Can any Epic build without spellcasting hold its own?

[Nettlekid]

I should preface this by saying: Imagine a campaign designed for low Epic, level ~21, where the enemy monsters are likely to be non-casters, the most being the SLAs that many monsters have. The non-monster casters, however many they may be, would both be lower level and also very un-Tippyversed. That's the kind of world I'm concerned with.

That being said, despite a lack of spell-slinging from enemies, there are Epic monsters that are pretty outright lethal. Considering the presence of Great Wyrm Dragons (minus their casting) with remarkably high attack rolls and AC, or peculiar monsters with powerful abilities like Umbral Blots and Lavawights, can a non-caster hope to properly compete?

[docnessuno]

It all depends on the level of optimization of said characters.

A Fighter 21 picking up stuff like whirlwind attack (and its prerequisites), the weapon focus/specialization chain and similar feats? It won't stand a chance.

A Warblade 21, with a good feat selection? Won't be on par with a full caster, but it will sure be able to make his presence on the battlefield noticeable.

Last time i got near epic play my Monk / Crusader / Warmind trashed a couple balors before they had the chance to say "Hello" (but it had some limited spellcasting in the form of warmind psionic powers).

[NichG]

This really depends most on the degree of player optimization going on. As the levels get higher, more and more of the difference between what characters can handle comes from optimization instead of innate numbers (even if you restrict to non-casters, this is true).

For example, if you just take levels for the raw numbers, then going e.g. from Lv21 -> Lv22 is a ~5% change in numerical values at best (less, really, due to the way epic scaling works). If however you consider the chance to gain a new class ability or template, one that may well synergize with things you already had, the effect per level at those levels can still be much greater than +5%. And that sort of multiplicative effect has, for an optimizing player, been going on for the last 20 levels as well.

So for an optimizing player, I'd say 'certainly they can'. For a non-optimizing player I'd just be very careful as DM especially when it comes to one-action-TPK abilities that some epic creatures throw around (e.g. the Atropal)

[Phelix-Mu]

Answer: Yes and/or it depends.

Within the limits of theoretical optimization, the epic-level monsters are not too impressive. Consider that Tippy ran a competition (fairly PO, too) to design an ECL 20 mostly monk to solo every encounter in the Elder Evils book. Now, that was non-epic, but single character builds emerged that could destroy that book handily, in solo combat.

So, yes, theoretically even something as basically bad as a mainly monk can be optimized to kill most if not all epic monsters.

Now, if that's what monk can do, imagine a Tier 3 set up to be maximully powerful.

But, around a given table, where optimization limits are based on the power-level of the game, not theoretical limits, there may be less success. Still, though, the game designers dramatically underestimated the power that could be milked out of the mechanics. Many of the big bads of epic level are just hard to kill.

Also consider that, by epic level, money starts falling out of the sky in truly ridiculous quantities. Magic items can patch up a fair bit of the weaknesses of non-casters (if not actually raise tier level by much).