrolls. (+5 inherent bonuses to all stats of course.)
(By the way, I know firsthand that this is the kind of thing 12 year olds will try to do the moment they get their hands onto Hero Lab.)
I don't know, burt i think rogues major magic can fix that
And with only one talent to pick in 3 levels, how exactly would you get that?
For the mystic theurge build, consider using druid rather than cleric.
Because:
The natural spell feat allows spell casting of any type, not just druidic, while wild shaped and with the addition of the wild speech feat to allow normal conversation you should have some fun.
Another question is- what archetype of arcane caster and what archetype of divine caster?
That gun shootin' wizard might be worth it if you have 30 caster levels.
You might also do only 18 or so levels of divine and arcane, but take a few levels of monk for the wisdom to AC thing and evasion.
More likely, the capstone abilites of your particular types of casters would be better.
Yep, that's badwrongfun right there.
If you're replying to me, maybe I should clarify. It would mean he could be a ninja 37/wiz3/AT10 or rogue 37/wiz3/AT10, but he couldn't split the levels up.
I don't know, burt i think rogues major magic can fix thatAnd with only one talent to pick in 3 levels, how exactly would you get that?
Feat: Extra talent. But you could replace 3 wiz and 1 fighter for 4 sorc.