Regarding the legacy stuff: I think 3e's Heroes of Battle, Miniatures Handbook, and Stronghold Builder's Guidebook are a good model to follow. Not because they're balanced, or because the stronghold components are well-priced, or because followers and commander ratings are simple and manageable--they're none of those, not by a long shot--but because they are modular and optional.

SBG doesn't say "Okay, PCs, it's level X, you have a castle now!" It merely provides rules for building strongholds of all sorts, from normal castles to astral dreadnoughts, and then lets the PCs do whatever they want with them. It provides the Landlord feat to help defray some of the costs, but it doesn't limit you to any level range for using the SBG otherwise. Same with army-commanding stuff. There's Leadership, Undead Leadership, Wild Cohort, Thrallherd, and similar for people who want cohorts/special companions and followers, and all of Heroes of Battle for people who want to command armies. You buy into the Sun Tzu minigame with feats, PrCs, etc. if you want to, or ignore them if you don't.

I'm kind of surprised that, with all of WotC's emphasis on how 5e can accommodate everyone's tastes with modules, they're baking legacy mechanics into the game instead of making them a module. (Though "integrating legacy mechanics" is a pretty good description of 5e overall. )

Quote Originally Posted by wadledo
In addition, no one likes high level play because even when wotc puts lots of effort into it (4e comes to mind), it's not that fundamentally different from low level play, just that the number are higher.
Methinks you haven't played many high level games, or if you have you've either tried to keep things similar to low-level play or haven't had many casters in your parties. Dungeons & Dragons generally turns into Logistics & Dragons by the mid levels; you stop worrying about every last arrow and bedroll and stop concerning yourself with walking around everywhere, and instead have enough cash and extradimensional storage to stop worrying about the fine details and have the ability to fly, teleport, or plane shift most places. Combat goes from "stab the goblins or fireball the orcs and hope to roll high" to "I can easily hit the buggers with a weapon or spell, now I need to find the right tactic to get around their immunities and other defenses."

As Oracle_Hunter pointed out, epic casters can do ridiculous, world-changing things, but that doesn't start in epic. Casters can start changing the world and setting the pace of the plot by mid levels, whether it's outfitting whole armies with siege weapons conjured out of thin air to hold off a ravening horde of orcs or teleport back and forth between three or four cities to administer them all at once or open trade routes between their home nation and the City of Brass or something else.

It's that plot- and world-shaping potential I like about mid-to-high level D&D. You can go toe to toe with armies of faceless evil mooks or play Fantasy SWAT Team in many systems, but you're rarely going to be able to make major changes to the status quo in games like Shadowrun or WoD with their fairly static settings (there are world-changers out there, but they aren't you) or CoC or WHFRP (you don't matter in the grand scheme of things) or the like; even many d20 variants like Conan or Iron Heroes take away all the tools you can use to shape the setting, leaving you at the mercy of the DM to decide if he wants the setting changed (if you're a player) or depriving you of the opportunity to be surprised by players' large-scale crazy plans (if you're a GM). Whether you personally like high-magic settings like Forgotten Realms or the Tippyverse or not, it's clear that player-driven plans like "I want to revolutionize the world's economy" or "I want to magitek-ify this Medieval setting" or "I want to build a moon base" just aren't an option in lower-magic settings, or at least can't be achieved personally and require the DM to basically hand you control of major nations to manage to pull them off.

Quote Originally Posted by Oracle_Hunter
People who enjoy 3e Epic games enjoy having casters that can do ridiculous things; it is a fundamentally different style of play from earlier where you operate under constraints. It makes no sense to include both types of game-play under one set of rules -- Core 5e should be "1-10 then retire" and then later release a "Epic 5e" module where people can design Fantasy Superheroes from Day 1 while also including a detailed system for "epic stories" like managing kingdoms, fighting Gods and whatnot. Anything less is simply not going to feel "epic" enough for these types of Players -- as 4e demonstrated.
One minor quibble: people don't necessarily want casters that can do ridiculous things, they want characters who can do ridiculous things. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the "high level fighters should be Beowulf"-type arguments tossed around here frequently, all of the 3e Epic Destiny homebrews that were popular a while back, and all the attempts to make tier 1 martial characters with plot-altering powers (misguided though the individual attempts often are).

Otherwise, on the need for god-slaying and divine ascension rules, that playstyle being fundamentally different from low-level play, etc. I completely agree.