E6 Epic level abilities

[Tvtyrant]

My current E6 campaign is now reaching into the epic levels from level 1, and we have been discussing how to make the game feel more "epic." I know this is fundamentally apart from the E6 game design goals, but we adhere to E6 primarily for worldbuilding and balance reasons.

One possible solution we have been talking about is adopting daily powers from 4E as epic level abilities. The system I am thinking of using is an epic feat chain to gain access to the powers of a particular 4E class. The first one would give access to an at-will from that class, the second would gain a choice of either another at-will or a first level daily from that class. The third feat would be another at-will, another first level daily or a 5th level daily.

Rather than simply be a system of having 1 use per day, the power saps the energy of the user and immediately fatigues them in a way that can only be healed by resting. Using it again exhausts you, and again causes the user to fall unconcious until a day has passed.

[Amechra]

One thing I always liked was allowing players to take Epic destinies after 6th level, with each level of benefit coming at every 5 feats after the first.

You just need to tone them down a bit, and they'll easily fit.

[Tvtyrant]

One thing I always liked was allowing players to take Epic destinies after 6th level, with each level of benefit coming at every 5 feats after the first.

You just need to tone them down a bit, and they'll easily fit.

Sounds like a good idea. The lower level dailies are closer in power but they are not as epicy.

Have you tried using the at-wills? How do those work?

[Amechra]

I meant the 3.5 epic destinies.

The official ones are here (http://web.archive.org/web/20090218080723/http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080428).

The Demented One has a ton in his sig. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7315805&postcount=52)

You can find some others lying around as well.

That is, of course, if you are playing 3.5.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

You could also use the Mythic rules from Pathfinder, which are not in their SRD yet but you could find a playtest PDF floating around if you Googled it. The Mythic rules are designed to be Pathfinder's equivalent to 3e's Epic rules, but they scale from first to 20th level.

[Tvtyrant]

I think I am going to have them adopt a Paragon path from 4E upon reaching epic actually. They act like epic prestige classes and there are already a metric ton of them. On reaching level 6.1 the player gets the first power and ability in their paragon path, then at 6.5 and finally again at 7.0.

The final frenzied berserker power is pretty extreme for E6, but hilarious.

[Amechra]

But... 4e is not directly compatible with 3.5.

Which leads me to ask... what system are you doing this in? I'm assuming 3.X, but you could be doing it in 4e...

[Tvtyrant]

But... 4e is not directly compatible with 3.5.

Which leads me to ask... what system are you doing this in? I'm assuming 3.X, but you could be doing it in 4e...

Not entirely compatible, but most of the rules jive. Dazed is a bit different, and there are some new additions, but a lot of the rules changes as I understand it are additive or renames of the same thing.

Take the two hit instead of saves. The ease by which you can change "hits reflex with charisma" to "reflex save" is pretty high (although the DCs will be lower than with spells.)

Part of the reason that I started thinking about using 4E rules in epic is that the game feels so different that it clearly distinguishes the two, without the sudden onset brokenness of earlier epic D&D.

Edit: In general I really like the 4E abilities for their coolness factor. They take some of the world building problems of 3.5 to a new height however. How is an army of conscripts (or any army at all) supposed to make sense in a 4E world? The level differences are so huge that it seems unlikely that an army could take out even a low level group, much less a high level adventurer.

They seem perfect for a split-rule world to me because the feeling changes, and the characters do not gain HP or defenses at a rate that would let them crush nations. Being the coolest swordsman/wizard ever is cool, being superman ruins the game for me.


Edit II: For example, a level 6 Sorcerer with 10 epic feats could have the whole of the Wild Mage path, with the Prismatic Bolt power as a demi-capstone. The effects would have to be explained in the context of 3.5, but they are effectively slightly modified versions of normal status conditions.