Epic Level Game Tips

[KnotKnormal]

Ok, I've gotten excellent suggestions from you guys on my story and encounters to run, as well as how to handle my players insane level and stats. are there any last minute suggestions or things you think i should know before i deliver the world history and make it all official?

Thanks you everyone for your help, good luck in all your adventures.

[AWiz_Abroad]

Best of luck with the game. I'm a big fan of epic level play (even with tier 1 characters). Stay flexible, and be prepared to do some considerable improvisation, because as all power increases your options, epic grade power can cause things to go sideways in a hurry.

[EugeneVoid]

Ask your players how they want to handle Epic Spellcasting.

[Doorhandle]

Be aware it's going to have an insane amount of bookkeeping.

[vhfforever]

Ask your players how they want to handle Epic Spellcasting.

This. Or ban it entirely.

[KnotKnormal]

thanks everyone, I've limited their epic level spells through book limitations, also I'll leave my book keeping up to my Co-DM we already plan on spending a considerable amount of time after each session to figure out what the hell happened in all the shenanigans.

[TuggyNE]

I've limited their epic level spells through book limitations

I beg your pardon? All but two of the seeds and as far as I know all the mitigating factors anyone could ever want for causing general epic spellcasting chaos are in one book, the ELH. So if you have epic spells, you have essentially all the brokenness of them.

Unless you rewrite the system, of course. Which I am presently doing intermittently, but have not nearly finished, or else I'd point you to that instead.

Or maybe you didn't mean Epic Spellcasting, proper, but e.g. Improved Spell Capacity or the epic progressions of casting classes or something. Those are quite different, and much more controllable (relatively speaking).

[Salbazier]

thanks everyone, I've limited their epic level spells through book limitations,

err, I don't think this will help. Only one book is needed for Epic Spellcasting: ELH. There are several variant of Epic spellcasting homebrew around in this board. There's a metamagic feat based epic spellcastin by ...Belial, I think. Then there is a simple fix made by Realm of Chaos as part of his Tome of Epic Prestige. You may want to check them

[TypoNinja]

I'm currently in an Epic level game and my observation is that fights are extremely binary.

We haven't had a close victory, we haven't had anything resembling a close fight. We're either prepared for what the encounter is and dominate it, or we aren't prepared and are practically helpless in the face of it and must retreat.

We recently had an encounter go badly, reform, new plan, still went badly because the cleric failed a save or die. Another retreat, and then on the third try we slapped the encounter around like it owed us money.

This wide swing where preparation means everything leads to some silly outcomes. We can step all over an encounter 8 levels above us, and then moments later get manhandled by an encounter 5 levels under us.

[KnotKnormal]

Or maybe you didn't mean Epic Spellcasting, proper, but e.g. Improved Spell Capacity or the epic progressions of casting classes or something. Those are quite different, and much more controllable (relatively speaking).

Sorry worded that really badly. I limited both the classes available as well as the spells available. I thought this would make things 10x easier for both myself and the players. Sorry for the confusion.

[KnotKnormal]

I'm currently in an Epic level game and my observation is that fights are extremely binary.

We haven't had a close victory, we haven't had anything resembling a close fight. We're either prepared for what the encounter is and dominate it, or we aren't prepared and are practically helpless in the face of it and must retreat.

We recently had an encounter go badly, reform, new plan, still went badly because the cleric failed a save or die. Another retreat, and then on the third try we slapped the encounter around like it owed us money.

This wide swing where preparation means everything leads to some silly outcomes. We can step all over an encounter 8 levels above us, and then moments later get manhandled by an encounter 5 levels under us.

Actually I have an amazing tip that I plan on using. Half the Hp of all the monsters and double the damage out put. Then drop the encounter level. The battles won't be very close but to the players it will think it a dire situation the entire time. I tested this I a one shot (one session campaign) and my players loved it. The one said he had never been so scared of a goblin before.

Granted this needs modification with lower level mass minions. Make them easy to hit and one Hp. Then again double your dps. Try it once and see what your players think.