Epic Pathfinder

[Bartmanhomer]

Is there such a thing as Epic Pathfinder. You know levels beyond level 20? :confused:

[Eldonauran]

You can keep gaining levels indefinitely, until you run out of class levels in all the classes. The experience costs becomes ridiculous after a while.

[Bartmanhomer]

You can keep gaining levels indefinitely, until you run out of class levels in all the classes. The experience costs becomes ridiculous after a while.

What about epic monsters?

[Eldonauran]

Oh, there are plenty of creatures out there with CR's in the high twenties and even thirties. You go any higher than that and you are playing well outside the scope of the original game.

[legomaster00156]

I suggest looking into the Mythic rules instead, which are not additional levels beyond 20, but a system of tiers that rise alongside your normal leveling.

[Biggus]

You can keep gaining levels indefinitely, until you run out of class levels in all the classes.

Can you? Where does it say that?

[Eldonauran]

I am away from my source material, so I will point you towards Character Advancement (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement/) at the 2d0pfsrd. Spoiler-ed below for your convenience.


Advancing Beyond 20th Level

Although classes doesn’t describe what happens after 20th level, this isn’t to say that there are no resources available to you should you wish to continue your campaign on to 21st level and beyond. Rules for epic-level play like this exist in numerous products that are compatible with this game, although in many cases these alternative rules can provide unanticipated problems. For example, if your campaign world is populated by creatures and villains who, at the upper limit of power, can challenge a 20th-level character, where will epic-level PCs go for challenges? You might be looking at creating an entirely new campaign setting, one set on different planes, planets, or dimensions from the one where your players spent their first 20 levels, and that’s a lot of work.

The following are brief guidelines to continue play beyond 20th level. These guidelines aren’t robust enough to keep the game vibrant and interesting on their own for much longer past 20th level, but they should do in a pinch for a campaign that needs, say, 22 or 23 experience levels to wrap up. Likewise, you can use these rules to create super-powerful NPCs for 20th-level characters to face.

Experience Points

To gain a level beyond 20th, a character must double the experience points needed to achieve the previous level. Thus, assuming the medium XP progression, a 20th-level character needs 2,100,000 XP to become 21st level, since he needed 1,050,000 XP to reach 20th level from 19th. He’d then need 4,200,000 XP to reach 22nd level, 8,400,000 XP to reach 23rd, and so on.

Scaling Powers

Hit dice, base attack bonuses, and saving throws continue to increase at the same rate beyond 20th level, as appropriate for the class in question. Note that no character can have more than 4 attacks based on its base attack bonus. Note also that, before long, the difference between good saving throws and poor saving throws becomes awkwardly large—the further you get from 20th level, the more noticeable this difference grows, and for high-level characters, bolstering their poor saving throws should become increasingly important. Class abilities that have a set, increasing rate, such as a barbarian’s damage reduction, a fighter’s bonus feats and weapon training, a paladin’s smite evil, or a rogue’s sneak attack continue to progress at the appropriate rate.

Spells

A spellcaster’s caster level continues to increase by one for each level beyond 20th level. Every odd-numbered level, a spellcaster gains access to a new level of spell one above his previous maximum level, gaining one spell slot in that new level. These spell slots can be used to prepare or cast spells adjusted by metamagic feats or any known spell of lower levels. Every even-numbered level, a spellcaster gains additional spell slots equal to the highest level spell he can currently cast. He can split these new slots any way he wants among the slots he currently has access to.

For example, a 21st-level wizard gains a single 10th-level spell slot, in which he can prepare any spell of level 1st through 9th, or in which he can prepare a metamagic spell that results in an effective spell level of 10 (such as extended summon monster IX, or quickened disintegrate). At 22nd level he gains 10 spell-levels’ worth of new spell slots, and can gain 10 1st-level spells per day, two 5th-level spells per day, one 7th-level and one 3rd-level spell per day, or one more 10th-level spell per day. At 23rd level, he gains a single 11th-level spell slot, and so on.

Spellcasters who have a limited number of spells known (such as bards and sorcerers) can opt out of the benefits they gain (either a new level of spells or a number of spell slots) for that level and in exchange learn two more spells of any level they can currently cast.

You might want to further adjust the rate of spell level gain for classes (like paladins and rangers) who gain spells more slowly than more dedicated spellcaster classes.

Multiclassing/Prestige Classes

The simplest way to progress beyond 20th level is to simply multiclass or take levels in a prestige class, in which case you gain all of the abilities of the new class level normally. This effectively treats 20th level as a hard limit for class level, but not as a hard limit for total character level.

If you want a more 'official' link, try this one out (https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Beyond%2020th%20Level&Category=Ending%20the%20Campaign).

[Silvercrys]

I guess I'll just point out that there is a very good reason given for reducing save and attack bonus scaling at epic levels in 3.5 and that I think Paizo should have simply capped them at your 20th class level while allowing your class features and such to accumulate if they didn't want to fiddle with a reduced progression. They even point this problem out in their Epic text and then handwave it with "just boost your weak saves since it's more important now, duh".

But particularly if you're intending to go anywhere near what I will call "Deep Epic" (level 30ish+) you will run into the problem of bonuses outscaling some characters. At level 30 the Wizard will have a Reflex save of around +9, and the Rogue will have a Reflex of +17 base. At level 40 they'll be at +12 and +22, respectively, and the Wizard will be rolling Reflex saves to see if they got a 20. The same problem occurs with attack bonuses; eventually the half-attack bonus classes won't even be able to hit touch ACs due to deflection bonuses and Dex bonuses outstripping their ability to hit. Etc. It's even worse in Pathfinder because a bunch of, say, the Fighter's class features are just a scaling bonus to attack and damage rolls that will scale for basically ever.

If I were going to attempt such a thing myself, I'd crib the 3.5 epic rules almost word for word (rebuilding the epic base and prestige class advancement tables for the Pathfinder version of those classes, of course), but not allow 3.5 epic feats (though of I had time I'd probably homebrew a list of Epic feats based on Pathfinder feats). Spellcasters can have the Pathfinder version of extra spell slots in place of the Improved Spell Capacity feat, though, it looks kind of neat.

[Biggus]

I am away from my source material, so I will point you towards Character Advancement (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement/) at the 2d0pfsrd.

Thank you, I missed that bit somehow.

While it doesn't specify a maximum level, it does make it pretty clear that these rules are only intended to go a few levels past 20th and will become disfunctional beyond that, so I think saying "You can keep gaining levels indefinitely, until you run out of class levels in all the classes" is misrepresenting the situation somewhat...

[Eldonauran]

Thank you, I missed that bit somehow.

While it doesn't specify a maximum level, it does make it pretty clear that these rules are only intended to go a few levels past 20th and will become disfunctional beyond that, so I think saying "You can keep gaining levels indefinitely, until you run out of class levels in all the classes" is misrepresenting the situation somewhat...

*shrug* The OP question wasn't about the viability of levels over 20. I am merely here to facilitate answering the question, not defending the perceived misrepresentation of my statements. Source material has been linked and you can review it at your leisure. If I misspoke, you can disregard the comment and find the information you want at the sources provided.

[Aotrs Commander]

I guess I'll just point out that there is a very good reason given for reducing save and attack bonus scaling at epic levels in 3.5 and that I think Paizo should have simply capped them at your 20th class level while allowing your class features and such to accumulate if they didn't want to fiddle with a reduced progression. They even point this problem out in their Epic text and then handwave it with "just boost your weak saves since it's more important now, duh".

But particularly if you're intending to go anywhere near what I will call "Deep Epic" (level 30ish+) you will run into the problem of bonuses outscaling some characters. At level 30 the Wizard will have a Reflex save of around +9, and the Rogue will have a Reflex of +17 base. At level 40 they'll be at +12 and +22, respectively, and the Wizard will be rolling Reflex saves to see if they got a 20.

Shouldn't there only be 6 points between poor and good saves at Epic, though, since you get +1 every 2 levels? (+6 vrs +12, +5 to each for every 10 levels?) - obviously stuff like rogue reflex, cleric will and barbarian fort will be noticably spiked higher because thse are stas that the character is likely to spend special effort on boosting, but...?



You make a good point on the half attack class (as does PF) - I am planning on running a adventure path converted 17-Epic at some point in the medium-term future (though I doubt it will go into "deep epic" if I can avoid it) and I perhaps ought to consider that.

Briefly considered whether you could cap BAB at 20 and then scale, but I realsied that actually doens;t make a difference at all to half-BAB than what exists alreeady; nevermind then!

[Silvercrys]

Right, that's how it is in 3.5 epic, but in Pathfinder's epic blurb they tell you to advance your saves and attack bonus the same way you did from 1-20 with the caveat that you should probably do something about your bad save(s) and not play for more than a few levels past 20.

[Jack_Simth]

I'll just leave This person's Epic Pathfinder Homebrew (http://jessesdnd.com/epicpf) here....

[GrayDeath]

I guess I'll just point out that there is a very good reason given for reducing save and attack bonus scaling at epic levels in 3.5 and that I think Paizo should have simply capped them at your 20th class level while allowing your class features and such to accumulate if they didn't want to fiddle with a reduced progression. They even point this problem out in their Epic text and then handwave it with "just boost your weak saves since it's more important now, duh".

But particularly if you're intending to go anywhere near what I will call "Deep Epic" (level 30ish+) you will run into the problem of bonuses outscaling some characters. At level 30 the Wizard will have a Reflex save of around +9, and the Rogue will have a Reflex of +17 base. At level 40 they'll be at +12 and +22, respectively, and the Wizard will be rolling Reflex saves to see if they got a 20. The same problem occurs with attack bonuses; eventually the half-attack bonus classes won't even be able to hit touch ACs due to deflection bonuses and Dex bonuses outstripping their ability to hit. Etc. It's even worse in Pathfinder because a bunch of, say, the Fighter's class features are just a scaling bonus to attack and damage rolls that will scale for basically ever.

If I were going to attempt such a thing myself, I'd crib the 3.5 epic rules almost word for word (rebuilding the epic base and prestige class advancement tables for the Pathfinder version of those classes, of course), but not allow 3.5 epic feats (though of I had time I'd probably homebrew a list of Epic feats based on Pathfinder feats). Spellcasters can have the Pathfinder version of extra spell slots in place of the Improved Spell Capacity feat, though, it looks kind of neat.


Right, that's how it is in 3.5 epic, but in Pathfinder's epic blurb they tell you to advance your saves and attack bonus the same way you did from 1-20 with the caveat that you should probably do something about your bad save(s) and not play for more than a few levels past 20.

Oh Noes, the noncasters get good stuff past Level 20! They may even hit stuff they attack?

How ever should a poor Reflex 9 base wizard compete with that, with only 10th Level Spells? ^^



Less sarcastic: Keeping normal BAB and Save progression for all Classes was how we did epic the very few times we used it anyway. And by banning more than one, very long time research needing, Epic Spell for any caster. Just look at the Epic Monsters. Unless you want ALL your Characters to be full Casters of course, but then again, given "normal" optimization, that will happen any way.....:)