Keeping up at Epic Levels

[liquidformat]

So I have played in a couple epic games now and have noticed the fact that mundanes even ToB doesn't scale at all in epic and are left in the lurch by casters. How do other people handle this, is the answer just no mundanes at epic levels or what?

[GrayDeath]

We only played "real" Epic once (meaning longer than 2-3 sessions or 2 Levels), and in that group we simply houseruled A LOT.

Amon other things, Martial Classes gained Extra maneuvers, normal BAB progression, +1 to saves and feats per Epic Level, and increasing Resistances/Immunities.

Still horribly underpowered compared to Casters, but then again, that is true from level 10 to 12 (depending on OP) anyways....

[tyckspoon]

Yeah, martial/mundane scaling just kind of stops even pretending to keep up when you hit the Epic rules; you don't get 1/1 BAB any more and the cost of weapon/armor/stat bonus items goes through the roof, but the sorts of monsters you're supposed to fight still get huge amounts of attack bonus, armor, hp, etc from their inflated HD. The solutions are:
Optimize more - it is *possible* to get a mundane character to compete with these numbers, but you have to work at it. "Just spend your gold on the highest +weapon and armor you can find" won't do it, you have to be efficient and clever and/or use the known exploits that are potentially too good for pre-Epic play (like a Persistent Wraithstrike charger who can power attack for full against Touch AC will still carve up most Epic encounters pretty good.)

Just say screw it to the idea of WBL and give your mundanes the +stat gear they need to make the numbers work, regardless of how much the book says it's nominally 'worth' - High level WBL is weird, Epic WBL is imaginary.

Get your casters to buff you - one of the few categories of Epic Spells that actually kind of works by the book is number buffs. You can get something like +20 to AC and Strength for a week for the cost of a +8 sword.

Have everybody play at least partial casters - kind of falls under 'Optimize more', I guess, but if you're not going all the way into Epic Spells then at least having people be responsible for their own combat buffs helps cover the cracks in the system. The problems with Epic math are a lot easier to ignore when all of your party can do Touch Attacks on demand/use Bite of the Werebear/etc with spells.

[liquidformat]

Ya I have been playing in a game as a goliath barbarian/warhulk/hulking hurler/soulborn (we got gestalt for the mundanes under tier 3) where I continued sitting on warhulk in epic levels and I have a bag full of adamantine bullets of sizing/returning that I just increase to my weight limit and throw. Pretty much anything I hit is dead but there is a lot of goofyness that just makes him useless a large percentage of the time.

[DarkSoul]

I think it depends on what the casters are allowed to get away with, too. If 0 DC epic spells are common, I don't feel like it's mundanes that need to be changed. I'm not saying they don't need any buffs, but when a single feat makes multiple entire classes/concepts irrelevant, it's not the classes that are the problem.

[Biggus]

You need to both limit casters somwhat and give mundanes extra stuff to make epic anywhere near balanced. Set a minimum DC for epic spells and don't allow any with too much munchkin potential (the DM always has to approve them anyway), don't allow multispell to be taken multiple times, and make Improved Metamagic reduce the total spell level by one, not reduce each metamagic feat's level increase by one.

Allow multiple abilities on magic items (this is the standard rule anyway but many DMs don't allow it). This allows martials space to get fly, teleport, freedom of movement and so on without sacrificing bonuses to basics like ability scores and AC that they need. Get a Casting Glove (MiC) which enables you to use magic items you have stored, rather than needing to spend a move action getting them out. A Talisman of Undying Fortitude (MiC) is particularly handy to use this way: it makes you immune to a ton of effects and can be activated as a swift action.

Also, in the ELH it explicitly encourages you to create your own epic feats. I'm AFB right now, but the wording is very open-ended, something like "if you can imagine your character doing it, it can probably become an epic feat" (if an ability you want is especially powerful, it might have to be split into several feats). Epic versions of things like the Mage Slayer series might be worth thinking about.

At least some of the martial classes should definitely get more bonus feats. It's absurd that the Monk, already probably the weakest core class, also gets the least bonus feats.

[False God]

My best solution was to basically give them monstrous powers, if not outrightly make them into monsters. A "Fighter" improves dramatically when they're a Titan rather than a human.

Magic still rules the roost to the sure, but even discounting the spells a lot of high-level monsters have, the increase to BAB, saves, and the increase in HP did wonders to help them keep up.

Also, I had to custom-design a lot of monsters to be specifically immune to magic, but ya know, vulnerable to being beat to death with a sword. I made a lot of "legendary" creatures which often only had "mcguffin" weaknesses and those mcguffins just happened *winkwink* to be magic swords and stuff.

Martials fall off the "competitive with casters" wagon around level 10. By level 20 the average martial is so far behind it's not even funny. Getting into epic is just a joke for them. Improvements in their class abilities BAB, saves are all largely meaningless in the face of the ridiculous level of power wielded by spellcasters.

Ultimately, "no mundanes at epic levels" is not an unreasonable answer. See my "make them into monsters" answer, since most of them have some spellcasting, realistically you're slowly weeding out the martial and replacing it with magical.

[Efrate]

You almost have to go all mundane or all caster. The problems are too bad with mixed parties.

Other fixes: epic (subsystem) feats. make your own tob maneuvers and stances, your own soulmelds, etc.

Make all martial epic feats available with no/lower prereqs.

[RNightstalker]

Epic levels requires a Nuclear Peace Treaty of sorts, as feats for casters throw the game further out of "balance". Multispell let's a caster cast an additional quickened spell; going from a spell and a quickened to a spell and two quickened...there's nothing that compares with that with martial characters.

Ultimately, a good group will figure out a way to make it work for them.

[Xasten]

Liberal use of artifacts for melees, enemy immunities, and general encounter design. I let BAB continue past 20th until you hit 20 BAB, and then used the epic attack bonus progression. I approached the design of each encounter in a way to required creative use of all the party's assets and characters. We played from 1 to 25 over several years.

Epic spells were tightly controlled with a much more nebulous epic casting system I wrote from scratch (starting on page 26): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rL01Mza6BpmRv3yjflv4afyFeEPzCMRV

[Quertus]

Balance to the table. If everyone - muggles, casters, and GM - does this, you don't have a problem. Why are we still discussing this?

If the question is simply, "how does one fix a martial build to keep up with monsters straight out of the book", well, "optimize harder - don't worry about cheese", "use all the rules that favor muggles" and "add more things that favor muggles", as others have said.


Also, in the ELH it explicitly encourages you to create your own epic feats. I'm AFB right now, but the wording is very open-ended, something like "if you can imagine your character doing it, it can probably become an epic feat" (if an ability you want is especially powerful, it might have to be split into several feats). Epic versions of things like the Mage Slayer series might be worth thinking about.

At least some of the martial classes should definitely get more bonus feats. It's absurd that the Monk, already probably the weakest core class, also gets the least bonus feats.

Custom feats? How about…

Epic Iterative: by taking this feat, when you make a full attack, you gain an additional attack at your full BAB, and all of your iterative attacks are also made at full BAB. You may take this feat more than once; each time you take it, the number of attacks you make in a full attack increases by one.

Epic Flurry: Wherever you use Flurry of Blows, double the number of attacks made. All are at your full BAB.

Doorway Jaunt: you understand the Infinite Staircase, and can bend it to your will. Whenever you walk through a doorway, you may exit any other doorway, anywhere, on any plane.

Seal Effect (requires 25 ranks in Heal): as a reaction to failing a save or to otherwise being affected by an effect, you may seal the effect, allowing you to ignore the effect indefinitely. For example, if you are beheaded by a Vorpal Blade, you might grab your head, and seal it back in place; if you were petrified by looking at Medusa, you may hold your hand to your eyes to seal the petrification energy from spreading. The seal has a visual manifestation; unless you take pains to conceal the affected area, anyone looking at you will know your Doom. Further, any subsequent exposure to a similar ability has a 50% chance to break the seal (on top of its usual effect). You may only seal one effect at a time. However, you can apply remedies to the effect you have sealed (Regeneration, Stone to Flesh, etc), allowing you to avoid your Doom, and ready this power for use once more.

Power-Disabling Strike: whenever you strike a creature with one or more innate supernatural abilities, it must make a Save (DC = 10+ 1/2 BAB + Dex mod) or lose access to a randomly selected ability. You may poke a Beholder in the eyes, jab a Dragon in the throat, etc.


Epic levels requires a Nuclear Peace Treaty of sorts, as feats for casters throw the game further out of "balance". Multispell let's a caster cast an additional quickened spell; going from a spell and a quickened to a spell and two quickened...there's nothing that compares with that with martial characters.

Ultimately, a good group will figure out a way to make it work for them.

IMO, a good group will balance to the table.

For keeping up with Multispell, how about…

Just That Fast (requires BAB 20 or Fighter 12): whenever you would get a full round action, you get two full round actions instead.


Liberal use of artifacts for melees, enemy immunities,

Making cool custom items - especially artifacts - is an underused GM-side balance asset, IME. But enemy immunities? Wouldn't it be better to focus more on "everyone can play the game" than on "you can't play the game"?

[MeimuHakurei]

Balance to the table. If everyone - muggles, casters, and GM - does this, you don't have a problem. Why are we still discussing this?

If the question is simply, "how does one fix a martial build to keep up with monsters straight out of the book", well, "optimize harder - don't worry about cheese", "use all the rules that favor muggles" and "add more things that favor muggles", as others have said.



Custom feats? How about…

Epic Iterative: by taking this feat, when you make a full attack, you gain an additional attack at your full BAB, and all of your iterative attacks are also made at full BAB. You may take this feat more than once; each time you take it, the number of attacks you make in a full attack increases by one.

Epic Flurry: Wherever you use Flurry of Blows, double the number of attacks made. All are at your full BAB.

Doorway Jaunt: you understand the Infinite Staircase, and can bend it to your will. Whenever you walk through a doorway, you may exit any other doorway, anywhere, on any plane.

Seal Effect (requires 25 ranks in Heal): as a reaction to failing a save or to otherwise being affected by an effect, you may seal the effect, allowing you to ignore the effect indefinitely. For example, if you are beheaded by a Vorpal Blade, you might grab your head, and seal it back in place; if you were petrified by looking at Medusa, you may hold your hand to your eyes to seal the petrification energy from spreading. The seal has a visual manifestation; unless you take pains to conceal the affected area, anyone looking at you will know your Doom. Further, any subsequent exposure to a similar ability has a 50% chance to break the seal (on top of its usual effect). You may only seal one effect at a time. However, you can apply remedies to the effect you have sealed (Regeneration, Stone to Flesh, etc), allowing you to avoid your Doom, and ready this power for use once more.

Power-Disabling Strike: whenever you strike a creature with one or more innate supernatural abilities, it must make a Save (DC = 10+ 1/2 BAB + Dex mod) or lose access to a randomly selected ability. You may poke a Beholder in the eyes, jab a Dragon in the throat, etc.



IMO, a good group will balance to the table.

For keeping up with Multispell, how about…

Just That Fast (requires BAB 20 or Fighter 12): whenever you would get a full round action, you get two full round actions instead.



Making cool custom items - especially artifacts - is an underused GM-side balance asset, IME. But enemy immunities? Wouldn't it be better to focus more on "everyone can play the game" than on "you can't play the game"?

Yeah, as far as I can tell the OP is asking how a balancing to the table is to be accomplished. Of course, switching to a casting class is absolutely a way this can be accomplished, but not all ways to balance are satisfactory - the character's playstyle, feel and fluff should be respected.

As for your feats: Most of them are fairly solid, although Seal Effect and Power-Disabling Strike could easily be nonepic martial feats (or manuevers even).

[AvatarVecna]

For many people, the answer is "don't play epic" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560008-Advice-on-running-a-lvl-30-Campaign). The reason this happens is just that it's more of the same: mundanes are linear, casters are quadratic, exponential even. "Epic Spellcasting", where you can design your own effect that can effectively do anything depending on how many solars it needs to power, but that's honestly more just an extension of existing problems: mages could already do anything if they put their mind to it, Epic Spellcasting just makes that explicit. Mundanes were already largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things just because the scale at which threats take place has long since outpaced what they are capable of contributing.

Even if your mage isn't going all out - if they're still actually going out on adventures and risking their hit points (rather than, for example, solving all their problems by hiding in their impregnable unlocateable demiplane, teleporting aleax ice assassins back in time to solve the problems before they even begin to exist) - you can still get absurdly powerful in a straight-up fight without even breaking the rules on how things are intended to work - you just have so many powerful tools at this point that even using them in a straightforward manner is too much to handle if the game is also trying to keep noncasters viable.

Like...just take a look at all the existing epic feats. Try and find one worth taking that isn't inherently tied into casting. Did you find Epic Leadership yet? Because that's the one. The only one. The only one that isn't explicitly caster-only and is still worth taking despite that. And even Epic Leadership is kinda losing its luster when it has to compete with epic caster minionmancy. And even then it's only if your DM is letting your cohort level up normally to the "ECL-2" maximum, rather than having the chart be their maximum since that's just supposed to be for if you're picking up a fresh cohort. But after that...the Deflection feats? Lingering Damage essentially doubles your Sneak Attack, in a way that actually gets better when you level up (not that common in noncaster feats), so that's something if you don't have to worry about precision-immunity for one reason or another? Death Of Enemies and Devastating Critical would be cool if you ever fight anything in epic that somehow isn't crit-immune I guess? The "Great [Attribute]" feats aren't necessarily garbage I suppose? If you can't cast, or craft, or wild shape...epic feats don't offer you that much. They're just slightly better feats, as opposed to "craft (possibly literal win button)" like mages get.

There are three primary ways of not dealing with the absurd power/versatility gap between casters and noncasters in epic. In order of least preferable to most (and incidentally, easiest to hardest): the first is "don't play epic", the second is "homebrew the shizz outta everything until it's balanced-ish enough" and the third is "establish a gentlemen's agreement where the mage players agree not to make mages that accidentally invalidate the rest of the party".

[Biggus]

Death Of Enemies and Devastating Critical would be cool if you ever fight anything in epic that somehow isn't crit-immune I guess? [...] If you can't cast, or craft, or wild shape...epic feats don't offer you that much. They're just slightly better feats, as opposed to "craft (possibly literal win button)" like mages get.


There are quite a lot of monsters in the ELH which aren't immune to crits or death effects.

On the second point...how about an epic feat which replicates the Midgard Dwarf's "Master Smith" ability, which means you're always considered to meet the prerequisites for crafting items (including the ability to cast spells) even if you have no spellcaster levels, to enable mundanes to craft their own custom equipment?

[pabelfly]

Like...just take a look at all the existing epic feats. Try and find one worth taking that isn't inherently tied into casting. Did you find Epic Leadership yet? Because that's the one. The only one. The only one that isn't explicitly caster-only and is still worth taking despite that. And even Epic Leadership is kinda losing its luster when it has to compete with epic caster minionmancy. And even then it's only if your DM is letting your cohort level up normally to the "ECL-2" maximum, rather than having the chart be their maximum since that's just supposed to be for if you're picking up a fresh cohort. But after that...the Deflection feats? Lingering Damage essentially doubles your Sneak Attack, in a way that actually gets better when you level up (not that common in noncaster feats), so that's something if you don't have to worry about precision-immunity for one reason or another? Death Of Enemies and Devastating Critical would be cool if you ever fight anything in epic that somehow isn't crit-immune I guess? The "Great [Attribute]" feats aren't necessarily garbage I suppose?

A Multiweapon Fighter would love Epic Weapon Focus and Epic Weapon Specialization. The feats make a lot of sense if you're throwing, say, six or eight or ten weapon attacks at full BAB at the opponent and doing a crazy amount of attack rolls.

[False God]

A Multiweapon Fighter would love Epic Weapon Focus and Epic Weapon Specialization. The feats make a lot of sense if you're throwing, say, six or eight or ten weapon attacks at full BAB at the opponent and doing a crazy amount of attack rolls.

Uh, what? Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization are terrible in their own right and mostly just required for certain later, better feats. A weak bonus with requiring two feats you probably tried to avoid to begin with.

And for reference: Bull Strength gives the exact same bonus as Epic Weapon Focus AND it applied to damage, providing half the effect of Epic Weapon Specialization. Yep, that's a second level spell providing the legwork of 1 and a half epic feats.

And speaking of throwing Epic Weapon Specialization has no effect on attacks beyond 30ft. A restriction that does NOT exist on the non-epic Weapon Specialization. Because OH NO! We certainly can't have epic-level mundane characters doing high damage at range! What if they outshine our precious, delicate casters????

----------
Devastating Critical is kinda neat...except for the ridiculous train of feats required to take it AND another epic feat!

Distant Shot is probably one of the few with reasonable requirements and is particularly useful in certain builds.

Improved Manyshot is nice, but I doubt it will dramatically increase the number of shots you get, especially with the reduction in BAB progression typical at epic.

Lingering Damage is nice....if your target isn't immune to critical hits.

Multiweapon Rend is kinda neat, if you've got 3+arms. (see: making mundanes into monsters)

There are a lot of epic "mundane" feats that are neat, but nothing that comes close to comparing to the stuff you get with magic.

[Xasten]

Making cool custom items - especially artifacts - is an underused GM-side balance asset, IME. But enemy immunities? Wouldn't it be better to focus more on "everyone can play the game" than on "you can't play the game"?

Certainly. It's not about "You must be this XYZ to ride this ride," but about creative stacking of heavy resistances and immunities that challenge the party creatively as opposed to just "that didn't work." For example, I had some NPCs with a large pool of "points" similar to a fatespinner that could refresh every X number of rounds to selectively use on their saving throws. I used items like Helm of the Phoenix/The DMG Scarab that absorbs negative levels, ruby cincture of immutability, and so on to provide a strong layer of defense without completely making save-or-suck/die spells unusable. Some NPCs I gave partial immunities for or resurgence type abilities against specific effects.

For example, here's the final bad guy in my campaign. The stats are a bit abridged and in my own short hand, but I think you can piece together how he worked: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1n38wta8ul6DhBs6RgHTsV6Qg6E7oiIPO

He's basically a giant assbeater with a lot of limited use abilities that ensure that he'll be around for more than 2 rounds of combat. In fact, the final fight lasted something like 8 hours and 80+ rounds. There was a LOT going on in addition to the bad guy, but you get my point. If you want something to be a challenge and to stick around you need thick defenses that can be worn down. So, no. It's not just "lol fire immune," but I do think long and hard about layering a formidable defense.

In fact, the final bad guy was successfully debuffed and hit with a 24th level maximized sphere of ultimate destruction at one point. It didn't kill him, but the players did finally penetrate his defenses and were rewarded greatly for it.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Epic Destines are a start. I forget which Dragon Magazine they are in (one of the 4th Ed changeover ones). The abilities granted by Blade of Ragnarok make an absolute joke out of any of the martial epic feats.

In epic a lot of what you are struggling against is that 1) devs felt that a continually scaling caster level was a trivial gain and 2) they felt that a generic +1 to hit was equivalent to an entire spell level. 2 11th level slots are definitely a lot more valuable than a +1 to hit (especially since that +1 does not carry more attacks... ever).

[pabelfly]

Uh, what? Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization are terrible in their own right and mostly just required for certain later, better feats. A weak bonus with requiring two feats you probably tried to avoid to begin with.

And for reference: Bull Strength gives the exact same bonus as Epic Weapon Focus AND it applied to damage, providing half the effect of Epic Weapon Specialization. Yep, that's a second level spell providing the legwork of 1 and a half epic feats.

So let's start with... high-level casting is stronger than high-level melee, and that only becomes more true in Epic. We both agree on that.

Now that's out of the way, a static +4 to damage isn't much for most melee characters at high-level, but with multiweapon fighting, you (likely) had plenty of arms to start with, you've added more with grafts, and you'd be getting four attacks with each limb thanks to Perfect Multiweapon Fighting. Not every attack will hit, but the iteratives do start to add up when you're hitting with several dozen attacks in a single turn.

[AvatarVecna]

There are quite a lot of monsters in the ELH which aren't immune to crits or death effects.

DC is assumed to be Base 10 + one-half CR (since equal level is about the last time they should be a significant threat) + one-half CR (about where your Str/Wis bonus should be if you're crit-fishing for death saves - I feel like +10 at lvl 21 is or +15 at lvl 30 isn't asking too much for what's probably a primary stat on an epic optimized crit-fishing build). This also makes the math easy. Fair? Eh.

Oh and part of that "not taking them seriously if you're higher level than them", anything that doesn't have an epic CR (21+) isn't even gonna get mentioned. I'm also leaving out advanced/epic dragons just cuz that can scale infinitely. Just assume that between casting and items you can't expect any epic dragon to go out like a bitch to a particularly sharp stick-poke. Templates are also not calc'd for final score, although they'll be mentioned for how they affect immunity/save/DC. It's just difficult to say how likely a particular templated monster will get killed when you don't know the odds for every monster in existence.

Additionally, FEs are divided into three rough groups: primary (things you take because you think you'll face them commonly), secondary (things you think will come up but aren't really that common) and tertiary (favored enemies you take just to say you have them once you ran out of good FEs to take). These will reduce by 0, 1/2, and 3/4 respectively.



DC
DoE
Creature
Explanation


0.000
0.000
Abomination, Anaxim
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Abomination, Atropal
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.400
0.100
Abomination, Chichimec
+22 vs DC 31 succeeds 12/20. Outsider (Air) is a tertiary FE.


0.450
0.225
Abomination, Dream Larva
+31 vs DC 41 succeeds 11/20. Outsider (Chaotic) is a secondary FE.


0.950
0.950
Abomination, Hecatoncheires
+39 vs DC 67 succeeds 1/20. Outsider (Evil) is a primary FE.


0.200
0.200
Abomination, Infernal
+31 vs DC 36 succeeds 16/20. Outsider (Evil) is a primary FE.


0.000
0.000
Abomination, Phaethon
Ooze-like Outsider has immunity to criticals.


0.150
0.075
Abomination, Phane
+31 vs DC 35 succeeds 17/20. Outsider (Chaotic) is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Abomination, Xixecal
+55 vs DC 46 succeeds 19/20. Outsider (Cold) is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Brachyurus
+41 vs DC 33 succeeds 19/20. Magical Beast is a secondary FE.


0.000
0.000
Colossus, Stone
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Colossus, Flesh
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Colossus, Iron
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Demilich template
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.050
0.025
Devastation Centipede
+75 vs DC 49 succeeds 19/20. Vermin is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Devastation Spider
+76 vs DC 51 succeeds 19/20. Vermin is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Devastation Scorpion
+77 vs DC 52 succeeds 19/20. Vermin is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Devastation Beetle
+84 vs DC 60 succeeds 19/20. Vermin is a secondary FE.


0.000
0.000
Primal Air Elemental
Elemental has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Primal Earth Elemental
Elemental has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Primal Fire Elemental
Elemental has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Primal Water Elemental
Elemental has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Genius Loci
Ooze has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Gibbering Orb
Amorphous aberration has immunity to criticals.


0.850
0.850
Gloom
+17 vs DC 35 succeeds 3/20. Monstrous Humanoid is a primary FE.


0.000
0.000
Golem, Mithral
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Golem, Adamantine
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.700
0.350
Ha-Naga
+17 vs DC 32 succeeds 6/20. Aberration is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Hagunemnon (Protean)
+40 vs DC 39 succeeds 19/20. Aberration is a secondary FE.


0.300
0.300
Hoary Hunter
+28 vs DC 35 succeeds 14/20. Fey is a primary FE.


0.000
0.000
Hunefer
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Lavawight
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.400
0.400
LeShay
+29 vs DC 38 succeeds 12/20. Fey is a primary FE.


0.000
0.000
Living Vault
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Mu Spore
Plant has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Neh-Thalggu
Amorphous aberration has immunity to criticals.


0.500
0.250
Paragon (example)
+22 vs DC 33 succeeds 10/20. Aberration is a secondary FE.




Paragon template
Increases Save by at least 17 and DC by at most 12.


0.050
0.025
Prismasaurus
+41 vs DC 38 succeeds 19/20. Magical Beast is a secondary FE.


0.700
0.700
Pseudonatural (example)
+16 vs DC 31 succeeds 6/20. Outsider (Extraplanar) is a primary FE.




Pseudonatural template
Increases Save by 5 and DC by at most 10.


0.000
0.000
Ruin Swarm
Ooze/swarm has type/subtype immunity to criticals


0.000
0.000
Shadow Of The Void
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Shape Of Fire
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.050
0.025
Sirrush
+41 vs DC 34 succeeds 19/20. Magical Beast is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.025
Sirrush, Three-Headed
+45 vs DC 38 succeeds 19/20. Magical Beast is a secondary FE.


0.150
0.075
Slaad, White
+27 vs DC 31 succeeds 17/20. Outsider (Chaotic) is a secondary FE.


0.200
0.100
Slaad, Black
+30 vs DC 35 succeeds 16/20. Outsider (Chaotic) is a secondary FE.


0.100
0.050
Tayellah
+31 vs DC 34 succeeds 18/20. Magical Beast is a secondary FE.


0.500
0.250
Thorciasid
+21 vs DC 32 succeeds 10/20. Aberration is a secondary FE.


0.050
0.050
Titan, Elder
+47 vs DC 40 succeeds 19/20. Outsider (Extraplanar) is a primary FE.


0.000
0.000
Treant, Elder
Plant has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Umbral Blot
Construct has type immunity to criticals.


0.050
0.050
Uvuudaum
+40 vs DC 37 succeeds 19/20. Outsider (Evil) is a primary FE.


0.300
0.150
Vermiurge
+27 vs DC 34 succeeds 14/20. Aberration is a secondary FE.


0.000
0.000
Winterwight
Undead has type immunity to criticals.


0.000
0.000
Worm That Walks
Ooze has type immunity to criticals.



If, over the course of your long epic career, you fought each of the 55 creatures in the ELH once when you were of equal level to them, and you scored one critical hit against each of them before they expired, you could expect 7.45 deaths from Devastating Critical, or 5.375 deaths from Death Of Enemies.

But honestly, you ignore most of that table. You saw my assumption in there, about how you will crit once against each of these creatures before they die? Yeah, that's not realistic. Yes, the numbers in the table get better if you're using some methods of ignoring crit-immunity but that's honestly one of the less important ways that these feats are irrelevant in high-level play. Let's say you're crit-fishing at 15-20, so out of ten attacks, three will threaten; call it one in three attacks. Let's say you're good enough that you always confirm. By the time you've attacked something of about your level three times, with one of those hits being a crit, you've dealt at least 4 times your normal damage to them. That should be enough to outright murder something of your level, you don't even need to touch on death saves because of the crit. Even if you're a fantastic crit-fisher by normal charop standards, by the time you ever force a save, they'll already be dead regardless of whether they're vulnerable to crits or death effects.

Sure it might very occasionally come up and give you a kill an attack or two earlier than you expected, but "very occasionally comes up and makes you slightly better at the one thing you were great at already" isn't what I'm really looking for in epic feats. These feats might each come up once per campaign. Spell Stowaway (Time Stop) might come up at least once an adventure (probably while fighting the boss) or more frequently (if your party casters are fond of that spell). Improved Spell Capacity comes up at least once per day. Dragon Wild Shape can come up multiple times a day. Permanent Emanation comes up literally whenever the chosen spell is relevant, which could be anything from "any time there's a magic effect around" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectMagic.htm) to "any time I make a melee attack, lift something, roll a Str-based check, cast a spell, or get a kill" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22921285&postcount=2).


On the second point...how about an epic feat which replicates the Midgard Dwarf's "Master Smith" ability, which means you're always considered to meet the prerequisites for crafting items (including the ability to cast spells) even if you have no spellcaster levels, to enable mundanes to craft their own custom equipment?

That would help, but even Artificer is starting to have a rough time crafting gear without abusing time. Epic items worth having just get so expensive that it takes forever to make them. A feat that lets noncasters craft is useful, but as far as the "feats tied to spellcasting that are worth taking", item crafting feats are on the lower end anyway. If we're arbitrarily making caster feats available to noncasters, I'd probably focus Spell Stowaway first so that going into Time Stop isn't an auto-win button against noncasters.


A Multiweapon Fighter would love Epic Weapon Focus and Epic Weapon Specialization. The feats make a lot of sense if you're throwing, say, six or eight or ten weapon attacks at full BAB at the opponent and doing a crazy amount of attack rolls.

I'm not saying "these feats are garbage for everybody", I'm just saying "these feats are only valuable if you're already garbage". Epic Weapon Focus means one attack in twenty hits when it shouldn't have. It's a 5% increase in DPR at most. Epic Weapon Specialization is +4 damage per attack, which even for that build you're touting is just +40 DPR. Knowledge Devotion does more for you than both of those feats put together, and bonus it'll actually work on ranged attacks at ranges further than 30 ft. EWF/EWS are feats that you take when you've run out of better feats to take on a build that cares about attack and damage numbers, and by the time you've run out of better things to take, you'll already be dealing all the damage you'll ever need and always hitting so it won't even matter.

Every way a noncaster has of "contributing", a primary caster will be able to accomplish more with fewer resources. The one thing that noncasters tend to do better is uncontroversial at-will damage. No spell slots, no metamagic stacks, no tricks, just pure DPR. But even then, being slightly better at this one particular method of eliminating threats is only relevant in epic if the DM is bending over backwards to keep it that way. Immunity to being threatened isn't very complicated and the methods for doing so are on the SRD. Immunity to damage is uncommon and resource-intensive but at this level isn't difficult to acquire. Immunity to dying from this damage can be accomplished in a couple different ways. But even if they're not immune to the attack, the damage, or the dead condition that damage imposes...death ceased being anything more than a temporary inconvenience at level 9. And it's only gotten easier.

[pabelfly]

I'm not saying "these feats are garbage for everybody", I'm just saying "these feats are only valuable if you're already garbage". Epic Weapon Focus means one attack in twenty hits when it shouldn't have. It's a 5% increase in DPR at most. Epic Weapon Specialization is +4 damage per attack, which even for that build you're touting is just +40 DPR. Knowledge Devotion does more for you than both of those feats put together, and bonus it'll actually work on ranged attacks at ranges further than 30 ft. EWF/EWS are feats that you take when you've run out of better feats to take on a build that cares about attack and damage numbers, and by the time you've run out of better things to take, you'll already be dealing all the damage you'll ever need and always hitting so it won't even matter.

Every way a noncaster has of "contributing", a primary caster will be able to accomplish more with fewer resources. The one thing that noncasters tend to do better is uncontroversial at-will damage. No spell slots, no metamagic stacks, no tricks, just pure DPR. But even then, being slightly better at this one particular method of eliminating threats is only relevant in epic if the DM is bending over backwards to keep it that way.

10 limbs x 4 attacks per limb x +4 damage is 160. You're not going to hit all of them but you're definitely doing more than 40 damage with it.

And immunity to damage... sure, it's a thing, but so is counterspelling and finding various ways to ignore/negate spells, or just using an anti-magic field.

[Quertus]

There are three primary ways of not dealing with the absurd power/versatility gap between casters and noncasters in epic. In order of least preferable to most (and incidentally, easiest to hardest): the first is "don't play epic", the second is "homebrew the shizz outta everything until it's balanced-ish enough" and the third is "establish a gentlemen's agreement where the mage players agree not to make mages that accidentally invalidate the rest of the party".

Balance to the table. If you care about balance, and you don't have this as part of your gentleman's agreement, you're doing something wrong. People could accidentally mess up balance? Sure. But if you've played all the way to epic, and are still clueless? Well, let's just say that that level of "unable to see the elephant" was the impetus for Quertus (my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named).

[False God]

10 limbs x 4 attacks per limb x +4 damage is 160. You're not going to hit all of them but you're definitely doing more than 40 damage with it.

And immunity to damage... sure, it's a thing, but so is counterspelling and finding various ways to ignore/negate spells, or just using an anti-magic field.

Realistically though, who the heck has 10 limbs? Frankly I can't even think of a "normal" (largely humanoid in design and easily playable in 90% of games) race that has more than 2.

This kinda goes back to my point about "make them monsters". Figuring out how to get Bob the Human to 10 arms is probably less complicated than figuring out how to make Bob into a Marilith. That epic-level Wizard over there can do it, for instance.

Similarly, much of the problems of "martials being underpowered" goes away when you apply the fix of "turn them into monsters" instead of "try to make questionable Epic feats work".

[Biggus]

[spoiler=Sort of but not really]

Wow, you really didn't want to leave me in any doubt about that, did you? You could have just said "a lot of the epic monsters who aren't immune will make the save on a 2 when level-appropriate, and a lot of them are types not often taken as Favored Enemies". Still, fair points, you're clearly right.

About the only way your maths is potentially off (assuming you don't have anyone with Epic Spellcasting handy who's willing to use it to buff you) is that if a Ranger can get access to the spell Owl's Insight at a high caster level through UMD or a Druid cohort they can boost their save DC quite substantially.


That would help, but even Artificer is starting to have a rough time crafting gear without abusing time. Epic items worth having just get so expensive that it takes forever to make them. A feat that lets noncasters craft is useful, but as far as the "feats tied to spellcasting that are worth taking", item crafting feats are on the lower end anyway. If we're arbitrarily making caster feats available to noncasters, I'd probably focus Spell Stowaway first so that going into Time Stop isn't an auto-win button against noncasters.

There's the epic feat Efficient Item Creation, although even with that it's not exactly quick.

Making other caster feats which don't involve actually spellcasting available to noncasters isn't a bad idea. I mentioned the Master Smith ability because it's something which already exists, you'd just be making it available to other races.


Epic Weapon Focus means one attack in twenty hits when it shouldn't have. It's a 5% increase in DPR at most.

EWF is a +2 bonus, not a +1. It's still pretty poor for an epic feat though.


Epic Weapon Specialization is +4 damage per attack, which even for that build you're touting is just +40 DPR. Knowledge Devotion does more for you than both of those feats put together, and bonus it'll actually work on ranged attacks at ranges further than 30 ft.


In 3.0, the nonepic Weapon Specialisation only worked with ranged weapons up to 30ft, EWS working that way is just something they forgot to change in the update booklet. Any DM who isn't a RAW-obsessive will let it work as 3.5 WS does.

[Bohandas]

Just say screw it to the idea of WBL and give your mundanes the +stat gear they need to make the numbers work, regardless of how much the book says it's nominally 'worth' - High level WBL is weird, Epic WBL is imaginary.

Better yet, just say screw it to the epic attack and save progressions and have those things advance as they do normally (including the accumulation of additional attacks per round). I haven't played epic personally, but the wonky way it handled BAB and saves always struck me as so needless that I'm half inclined to believe that they were just included as filler

[farothel]

We once played a game that had the potential to go epic. In the end, we didn't and stopped at lvl 17, but even there you have discrepancies between casters and non-casters. We had the following to help us in this regard:
-the mage in our group was a relatively inexperienced player, so that character was certainly not optimized.
-the paladin and ranger (I class them as non-casters as their casting ability is secondary) were experienced players and were much better optimized.
-the barbarian was in the middle and was also quite optimized (he once one-shot a chimera)
-I played the cleric and while I did optimize, I did it towards diviniation and buff/debuff (I was a cleric-loremaster). Figure out up front what was coming so we could all be prepared and then mostly help my comrades. I would fight of course, but loremasters have D4 HD so my hitpoints were running behind and I had to be careful (actually the mage had more hitpoints then I had).
-We played the Drow Campaign, so a lot of our adversaries had spell resistance (one of the reasons I threw a lot of buff spells). For instance I Always had quite a lot of dispells and greater dispells prepared to pull the barbarian out of mind control effects.
-In this campaign we all had a magical item that progressed with our level and that we could rework every time it progressed (change the bonusses and special abilities). That helped the fighter types more than the casters, as it was a weapon, armour or shield.

[Silvercrys]

Allowing iterative attacks to accumulate just slows down play, at some point you're rolling a hundred attacks from two weapon fighting at a -500 penalty against a dragon with AC 1000, and what is even the point in that?

Nah, the easiest way to buff non-optimized martials is to just buff them.

Give them a feat that straight up doubles their damage (yes, even sneak attack) called Epic Weapon Damage that they can take once every ten or twenty levels (maybe split the levels by "tier" so you can take it as many times as your current epic tier) to ensure their weapon damage doesn't get out paced. Or just multiply player damage by whatever tier you're in with no feat tax, 1-20 is tier 1, 21-40 is 2, 41-60 is 3, 61-80 is 4, 81-100 is 5, etc.

Make skill feats that buff Epic skill uses to be as good as casting spells, maybe actually let them duplicate the effects of spells (I know some Epic skill uses are close, but still).

Force them to be initiators and give them access to the Epic Spellcasting System using Martial Lore instead of Spellcraft.

Etc.

Or just force everyone to be casters, that's the easy way.

[AvatarVecna]

Balance to the table. If you care about balance, and you don't have this as part of your gentleman's agreement, you're doing something wrong. People could accidentally mess up balance? Sure. But if you've played all the way to epic, and are still clueless? Well, let's just say that that level of "unable to see the elephant" was the impetus for Quertus (my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named).

I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. It's absolutely what you should do. But if the question posed is "why can't noncasters keep up at epic" the answer is "because they're trash". And there is a not-insignificant portion of the community who think that this is the fault of mages having too much power rather than epic noncasters too little, that the obvious solution is to either nerf mages to be as uberspecialized and useless as fighters or to have the mages basically carry the party to victory in a way that the noncasters never have to feel like they're utterly outclassed and useless. Which at this point, they are.


10 limbs x 4 attacks per limb x +4 damage is 160. You're not going to hit all of them but you're definitely doing more than 40 damage with it.

The fact that I misremembered the number of attacks you were blathering on about doesn't change that it's a lame amount of damage to add per attack. At the end of the day, even if you assume EWS was supposed to apply to all ranged attacks...it's +4 damage per attack. Power Attack almost universally gives more, in a way that scales with your level. Knowledge Devotion gives more (plus an attack bonus). Shadow Hand almost certainly gives more to a TWF/MWF build, and basically requires Martial Stance (Assassin's Stance) which bonus, also gives more bonus damage than Epic Weapon Specialization. And that's just in feats. There's a half-dozen low-level enchantments and spells that could be applied that easily outstrip the piddly damage this feat gives you. Case in point: in your own example, the reason the final DPR change looks so impressive has nothing to do with EWS and everything to do with "40 attacks per round".

And all of this is assuming you even need more damage, when that's honestly the one thing that most noncasters already have more than they'll ever need. You either have enough damage that anything you could reasonably face dies satisfactorily quickly (in which case your feat is best spent on not beating a dead horse), or you don't have enough damage and your feat is best spent on the most optimal increase to that damage. The only situation where taking this feat (and indeed, most of its prereqs) is a good choice is when you need more damage and all the superior alternatives have already been taken. But by the time you've taken everything better than EWS, you'll likely be playing a game with levels in the three-digit numbers and have transcended true combat. It's not something you take because it's good. It's something you take because it's simple and you don't have to think too hard about building your character. That's literally the straight-up intent behind that entire feat line: "these are the feats that every fighter takes to avoid having to think about what feats to take, if you're the kind of person that's not interested in all this charop nonsense".


And immunity to damage... sure, it's a thing, but so is counterspelling and finding various ways to ignore/negate spells, or just using an anti-magic field.

See, when I see arguments like this I'm not even sure how to debate them. I say "you can't counter this defense" and you say "yeah but someone else can" and I'm like...you're not wrong? But you're not making the point you seem to think you're making. Of course your friendly mage could counter the enemy mage, but you couldn't and that's kinda the problem I'm trying to highlight. Magic is allowed to beat nonmagic, but it only goes that one way; nonmagic can't be allowed to beat magic. Even using spells out of the box the way they were meant to, a caster is eventually capable of solving any problem a noncaster is capable of solving, and is usually more capable of doing so. So why are you even here? Just go wait in the corner while the real heroes sort out the problem of the week. I'll make sure to leave you some simple problem to solve Alexander-The-Great-style so you don't feel like you did nothing even though you basically did.

I should be clear: I don't think this is the way things should be. I think a game system should work to make options meaningful in letting you fill your role without making characters too samey, but that's a fine line to walk, and 3.5 just...doesn't. The first step is accepting that the problem exists.


Wow, you really didn't want to leave me in any doubt about that, did you? You could have just said "a lot of the epic monsters who aren't immune will make the save on a 2 when level-appropriate, and a lot of them are types not often taken as Favored Enemies". Still, fair points, you're clearly right.

About the only way your maths is potentially off (assuming you don't have anyone with Epic Spellcasting handy who's willing to use it to buff you) is that if a Ranger can get access to the spell Owl's Insight at a high caster level through UMD or a Druid cohort they can boost their save DC quite substantially.

Honestly I figured I was being kinda generous on the DC by assuming the PC essentially has the connected stat be equal to 10+character level, because that's essentially what it is.

My assumption is 30 Str/Wis at lvl 20, 40 at lvl 30, 50 at lvl 40, etc. This is mostly because it makes the math easy ("the monster should expect the DC to be about 10+their own CR"), but also it's not that unreasonable. That's what, starting 14, 5 level up bonuses, 5 from a tome, and then a +6 item? That's reasonable by level 30 for a main stat like a fighter's strength. Getting it for a secondary stat is gonna be more difficult since we can't use level-up bonus twice (and Ranger will probably put it into Str or Dex for offence), but a slightly higher starting score 15 with a tome +5, a +6 item, and then a shot of Owl's Insight wand (CL 9, minimum) like you're suggesting could definitely keep them on-pace.

The problem isn't 30 at lvl 20 though, it's 40 at lvl 30 (and continuing the pattern). You'll get another +2 from level and probably maybe...+2 from Great [Attribute] feats if you're really focused on it, but from there your piggy bank has to do the heavy lifting and that can get expensive fast. A +6 Str item is 36,000 but a +12 Str item is 1,440,000 - kind of a big leap, and while not beyond a lvl 30 characters ability to afford, it's certainly not cheap even by their standards. And while a Ranger 20 will probably have a good enough UMD to use a wand of Owl's Insight (DC 20), that's only giving him a +4 right now; if he wants more than that, he's gonna need to invest enough in UMD to consistently hit DC 20+CL to activate a scroll of it, which is gonna max out at 40. Easy if you're willing to sink another 40k into a UMD +20 item, sure, and going from +4 to +10 is enough that the ranger now has 40 at lvl 30. Getting to 50 will be harder though because now that has to be an epic scroll, which 1) he can't make, and 2) he's not inclined to really share, so it's probably coming out of his own money rather than as a favor from friends.

In regards to the "well a caster could use Epic Magic or spell slots to fix the holes in my trash"...well, you're not wrong, but at the same time you could just as easily play a druid with a pet ranger and be doing much better for yourself. :smalltongue:


There's the epic feat Efficient Item Creation, although even with that it's not exactly quick.

I'm aware, and yeah it helps but...only so much. And only with a particular item creation feat, although that's not too limiting since a few are pretty broad.


Making other caster feats which don't involve actually spellcasting available to noncasters isn't a bad idea. I mentioned the Master Smith ability because it's something which already exists, you'd just be making it available to other races.

That's fair. And it's at least something PF has that isn't even epic, so at least somebody's been taking steps in the right direction.

[AvatarVecna]

Or just force everyone to be casters, that's the easy way.

Ah, the "Librim Eternia" approach. :smalltongue:

[Biggus]

Allowing iterative attacks to accumulate just slows down play, at some point you're rolling a hundred attacks from two weapon fighting at a -500 penalty against a dragon with AC 1000, and what is even the point in that?

Yeah, extra iterative attacks aren't the way forward, reducing/ removing the attack penalty for existing attacks makes more sense.


starting 14, 5 level up bonuses, 5 from a tome, and then a +6 item? That's reasonable by level 30 for a main stat like a fighter's strength.

A Fighter with UMD can use scrolls to stack Righteous Might, Aura of Vitality and eventually Greater Visage of the Deity, which together give a further +16 to strength. But that only works if you have time to prepare, unless you have a Casting Glove (MiC) and can both find and afford Quickened scrolls of those spells (and even then, you don't reach your full strength until the third round of combat).


The problem isn't 30 at lvl 20 though, it's 40 at lvl 30 (and continuing the pattern)

Yeah...the epic rules might theoretically work to infinite levels, but the higher you go, the worse the problems get. I play with a lot of houserules to fix the more glaring issues, and even then once it gets past about level 40 it still starts to fall apart.


And it's at least something PF has that isn't even epic, so at least somebody's been taking steps in the right direction.

What PF thing are you referring to here?

[Bohandas]

This is fighter specific, but what if we let fighters' bonus feats start being epic around level 12, that way they'd fall less behind casters and when they reached actual epic they'd have a leg up.

EDIT:
And we could do a similar thing with rogues; feats chosen in place of a special ability can be epic

EDIT:
Now that I think of it, given the description of bonus feats on page 7 of the Monster Manual a rogue may technically be able to take epic feats as special abilities by RAW given the fact that the bonus feat option does not state that they must meet the feat's prerequisites

[Asmotherion]

Depends; if the DM allows Epic Spells anything short of a Full Caster is going to be irelevant.

On the other hand the whole point of Epic Level play (for me at least) is to see what crazy OP spells you can come up with and test them against enemies that at least have a small chance to survive. Even more interesting is to fight enemy Spellcasters who can also cast Epic.

[Efrate]

You are technically correct about rogue. You ignore all prereqs between that and the like on the MM about bonus feats, so your rogue could take and use epic spellcasting if you really wanted him too with a reasonable investment in skills. It's known but in TO territory and I have never seen it allowed.

[Biggus]

This is fighter specific, but what if we let fighters' bonus feats start being epic around level 12, that way they'd fall less behind casters and when they reached actual epic they'd have a leg up.

EDIT:
And we could do a similar thing with rogues; feats chosen in place of a special ability can be epic

EDIT:
Now that I think of it, given the description of bonus feats on page 7 of the Monster Manual a rogue may technically be able to take epic feats as special abilities by RAW given the fact that the bonus feat option does not state that they must meet the feat's prerequisites

If we're going to be really technical about it, being epic isn't a prerequisite for epic feats, as they don't list "21st level" or anything similar under prerequisites. However, the DMG says "the following feats are only available to epic characters" which is pretty cut and dried, and the other sources of epic feats in 3.5 have similarly unambiguous statements.

[Mato]

So I have played in a couple epic games now and have noticed the fact that mundanes even ToB doesn't scale at all in epic and are left in the lurch by casters.They do scale, some.

All the save DCs continue to improve and certain maneuvers that already scale like insightful strike and burning blade continue to progress. ToB was never about logarithmic advancement in favor of ramping down until a refresh and extremely large amounts of damage are possible much earlier in the game. For a super simple example, for a bit over thirty thousand gold you can buy a manyfanged dagger to use with strike of perfect celerity which means it gives a +400 bonus to damage, or enough to kill most CR20 things in one hit at level 17. Where exactly do you go from there? Kill the same creature twice?

The answer is you branch out and learn a new talent of course.