DnD has never decided if it wants to be low fantasy Lord of the Rings, medium fantasy Conan, high fantasy Jack Vance, or epic like tall tales and myths. Ideally, they should all happen at some point in the level progression, but DnD has never wanted to define itself that way despite being a level-based system and trying to do all these concepts.
Until that core decision is made, pushing the numbers along the series will just show how bad the math is. Even band-aid game design like the Tomes, however brilliant in it's own very limited way, will not have a solution.
Tome Epic--Should it be there?
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Sounds good to me. Who knows, I might put it up on the old Wiki for shits and giggles.For Valor wrote:First 2 levels are Fire Mage, then 2 levels of Weird (Origin: Fire, Sphere: Fire), 3 levels of fire mage, 2 levels of Weird, 2 levels of fire mage, 1 level of Weird, and the rest in Fire Mage.
You could also drop Hardiness of the Elements and give the class something WotC-based.
You want me to write an epic progression?
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Username17
- Serious Badass
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Epic Fire Mage
Extended Conflagration: Evey level, the radius of the Epic Fire Mage's Conflagration increases by 5'.
Caster Levels: The Epic Fire Mage's Epic levels are added to the caster level as a Fire Mage.
Fire Bonus: Starting at 22d level, the Fire Mage inflicts more amage when they deal fire damage. At 22nd level, they inflict +1 Fire damage with every spell, attack, or effect. This bonus increases by +1 every two levels.
Triumphant Explosion: At 23r level, and every three levels after that, the Epic Fire Mage wins D&D.
Bonus Feat: At 24th level an every four levels thereafter, the Epic Fire Mage gains a Bonus Feat.
-Username17
| Level | benefit |
| 21 | Extended Conflagration, Caster Levels |
| 22 | Fire Bonus +1 |
| 23 | Triumphant Explosion |
| 24 | Bonus Feat, Fire Bonus +2 |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Triumphant Explosion, Fire Bonus +3 |
| 27 | |
| 28 | Bonus Feat, Fire Bonus +4 |
| 29 | Triumphant Explosion |
| 30 | Fire Bonus +5 |
Extended Conflagration: Evey level, the radius of the Epic Fire Mage's Conflagration increases by 5'.
Caster Levels: The Epic Fire Mage's Epic levels are added to the caster level as a Fire Mage.
Fire Bonus: Starting at 22d level, the Fire Mage inflicts more amage when they deal fire damage. At 22nd level, they inflict +1 Fire damage with every spell, attack, or effect. This bonus increases by +1 every two levels.
Triumphant Explosion: At 23r level, and every three levels after that, the Epic Fire Mage wins D&D.
Bonus Feat: At 24th level an every four levels thereafter, the Epic Fire Mage gains a Bonus Feat.
-Username17
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Lago PARANOIA
- Invincible Overlord
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That's a pretty scathing parody of epic progression, Frank.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
And it would actually pass on the Old Wiki, because it's a perfect case of Poe's Law.Lago PARANOIA wrote:That's a pretty scathing parody of epic progression, Frank.
It looks just like an epic class.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Lago PARANOIA
- Invincible Overlord
- Posts: 10555
- Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am
To be fair, 4E made a pretty gamely attempt (for them) to subdivide the game into these theaters (heroic/paragon/epic) and enforce it accordingly. It even got its own blurb in the PHB.K wrote: DnD has never decided if it wants to be low fantasy Lord of the Rings, medium fantasy Conan, high fantasy Jack Vance, or epic like tall tales and myths. Ideally, they should all happen at some point in the level progression, but DnD has never wanted to define itself that way despite being a level-based system and trying to do all these concepts.
The fact that it didn't pan out remotely is more a testament to their lack of game design prowess than anything. D&D certainly does recognize the dissonance to some extent. They just suck at fixing it.
Gee whiz, don't get a cramp jerking yourself off, K.Until that core decision is made, pushing the numbers along the series will just show how bad the math is. Even band-aid game design like the Tomes, however brilliant in it's own very limited way, will not have a solution.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
I don't necessarily agree that the math is bad in D&D 1-10. The problem is that in order for people to have differing grades of abilities in a level based game they have to grow at different rates. And any two things that grow at different rates will reach a point where they have diverged sufficiently that they are no longer on the same RNG.K wrote:Until that core decision is made, pushing the numbers along the series will just show how bad the math is. Even band-aid game design like the Tomes, however brilliant in it's own very limited way, will not have a solution.
If D&D has granularity at 1-10, 20-30 are crazy town. If D&D is balanced at 21-30, then for levels 1-10 everyone seems the same. The only other option is the 4e "The game stays the same for 30 levels" bullshit approach where you start a certain distance apart on the RNG and then just all advance together.
Levels 1-20 focus on tactical combat. Once you get to the stage where you can stop time, or summon armies of angels to do your bidding, tactical combat ends up taking a back seat. It becomes more of a problem solving exercise: "Which of our ridiculous abilities can we use to overcome this even more ridiculous obstacle?"
The question is whether this still in any way represents D&D, and whether players want to start playing an entirely different game after they reach a certain level.
Simplified Tome Armor.
Tome item system and expanded Wish Economy rules.
Try our fantasy card game Clash of Nations! Available via Print on Demand.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities” - Voltaire
Tome item system and expanded Wish Economy rules.
Try our fantasy card game Clash of Nations! Available via Print on Demand.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities” - Voltaire
I just want to say that I love that my summation of atheists in D&D was deemed sig worthy.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
The divergence becomes serious about level 4, which is why I consider the math for level 1-20 bad outright. At around 4, Fighters are no longer able to kill level-appropriate challenges like Ogres AND they are spending every gold they can pull out of monster anuses on magic equipment to keep from falling further behind the curve. The Wizard and other spellcasters at this point are looking for things to spend gold on but satisfied to keep it in a Santa Sack until then, and are killing level-appropriate things their whole lives.Red_Rob wrote:I don't necessarily agree that the math is bad in D&D 1-10. The problem is that in order for people to have differing grades of abilities in a level based game they have to grow at different rates. And any two things that grow at different rates will reach a point where they have diverged sufficiently that they are no longer on the same RNG.K wrote:Until that core decision is made, pushing the numbers along the series will just show how bad the math is. Even band-aid game design like the Tomes, however brilliant in it's own very limited way, will not have a solution.
The Tome's only real success is that it pulls fighting guys into "medium fantasy" mode and out of "low fantasy" mode. Just doing that caused people's heads to explode in uncontrollable nerd-rage.
Spellcasters are low fantasy at levels 1-4, medium at 5-12, and high from then on (except Sorcerers, who hit their marks a level late).
Epic levels are hardly necessary when the high levels are underused.
The fundamental error is to use the same game for heroic tier, paragon, epic, etc.
You cannot have a game where there are 1st level figures and 20 levels figures on the board - with every 20 level figure worth about 1000 1st level figures. As a result, either the game explodes, or you play 4ed D&D, with number increasing the exact same amount on both sides.
The reasonable solution would be to have a different game for levels 1-7 - it would fit Conan, Lord of the Rings etc.
For the levels 8-15 there would be entirely different game, with different rules. For example it could be a tactical game, with basic figure representing a hero plus about 20 followers. Finally, the 16-20 level game would be on the scale of Dragon Pass.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1720/dragon-pass
http://fortressat.com/index.php?option= ... Itemid=551
The fundamental error is to use the same game for heroic tier, paragon, epic, etc.
You cannot have a game where there are 1st level figures and 20 levels figures on the board - with every 20 level figure worth about 1000 1st level figures. As a result, either the game explodes, or you play 4ed D&D, with number increasing the exact same amount on both sides.
The reasonable solution would be to have a different game for levels 1-7 - it would fit Conan, Lord of the Rings etc.
For the levels 8-15 there would be entirely different game, with different rules. For example it could be a tactical game, with basic figure representing a hero plus about 20 followers. Finally, the 16-20 level game would be on the scale of Dragon Pass.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1720/dragon-pass
http://fortressat.com/index.php?option= ... Itemid=551
Last edited by baduin on Sun Aug 01, 2010 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat."
4e said that they had tiers, but they lied. I honestly cannot look at a power and tell you what tier it belongs to because they all do some damage and maybe one of seven unique status effects. The entire system is a smooth linear progression with nothing new coming to the table.baduin wrote:Epic levels are hardly necessary when the high levels are underused.
The fundamental error is to use the same game for heroic tier, paragon, epic, etc.
3e actually does tiering better, because spellcasters actually get better effects that do more meaningful things (even though 5-7 is kinda a no man's land).
So, we see that a separate game isn't at all necessary. You could do 3e as a tiered system by slightly adapting the old oDnD Blue Box idea of "name level" where at certain levels you'd get free stuff for being at that level. Maybe it would enforce a mandatory downtime to go from level 10-11 and during that time people would be going on off-camera sidequests and the Fighter would come back with an artifact sword and the Wizard would go learn arcane lore at a college of magic or from a supernatural patron.
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TheFlatline
- Prince
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I think the idea of "separate games" here for the different tiers is simply to say that Heroic, Paragon, and Epic aren't part of the same path. Each "tier" has it's own complete, stand-alone arc. In a heroic power level, you'll never achieve powers that include phrases like "once per day, the first time you die".
The idea that a character will go from Lord of the Rings where every fight is potentially lethal, through Beowulf and Hercules levels of mythology, and then finally be able to pimp slap the gods seems kind of... out there. It causes all kinds of sh*t problems with economy, society, power level balance, progression, and other headaches, because *everyone* can follow this path in theory.
Instead, the idea is that if you're playing in a Heroic Eberron setting, you're a skilled mortal, who will reach the limits of human skill by the time they level cap, and the rest of the world around you reflects that. If you're playing Paragon, you and your crew is akin to Achilles say, and there are *not* that many people out there of your power to begin with. Epic, you're playing with the Gods, and sh*t like the economy of a hamlet isn't going to concern you, because you're more concerned with metaphysical conflict than you are with saving the town from gnolls.
I suppose it'd be possible at that point in the monster manual, if you retained the CR system, to simply add a power tier code to the CR. So a gnoll might be a H2 threat, or P1 threat, or an E1/5 threat. If you really wanted to get granular you could have power tiered abilities, but that idea kind of rubs me the wrong way.
I totally wouldn't mind the 3 different playsets of power tiers. It'd make it easier and more appealing to play epic level games, since I wouldn't have to create a 20th level character. I'd just gen a 1st level epic character and be off.
The idea that a character will go from Lord of the Rings where every fight is potentially lethal, through Beowulf and Hercules levels of mythology, and then finally be able to pimp slap the gods seems kind of... out there. It causes all kinds of sh*t problems with economy, society, power level balance, progression, and other headaches, because *everyone* can follow this path in theory.
Instead, the idea is that if you're playing in a Heroic Eberron setting, you're a skilled mortal, who will reach the limits of human skill by the time they level cap, and the rest of the world around you reflects that. If you're playing Paragon, you and your crew is akin to Achilles say, and there are *not* that many people out there of your power to begin with. Epic, you're playing with the Gods, and sh*t like the economy of a hamlet isn't going to concern you, because you're more concerned with metaphysical conflict than you are with saving the town from gnolls.
I suppose it'd be possible at that point in the monster manual, if you retained the CR system, to simply add a power tier code to the CR. So a gnoll might be a H2 threat, or P1 threat, or an E1/5 threat. If you really wanted to get granular you could have power tiered abilities, but that idea kind of rubs me the wrong way.
I totally wouldn't mind the 3 different playsets of power tiers. It'd make it easier and more appealing to play epic level games, since I wouldn't have to create a 20th level character. I'd just gen a 1st level epic character and be off.