New Free RPG: EpicPath.org

[Nuada99]

Hello Fellow Gamers!

About 3 years ago, a buddy of mine and I started writing a new game system, borrowing our favorite parts of Pathfinder, D&D 4E, and even Champions (a little), in hopes of building something really special. We think we're well on our way, and we'd love to hear what you folks have to say.

The game is called Epic Path (located at epicpath.org), and it is completely free.

It is our intention to keep it free forever, since we do this out of a love for gaming, not a need to try to scrape out an admittedly meager living from publishing RPG materials.

The game features 15 classes (and a few works in progress), 23 races, over 200 monsters, as well as rules for making new monsters all the way up to CR 40, and a host of other rules and modifications.

We'd love some feedback, and we've made a forum for that feedback (forums.epicpath.org). We'll also check in on this thread regularly, so here's good too!

Let us know what you think!

Thanks
Reese

[fikoantunes]

Wow! Congratulations on the feat. Even making a solid adventure is a though job, I wonder accomplishing something huge like that. Can't wait to give a read on it:smallwink:

[ATHATH]

I'll probably check it out soon.

Also, no offense (intended), but how do we know that you're not a spambot that is advertising its virus-loaded website (I haven't seen it yet, but it might be)?

Admittedly, not selecting the default Rogue avatar makes me think that you are human, but you could still be a hacker or something. I'll wait for other Playgrounders to report in.

[Bayar]

I'll probably check it out soon.

Also, no offense (intended), but how do we know that you're not a spambot that is advertising its virus-loaded website (I haven't seen it yet, but it might be)?

Admittedly, not selecting the default Rogue avatar makes me think that you are human, but you could still be a hacker or something. I'll wait for other Playgrounders to report in.

I looked at the magic item creation rules and it seems legit.

[Nuada99]

I'll probably check it out soon.

Also, no offense (intended), but how do we know that you're not a spambot that is advertising its virus-loaded website (I haven't seen it yet, but it might be)?

Admittedly, not selecting the default Rogue avatar makes me think that you are human, but you could still be a hacker or something. I'll wait for other Playgrounders to report in.

It's a fair question in this day and age. I don't know what I can say to convince you, other than promises that it's a clean site (there's not even any ads, 'cause we hate them).

Thanks to everyone who's already given it a peek. I really appreciate any feedback you might have.

-Reese

[ATHATH]

I looked at the magic item creation rules and it seems legit.
Ok, I'll check it out soon.

[Amphetryon]

I'll probably check it out soon.

Also, no offense (intended), but how do we know that you're not a spambot that is advertising its virus-loaded website (I haven't seen it yet, but it might be)?

Admittedly, not selecting the default Rogue avatar makes me think that you are human, but you could still be a hacker or something. I'll wait for other Playgrounders to report in.

What could the OP provide as sufficient proof? How would you know that any who vouch for the OP are not in on whatever spambot plot you appear to be concerned about, working as the 'plant in the huckster's crowd?' I'm honestly curious what anyone here could do to persuade you these fears are - or are not - unfounded.

[MisterKaws]

Well, I did a quick check on some pages, and the only scripts I found are related to site options, so it at least seems safe.

[mauk2]

We'd love some feedback, and we've made a forum for that feedback (forums.epicpath.org). We'll also check in on this thread regularly, so here's good too!

Let us know what you think!

Thanks
Reese


I am the 'buddy' referred to above, and if anybody is wondering why the forums are broken over there, it's because Nuada pulled them down to work on them.

They should be back soon, unless he fat fingers something REAL bad. :)

[Nuada99]

...unless he fat fingers something REAL bad. :)

Yeah, about that...

Rebuilding the forums server might take a little while. Should be back up in a couple of hours, though.

[ATHATH]

What could the OP provide as sufficient proof? How would you know that any who vouch for the OP are not in on whatever spambot plot you appear to be concerned about, working as the 'plant in the huckster's crowd?' I'm honestly curious what anyone here could do to persuade you these fears are - or are not - unfounded.
Everyone on this forum is a spambot that is out to get me! It's a conspiracy!

In all seriousness, I was just being cautious/paranoid. You can never be too careful (well, you actually can be too careful, but that's not the point).

[mauk2]

Yeah, about that...

Rebuilding the forums server might take a little while. Should be back up in a couple of hours, though.


Okay, the forums are back up.

I hope people are looking things over. That said, it's a huge mass of stuff, so, yeah. We've tried to keep it organized. :) If we've failed, that would be valuable feedback as well.

If anybody has any questions or comments, please ask!

[animewatcha]

Glossing over the monk section. The FoB to-hit penalty reduction is not made mention of within the entry. Table and text conflict.

[Nuada99]

Glossing over the monk section. The FoB to-hit penalty reduction is not made mention of within the entry. Table and text conflict.

Nice catch. I've updated the text of Flurry of Blows to reflect the to-hit penalty.

Thanks!

[atemu1234]

I'm reading over it; it looks good. I'll still probably just be converting what needs to be to 3.5, but hey, I appreciate new and differing material.

I like it, good on you for creating it.

[Nuada99]

Thanks! Hopefully, even if the game only gives people some new ideas for their own games, it's useful to the community. There is no 'one game fits all', after all.

[mauk2]

Glossing over the monk section. The FoB to-hit penalty reduction is not made mention of within the entry. Table and text conflict.


Ah, checking up on us, to see if we fixed the 'Flurry of Misses' problem.

As a matter of fact, yes we did! :)

Being able to base your to-hit and damage on Dex and Wis, along with wiping out the penalty, means Monks are not nearly as frustrating in Epic Path.

Interestingly enough, the Monk is one of the classes we changed the LEAST. The Fighter, the Bard, the Ranger, all are totally different.

We like to think we've addressed just about every legitimate issue in every class. If you have any suggestions, though, we'd be glad to hear them!

[Nuada99]

I think I'm proudest of the Cleric and Warlord classes. We really wanted the primary healer classes to be fun and interesting to play.

The Cleric gets two abilities in particular which really drive the way they play.

Defender of the Faith allows them to add their Wisdom modifier to both to-hit and damage rolls when they are adjacent to an injured ally. This gives them an incentive to stick close to the front lines, and also makes them competent at melee. .
Castigate, activated by a swift action use of Channel Divinity (formerly Channel Energy), gives them a free heal on an adjacent ally each time they successfully strike an enemy with a melee attack.

In combination, this means the cleric is a good meleer, and has incentive to actually melee. At the same time, it gives them a useful heal that doesn't take away their ability to fight, but also incentivizes them to leave the party at least a little bloody. Bleed for the glory of my god, minions!

Another fun change to the cleric is the fact that, if they use any of the 'Cure' spells during combat, they can slide the target (or targets, if it's a mass cure) 1 square per die of healing provided. This means a cure moderate, in addition to healing, can move the target 2 squares. Since it's forced movement, it doesn't provoke. Suddenly, the cleric is also a little bit of a controller class, arranging the battlefield to suit him (or his god, really).

The Warlord is a completely different breed of healer class. They are very capable healers outside of combat, but in combat, have very little means of healing actual damage. Instead, they use temporary hit points as a kind of pre-healing. They also get a number of extremely useful buff abilities, for those allies willing to stick close to them. From a role-playing standpoint, their healing and buffs are largely non-magical in nature, and they're just yelling at their allies to perform better, and it really works. They're like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Except they can yell a dead character back to life, once they get a few levels under their belt. ("I have never seen such a useless pile of meat in my life! Your weapons would be more useful decorating my fireplace! Get on your feet and pretend for a few minutes you know what you're doing!")

Every class in the game is significantly different from their predecessors in Pathfinder.

Of course, one of the big design issues with Pathfinder and 3.5 has always been that casters completely outclass melee classes, starting around level 5. Tome of Battle (3.5) tried to address this, but went a little too far, in my opinion. In Epic Path, we did a lot of math to try to keep meleer's in the same league as casters at the higher levels. That said, casters are much squishier than most meleers, so it's actually okay that they do the most damage. It's just not okay that they can dominate every battle and leave the meleers in the dust, in terms of performance.

To address this performance gap, base weapon damage scales with the wielder's level. At levels 8, 15, 22 and 29, the base weapon die of any weapon doubles, triples, quadruples, and quintuples, respectively. This means a longsword in the hands of a 22nd level character deals 4d8 base damage, before any Strength mods or magic enhancements are added in. Multiplied over several attacks per round, this really puts the melee classes back into the game at the higher levels.

There's lots more to talk about, but hopefully, this will pique your interest a little. Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and thanks for taking a look.

[animewatcha]

Ah, checking up on us, to see if we fixed the 'Flurry of Misses' problem.

As a matter of fact, yes we did! :)

Being able to base your to-hit and damage on Dex and Wis, along with wiping out the penalty, means Monks are not nearly as frustrating in Epic Path.

Interestingly enough, the Monk is one of the classes we changed the LEAST. The Fighter, the Bard, the Ranger, all are totally different.

We like to think we've addressed just about every legitimate issue in every class. If you have any suggestions, though, we'd be glad to hear them!

I just happened to glance over it. Also, the two-weapon feat feat interaction. Do they take the penalties of TWF or not?

One of the most common suggestions on this forum ( and half-rear implemented by pathfinder ) was to make monk Full BAB.

[mauk2]

I just happened to glance over it. Also, the two-weapon feat feat interaction. Do they take the penalties of TWF or not?

They do not, even if they foolishly use a weapon for fighting. Is that unclear? We can clarify that, which is exactly the point of getting feedback from other people. :)



One of the most common suggestions on this forum ( and half-rear implemented by pathfinder ) was to make monk Full BAB.

We thought about that, briefly, but decided that making Monks base their to-hit and damage on two stats was a much better solution. The reasoning is, it is a solution that places more control in the hands of the player. It always bothered me that Monks should have these huge Strength scores. In my mind, that makes no sense at all.

So, in order to place the control of how YOUR character looks and plays in YOUR hands, we made it the player's choice. If you want to have a tremendously strong Monk, you can. But! If you would rather play a slender little high-Dex ass-kicker, you can do that, and you are not penalized for that choice.

Plus, by giving Monks two combat stats, it is actually a stronger fix than making them full BAB, and avoids the 'eight attacks per round in a flurry of blows' silliness that full-BAB implies.

Besides, full BAB is only a +5 to-hit at 20th level, and a second full combat stat mod will be much higher than a wimpy little +5, and kicks in much earlier to-boot. :)

Trust me, we thought this out in...ridiculous detail. For every character class.

But the feedback is extremely good, for example, the two-weapon fighting question. It's perfectly clear to me, but obviously, it's not as clear as it needs to be. So we'll fix that! Thank you!

Is anything else unclear?

[Nuada99]

Races in Epic Path have been completely overhauled.

We hate the fact that races in Pathfinder each had this weird matrix of ability score modifiers which more or less force players into choosing from a small subset of races best suited for the character class they want to play. It limits role-playing and also limits flavor in the campaign.

So, to fix this, ALL races now grant +2 to any two stats and -2 to any one stat. Racial ability scores are the same for everyone. However, in order to keep each race distinctive, every race has a set of standard, major and minor traits which are (mostly) unique to that race.

When you select a race, you get all of its standard traits. All members of the race share the standard traits. However, you only get to choose 1 major trait and 1 minor trait from the set of traits available to the race. This allows the character to tailor the racial abilities more closely to his/her preferences, but still keep those abilities bounded in the flavor of that race's theme.

An example of a major trait might be: Street Tough (Ex): Sometimes Half-elves have to resort to using unexpected tactics against those who wish them harm. Half-elves with this racial trait gain a +2 racial bonus to CMB. At 10th level, this bonus increases to +3. At 20th level, it increases to +4, and at 30th level it increases to +5. In addition, the Half-Elf picks one combat maneuver at 1st level, and they can now perform that combat maneuver as a swift action. This racial trait does not prevent attacks of opportunity provoked by the combat maneuver. (Half-Elf (http://www.epicpath.org/index.php/Half-Elf))

An example of a minor trait might be: Nine Lives (Su): Once per day as an immediate action, when hit by a melee attack, a Gata with this racial trait can force the opponent who made the attack to reroll it with a -4 penalty. The opponent must take the result of the second attack roll. (Gata (http://www.epicpath.org/index.php/Gata))

As a result of this approach, while Epic Path does maintain the "big six" standard races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halfings, Half-Elves and Gnomes), we also have 17 "exotic" races which are highly balanced against the power levels of the standard races. This allows a GM to make his/her campaign setting as cosmopolitan or as traditional as he/she prefers, without the risk of getting all her power-gamers to lock in on those one or two races which are frankly overpowered.

While our goal with the race redesign was to get a functional set of races and traits written up, as well as flavor text for each race (oh, man, it took MONTHS!), the design allows for easy future expansions, either for additional races, or additional traits for one or more races. As long as any new traits fit the theme of the race and aren't significantly more powerful than the existing traits, balance is maintained. It's very modular and easily governed.

While many of the races are just Epic Path versions of some of the more popular exotic races, we renamed or re-themed most of them. For example, the Tiefling race in Epic Path are the foot-soldiers of Hell, a manufactured product of eugenics designed to blend into a society, but also subvert and control it. Unexpectedly, most of them decided to rebel and make their own destiny once on the Prime Material (Devils are kind of horrible bosses, after all). However, a faction of orthodox Tieflings still serve Hell, still seeking to conquer and corrupt the world, and they hate the separatist Tieflings who rejected their Creators with an abiding intensity. (See Tieflings (http://www.epicpath.org/index.php/Tiefling) for details).

Anyway, if there are any aspects of the game you're curious about, or if you spot any changes we made that don't make sense to you, let us know. We'd love to talk about it.

[mauk2]

Also, the two-weapon feat feat interaction. Do they take the penalties of TWF or not?

Okay, we've updated the Monk to make this clearer. Hope this helps! :)

[mauk2]

Ah, I missed this response when it was posted, I am not good.


I'm reading over it; it looks good. I'll still probably just be converting what needs to be to 3.5, but hey, I appreciate new and differing material.

Go for it!

I'd just advise caution: Epic Path looks a lot like Pathfinder at low levels, because frankly, Pathfinder is pretty good at low levels. But as you go higher and higher, the monsters and character classes get further and further away from the way Pathfinder works. Epic Path and Pathfinder have diverged a great deal by about eighth level, and it only gets wider from there.

For example, a level 10 Pathfinder monster has somewhere around 110 to 160 hit points.

A CR10 Epic Path monster has 175 hit points base, or 350 if it has a Heavy, Killer, Tank, Shooter, Sneak or Leader Role role, or 700 if it has a Threat role. Dragons, for example, are Threats. They make a fight you will remember!

And the differences get wider as the CR gets higher. :)

We've done the math and run the playtests, and the game works perfectly fine with these numbers, but conversion backwards to older systems could be a bit scary.


I like it, good on you for creating it.

Thank you! We did it for fun, and because we wanted to make the best darn D20 game, a game that would WORK, not have all sorts of weird broken bits in it, and allow GM's and players to have the maximum fun with the story, and not with the rules.

Have fun!

[charcoalninja]

My first nagging issue with it is how many Fighter Talents are 1/day. I personally find such limited abilities on mundane characters to be silly and harmful to Verisimilatude. Why can't my Spartan do his cool death move more than once a day? He knows it, enemy is there, he still has his spear...

Edit: also not being able to turn off Challenge seems odd again for the same reason. If Challenge is my fighter actively being scarey, should he not be able to just not do that?

[mauk2]

Ooof, excellent questions, you guys are going right to the hard stuff. :)



My first nagging issue with it is how many Fighter Talents are 1/day. I personally find such limited abilities on mundane characters to be silly and harmful to Verisimilatude. Why can't my Spartan do his cool death move more than once a day? He knows it, enemy is there, he still has his spear...


The reason for some Fighter Tactics (not Talents, Rogues get those) being once/day is purely mechanical, and yes, I'm not one hundred percent sold on the notion even myself.

Here's the reasoning: In EP we wanted there to be four main 'roles' in a party: Damage, Heals, Buffs, and Tanks. We've built the monsters to put out enough damage that they can imperil a PC very easily. If two or three mobs tee up on your rogue, and land a few lucky shots she's gonna get creamed.

To counteract that, we put in strong Buff and Heal classes, and of course, Tanks. Fighters are the best tank class, followed by paladins, monks, and warlords. As a result, the Fighter Tactics are biased towards defensive abilities. However, since we're trying to be as flexible as possible, the Fighter also gets offensive Tactics, but they tend to be a bit weaker, or more limited in terms of numbers of times per day.

That said, if you want to build an offensive fighter, you certainly can, and we've made builds that can reach rogue-like levels of damage.




Edit: also not being able to turn off Challenge seems odd again for the same reason. If Challenge is my fighter actively being scarey, should he not be able to just not do that?



The real distinguish-er of a tank class is the ability to land a 'fight me bro' debuff. Of the Tank classes, the Fighter's Challenge is the best such 'fight me bro' ability. Which is one of many reason why Fighters make the best Tanks.

However, Fighters are so flexible, they can ALSO put out insane damage if you build them that way. And they still have ridiculous hitpoints and DR and all that other tasty stuff. How is that fair or balanced against a rogue, for example?

The balancing factor is the fact that the Challenge cannot be turned off. If you build a super-damage Fighter, you're going to wreck face, but you're also going to have to deal with very high levels of incoming damage, because the mobs sort-of have to attack you back. And if you've spent all your feats and tactics on offense, you can't handle that level of incoming damage. If you want to make a max-damage Fighter build, you can, but then you better have a strong healer or two to help keep you standing.

One of the main things we tried to do with Epic Path was make at least two classes 'good' at everything. There's two primary healer classes and three sort-of healers, a main Tank and four secondary tanks, between three and five buffers, and everybody else is good at damage. Oh, and there's a lot of classes that are 'sort of' good at several things.

You can put together a 'workable' party a lot of different ways. And teamwork between players is richly rewarded. :)

That said, if you want to make Fighter offensive Tactics into per-encounter or per-round, you surely can, just be aware that you're going to be stepping on other melee classes a little by doing so. To be perfectly honest, I'd love some feedback from actual play-time, all the playtest Fighters we've seen so far have been tank-troller hybrid builds.

I hope this answers your questions! If you have any more, please ask.