What would you change about epic levels, in particular, epic spellcasting?

[StevenC21]

I recently finished playing Mask of the Betrayer in Neverwinter Nights 2. It's great, so go play it if you haven't. This question was prompted by myself noticing, though, how bland and boring it honestly is to play an epic spellcaster in that game.

Now, 3.5e proper definitely doesn't do epic levels exactly the same way as NWN 2, but it's rather similar. And I don't think that anyone would say that 3.5e has epic spellcasting done right by any stretch. It's a horribly broken system with numbers that go all over the place, that really can't be used effectively without heavy optimization, and if you do manage to use it correctly then you just break the game over and over again. I'm curious to hear what you guys would have done differently.

Personally, one of my biggest gripes about spellcasters at epic levels is the combat-ineffectiveness of most of the existing magic. Sure, epic spells are a thing, but a strong portion of your spells seem to just become all but worthless at epic levels - this is a combination of epic enemies piling on immunities, as well as their saving throws just massively outpacing your INT/WIS/CHA increases - and since you're not getting 10th+ level spells, you don't get the DC boost from increasing spell levels anymore.

Sure, there's a few "killer combos" where you can do obscene amounts of SR: No Ranged Touch Attack damage, but that's not especially interesting. And it really limits your options in combat.

So, how would you change epic spellcasting?

First of all, I personally would want to see an actual spell progression beyond 9th. The Epic Spell system just didn't work well at all. You never do get very many epic spell slots, so using them as a primary combat tool is a terrible idea.

10th, 11th, etc. spells are, in my opinion, the natural way to progress the game. Of course, this could require a lot of work to make unique spells for all the different classes and such. One fix for this could be to pad out the spell lists with "Epic" versions of existing spells - Mass Disintegrate could be an epic spell, for example, with either additional targets or an AoE perhaps, and an improved damage die cap.

I just don't like how useless even SoS or SoD spells become at epic levels because of increasing saves and massive lists of immunities.

[Morphic tide]

The reason for the lack of "hard" 10th level and up spells is Faerun lore, they actually did exist, but when a human civilization reached the point they could actually use the things on something resembling a regular basis they ended up borking magic Plane-wide because a guy invented a 12th level Spell to steal the divinity of the God of Magic. Killing then-him in the process and ruining Netheril, the civilization in question, due to not having an instruction manual and thus literally breaking the laws of magic until a new, proper, God of Magic came about. "Epic level" spells are an end-run around this restriction, using magic independently of its normal organizing structure so as to bypass the restrictions it's "supposed" to have.

Given this, I'd keep the seed-and-modifier structure of Epic Spellcasting, but axe paying for basic scaling, and organize seeds into Circles that act as the "base" spell level of the effect for prerequisites required. Furthermore, I'd give a framework for backlash in the event of the caster pushing beyond their means, rather than static costs built into the spell to make it work in the first place. You should be able to push your luck, but the worse you do and the grander the effort made, the nastier the side-effects.

My own "main" issue with Epic levels is that things explode from 21st onwards, with jumps and enormous exponents making it so that there's no reasonable way to "connect" the levels. Drag the "primary" numeric scaling back to mostly linear from that point forward, including GP costs, and re-factor things around giving sensible content to play a 21-40 campaign. Then give CR ranges for cosmic events, with a lot of "at least" statements. It doesn't matter how hard the Lady of Pain stomps Azmodeus, only that she can fight off everything he can send her way.

[Zanos]

Frankly, just axe Epic Spellcasting entirely and key it back to spell levels. Epic Magic is based on a skill check, and those are so incredibly easy to break even when you aren't an epic spellcaster. Spell levels are mostly a fine mechanic. You can push out the progression a bit, giving 10ths at 21 and then maybe another spell level every 4 levels after or something like that. You'd have to make up almost all of the spells but you would have to do that anyway with epic magic. You do have to think about what you want magic to actually do at epic. Most things you would expect extraordinarily powerful wizards to do were kind of covered by 9th level. You could just use existing spells and juice up the scale, but metamagic and improved spell capacity could already cover quite a bit of that. At some point you'd have to be blowing up planets and smiting gods to justify the spell level, but maybe that's what you want?


The reason for the lack of "hard" 10th level and up spells is Faerun lore, they actually did exist, but when a human civilization reached the point they could actually use the things on something resembling a regular basis they ended up borking magic Plane-wide because a guy invented a 12th level Spell to steal the divinity of the God of Magic. Killing then-him in the process and ruining Netheril, the civilization in question, due to not having an instruction manual and thus literally breaking the laws of magic until a new, proper, God of Magic came about. "Epic level" spells are an end-run around this restriction, using magic independently of its normal organizing structure so as to bypass the restrictions it's "supposed" to have.
It's kind of hard to blame Karsus considering his nation was being destroyed by a plague of magic devouring monsters that Mystryl was not clearly doing anything about. It's pretty lame how the lore treats Karsus, considering the fall of Netheril was technically caused by Mystrl cutting off the Weave entirely to prevent Karsus's poor control from causing fluctuations. And then Karsus is permanently barred from the afterlife of every god, confined to be a vestige, and his entirely bloodline cursed to never again be able to cast magic. He was arrogant, sure, but the dude did his best to save his country and his people, and not only were they all killed for it but the gods basically cursed his soul and his bloodline for eternity.

Frankly, the entire thing could have been avoided if the God of Magic had bothered even once to communicate with the single most powerful mortal spellcaster to ever exist. But the arrogance of mortals pales in comparison to the arrogance of deities in FR. You can thank Ed, I guess. In any case, Mystryl/Mystra consistently allowing tens of thousands of people to die(see also: the spellplague) for nebulous reasons that are totally inline with her grand schemes is no reason to leave a broken system in place.

[RandomPeasant]

Epic needs to be redesigned from the ground up. Actually, it's worse than that, because a decent chunk of pre-Epic gameplay also needs to be redesigned. What Epic Spellcasting should be doing is providing vasty rituals of mighty power so characters can do things like shut off the sun, call down an endless winter, or unleash terrible plagues upon the world. However, there aren't really mechanics for that sort of thing to interact with. There's no real rules for kingdom-management type stuff, so you can't even begin to answer questions like "what happens to agriculture when a Xixecal marches south, and what magics could the PCs use to mitigate that". As far as the comparison to combat magic goes, I would probably address that by compressing the system so that "Epic" is just the last ~5 levels of the twenty-level progression. Twenty is really quite a lot of levels, I don't think you need an additional chunk for fighting gods, demon lords, and elder evils.

[Kama Itachi]

TL;DR: 3.x at its core doesn't scale well into epics and several game design decisions around heroic spells and epic spells and class features make it worse. 3.x doesn't even scale well to level 16, much less 26 or 36.

I don't think you can apply a 'quick fix' to make epic levels not break totally, in part because the game itself breaks somewhere around level 14-17 and not 21+.

As for spellcasting in particular, epic spellcasting should do things that are utterly unique, (nearly) absolute, or on a completely new scale in terms of power and/or range. While some epic spells do this, they're not particularly useful combat spells, and D&D is a combat-focused RPG. Besides, how many epic spells can compete with Wish, Miracle, or Power Word: Kill? Most of the combat-useful spells would just be non-epic spells with Moar Dice or lacking save/SR.

Part of the problem is also how 3.x scales. If you want to add hit points to a monster, you have to improve its Constitution score (as long as it's not an Undead or Construct, though PF1e fixes the former and I usually houserule STR or DEX bonus=CON HP bonus to fix the latter) or add more Hit Dice. You can only increase CON by so much before the numbers get silly and you have a player revolt, and Hit Dice increases also increase To-Hit bonuses, saving throws, feat progression, and caster level for spell-like abilities. Heroic levels handle this by giving the players magic items to bring their progression closer to monster scaling, but taken too far into epic players eventually have 60 or more to every ability score that counts for them.

Of course, this doesn't even get into how badly martials get shafted by epics. Casters have their power curve go from x2 to x3 or x4, martials get their power curve reduced by way of having worse to-hit bonus and saving throw progression and getting virtually no new class features from epics. Heck, for most martial builds it's better to just take heroic base or prestige classes in Epics to get bonus feats, SLAs, or passive spell effects. Case in point: Occult Slayer, a 5-level heroic prestige class, gives extra damage vs. spellcasters, Spell Turning 2/day, and passive Mind Blank as an Ex, among a few other features. Legendary Dreadnought, over TEN levels, gives +20 to break doors (but only 2/day), +20 to resist bull rushes (but only 2/day), 24 bonus HP, two bonus feats, and non-stacking DR 6/-. I know you're more interested in making epic spellcasting better, but the caster needs a meatshield and if you don't want the melees to retire their characters and pick up a caster then they need to be able to contribute too.

[Biggus]

Now, 3.5e proper definitely doesn't do epic levels exactly the same way as NWN 2, but it's rather similar. And I don't think that anyone would say that 3.5e has epic spellcasting done right by any stretch. It's a horribly broken system with numbers that go all over the place, that really can't be used effectively without heavy optimization, and if you do manage to use it correctly then you just break the game over and over again. I'm curious to hear what you guys would have done differently.

Personally, one of my biggest gripes about spellcasters at epic levels is the combat-ineffectiveness of most of the existing magic. Sure, epic spells are a thing, but a strong portion of your spells seem to just become all but worthless at epic levels - this is a combination of epic enemies piling on immunities, as well as their saving throws just massively outpacing your INT/WIS/CHA increases - and since you're not getting 10th+ level spells, you don't get the DC boost from increasing spell levels anymore.

Sure, there's a few "killer combos" where you can do obscene amounts of SR: No Ranged Touch Attack damage, but that's not especially interesting. And it really limits your options in combat.

So, how would you change epic spellcasting?

First of all, I personally would want to see an actual spell progression beyond 9th. The Epic Spell system just didn't work well at all. You never do get very many epic spell slots, so using them as a primary combat tool is a terrible idea.

10th, 11th, etc. spells are, in my opinion, the natural way to progress the game. Of course, this could require a lot of work to make unique spells for all the different classes and such. One fix for this could be to pad out the spell lists with "Epic" versions of existing spells - Mass Disintegrate could be an epic spell, for example, with either additional targets or an AoE perhaps, and an improved damage die cap.

I just don't like how useless even SoS or SoD spells become at epic levels because of increasing saves and massive lists of immunities.

I had pretty much this exact thought years ago (partly inspired by the original NWN in fact), and in the process of trying to make it work discovered there are a lot of problems.

You can make epic casters progress like normal casters, as in 10th-level spells at level 21 then a new spell level every 2 levels afterwards, with new spells every level that increase in power like normal spells, but that leads to such rampant power inflation it's only at all manageable if you're not planning to play to past low epic levels, say level 30 maximum. Also, if you're going to do that, you'll need to think up some awesome new class features to give the other classes (the Epic Destinies in Dragon 363 might be a good places to start) and some equally-awesome multiclassing feats to stop everyone else falling behind even more than they already do at epic. Oh, and you'll need to adjust the CRs of epic monsters as characters will soon become a lot stronger than under the existing system.

If you want it to work to higher epic levels, it'll need to be a toned-down version of what they get pre-epic. When I was trying to do it, I eventually decided that if they only get one base spell per day at each level and they don't get any bonus epic feats, it could be just about workable. But there are still problems: either they have to put pretty much all their resources into boosting their casting stat, or after a while their spell levels outpace their bonus spells so they just get the one base spell per level. Also, having no bonus epic feats makes them a lot less customisable than the existing system, which some people might find less fun than the existing system. YMMV.

The other alternative is to make 10th+ spell levels work the same as standard ones, but make them come much less frequently. In Forgotten Realms history, Karsus was 41st level and the only mortal ever to cast a 12th-level spell. I don't know if it's ever stated what levels 10th and 11th level spells became available, but I'd guess 21 and 31.

It could be workable to make the spell progression half what it is pre-epic, so 10ths at level 21, 11ths at level 25 and so on. But even that only put the problem off a bit, so again it depends what level you want to be able to play to.

The problem with immunities is a major one at epic. It's not just spells: past a certain point immunity to crits and sneak attacks becomes very common among NPCs, shutting down rogues and crit-fishers for example. My solution to this is to split immunity into two categories, virtual immunity and true immunity. The former replaces almost all immunities derived from spells and items, and gives a huge bonus instead of total immunity, the latter gives total immunity and is largely restricted to gods, major artifacts, and intrinsic immunities (eg a creature without a head is completely immune to beheading). This slows down the game a little, but it does mean that a much wider range of spells and abilities remain usable.

Another issue with save-or-suck effects at epic is the Multispell feat; pre-epic you generally don't have to save more than twice a round (one normal, one quickened) but with Multispell you might be saving five, ten or more times per round, so it becomes necessary that enemies only fail on a natural one or it effectively becomes no-save-just-lose. Personally I don't allow Multispell to be taken multiple times, and also allow an analogous feat for noncasters which allows them an extra swift action per round.

As for Epic Spellcasting (the feat) it needs a major overhaul, but what form that makes depends on how you want it to work. If you only want to go to lowish epic levels and are happy with characters being able to destroy planets at level 30 it's going to be very different to if you want to go to level 40+ and use the existing ELH monsters more-or-less as written.

[Jack_Simth]

Step 1: Nuke the Epic Spellcasting feat, "clarify" that the cap increase from Reserves of Strength only applies to the CL boost from that feat. So a 20th level caster using Reserves of Strength on a Fireball deals (up to) 13d6, not 23d6.
Step 2: All base (not PrC) casting classes get a bonus feature at 21st:
Limitless: Any spell with a caster level-based cap now has that cap raised to your class level or the base limit of the spell, whichever is higher (so 30d6 fireballs as a Sorcerer-30, but only 25d6 fireballs as a Sorcerer-25/Archmage-5). Additionally, metamagic feats can now stack with themselves via "d&d math": So an extended×3 Mage Armor lasts 4 hours/level in a 4th level slot, and an Empowered ×3 Fireball deals 2.5 times the base damage roll in a 9th. Save DCs for spells are raised to 10 + 1/2 CL + casting mod + relevant feats and class features.
Step 3: Slots continue to progress above 20th according to the same pattern as below 20th. Classes with limited spells known gain 2 bonus spells known of any level each level.

[Biggus]

martials get their power curve reduced by way of having worse to-hit bonus and saving throw progression

Minor correction: epic saves for all classes progress at the fast progression. Agree with pretty much everything else you said though.


"clarify" that the cap increase from Reserves of Strength only applies to the CL boost from that feat. So a 20th level caster using Reserves of Strength on a Fireball deals (up to) 13d6, not 23d6.

Very much agree that this is the correct reading of Reserves of Strength.


Step 2: All base (not PrC) casting classes get a bonus feature at 21st:
Limitless: Any spell with a caster level-based cap now has that cap raised to your class level or the base limit of the spell, whichever is higher (so 30d6 fireballs as a Sorcerer-30, but only 25d6 fireballs as a Sorcerer-25/Archmage-5). Additionally, metamagic feats can now stack with themselves via "d&d math": So an extended×3 Mage Armor lasts 4 hours/level in a 4th level slot, and an Empowered ×3 Fireball deals 2.5 times the base damage roll in a 9th. Save DCs for spells are raised to 10 + 1/2 CL + casting mod + relevant feats and class features.
Step 3: Slots continue to progress above 20th according to the same pattern as below 20th. Classes with limited spells known gain 2 bonus spells known of any level each level.

Have you actually played with these rules? They seem like they'd run into a lot of the problems I outlined in my previous post, at least if you played more than a few levels into epic.

[Jack_Simth]

Minor correction: epic saves for all classes progress at the fast progression. Agree with pretty much everything else you said though.



Very much agree that this is the correct reading of Reserves of Strength.



Have you actually played with these rules? They seem like they'd run into a lot of the problems I outlined in my previous post, at least if you played more than a few levels into epic.

No, but really, you've had most of those problems for quite some time prior to Epic. You need to get folks into it for more than the mechanics.

[Morphic tide]

I think the 2e rules were 10th level spells at 25, 11th at 35, and 12th at 40. Bringing it to a clean per-five-levels would mean 12th level spells are possible at 35, but the problem is that the precedent for 10th level and up isn't useful for day-to-day gameplay and has explicit setting forbiddance. There's enough drastic structural problems with high-level casters waving away campaigns at level 20, giving them even more ridiculous just-because buttons to push isn't going to be sustainable. Thus Epic Spellcasting.

Using a skill check may be breakable, but it isn't that hard to work out the readily-available means to balance accordingly, and you can gate the qualitative scaling with skill ranks and caster level.

[Doctor Despair]

Without having read the whole thread in detail yet, I wanted to start by responding to the OP: spellcasters at epic levels are playing a different game than what you want to. You're complaining about your non-epic spells being worthless against many epic enemies, when you can, in many cases, warp reality to an extent that those enemies are trivialized. You can resolve most conflicts without direct battle as well.

I think you have to fundamentally ask yourself what you want epic gameplay to look like. As it is, the system is abusable such that most level 21 casters can transcend the mortal plane and warp reality to their liking the second they hit that ECL. That suggests, to me, that in written settings, deities use their portfolio sense to smite any casters that would abuse epic spellcasting to do silly things before they have the opportunity to do so. There are no secrets from sufficiently motivated greater deities, and they have weeks or even months of warning to prepare for your shenanigans.

If you don't like the lack of freedom/autonomy that this implies (i.e., your character has free will as long as they use it to make choices the deities approve of), then you need to rework the system. Either the deities need rewriting so that they can't see into the future, or epic spellcasting needs to look differently. I'm personally fine with the RAW that any character smart enough to be an epic spellcaster is smart enough not to shake things up too much, but if we'd prefer a system where PCs just CAN'T shake things up too much, we can look at some of the homebrew options people are discussing here.

In the OP, for example, you seem to want epic spellcasters to continue blasting and using tactical maneuvers instead of world-bending maneuvers. One quick fix might be adding epic metamagic to bypass immunities, for example, or making irresistible spell (a third party feat) an epic option. These achieve the same result (rocket tag, casters trivialize challenges and auto-win) while bypassing the caster-level/spellcraft-boosting shenanigans of epic spellcasting's subsystem. Alternatively, as you suggested, you could make 10th/11th/12th/etc level spellslots with new custom spells... It all depends on the kind of game you want epic casters to play. They're all valid preferences, in my opinion, although some would be more fun to play than others.

[Max Caysey]

I recently finished playing Mask of the Betrayer in Neverwinter Nights 2. It's great, so go play it if you haven't. This question was prompted by myself noticing, though, how bland and boring it honestly is to play an epic spellcaster in that game.

Now, 3.5e proper definitely doesn't do epic levels exactly the same way as NWN 2, but it's rather similar. And I don't think that anyone would say that 3.5e has epic spellcasting done right by any stretch. It's a horribly broken system with numbers that go all over the place, that really can't be used effectively without heavy optimization, and if you do manage to use it correctly then you just break the game over and over again. I'm curious to hear what you guys would have done differently.

Personally, one of my biggest gripes about spellcasters at epic levels is the combat-ineffectiveness of most of the existing magic. Sure, epic spells are a thing, but a strong portion of your spells seem to just become all but worthless at epic levels - this is a combination of epic enemies piling on immunities, as well as their saving throws just massively outpacing your INT/WIS/CHA increases - and since you're not getting 10th+ level spells, you don't get the DC boost from increasing spell levels anymore.

Sure, there's a few "killer combos" where you can do obscene amounts of SR: No Ranged Touch Attack damage, but that's not especially interesting. And it really limits your options in combat.

So, how would you change epic spellcasting?

First of all, I personally would want to see an actual spell progression beyond 9th. The Epic Spell system just didn't work well at all. You never do get very many epic spell slots, so using them as a primary combat tool is a terrible idea.

10th, 11th, etc. spells are, in my opinion, the natural way to progress the game. Of course, this could require a lot of work to make unique spells for all the different classes and such. One fix for this could be to pad out the spell lists with "Epic" versions of existing spells - Mass Disintegrate could be an epic spell, for example, with either additional targets or an AoE perhaps, and an improved damage die cap.

I just don't like how useless even SoS or SoD spells become at epic levels because of increasing saves and massive lists of immunities.

Problem with epic spellcasting is that its not difficult to mitigate the Spellcraft check down to 0, meaning the spell takes 0 days and cost 0 gp to create. So you instantly have the spell for free! Broken system!

[sleepyphoenixx]

Personally i'd just remove epic levels completely (well, i already do). They add nothing to the game. The game doesn't need to scale infinitely.
You don't need epic levels to play a powerful spellcaster. Anything after level 15 already does that just fine.

It's simply not necessary to fix a system that doesn't add anything.


Personally, one of my biggest gripes about spellcasters at epic levels is the combat-ineffectiveness of most of the existing magic. Sure, epic spells are a thing, but a strong portion of your spells seem to just become all but worthless at epic levels - this is a combination of epic enemies piling on immunities, as well as their saving throws just massively outpacing your INT/WIS/CHA increases - and since you're not getting 10th+ level spells, you don't get the DC boost from increasing spell levels anymore.


I'm not really sure why you think spell DCs should keep up with enemy saves without any investment.
Every other class has to pump a significant chunk of WBL into their main combat ability to keep it relevant, why should spellcasters be the exception?
They also generally have to specialize. Only casters get away with the generalist approach for most of pre-epic because spells are just that good.

You can certainly complain about a lack of such options (they exist, but you really have to go book diving for anything beyond Spell Focus), but the general idea of your spells being mediocre without specialization is one of the few balancing factors spellcasters have. Imo there are already too many no-save spells that make a mockery of this system, which is one of the main contributors to mundane-caster imbalance.

That's not limited to epic levels btw, it applies just as well beforehand. If you want higher spell DCs invest into having higher spell DCs instead of expecting to get them for free.


Problem with epic spellcasting is that its not difficult to mitigate the Spellcraft check down to 0, meaning the spell takes 0 days and cost 0 gp to create. So you instantly have the spell for free! Broken system!
That's easily fixed by basing cost and development time on spellcraft DC before mitigating factors. It's honestly baffling that it wasn't done that way in the first place.
If anything adding a bunch of mitigating factors should increase development cost and time, not reduce it.

[Biggus]

No, but really, you've had most of those problems for quite some time prior to Epic.

This is true, but it's also true that they rapidly get even worse if you continue existing progressions into epic. At nonepic levels it takes a degree of skill to completely break the game, at epic levels with nonepic progressions a caster becomes a god by about level 30 without even trying.


You need to get folks into it for more than the mechanics.

Not sure what you mean by this?


Problem with epic spellcasting is that its not difficult to mitigate the Spellcraft check down to 0, meaning the spell takes 0 days and cost 0 gp to create. So you instantly have the spell for free! Broken system!

Yeah, this is one of the worst problems, the variant of setting a minimum DC suggested in the epic level FAQ should have been the default rule IMO. The other really bad one is the additional participants rule, without any limits on how many you can have an epic caster who's the head of a decent-sized religion or mage guild has effectively no limit on what they do.


Personally i'd just remove epic levels completely (well, i already do). They add nothing to the game. The game doesn't need to scale infinitely.


I feel that "I don't want to play at epic levels so that means they shouldn't exist" is such an obvious fallacy it shouldn't need pointing out. I've enjoyed playing at epic, and it's just false to say it adds nothing to the game. It adds nothing that you want to the game, and that isn't the same thing at all.

I do agree it was a mistake to try and make the game scale infinitely though, it would have been a lot simpler (and worked a lot better) if they'd set a level cap of 30 or 40.

[Zanos]

Problem with epic spellcasting is that its not difficult to mitigate the Spellcraft check down to 0, meaning the spell takes 0 days and cost 0 gp to create. So you instantly have the spell for free! Broken system!
Well, that's half the problem. The other half is that if you want to make an "epic" fireball that deals 20d6 damage and takes a standard action to cast, it's gonna run you over half a million gold and ~21000 xp if you aren't using mitigation.

Base energy DC: 19
Standard action cast: +20
Add +10d6 damage: +20
DC 59

Cost to develop:
59*9000 = 531,000gp
531,000/25 = 21240xp

[sleepyphoenixx]

I feel that "I don't want to play at epic levels so that means they shouldn't exist" is such an obvious fallacy it shouldn't need pointing out. I've enjoyed playing at epic, and it's just false to say it adds nothing to the game. It adds nothing that you want to the game, and that isn't the same thing at all.

I do agree it was a mistake to try and make the game scale infinitely though, it would have been a lot simpler (and worked a lot better) if they'd set a level cap of 30 or 40.

I meant exactly what i said. What does epic add that you couldn't already do at level 18 or 19?
Epic Spellcasting, which i think we both agree is too broken to actually use.

So what am i forgetting? What else is left? Because i honestly can't remember anything other than that.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I meant exactly what i said. What does epic add that you couldn't already do at level 18 or 19?
Epic Spellcasting, which i think we both agree is too broken to actually use.

So what am i forgetting? What else is left? Because i honestly can't remember anything other than that.

Weapons above +10, spellcasting with higher-than-9th level for metamagic, epic vestiges, epic warlock invocations, familiars casting 8th level spells, absorbing more than one charge of spellfire from an item at once, having bardic music bypass all mind-affecting immunities, rebuke outsiders, make thrown attacks as a martial against everyone in a 30ft radius......

I mean, it's right there and I'm not pointing out what every epic feat and every epic prestige class does. As the Giant once said "the difference between high-level and low-epic is mostly one of proportion", but really, so is every level gain. As soon as you gain Teleport and Plane Shift (which don't really have a lower-level equivalent), everything higher is mostly "the same, but bigger, and less resisted". You can feel like it means playing above 11th level is pointless, and I won't argue with that, but it doesn't mean that higher levels have nothing to offer.

[RandomPeasant]

Weapons above +10, spellcasting with higher-than-9th level for metamagic, epic vestiges, epic warlock invocations, familiars casting 8th level spells, absorbing more than one charge of spellfire from an item at once, having bardic music bypass all mind-affecting immunities, rebuke outsiders, make thrown attacks as a martial against everyone in a 30ft radius......

Most of that is just "it goes to 11". Like, yes, at Epic levels you can have +11 weapons. Is that really substantively different from having +10 weapons? Would the game not work if you compressed the Epic Vestiges and Epic Invocations into 20 levels? Biggus already said he doesn't think the game should scale indefinitely. Once you've admitted that I think it's pretty hard to argue that 20 isn't enough levels. It's really a lot of levels, and we'd be better off clearly marking what each level range means than trying to drag things out. Then you end up with things like the Epic power of... making a bunch of close-range attacks.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Weapons above +10, spellcasting with higher-than-9th level for metamagic, epic vestiges, epic warlock invocations, familiars casting 8th level spells, absorbing more than one charge of spellfire from an item at once, having bardic music bypass all mind-affecting immunities, rebuke outsiders, make thrown attacks as a martial against everyone in a 30ft radius......

I mean, it's right there and I'm not pointing out what every epic feat and every epic prestige class does. As the Giant once said "the difference between high-level and low-epic is mostly one of proportion", but really, so is every level gain. As soon as you gain Teleport and Plane Shift (which don't really have a lower-level equivalent), everything higher is mostly "the same, but bigger, and less resisted". You can feel like it means playing above 11th level is pointless, and I won't argue with that, but it doesn't mean that higher levels have nothing to offer.

Most of those sound more like balance problems than features to me. Others are already available before epic anyway.
If there's a particular functionality from an epic feat you want your players to have just change the requirements to make them available earlier.
None of those things require epic levels to function.

And considering the mess that is epic level progression i'd argue they would function better pre-epic with a little houseruling than using them as written.

[Jack_Simth]

This is true, but it's also true that they rapidly get even worse if you continue existing progressions into epic. At nonepic levels it takes a degree of skill to completely break the game, at epic levels with nonepic progressions a caster becomes a god by about level 30 without even trying.
So? You can always boost the baddies to match. Sure, the more resources you have available, the less skill it takes to meet a goal. And yes, the caster / noncaster disparity gets progressively worse. But again, that's been a problem for quite some time prior to Epic (exactly how long it's been is table-dependent, but nearly any table will have noticed the caster / non-caster disparity well before 20th), it just gets worse with levels. Which mostly just means you'll need to have the noncasters reroll into casters if you want to go very far into Epic (and the casters should probably make undead and/or constructs as proxies for the occasional dead magic zone).

Again: this has been a problem (or a feature: Depends on your perspective) for quite some time, as caster supremacy is pretty well established well before 20th.


Not sure what you mean by this?We're talking about 3.5 D&D.

How to break the game is very well established. There's no shortage of ways to do it before 20th, quite a few ways to do it prior to 15th, many prior to 10th, and even some prior to 5th. If folks are in it for the mechanics and the big numbers... yeah, 3.5 will break, the DM will need to up the ante, and the game becomes rocket tag. This is largely true of basically any level.

Ultimately, the game's integrity relies on people trying not to break the game (although what that looks like varies from table to table, simply because what the game "should" look like also varies from table to table). You'll need folks who are interested in characters over mechanics, and who agree with your particular take on what an Epic game of D&D "should" look like, and actively try to make that happen. Otherwise, you'll get something very much not like what you're after (it's a common problem when folks are after different things).