Remaking/Merging Epic and Mythic (3.X/PF)

[Destro2119]

So recently I have been interested in beyond 20thlevel superpowered gameplay. In 3.X, this manifested in epic levels, and in Pathfinder it manifested in mythic tiers. Both had problems (epic was ludicrously underpowered 95% of the time, and stupidly cheesy the other 5%, while PF mythic retained martials are worthless and had stuff like "day long time stop" next to "gain +1 to DC"), but I am trying to combine the best of both worlds.

Epic's advantages were that it felt really epic, and had some genuinely good stuff, but mostly it just felt good to have a hero that could truly be the best of the best.

Mythic's advantages were flexibility (mythic power expenditure helps to replicate some of that Spheres goodness) and ability to do mythic stuff early because mythic tiers scale separately from levels.

I am trying to combine both into a single system that is also improved from its parts.

Some goals I am hoping for this system are:

-ability to make all classes do stuff, ie I feel at this level martials should be able to cut through force fields, lift mountains, fly like Superman through sheer force of will, move hypersonically, and casters should be Dr. Stranges in their respective fields. Epic and quite a bit of mythic stuff felt super underpowered because a lot of it was just taking away restrictions or literally adding +1 to hit.

-ability to scale coherently, ie BaB, hp et al can scale in such a way you don't randomly have a +30 to one save and a +8 to another, for one example

Some general concepts I think could be implemented are:

-creating a system that can scale like mythic, but also offer benefits for beyond 20h level. A general idea could be that mythic enables the powers, but epic enhances them.

-creating a resource pool for each class that can be used to activate and enhance powers and abilities.


Any help or feedback you can offer is welcomed.

[rel]

Streamlining things system wide by reducing restrictions and locking down numbers growth might be a good start.

The sheer power of spells aside, Casters usually do better out of epic and similar systems because the tools they get tend to be stand alone and entirely functional out of the gate.

Fighters meanwhile tend to get largely non-functional kit that is slowly brought into semi functionality through many incremental power ups. Any power built under that paradigm will seem lackluster by comparison.

And ignoring the existing paradigm and simply providing stand alone, functional power risks invalidating previous build resources or constraining your new power in a clunky way.

[Erik the Green]

Destro, you might find some good ideas in these past threads for martials (and even for spellcasters) that are cool _and_ useful and not just more "+1 of X" or how the @*$# does epic spellcasting even work?!:

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ions-and-Feats

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ine-Epic-Feats

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...c-Spellcasting

Also, what about making Mythic path powers into Epic feats and feat chains, with prereqs of character level +BAB or related skill level, powered by daily uses per the stat mod of whatever attribute seems most relevant to each feat?
I don't necessarily personally feel the whole one pool to power everything deal like PF made Mythic-ness be..why _not_ have an Epythic warblade who can single-stroke battle a mountain in half 20 times a day, but who can only tell a dragon to "sit" and make it stick a few times a day because their charisma isn't really that great even though they technically qualify for Epic Domination because their +Intimidate is very high?

Just my 2 cents-E

[Biggus]

at this level martials should be able to cut through force fields

The Legendary Dreadnought's Unstoppable ability allows them to punch through a Wall of Force if they can make a DC32 strength check. In my games I've made it something anyone can do if they can hit DC32, and made it apply to similar spells such as Forcecage as well.

I'll probably have some more general thoughts later but this was the first one that occurred to me.

[Destro2119]

Destro, you might find some good ideas in these past threads for martials (and even for spellcasters) that are cool _and_ useful and not just more "+1 of X" or how the @*$# does epic spellcasting even work?!:

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ions-and-Feats

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ine-Epic-Feats

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...c-Spellcasting

Also, what about making Mythic path powers into Epic feats and feat chains, with prereqs of character level +BAB or related skill level, powered by daily uses per the stat mod of whatever attribute seems most relevant to each feat?
I don't necessarily personally feel the whole one pool to power everything deal like PF made Mythic-ness be..why _not_ have an Epythic warblade who can single-stroke battle a mountain in half 20 times a day, but who can only tell a dragon to "sit" and make it stick a few times a day because their charisma isn't really that great even though they technically qualify for Epic Domination because their +Intimidate is very high?

Just my 2 cents-E

A bunch of this stuff is working off of the baseline assumptions of the new Corefinder system by Legendary Games which is, to put it simply, "PF Revised and Reloaded" with a ton of enhanced and new mechanics. So that should help the "normal" scaling of martials and casters.

Back on topic, I'm trying to make this new epic/mythic system to avoid the boringness of "+math". Hence why I said martials and casters need to gain superheroic abilities.

Could you give an example for the feat chain stuff? Like, how would it look like?

[Nizaris]

My quick proposal would be to allow players to continue gaining class levels and like in 3e epic, PCs stop gaining BAB and saves from their new class levels, instead gaining a BAB every odd level and +1 save increase every even level. In addition to their class levels, they pick a Mythic Path gaining all the usual bonuses.

No epic magic spells, there are Mythic versions of some spells they can use and spellcasters still gain 10th level spell slots for casting meta-magic spells of higher level.

Some mythic abilities do some of what you're looking for for martial characters, ignoring hardness for anything you want to break (like Walls of Force's hardness 30), ability to jump insane distances to attack or grapple enemies to the ground).

[Destro2119]

My quick proposal would be to allow players to continue gaining class levels and like in 3e epic, PCs stop gaining BAB and saves from their new class levels, instead gaining a BAB every odd level and +1 save increase every even level. In addition to their class levels, they pick a Mythic Path gaining all the usual bonuses.

No epic magic spells, there are Mythic versions of some spells they can use and spellcasters still gain 10th level spell slots for casting meta-magic spells of higher level.

Some mythic abilities do some of what you're looking for for martial characters, ignoring hardness for anything you want to break (like Walls of Force's hardness 30), ability to jump insane distances to attack or grapple enemies to the ground).

Yes, but I want all those abilities to be considered more casual. And I would definitely want martials to remains relevant, probably by just giving them extra iteratives that all scale quickly enough that the extras aren't useless. Maybe some epic abilities/feats to bolster that and other things too.

In terms of spells, I'll keep mythic versions, but I'll try to make them all more worthwhile, and also grant some higher capbilities with spells (see Jesse's Epic Pathfinder Handbook for the inspiration for my ideas).

My general design goal is that the new system should essentially be like superpowering all preexisting capabilities, and then becoming essentially the Power Cosmic as you continue to scale.

[Biggus]

And I would definitely want martials to remains relevant, probably by just giving them extra iteratives that all scale quickly enough that the extras aren't useless. Maybe some epic abilities/feats to bolster that and other things too.

I'm not sure extra iteratives is a good idea is it will slow the game down; combat is already pretty slow by level 20. It might be better to improve the iteratives they already have, perhaps by reducing the penalty at level 21 and every 5 levels thereafter. So for example maybe -4/8/12 at level 21, -3/6/9 at level 26 and so on. This will also make Power Attack more effective and so allow them to increase their damage.

This brings up a more general point; do you want this to be an infinite-levels system or will there be a level cap, at least for PCs/mortals? Some of the problems with the 3E epic system come from trying to make it scale indefinitely, which probably wasn't worth it as hardly anybody plays beyond level 40ish.

The epic feats (and maybe class features) will be what martials really need to remain competitive and interesting. Quite a few people have made homebrew ones over the years, you can cherry-pick from those (the ones I've seen are of highly variable quality) as well as creating your own. There are some here. There are also some I saved off the old Dicefreaks site, I can PM them to you if you're interested.

[Destro2119]

I'm not sure extra iteratives is a good idea is it will slow the game down; combat is already pretty slow by level 20. It might be better to improve the iteratives they already have, perhaps by reducing the penalty at level 21 and every 5 levels thereafter. So for example maybe -4/8/12 at level 21, -3/6/9 at level 26 and so on. This will also make Power Attack more effective and so allow them to increase their damage.

This brings up a more general point; do you want this to be an infinite-levels system or will there be a level cap, at least for PCs/mortals? Some of the problems with the 3E epic system come from trying to make it scale indefinitely, which probably wasn't worth it as hardly anybody plays beyond level 40ish.

The epic feats (and maybe class features) will be what martials really need to remain competitive and interesting. Quite a few people have made homebrew ones over the years, you can cherry-pick from those (the ones I've seen are of highly variable quality) as well as creating your own. There are some here. There are also some I saved off the old Dicefreaks site, I can PM them to you if you're interested.

In a perfect world, it would be infinite in such a way that it would be always fun, but in most DnD lore the lore explanations for why you just have uber high level guys running around who are not deities, demigods, or cosmic guardians breaks down around level 40+. So high 40s/low 50s is probably the "unspoken max."

Having said that, I still want to allow the system to grant superpowerful abilities to everyone. For example, "ability to deflect a nuclear missile/superlaser" is something a monk should have by early epic levels, and definitely not "add +1 to beat DR." I also plan for the epic resource pool system to be able to bolster effects and abilities as well, other than spells.

Do you have any more specific ideas for creating/handling such abilities for martials and casters?

[RandomPeasant]

I think before you can start scaling past 20th level, you have to figure out how the game scales in the sub-20 levels. There's a lot of room for adding "epic" abilities to classes like the Fighter and the Rogue without needing to poke into the 20+ playspace, and that has the advantage of giving you a lot more to work with in terms of other classes and opposition.

[AntiAuthority]

I think before you can start scaling past 20th level, you have to figure out how the game scales in the sub-20 levels. There's a lot of room for adding "epic" abilities to classes like the Fighter and the Rogue without needing to poke into the 20+ playspace, and that has the advantage of giving you a lot more to work with in terms of other classes and opposition.

Agreed, such as Seven-League Leap becoming usable by the time other classes can fly... So around 5th level.

There's surely other abilities that could be opened up to put them on somewhat equal footing long before Level 20.

[rel]

fly vs seven league leap actually illustrates the dichotomy of functional self contained powers vs non-functional abilities with functionality unlocked via incremental upgrades

• seven league leap (SLL) gives some minor power ups to use of the jump skill; a acrobatics bonus and jumps not taking movement. fly flat out gives you a fly speed.
• SSL's secondary travel function is gated behind being lightly encumbered, requiring a runway and taking a full minute to activate. flight happens instantly still functions quite well regardless of armour and encumbrance and requires no special circumstances
• fly can be gifted to another party member SSL is self only
• SSL includes a full paragraph on how you can screw up and fall to your doom. Fly helpfully provides you with a slow fall should the spell fail.

This is indicative of mundane powers vs magical powers in general. A magical power is designed to do the designed thing and do it well, all on its own. A mundane power will do the thing badly, but only if you expend additional build resources. On its own, its often plain useless.

If you want to achieve a scaling system with a place for mundanes, you have to start by addressing that issue.

[Biggus]

Having said that, I still want to allow the system to grant superpowerful abilities to everyone. For example, "ability to deflect a nuclear missile/superlaser" is something a monk should have by early epic levels, and definitely not "add +1 to beat DR." I also plan for the epic resource pool system to be able to bolster effects and abilities as well, other than spells.

Do you have any more specific ideas for creating/handling such abilities for martials and casters?

Giving martials abilities which emulate mid-to-high level spells is one way, the epic warlock feats from Epic Insights largely worked that way and they're often held up as examples of truly Epic feats.

Maybe use your players as a resource, ask them "if your character could do anything, what would you want them to be able to do?". I asked this on here a while ago, these were the answers I got: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...s-for-mundanes

For casters, some of the existing epic feats are brokenly powerful and need changing. Some suggestions:

Multispell: rather having a feat which grants +1 quickened spell per round, instead have one which grants +1 swift or immediate action per round and is available to everyone. Also, only allow it to be taken once.

Improved Metamagic: reduces the total spell slot adjustment from adding metamagic by 1, not each feat's adjustment by 1.

Epic Spellcasting: set a minimum DC to avoid spells being created without expending any time, money and XP. Set a maximum bonus to ability scores, attack bonus etc, perhaps 1/2 caster level (perhaps make an exception for spells with durations of one round or less, in the manner of True Strike). Maximum damage die is d12 not d20. Instantaneous spells cost twice as much as permanent spells (ie ten times as much as spells which are neither). Set a maximum number of additional participants, perhaps 1/2 caster level. On the other side, reduce the base casting time to 1 full round (the need to spend +18 Spellcraft DC to get them down to a sensible casting time makes epic spells so much worse than nonepic spells that you're almost required to abuse them to make them worthwhile).

[AntiAuthority]

fly vs seven league leap actually illustrates the dichotomy of functional self contained powers vs non-functional abilities with functionality unlocked via incremental upgrades

• seven league leap (SLL) gives some minor power ups to use of the jump skill; a acrobatics bonus and jumps not taking movement. fly flat out gives you a fly speed.
• SSL's secondary travel function is gated behind being lightly encumbered, requiring a runway and taking a full minute to activate. flight happens instantly still functions quite well regardless of armour and encumbrance and requires no special circumstances
• fly can be gifted to another party member SSL is self only
• SSL includes a full paragraph on how you can screw up and fall to your doom. Fly helpfully provides you with a slow fall should the spell fail.

This is indicative of mundane powers vs magical powers in general. A magical power is designed to do the designed thing and do it well, all on its own. A mundane power will do the thing badly, but only if you expend additional build resources. On its own, its often plain useless.

If you want to achieve a scaling system with a place for mundanes, you have to start by addressing that issue.

You bring up a good point, as Seven-League Leap is the closest analogy I could think of... It has some pretty bad side effects such as needing a running start and, if you hit something on the way to your destination, you could just die fall potentially to your death (or just suffer massive damage)...

And I feel this is on-topic, but one of P1E's designers addressed this disparity and his solution to fixing it.

[Raven777]

If you want to achieve a scaling system with a place for mundanes, you have to start by addressing that issue.

I'm of the belief that the problem is tied to D&D fluff/culture first and foremost, so that needs to be adressed first. If you change people's mentality from Warrior = Guy Who Hits Good With Sword to Warrior = Guy Who can channel Chi / Grit / Spiral Power / Being So Angry He Can't Die, then making them able to fly, punch through magic or stand so incredibly still that they become invisible to the eye (hello Drax!) starts being acceptable. Then you can cook any spell-equivalent ability your heart desires.

[RandomPeasant]

Honestly the easiest fix in the context of 3e is just to have people play Gishes and pretend not to notice that the sword guy's rapid movement comes from a haste spell rather than a Move At The Speed of Thought definitely-not-a-spell ability. Alternatively, just write a buttload of extra maneuvers and some additional ToB classes.

[rel]

I'm of the belief that the problem is tied to D&D fluff/culture first and foremost, so that needs to be adressed first. If you change people's mentality from Warrior = Guy Who Hits Good With Sword to Warrior = Guy Who can channel Chi / Grit / Spiral Power / Being So Angry He Can't Die, then making them able to fly, punch through magic or stand so incredibly still that they become invisible to the eye (hello Drax!) starts being acceptable. Then you can cook any spell-equivalent ability your heart desires.

Adjusting the fluff is good. I recommend a mythic world rather than a mythic character.
The dragon flies, not because it is magic but because the world is one in which a dragon can exist.
The warrior can cut through a mountain with a blade of grass, not because they are magic but because the world is one in which such feats can be achieved through sufficient skill.
The warrior is no more magical than the giant beetle that can tunnel at a walking pace through solid rock.

Hand in hand with that, I recommend avoiding using spell equivalence as a mechanism. i.e. like spell x.
And further avoid identical mechanics to spellcasting; 9 levels of power, coming online at odd character levels, limited uses recovered with a nice long nap.
The closer things look to spellcasting mechanically, the less different they will feel thematically.

[Destro2119]

You bring up a good point, as Seven-League Leap is the closest analogy I could think of... It has some pretty bad side effects such as needing a running start and, if you hit something on the way to your destination, you could just die fall potentially to your death (or just suffer massive damage)...

And I feel this is on-topic, but one of P1E's designers addressed this disparity and his solution to fixing it.

Thanks everyone for all of the insight on this! The idea that ALL classes need to be better and have better capabilities is a big theme that the system should have. I am actually working on a project to try to create a PF that is better in this way. It is called Corefinder by Legendary Games. Invite link if you're interested: https://discord.gg/JCsYPdHMct We could really use people like you guys!

On another note, the truly epic stuff should be things like being able to wage a one character war on a capital starship or causing suns to go supernova. And everything in "epic" territory scales to that. (BTW, in terms of epic spells, I am using the Jesse DnD Epic Pathfinder Handbook as a basis, and the mythic rules as a supplement to that.)

The idea of a sort of epic power pool akin to PF's mythic powering abilities is a good base mechanic I think.

PS if you check out PF mythic, a ton of the mythic abilities and powers are better as base mechanics, just like what 3.5 did to 3.0's epic stuff.

[digiman619]

Thanks everyone for all of the insight on this! The idea that ALL classes need to be better and have better capabilities is a big theme that the system should have. I am actually working on a project to try to create a PF that is better in this way. It is called Corefinder by Legendary Games. Invite link if you're interested: https://discord.gg/JCsYPdHMct; We could really use people like you guys!

On another note, the truly epic stuff should be things like being able to wage a one character war on a capital starship or causing suns to go supernova. And everything in "epic" territory scales to that. (BTW, in terms of epic spells, I am using the Jesse DnD Epic Pathfinder Handbook as a basis, and the mythic rules as a supplement to that.)

The idea of a sort of epic power pool akin to PF's mythic powering abilities is a good base mechanic I think.

PS if you check out PF mythic, a ton of the mythic abilities and powers are better as base mechanics, just like what 3.5 did to 3.0's epic stuff.

Just as a heads up, your semicolon busted your invite link.

[NichG]

So recently I have been interested in beyond 20thlevel superpowered gameplay. In 3.X, this manifested in epic levels, and in Pathfinder it manifested in mythic tiers. Both had problems (epic was ludicrously underpowered 95% of the time, and stupidly cheesy the other 5%, while PF mythic retained martials are worthless and had stuff like "day long time stop" next to "gain +1 to DC"), but I am trying to combine the best of both worlds.

Epic's advantages were that it felt really epic, and had some genuinely good stuff, but mostly it just felt good to have a hero that could truly be the best of the best.

Mythic's advantages were flexibility (mythic power expenditure helps to replicate some of that Spheres goodness) and ability to do mythic stuff early because mythic tiers scale separately from levels.

I am trying to combine both into a single system that is also improved from its parts.

Some goals I am hoping for this system are:

-ability to make all classes do stuff, ie I feel at this level martials should be able to cut through force fields, lift mountains, fly like Superman through sheer force of will, move hypersonically, and casters should be Dr. Stranges in their respective fields. Epic and quite a bit of mythic stuff felt super underpowered because a lot of it was just taking away restrictions or literally adding +1 to hit.

-ability to scale coherently, ie BaB, hp et al can scale in such a way you don't randomly have a +30 to one save and a +8 to another, for one example

Some general concepts I think could be implemented are:

-creating a system that can scale like mythic, but also offer benefits for beyond 20h level. A general idea could be that mythic enables the powers, but epic enhances them.

-creating a resource pool for each class that can be used to activate and enhance powers and abilities.


Any help or feedback you can offer is welcomed.

This isn't Pathfinder specific, but...

Consider unlocking alternate advancement paths (spending XP directly to gain or modify abilities, etc) which take the place of the general sameness once you've run through levels which have explicit book content for them.

Consider ways of including at-will free-form abilities (the way that things like Prestidigitation, illusions, X Creation, Polymorph Any Object, Wish) for each broad category of character, set so that associated damage/save DCs/etc are lower than dedicated things but to pad out bits of versatility that a dedicated character might otherwise miss. So e.g. perhaps martials have 'Cut Anything' letting them do things like destroying the distance between two points to teleport, severing the bonds of gravity to fly, cut line of sight or line of effect to create a barrier, etc - where such effects applied to anything broad or abstract would have a duration of a few minutes before reality heals.

Consider monster and potentially PC abilities which scale based on how much something is exceeded - deal extra damage proportional to how much you exceed a target's AC, bypass immunities if a target fails a save by 20+, etc.

Consider things like within-combat self-resurrection abilities and counters for those things, hard-stops against being one-shotted by overscaling damage (abilities like 'any single damage source is capped to 50% of the character's maximum hp').

Consider what sorts of things you want to be able to have lasting impacts on a character, and how those mechanics should work. Make things which manipulate such counters or conditions rare even at epic level, with a focus on tradeoffs rather than reversion. This can be stuff like a character having their name stolen from them, etc - high-end fairytale stuff.

Consider making abilities which permanently modify the world more common - things like creating a new race of monster, creating a PrC available to any followers of the PC which gives buffs, spells which grant abilities to the entire population of a city, etc. Very high level campaigns could involve things like rewriting the definitions underlying alignments, creating new planes of existence, forging contracts which bind any and all devils to serve the character's descendants without question or cost, etc.

[Crake]

-ability to scale coherently, ie BaB, hp et al can scale in such a way you don't randomly have a +30 to one save and a +8 to another, for one example

Epic already did this. After level 20, all saves gain +0.5 per level, and so does your attack bonus. Note that epic specifically does not scale BAB after 20, so whatever bab you have at level 20 is your final bab. After that, everyone gains 0.5 epic attack bonus each level, and the epic attack bonus does not grant you extra attacks. For saves, it means that the difference in your base saves at level 20 will remain the same for the rest of your levels post 20 as well.

[Destro2119]

Thanks for all the info!
A general idea I want to convey in the new epic system is essentially how it should be "ultimate cosmic power" where you get abilities that allow you to do things like "fight sentient evil planes/planets", "fight in black holes", and "engage in an ultimate battle for fate of the multiverse." In order to avoid nonsense like "swimming better is mythic" or "a minor bonus to math is epic tier", etc.

A ton of PF mythic stuff is actually more appropriate for base class features, and I might make a new thread discussing the inproveknt of classes and the system.