What should epic-level non-casters be able to do?

[Psychic Robot]

In terms of the tricks that they can do, both in and out of combat. . I get basic things like grappling dragons and beating up daemons with both hands tied behind their backs. But in terms of mechanical specifics? Here's what I'm thinking, and I'd like to see more.

1. Ranged weapons no longer have range increments. Instead, the character's range increment becomes as far as he can see.

2. Ignore all concealment/blindness/other miss chances, no matter what.

3. Shrug off debilitating effects.

4. Regenerate wounds.

5. Intimidate entire platoons of enemies with ease.

6. Turn invisible.

7. Scale walls like Spider-Man.

8. Leap hundreds of feat.

9. Wipe out a small army without breaking a sweat.

10. Hurl boulders without taking a PrC.

11. Move supernaturally quickly.

12. Blindsense/tremorsense.

13. Forge magical weapons because that's awesome and the D&D rules for that suck.

EDIT: Frank is probably right, this is more "superheroic" than "epic." I always tend to lowball this stuff, anyhow.

[Username17]

• Pick up and throw actual mountains.
• Shoot out the sun with an arrow.
• Jump up to Mount Celestia or any other Outer Plane.
• Talk corpses into rising from the dead to provide aid.
• Punch rivers into diverting course.
• Chop chasms into the ground.
• Climb into people's dreams and pilot them around.

This is all shit that "non-casters" do in actual source material. If you put the word "epic" in front of your name and you're just jumping around like Spiderman I am fucking embarrassed for you. Here are the tiers of play:

• Human Standard or Substandard
• Heroic
• Superheroic
• Epic

People who can only pull off superheroic feats at Epic level are like people who can only pull off shit I can do at level 8.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

How do you suggest representing those mechanically? For instance, punching rivers--that feels more like DM fiat than anything. Same with shooting out the sun.

[Username17]

How do you suggest representing those mechanically? For instance, punching rivers--that feels more like DM fiat than anything. Same with shooting out the sun.

If you're fighting against an enemy the size of a city or a mountain and you're worrying about how many 5' squares things are, you're doing something stupid.

An Epic fight should change the map. You should actually play it on the world map, with rivers, mountains, and forests being your smashed tables and swinging chandeliers. If you don't want to do that kind of shit, you should stop at the level of galaxy defending super hero that D&D already goes to.


-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

If you're fighting against an enemy the size of a city or a mountain and you're worrying about how many 5' squares things are, you're doing something stupid.

An Epic fight should change the map. You should actually play it on the world map, with rivers, mountains, and forests being your smashed tables and swinging chandeliers. If you don't want to do that kind of shit, you should stop at the level of galaxy defending super hero that D&D already goes to.

I actually agree with what you said here, but i've always had one mechanical problem: How do you actually do this in some manner of smooth transition?

The problem with changing the square size is that you need some breakpoint where the square size actually changes. So if suddenly you're level 20 and then you go to 21, how do you actually handle that if half the group is level 20 and half is level 21?

It almost seems like representing these kinds of epic combats has to be an entirely different game, since once you go changing aroudn the square size for higher level combats, your combat system is no longer even compatible with weaker characters.

[Kaelik]

The problem with changing the square size is that you need some breakpoint where the square size actually changes. So if suddenly you're level 20 and then you go to 21, how do you actually handle that if half the group is level 20 and half is level 21?

You use the only sensible XP system called: "Everyone levels at the same time because of accomplishing goals and there are no XP penalties or costs or different gaining rates."

[RandomCasualty2]

You use the only sensible XP system called: "Everyone levels at the same time because of accomplishing goals and there are no XP penalties or costs or different gaining rates."

Even so, you're going to have cohorts and other lower level followers possibly and you need a way to actually put them on the board.

[Prak]

If you're fighting against an enemy the size of a city or a mountain and you're worrying about how many 5' squares things are, you're doing something stupid.

An Epic fight should change the map. You should actually play it on the world map, with rivers, mountains, and forests being your smashed tables and swinging chandeliers. If you don't want to do that kind of shit, you should stop at the level of galaxy defending super hero that D&D already goes to.

I actually agree with what you said here, but i've always had one mechanical problem: How do you actually do this in some manner of smooth transition?

The problem with changing the square size is that you need some breakpoint where the square size actually changes. So if suddenly you're level 20 and then you go to 21, how do you actually handle that if half the group is level 20 and half is level 21?

It almost seems like representing these kinds of epic combats has to be an entirely different game, since once you go changing aroudn the square size for higher level combats, your combat system is no longer even compatible with weaker characters.

I know we're separating superheroic and Epic, but this makes me think of JLA. Superman is throwing Darkseid around and chasing him across the city, but Batman's still on the 5' sq. footing, so he kickass on Darkseid's mooks (?).

[Kaelik]

You use the only sensible XP system called: "Everyone levels at the same time because of accomplishing goals and there are no XP penalties or costs or different gaining rates."

Even so, you're going to have cohorts and other lower level followers possibly and you need a way to actually put them on the board.

1) Cohorts are bullshit.
2) You are now Epic, you therefore have Epic Leadership. You therefore have a fucking army on the board, as a swarm. That be how you roll.

[Prak]

so use the mob template for your followers. That actually sounds like a pretty good idea.

[Username17]

Squares should not happen if you intend your game to be extensible. People of even superheroic tier shouldn't give a fuck about 5' more or less either, because they should be teleporting and leaping hundreds of feet in the blink of an eye.

The areas that people interact with should rise smoothly as they grow in power. A 14th level character shouldn't have a threatened area of "2 squares" or even "10 feet" - he should be threatening an area of "30 meters." Maybe more.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

The areas that people interact with should rise smoothly as they grow in power. A 14th level character shouldn't have a threatened area of "2 squares" or even "10 feet" - he should be threatening an area of "30 meters." Maybe more.

Yeah, I mean, mainly the issue comes with problems like kiting, because as characters level, they have to become faster, but it seems that if high level characters are faster than low level ones, you'll have a lot of bad kiting issues to worry about.

[Psychic Robot]

Perhaps one could use the abstract square system that Saga Edition (nerd rage incoming) uses for space fights. However, the problem with this is that D&D doesn't really accommodate such things. You'd probably need a full system rewrite that does something like, "At level 1, you can jump a number of feet equal to your Jump check. At level 4, you can jump a number of feet equal to twice your Jump check. At level 8, you can jump a number of feet equal to three times your Jump check," or something along those lines.

Alternatively, you could just up skill ranks--perhaps a +1 bonus to skill per rank up until level 5, at which point you get a +2 bonus per rank until level 10, at which point you get a +3 bonus per rank," but that system is very clumsy.

Then again, outside of skills, it's very hard to represent certain things, such as smashing a mountain. Other things, though, wouldn't be so hard. At level 2 and 4, you get a +5-ft. bonus to your speed. At 6 and 8, you get a +10-ft. bonus to your speed. At 10 and 12, you get a +15-ft. bonus to your speed. At 14 and 16, you get a +20-ft. bonus to your speed. At 18 and 20, you get a +25-ft. bonus to your speed. Increase as you see fit.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah PR, I've had the same sort of troubles with trying to make a system that adequately simulates that. I think almost you might be better just defining all powers in terms of squares instead of actual distance, only as you level, what a square means goes up. If there's a battle between two people of different tiers, then you basically have to set the scale down. So for instance, an epic tier battle might occur in 20 ft squares, while a standard battle would be in 5 ft and a paragon battle might be in 10 ft squares. If a paragon guy fought on standard scale, then his ranges for everything would be doubled.

The advantage to that is that it lets you reuse certain abilities too at different tiers (assuming the damage scaled). Fireball for instance can be a radius 2 square burst or something at all tiers, but at epic tier you're looking at an explosion with a 100 ft diameter, and at low levels, it's just 25 ft across.

My main issue though was making that transition smooth.

[Psychic Robot]

That's actually something that could be used to fix 4e, if the rest of the system weren't such a mess. Is that at all similar to PL's "Big Fat Squares" idea? I glanced through the thread awhile ago, but I can't really remember what he was saying.

[Anguirus]

Not to ride Marvel Universe RPG's nuts too hard here but I think they do a good job of dealing with sliding scales of power. I would recommend that anyone who can get a copy of the core rules do so simply because it is such a strong departure from most other systems that it can't help but illustrate some concept of game design or another that you may not have even thought about before.

[Roy]

Of course, the obvious problem with making squares bigger is indoor environments are made of even more Fail... as if they were not cramped enough as is.

[Manxome]

Of course, the obvious problem with making squares bigger is indoor environments are made of even more Fail... as if they were not cramped enough as is.

Eliminate stacking restrictions; allow multiple people to occupy a single square. If two legendary heroes are fighting in my living room, the entire room is one square and they're both in it--there's no way for them to get a meaningful distance apart from each other without one of them leaving the room, because either of them can cross the room as part of an attack without anyone batting an eye. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

You migth even want to set melee ranges to "the same square," but allow characters to move into an adjacent square for free as part of making an attack. Then if you've got paragons fighting on a heroic battlemat, they can move multiple (heroic) squares for free as part of making an attack.

Or something like that.

[Roy]

Thing is, you seriously already fucking do that. If the room is less than 20 feet wide or long, your 5 foot step + 5 foot threat range seriously does cover it... and if you start closer to the middle of the room, you cover more ground. Once you subtract furniture on the walls, most living rooms qualify as such. So that doesn't even fucking change anything then.

[Prak]

Thing is, you seriously already fucking do that. If the room is less than 20 feet wide or long, your 5 foot step + 5 foot threat range seriously does cover it... and if you start closer to the middle of the room, you cover more ground. Once you subtract furniture on the walls, most living rooms qualify as such. So that doesn't even fucking change anything then.

and? that just means, to me, that it can be done without unbalancing things.

[Roy]

Thing is, you seriously already fucking do that. If the room is less than 20 feet wide or long, your 5 foot step + 5 foot threat range seriously does cover it... and if you start closer to the middle of the room, you cover more ground. Once you subtract furniture on the walls, most living rooms qualify as such. So that doesn't even fucking change anything then.

and? that just means, to me, that it can be done without unbalancing things.

And the point to me is either it doesn't change anything, and therefore Fails because it's supposed to, or it does change things, which means no caverns, outdoors only, FINAL DESTINATION. Aka, Fail.

This is particularly bothersome, given that about the only place you really can fight is deep underground and that only with that Tome rule someone mentioned about thick stone blocking scry and fry. Anything that is outdoors is trivial, basically.

[RandomCasualty2]

Eliminate stacking restrictions; allow multiple people to occupy a single square. If two legendary heroes are fighting in my living room, the entire room is one square and they're both in it--there's no way for them to get a meaningful distance apart from each other without one of them leaving the room, because either of them can cross the room as part of an attack without anyone batting an eye. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Yeah, pretty much while your range and everything increases, your space actually scales down as you level and doesn't increase. So if squares are 10 ft, then the space of a normal human on 10ft scale is oging to be 1/2, or 1/4 for 20 ft squares. And what this means is that you can fit more of them together in a given area.

The 1/2 square generally just helps for stacking purposes except in cases where you have to scale a character down to a smaller square size.

[Manxome]

Thing is, you seriously already fucking do that. If the room is less than 20 feet wide or long, your 5 foot step + 5 foot threat range seriously does cover it... and if you start closer to the middle of the room, you cover more ground. Once you subtract furniture on the walls, most living rooms qualify as such. So that doesn't even fucking change anything then.

and? that just means, to me, that it can be done without unbalancing things.

And the point to me is either it doesn't change anything, and therefore Fails because it's supposed to, or it does change things, which means no caverns, outdoors only, FINAL DESTINATION. Aka, Fail.

This is particularly bothersome, given that about the only place you really can fight is deep underground and that only with that Tome rule someone mentioned about thick stone blocking scry and fry. Anything that is outdoors is trivial, basically.

OK, I seriously have no clue what your complaint is or what you're trying to point out. You said that indoor environments were already too cramped. I thought that meant you felt that you couldn't fit enough combatants into them; eliminating stacking restrictions fixes that, just as I said. So either you meant something else or you're totally lost.

If your complaint is that attack ranges cover entire rooms and so you can't get out of range, then you either need to have smaller attack ranges or larger areas. Or you could maybe shift emphasis away from range to other mechanics like cover and LoS if that would satisfy you. Regardless, the only problem is that you've defined the requirements of the design to be mutually contradictory, so there's no point in discussing things. You can't have long-range attackers in confined spaces and yet outside of each others' range, so pick one of those three things you're willing to give up and move on.

And if your complaint is something else, then you haven't come within a mile of explaining it.

[Anguirus]

and? that just means, to me, that it can be done without unbalancing things.

And the point to me is either it doesn't change anything, and therefore Fails because it's supposed to, or it does change things, which means no caverns, outdoors only, FINAL DESTINATION. Aka, Fail.

This is particularly bothersome, given that about the only place you really can fight is deep underground and that only with that Tome rule someone mentioned about thick stone blocking scry and fry. Anything that is outdoors is trivial, basically.

OK, I seriously have no clue what your complaint is or what you're trying to point out. You said that indoor environments were already too cramped. I thought that meant you felt that you couldn't fit enough combatants into them; eliminating stacking restrictions fixes that, just as I said. So either you meant something else or you're totally lost.

If your complaint is that attack ranges cover entire rooms and so you can't get out of range, then you either need to have smaller attack ranges or larger areas. Or you could maybe shift emphasis away from range to other mechanics like cover and LoS if that would satisfy you. Regardless, the only problem is that you've defined the requirements of the design to be mutually contradictory, so there's no point in discussing things. You can't have long-range attackers in confined spaces and yet outside of each others' range, so pick one of those three things you're willing to give up and move on.

And if your complaint is something else, then you haven't come within a mile of explaining it.

Seconded

[Caedrus]

In terms of the tricks that they can do, both in and out of combat. . I get basic things like grappling dragons and beating up daemons with both hands tied behind their backs. But in terms of mechanical specifics? Here's what I'm thinking, and I'd like to see more.

1. Ranged weapons no longer have range increments. Instead, the character's range increment becomes as far as he can see.

You're not thinking epic enough.

Remember when Legolas hit multiple orcs through the eyes at long range when they had cover and high ground with a single multishot volley? Weak sauce. Not epic.

Remember in God of War when Ares throws a pillar like a javelin from halfway across the planet to impale a certain warrior with perfect accuracy?

THAT was epic.

2. Ignore all concealment/blindness/other miss chances, no matter what.

3. Shrug off debilitating effects.

4. Regenerate wounds.

5. Intimidate entire platoons of enemies with ease.

6. Turn invisible.

7. Scale walls like Spider-Man.

8. Leap hundreds of feat.

9. Wipe out a small army without breaking a sweat.

10. Hurl boulders without taking a PrC.

11. Move supernaturally quickly.

12. Blindsense/tremorsense.

13. Forge magical weapons because that's awesome and the D&D rules for that suck.

Dude, these are things non-epic, moderate-powered casters can do. Again, you're not thinking epic enough. Not even close.