How did AD&D Epic work?

[Tvtyrant]

In a different thread I have been working on a campaign around Modrons in 3.5 that takes place in the 1-20 level range, but looking their AD&D stats up they were in the "Epic" range of level 30 back in the day.

How exactly did Epic work in AD&D? Was it more balanced then 3.5?

[Premier]

Kind of a complicated answer there.

The very first versions of D&D didn't really bother with that kind of thing. There was a rule (surviving all the way up to 1st and 2nd edition D&D) that upon reaching "name level" (level 9 for most classes), the PC could build a castle, clear out the surrounding wilderness, and attract followers.

AD&D (1st and 2nd ed.) was quite lackluster about handling epic play. You got some tables to determine what followers your stronghold attracts, there was a Castle Builder's Guide and a high level supplement for 2nd ed., and that was all. Sort of understandable, though, since AD&D 1E was created to serve as a standardized ruleset for convention play, and convention games wouldn't involve domain management and the like; and 2E largely followed in 1E's steps without any radical innovations.


The only old school edition that really addressed the issue of high level play was the Mentzer version of Classic D&D. This version had levels progressing up to 36. At around level 9-11, characters gained the option of building a castle, tower (for magic users) or hideout (for thieves), which came with followers, various advantages (e.g. animals near elven strongholds would become peaceful and usable as messengers or a warning system), and obvious problems (other rulers starting to consider you a rival). Demihuman clan strongholds would also host the clan's sacred relic, which in turn could be used to create rare magical items.

The Mentzer edition went on to include quite a bit of crunch for ruling strongholds: an economic model that took population and natural resources into consideration, tables to determine random events, a way to keep track of the population's morale and loyalty, reasonably simple rules to conduct large-scale battles, etc. etc..

The other big epic thing in Mentzer was the Path to Immortality. At really high levels (30+) you could embark on the quest to become immortal (the only way to progress beyond level 36). It included finding an immortal patron and carrying out a multi-part quest involving acquiring artifacts, living up to the ideals of the chosen path (stuff here would be on the level of "drive out all dragons from the land", "build a castle in the sky", "become the greatest magic user in a 1000 mile radius", "found a lasting dynasty", etc.).

Once the quest was done, the PC became an Immortal, sort of a god-with-serial-numbers-filed-off-to-not-offend-soccer-moms. Ruleswise, running immortals was pretty much a whole separate game. It involved ruling your own plane of existence, meddling in the affairs of mortals, and taking part in Immortal politics dominated by the opposition of the Spheres of Thought, Time, Matter, Energy and Entropy.

As a side note, there was an official way of "winning" the game, and it was even outlined in the rulebooks. You'd have to climb the hierarchy level of Immortals, become one of the six top dogs, then disperse your essence into the universe and reincarnate as an ordinary mortal. Then, playing that mortal, you'd have to reach high levels, become an immortal again, and climb the hierarchy again. Then you'd be able to transcend the dimensional boundaries that bind even Immortals, and laminate your character sheet with solid gold - after several decades of regular playing.



So if you want to look at old school "Epic level play", peruse a copy of the Mentzer "BECMI" series - Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal.

Having said all that, the underlying larger issue is that epicness should be not a mathematical quality but a dramatical one. This Newspeak vocabulary that identifies the word "Epic" with "very high level" is a new development specific to WotC. Fighting an army of 20th level monsters to save the world doesn't really inherently feel epic - after all, it's the same thing as fighting 1st level goblins to save the village, only with higher modifiers and more HP on all sides. True epicness is something else - something about letting PCs flourish on their own, carve out their own niches, and live with the possibilities and consequences of their own decisions. Frodo is an epic figure and in old-school systems he would be no more than a 4-5th level character, tops. But discussing this would go beyond the scope of a single post.

[Tvtyrant]

This is an amazing post! Well that does answer a lot about the differences in high level play from 3.5 and 2E.

[Premier]

You're welcome. :)

[nedz]

The Mentzer edition isn't AD&D let alone 2E.

An Epic game usually meant one that had world or multiverse spanning scope rather than just a high level game. E.g. The LOTR is an epic story, but the characters aren't generally overwhealmingly powerful.

High level play generally meant anything over name level, i.e. roughly 10th. Beyond that point level differences often mattered less. High level wizards were very powerful, but a high level fighter would still be a threat if they could close.

I always viewed high level play as being similar to Anti-Submarine Warfare. Basically every spell had a counter-measure and these in turn had counter-counter-measures, which in turn had had further counter-counter-counter-measures. Spellcasting before combat was less about buffing, and more about putting up the protections. I guess it can be that way with the modern versions of the game.

For this reason Clerics were regarded as the most powerful class overall because they had most of the counter measures available to them.

[Tvtyrant]

I thought dart throwing halflings were the most powerful due to their endless supply of darts :P

[Mutazoia]

Stuff

Actually TSR did come out with a set of epic campaign rules in the late 80's...can't remember exactly what they titled it...I remember having it though...black box...covered from lvl 20 and up.... I probably still have my copy in a box in storage lol.

EDIT: It was the Master's Set (1984)...covered level's 26-30

[Matthew]

Actually TSR did come out with a set of epic campaign rules in the late 80's...can't remember exactly what they titled it...I remember having it though...black box...covered from lvl 20 and up.... I probably still have my copy in a box in storage lol.

EDIT: It was the Master's Set (1984)...covered level's 26-30

Yes, that is Mentzer. :smallwink:

There was a book called High Level Campaigns (http://www.tsrinfo.net/archive/dd1/hilvl.htm) released late in the second edition run, which dealt with levels 20-30 and beyond, but it was not all that great. A reasonable starting point.

[MeeposFire]

Yea that was D&D not AD&D.

I do believe they did come out with a high level handbook in the 90s but I don't remember for sure.

[Tvtyrant]

I thought Forgotten Realms in particular had the idea of an Epic high level range to explain Elminster? I never really played Forgotten Realms (or read the Driz'zt books, though I do love the splat books from Faerun) so I don't know.

[Gralamin]

I never really played AD&D, But I've commonly heard Birthright thrown around as if it was a High level/Epic level setting.

[hamishspence]

I thought Forgotten Realms in particular had the idea of an Epic high level range to explain Elminster? I never really played Forgotten Realms (or read the Driz'zt books, though I do love the splat books from Faerun) so I don't know.

In the 2nd ed heroes splatbook for Faerun, Elminster is level 28 (and the Simbul, level 30).

[Premier]

Yea that was D&D not AD&D.

Yes, but as I mentioned, there's not much point in discussing specifically AD&D's approach to high level play, because by and large it didn't have one. Plus, the different versions of old school D&D share a great enough number of design choices and assumptions that an arbitrary distinction of "let's talk only about AD&D but not about Classic" is not very sensible for many topics.


I never really played AD&D, But I've commonly heard Birthright thrown around as if it was a High level/Epic level setting.

Never played Birtright myself, but my understanding is that it wasn't specifically high-level - not any more than any other AD&D setting. It was epic in the sense that it dealt with the wars and politics of kingdoms and the players could be the rulers of these. So again, the distinction I touched on earlier: WotC's use of the word "Epic" as a synonym for "High level" is something they just pulled out of their nether regions.

[Darth Stabber]

I never really played AD&D, But I've commonly heard Birthright thrown around as if it was a High level/Epic level setting.

Actually, That is a common misconception about AD&D Birthright. In Birthright you are essentially imbued with the divine right to rule, and receive a host of random benefits (rolled from various charts of course) that would be considered a template by today's standards. You still started as a low level character, but you got some cool bonuses. Domain magic (the magic that could affect entire continents), could be cast by any cleric or wizard regardless of level. However it took months to cast.

Birthright is an awesome setting (3rd on my list of 2e faves after Planescape and spelljammer), and I believe that there is a 3.0 or 3.5 conversion out there if people are so inclined.

[LibraryOgre]

Actually, That is a common misconception about AD&D Birthright. In Birthright you are essentially imbued with the divine right to rule, and receive a host of random benefits (rolled from various charts of course) that would be considered a template by today's standards. You still started as a low level character, but you got some cool bonuses. Domain magic (the magic that could affect entire continents), could be cast by any cleric or wizard regardless of level. However it took months to cast.

I have to second this. My problem with Birthright is actually getting enough of a handle on it to run it... especially with my group, who are all insane. :smallbiggrin:


I thought dart throwing halflings were the most powerful due to their endless supply of darts :P

Actually, one of the scariest characters we ever ran into was my younger brother's halfling fighter, who was a dagger specialist. By specializing in daggers, he had a 3/1 rate of fire, doing 1d4+2 damage per hit, and something like a +5 to hit at level 1 when he was throwing. In one memorable encounter (using the C&T critical charts), he had one of his legs crippled and was stuck in magical darkness, but still managed to kill three people with thrown daggers. And because he was a halfling, no one could find him if he didn't want to be found.

[hamlet]

If you want to get really technical . . . in AD&D (and in 2nd edition in some ways), "epic" was, as said above, a matter of the scope of the campaign rather than the level. However, you could get above 20th level simply by continuing to gain XP. In 1st edition, it was right in the PHB. In 2nd, it was a soft limit at 20th, but in some supplements you could find expanded charts for up to 30th level, sometimes beyond. Dark Sun had extensive rules for what is nowadays "epic" play.

[Greylond]

Yea, for AD&D there wasn't any separate rules for "Epic" play. You just had XP Charts and class abilities that went up to about 30th level.

I GM'ed Birthright for a couple of years. It is a lot of fun but you have to have a group that doesn't mind that kind of game. Half the time our game sessions were almost Strategy Wargames since there is a lot of time spent actually running your Realm(small country, church network, or Merchant Network). Also, if/when you go to war you end up running battles. In the rules for it there was a system for running battles but for some of them we broke out the rules for Battlesystem(The TSR Fantasy Wargame). What worked for my group at that time was that we all loved playing RPGs, and Wargames.

[Tvtyrant]

Why would running your realm matter if your level 20+? Couldn't any problem be solved by teleporting to it and sorting it out personally?

[Greylond]

Politics, plus you had to actually be the Chief Executive Officer of your Realm. The rules for that system basically are done with a Realm Turn that was 3 months long, you had 3 Realm Actions per Realm Turn, each Realm Action took 1 month of time. Some things were "Free Actions" but the big stuff took a month long to do. Plus for Wizards there "Realm Spells" that took a full month to cast and they affected whole sections of your realm, Provinces/Counties. There were some pretty good spells that did things like help you defend(or attack) a county or just enhance what you could do with it.

Also, every PC(and major NPCs) who ran a Realm had special Bloodline abilities. Some were minor and others had some pretty cool major effects.

Bottom line was the idea that you had a whole Realm to run and you couldn't just pop off for an adventure any time you wanted because you had adversaries/neighbors who would use political actions to gain influence over your Realm and then eventually take it(or parts of it) over. Think about what was happening with Azure City and the Nobles.

Like I said, it is a totally different style of play than your usual Adventuring Party going around and kicking butt and robbing tombs.

[Tvtyrant]

How did that convert over to campaigns like Spelljammer or Planescape?

[Greylond]

It didn't without some GM work.

The Bloodlines were Powers given by the Gawds of the World. There were no real rules for what happens if you went to another Crystal Sphere in Spelljammer.

As for Planescape, it was just another adventure location. The Realms were tied to the game world due to the influence of the Gawds. Birthright was pretty much written to be a self-contained Setting. There was a "Shadow Realm" which was kinda like a dark, shadowy alternate world but it didn't really translate to any of the classic AD&D planes.

[LibraryOgre]

The Bloodlines were Powers given by the Gawds of the World. There were no real rules for what happens if you went to another Crystal Sphere in Spelljammer.

Not quite. Bloodlines were actual deific background in your line. The apocalyptic battle about 1500 years before the current campaign setting resulted in the deaths of all the old gods. Those who got the lion's share of their divine essence became the new gods. Almost everyone at Deismaar got some divine ichor in their bloodlines.

Leaving the Crystal Sphere for these microgods shouldn't be an issue. Might be interesting to see how the Lady receives them in Sigil, however.

[Greylond]

Not quite. Bloodlines were actual deific background in your line. The apocalyptic battle about 1500 years before the current campaign setting resulted in the deaths of all the old gods. Those who got the lion's share of their divine essence became the new gods. Almost everyone at Deismaar got some divine ichor in their bloodlines.


Yea, I know the details. I was writing a long post and wanted to cut it short.



Leaving the Crystal Sphere for these microgods shouldn't be an issue. Might be interesting to see how the Lady receives them in Sigil, however.

As far as leaving the Crystal Sphere, it depends on how the GM runs it, really. Does the magic of the Bloodline always there no matter what? Or is it tapping the power of the Gawds pool of magic and can get severed the same way that Cleric's spells(above 2nd level spells) get effected in Spell Jammer. It never came up in my game, so I never worried about it.

Plus if you are a PC with a Realm then you need to stay somewhere you can get back to that Realm easily or risk lose it.

[Greylond]

Actually, I just remembered that 2nd Edition did have a "High Level Options" book but it was part of the "Player's Option" series and by the time it came out I was already fed up with that series and didn't really get into it.

[MeeposFire]

Actually, I just remembered that 2nd Edition did have a "High Level Options" book but it was part of the "Player's Option" series and by the time it came out I was already fed up with that series and didn't really get into it.

Yep that the one I was thinking of previously.

[Matthew]

Actually, I just remembered that 2nd Edition did have a "High Level Options" book but it was part of the "Player's Option" series and by the time it came out I was already fed up with that series and didn't really get into it.

You mean the book I already mentioned and linked to above. :smallwink:

[Greylond]

Yes, that one! ;)

[Elana]

As just the title page of "high level campaign" might be a bit unsatisfying as an answer.

Levels 21-30
Which advanced spel levels for classes like bards (they ended up with 8th level spells at level 30..and remember they used the wizards list back then, and had a very fast level progression)
Lots of extra abilities for classes to gain with higher levels


More information about researching spells and creating magical items.

And True Dweomers...which are just what epic spellcasting is in 3rd Edition.
And yes, this added the same wonkiness as it does in newer editions.