if there's any book that I want ruled into pathfinder the most, it's the Epic Level Handbook. I miss playing obscenely high level games with world-breaking power against ridiculous enemies. We're on our way to completing Wrath of the Righteous right now, and the higher level and more mythic tiers I get, them ore I miss epic level play. Come on paizo, let's get Epic!
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Level 20 with 10 Mythic Tiers is pretty epic for most people. The vocal minority of the forum is very much against Mythic Adventures, so an Epic Handbook has very little chance of manifesting at this point.
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Paizo's lack of well-written epic rules is one of the main reasons my "main" group has not converted our campaign to Pathfinder from 3.5. I'm not holding my breath for Paizo to get it together, though. Oh well: if Paizo can't produce a product I want to buy and use, they'll just deal without my money. They've done it before and will probably continue to do so for years to come.
For all the flaws of Paizo's Mythic rules, they pale compared to the inconsistent morass of rules and the tepid setting that passed for offerings in the Epic Level Handbook. It's worth noting that not a single adventure or supplement was ever published. It's also worth noting that it was a 3.0 book which got nothing more than a bit of erratta to bring it into 3.5.
The book was a publishing and sales failure for WOTC. Not exactly a tempting item for Paizo.
I've played a character all the way to 20th level/10th Tier. The amount of broken sick levels of power that were possible convinced me that I do not what a pathfinder conversion of the old epic mess.
if there's any book that I want ruled into pathfinder the most, it's the Epic Level Handbook. I miss playing obscenely high level games with world-breaking power against ridiculous enemies. We're on our way to completing Wrath of the Righteous right now, and the higher level and more mythic tiers I get, them ore I miss epic level play. Come on paizo, let's get Epic!
The Mythic Rules are what we have in place of the Epic rules. Paizo toyed with the idea for a while, but decided not to go Epic.
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Suggestion: Never use five exclamation points in a row!
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Personally, I just don't really care for Mythic much. Epic was about going beyond what was normally possible after earning it, while Mythic is more about being randomly invested with extraordinary power (that could be taken away at any time) just because, and actually works best as a sort of short, one-shot or mini arch/campaign.
It's sort of like giving low level players each a powerful artifact of choice.
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Mythic is actually not nearly as bad as some claim.
The biggest thing to realize is that gaining mythic tiers is 100% tied to narrative events, not something that can be accomplished by just gaining XP. In that respect, and because mythic tiers aren't (necessarily) tied to class levels*, mythic rules are actually a lot easier to integrate into a campaign: allowing 1-2 mythic tiers (and/or creatures with 1-2 mythic ranks) doesn't actually push power levels that much above the use of hero points from the APG (apart from some specific cases), IMO.
As mentioned, the 3.0 Epic Handbook was a mess. Bland choices mostly about "bigger numbers," requiring the PCs to have custom magic items to keep up. The consistency of the provided setting material was outright horrible: some NPCs were given different class progressions in different sections and/or epic PrCs that would be impossible for them to qualify for.
*- One of the biggest drawbacks of Epic, IMO: you had to slog through 20 levels first, which already made it appeal to a limited group of gamers. Mythic Adventures suggests that PCs gain tiers no more than every two character levels, but you can have a 1st level/1st tier character or wait until 16th level to gain a mythic tier, as desired with the campaign.
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It's worth noting that not a single adventure or supplement was ever published.
This is incorrect. An epic level adventure was published in Dungeon Magazine #123.
While I want to support your request for Epic content, I have to agree that 5 exclamation points is a bit much.
Unfortunately, as mentioned upthread, Mythic is currently the closest you will currently get to true high level / epic play in PF. I too wish that we can see more support for high-level content, but I think at this point it would be better to see more support for 15-20 play and THEN post-20 play published by Paizo as far too many people seem to have issues with games that go beyond even 12th level, much less past 20th.
I looked at Mythic and don't feel it fills in for what I would consider actual post-20th level support, but for others it apparently works out fine.
More to the point, as I stated in the last thread you brought this up in Froggy, Paizo's developers have always had a strong anti-Epic stance ever since the 3.5 days, and have been quite adamant and consistent in saying that Mythic is how they intend to handle all post-CR 20 challenges and advancement.
It would be extremely, extremely, extremely unlikely for them to take years of that declaration and stance back and put out an Epic book now.
Creative Director
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It's worth noting that not a single adventure or supplement was ever published.This is incorrect. An epic level adventure was published in Dungeon Magazine #123.
And in Dungeon #92, there was "The Razing of Redshore," an adventure I wrote for 20th level characters that was specifically designed to serve as a transition into epic level play.
And then in the next issue, in Dungeon #93, we published James Wyatt's "The Storm Lord's Keep" which was a full-on epic adventure.
And finally, the last adventure of Savage Tide, in Dungeon #150, is likely to have the players reach 21st level before all is said and done.
And over in Dragon, we published a fair amount of content for epic level play, starting with an article I wrote for Dragon 297 called "Sentinels of the Shoal." Which ties in to "Razing of Redshore" in a lot of ways. Dragon would continue to periodically do epic level content for GMs and players a like... every one of the many Demonomicon articles I wrote for dragon contained an epic-level stat block for a demon lord.
It's true that WotC didn't produce much epic level support content, but Paizo did a fair amount of it back in the day.
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Creative Director
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More to the point, as I stated in the last thread you brought this up in Froggy, Paizo's developers have always had a strong anti-Epic stance ever since the 3.5 days, and have been quite adamant and consistent in saying that Mythic is how they intend to handle all post-CR 20 challenges and advancement.
It would be extremely, extremely, extremely unlikely for them to take years of that declaration and stance back and put out an Epic book now.
As my previous post provides plenty of examples, we were NOT anti-epic in the 3.5 days at all. In fact, Paizo was more or less the ONLY place producing epic content at all.
When we switched to Pathfinder, we were more interested in exploring a different solution to the question of "how do you tell over-the-top" stories than using epic level rules. Mythic is our solution to that.
Also... (developer vs. designer terminology rant)
For tabletop RPGs, a designer is not a developer, and a developer is not a designer, although a lot of the skills a designer needs are used by developers.
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Creative Director
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In fact, Paizo was more or less the ONLY place producing epic content at all.You weren't the only one. Mongoose Publishing released a substantial amount of epic support
(though not adventures), and Skortched Urf' Studios also did a little. You might have done the most adventures of any company, though (IMO Paizo's pregenerated adventure format is a poor fit for an epic campaign, but that's beside the point).EDIT: Ack, I forgot that the Drow War series was also Mongoose. The Drow War Book 3 is an adventure that goes from level 21 to level 30 (it is a follow-up to DWB 1, which goes from level 1-10, and Drow War Book 2, which goes from level 10-21).
Fair enough. I meant to say the only one producing "official" epic content (since the comment that sparked MY comment was about Wizards not supporting epic—which is not correct, since Dragon and Dungeon were their magazines), but your point stands.
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Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
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And in Dungeon #92, there was "The Razing of Redshore," an adventure I wrote for 20th level characters that was specifically designed to serve as a transition into epic level play.
I was a much more prolific reader of Dragon than I was of Dungeon—odd, given I now write and develop adventures for a living—but I remember Dungeon #92 was an issue I went out of my way to acquire specifically because I wanted to see what an epic adventure looked like. "The Razing of Redshore" did not disappoint, and it and the "Sentinels of the Shoal" article played a big role in shaping my home game's transition into epic level play. I still fondly remember some of Redshore's key NPCs and their devious tactics.
if there's any book that I want ruled into pathfinder the most, it's the Epic Level Handbook. I miss playing obscenely high level games with world-breaking power against ridiculous enemies. We're on our way to completing Wrath of the Righteous right now, and the higher level and more mythic tiers I get, them ore I miss epic level play. Come on paizo, let's get Epic!
I really liked Epic as well, but it had lots of flaws:
1)It barely gave the players something new to do. Just more hit points and bonuses to keep track off.
2) Many Epic Feats were just underwhelming(+1 attribute, +1natural armor)
3) The epic skills have unbelivably high DCs
4) The epic spells have unbelivably high DCs and are easily abuseable(buffs)
5) No new class features are gained.
Still I liked the feel of having a game that has no upper limit and can scale as far as you want it to. Multiclassing does not mean, you lose your capstone, you just delay it.
I believe(though I have yet to play it) Mythic does a much better job with allowing new options your characters normally won't have. I do not like being restricted to specific paths thoough.
You can always take the feat "dual path" they hand out mythic feats like candy. :-)
I'd be perfectly happy seeing some more mythic adventure material, but I confess to zero interest in epic anything.
When I ran Tsar, my players ended up with PCs at about 24th level with 2 mythic tiers. The four levels beyond 20th? Really just "meh, more numbers". The mythic tiers... those added some interesting tactical options.
And yes, I played Wrath, to its (awesome) conclusion. Darned fun, even though it was rocket-tag. That was sort of the point.
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Will there be any other support for mythic adventures than the World Wound AP?
We've used Mythic several times in adventures since then to create unique foes, and have done mythic creatures in bestiaries and other mythic options in a few player companions... but a full-on mythic themed adventure isn't something we've got on the schedule. You can certainly still use normal adventures with mythic characters though, either with a little work or by using characters of lower level than the adventure's recommended one or by running the game for only 1 or 2 mythic characters if you have a gamer shortage.
The Destiny of the Sands 3 part PFS scenario series has a mythic chapter to it. It also includes just enough rules material to run it without the book if needed.
There are several third party supplements for Pathfinder that are "da epic" and mythic works fine. Or just convert over the rules from 3.0/3.5 epic handbook which are easy. And frankly, creating content for that high of a level isn't in the best business or design interests of Paizo right now, IMO. There are far more stories that can be told and areas of Golarion that need to be explored before we create the new mythic city of super people, aka Waterdeep... Hence why most APs max out at 15 or 17, since you're effectively more mythic then most of the world anyway, other then people like Tar-Baphon or Karzoug with his major artifacts...
Surprised that nobody mentioned the Beyond 20th Level subsection of the Gamemastering section of the Core Rulebook (scroll down to almost the end). Paizo actually does have a kernel of support for Epic -- it requires some tweaking and completion work, but can serve as the nucleus for something serviceable.
Someone actually went through the job of making the Epic Level Handbook in Pathfinder; I've been looking over it,, and the feats look rather cool (One actually gives blindsense 15 from your weapon, one adds metamagic feats to bombs, one extends deflect things, one increases the effect you deflect, lots of neat effects with these feats. Spells just get neat metamagic effects that grant higher bonus damage or cuts out damage caps.
So far, looks kinda neat. Give it a shot. If you want more variety, grant folks the option to choose mythic feats and path abilities as feats, use ascendent spells, and treat their mythic pool as equal to half their level, ect. Should replicate the veriaty of mythic, with the power of epic.
You could always take the basic idea behind E6 and give your players additional feats for certain amounts of additional experience. Create some unique and interesting feats for them to take and it gives them the opportunity to get better without having to tack on more useless numbers.
For what I think of when I think epic, I like Genius games horrifically overpowered feats, and especially horrifically overpowered mythic feats.
Those are some fun and impressive feats.