[3.x] Epic D20 - Getting my money's worth out of ELH

[Senevri]

Not all that many years ago, I bought the 3.0 Epic Level Handbook. It's mostly just gathered dust, albeit one game did go to 20, and then in solo games up to 30.

Epic gaming has issues - one of them is the complexity of everything, the fact that as written, epic spellcasting breaks down, all the resistances and immunities, zillions of dice getting thrown and so forth.

So, after a day of poking at my Exalted 1e book, while I cooled down from the last RtToH session, and taking a look at my BESM 2e and Call of Cthulhu d20 books... I did nothing. But then, around midnight something clicked, and I couldn't get sleep.

In the interest of getting my beauty sleep, here's what I came up with:

Take Epic Levels as they are. Problem is, the characters ENTERING epic levels are immensely complex to start with. So,
1. Instead of building normal characters and continuing to epic, use simple Epic Base Classes, who start at "epic 1" level.
 - I had a couple of interesting variations of this theme, some which I may yet explore, but eventually I went with something that's perfectly compatible with the rules, front-to-back
2. Eliminate complex and time-using things. So:
- No damage dice, everything deals maximum damage
- No old spells... this gets tricky, and interesting. More on that later. Pre-epic spellcasting is considered base thaumaturgy, that all wizards can do.
- Hit Dice are the key, and HD are the same as level. This is where several variations arise.
- Resistances and immunities need to be there, but they need to be CLEARER. Currently, I'm working on something I think of as "DR stack", but I'm not sure if that works.
- Not too many abilities for starting characters.
- Easier item buying, actually this isn't hard - just take "K" as a basic monetary unit and presume the players have all the fish hooks and ten-foot poles they can carry in their complementary haversacks.

So, I resurrected an old expression of "Kits", which are basically pre-designed feat-equivalents of prestige classes or feat chains. For an example, the Epic Fighter's Weapon Focus equivalent, say, "Weaponmaster Kit", nets +6 to attack and damage with a weapon (group), as well as increasing threat range. A Dual-wielding kit grants +2 Shield to AC in addition of 4 two-weapon fighting hits, as well as two-weapon pounce and rend.

I think each kit should also give 1-2 special abilities usable as an action, generally speaking. I am unsure, but probably each Epic character starts with one free Kit, and Fighter getting two combat kits for free.

Spellcasting is going to be a variant system remotely resembling spellpoints, with around ten, twenty configurable arcane spells available. Essentially there'd be one Elemental damaging spell, which gets configured for range, area and element type during memorization, one single Transmutation spell which first rolls an attack, and if target's HP goes below zero, they can be transmuted to anything from a non-epic creature to a practical object or a pile of dust, and a single buff spell which grants, say, CL in bonuses distributed as one wills between stats, attack, saves and AC.

I know this is somewhat insane and redundant, but I guess there's a muse who won't let me sleep unless I get this out. I'm currently working on Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. Clerics pretty much get Harm, Heal, Summon and Enhance spells.

The Fighter, for an example would be build like this:

1. generate stats, add 5 points to stats as desired.

2.
Alignment: any
Hit Points: 200 + 20xCON
Base Attack: +20; Iteratives: +20/+25/+10/+5
Base Saves: Fortitude +12, Reflex +6, Will +6
2+INT skills
Features: Gains two combat kits for free

3. Choose combat kits and one free generic kit.

4. Choose 2+INT skills which all have max ranks (gets a few extra skill points but no big)

5. Buy 880K worth of equipment.

And, done.

I'll write some more on the DR stacking and the spell system later.

[Senevri]

Just a short note on spellcasting criteria:

- An Epic Wizard 1 should trounce a 20th level average wizard or sorcerer - played around Tier 2-3 for those who know the system, or around same as non-exploitative well-build core wizard.

- Vancian casting: This is the big one.
A Spell point system, as fine as it may be, treats a wizard's power as something like Mana, which is spent on spells.
This is inaccurate.
A wizard's spell power is more like disk space, or memory. The slots are alike page files as if a wizard was a 8 or 16 bit system with more RAM than can be pointed at by a memory address. So we upgrade to a higher - say, 64-bit system.

Now, this means that any address pointing at a spell takes up to 8 times as much space as in the old system, so a weaker spell will in fact, consume a bit more memory than before, but the benefits should outweight the downsides
So here are steps I'm considering, concerning simplification:

1. Determine the amount of memory space. This is same for all 20th level wizards, plus whatever comes out of bonus spells. One method is that each higher spell level uses twice as much RAM, so 9th level spells use 512 times the space a 0th-level spell uses. Alternatively, we could count how many pages a spell takes in a spell book, or we could use the same numbers as used by the spell point system.

2. Once we have the linear amount of space, determine the space a spell will use. Say, for an example, we have 20 9th-level spell equivalents. This means that unlike  the spell point system, if we prepare 2 9th-level spells and 6 8th-level spells, we're down by 5 slots - even if those spells were the same, say two preparations of Maw of Chaos. This keeps the difference between Sorcerers and Wizards quite distinct. Of course, if we used the granularity of 80 7th-level slots, a single 9th-level slot would consume 4 slots. It's all memory carrying capacity or inventory space.

3. Break down spells to few simple configurable spells, where increased power comes at a increased slot cost. This is a rather bothersome step, but basically it's something similar as was done to get the epic seeds, except... simpler, and a bit more limited.

[Senevri]

I'm brainstorming, and so forth.

Spell Effects of levels 0-3 are so trivial in Epic, that they should be castable without any commitment to slots.
This also removes them from our spell slot (Spell Memory Space Access) calculations. So, going by the doubling rule,
a 20th-level Wizard would have 4+8+16+32+64+128 space, or 1-2-4-8-16-32 ratio. This is still quite large, but gives us 252 + bonus from abililty score.
Bonus from high ability score follow the pattern of 1-3-7-15-31, or (n^2)-1 when n>1, for the highest level slot, although our n is (n-3). Of course after +9 this plateaus, and there's the lower level slots that follow.
 

Code: (Bonus Slots from high ability score)

+4 1 1
+5 3 +2
+6 7 +4
+7 15 +8
+8 32 +16 +1
+9 66 +32 +2
+10 70 +4
+11 78 +8
+12 95 +16 +1
+13 129 +32 +2
+14 133 +4
+15 141 +8
+16 158 +16 +1
+17 202 +32 +2

So, they follow the pattern of 1-2-4-8-17-34 increase, so that's what, (n+3 mod 6)?

Spells
Each spell has the following template:

Code:

Names:
Casting Time,
Range,
Target,
Saving Throw,
Spell Resistance,
Effect:
  <description>
  Cantrip(0 sp) - <base effects>
  One(1 sp) -  <increased effects>
  Two(2 sp) -  <etc>
  Three(4 sp) -
  Four(8 sp) - <additional effect>
  Five(16 sp) -
  Six(32 sp) - <additional effect>

For an example:

Spells
Each spell has the following template:

Code:

Names: Elemental Bomb
Casting Time, 1 std action
Range, long
Target, area
Saving Throw, Reflex Half
Spell Resistance, Yes
Effect:
  A small sphere travels to the target location, then explodes in elemental fury
  Cantrip(0 sp) - 30 points of common elemental damage in a 20ft-burst.
  One(1 sp) -  60 points of damage in a 25ft burst;
  Two(2 sp) -  90 points of damage in a 30ft burst;
  Three(4 sp) - 120 points of damage in a 35ft burst;
  Four(8 sp) - 150 points of damage in a 40ft burst; You may choose to delay the explosion up to 5 rounds.
  Five(16 sp) - 180 points of damage in a 45ft burst; You may choose to delay the explosion up to 10 rounds.
  Six(32 sp) -  210 points + Caster Level of damage in a 50ft burst; You may choose to delay the effect up to one minute per caster level.

Keyword: Elemental refers to the common elemental energies of fire, cold, acid and lightning.

[Senevri]

Now, what _types_ of spells do exist in arcane and divine? Thoughts?

Arcane: Blast, Boost, Curse, Illusion, Creating objects, Creating subspaces, Instantaneous Travel, Shapechange, Creating creatures, Summoning
Divine: Manipulate positive & negative energies, Boost, Curse, Summoning, Creating Objects, Creating Creatures

Now, Boost is still too obscure a category, I think. Hm.

*edit*
I just realized--- Spells in that style have capstone abilities.
*edit* Uh, so in six levels, the character gains 66 points of spellspace, so 11 on average, might as well go with that.

[PhaedrusXY]

I think this entire thing is a bit crazy, but hey it's your time. Anyway, you might take a look at this "pseudo-mana based" system and modify it to fit your needs. You'd also need to specify that this kind of fatigue/exhaustion cannot be healed magically...

I think it is kind of a neat idea, but the costs need to be tweaked because the way it is written heavily favors just blowing all of your "fatigue points" on high level slots, and not casting anything lower than the highest level spells you can manage (excluding the ones that are free). Unfortunately, I think that might have been a design feature instead of a flaw.

[Senevri]

I think this entire thing is a bit crazy, but hey it's your time.

What, just a bit? 
The reason I didn't just drop this once I managed to get a good night's sleep is that Epic levels dont' see much play as-is, and character compexity is one of the reasons. Besides, Exalted is cool, but my group doesn't seem to like it very much.

Want to hear something really wacky? Since my compatibility target is ELH, I'm seriously considering using it as printed - IE, wacky +zillion DRs and whatnot. I would basically prioritize enchantments so that 'magic' is lowest, and a special material counts as 'magic' and so forth.
Example: A big bad guy has DR 30/+6, but the player has a +5 Adamantite blade?  It cuts through the the DR.
Now, this isn't yet all that well thought out, so I haven't spoken of it much, but basically the issue is that at epic someone may have a +5 Flaming Shocking Corrosive Holy Demonbane longsword, and it's used against someone  with DR 10/+6, who has fire and acid resistance of 5 and.... So, yeah. Resolving the actual damage inflicted can get pretty annoying. I think some sort of all-or-nothing scheme should work here - if a weapon deals 3 points of fire and 19 points of normal damage, and the target has fire resistance of 10, just let all of it stack... But then, you'll need ways of getting through the resistance, too.

Anyway, you might take a look at this "pseudo-mana based" system and modify it to fit your needs. You'd also need to specify that this kind of fatigue/exhaustion cannot be healed magically...

That... is a nice system, actually.

I think it is kind of a neat idea, but the costs need to be tweaked because the way it is written heavily favors just blowing all of your "fatigue points" on high level slots, and not casting anything lower than the highest level spells you can manage (excluding the ones that are free). Unfortunately, I think that might have been a design feature instead of a flaw.

Well, unless the DM is running a very nice game, the wizards will probably be booming away with their high-level spells, in any case. I start with the assumption that any spell below the top ones, while not irrelevant, isn't exactly worth tracking. Minimizing the amount of spells, feats and equipment a 21th level character has, while still giving them the relative power of a moderately powerful 20th level character.
Math when filling charsheet and large numbers aren't really a big issue, but game-time math is, so I am kind of worried how wizards will work under my system - once I have the ten or so spells they know, designed.

[Senevri]

Pushing "relevant" to 6th, would make 9th level spells take mere 8 6th-level slots, which is easier math-wise, and would follow a pattern of 3-4-3-4-3, I think. 32 slots for 9th-equivalents seems like it'd be a lot of math in bookkeeping.

Summon spell will be tied to creature CR, Up to CR 6 for 6th-level equivalent, up to CR9 for 7th, CR 12 for 8, and CR 15 for 9.
I'm unsure if Calling should be a different spell, but probably, yes.

Metamagic would add slot cost multiplier, granting some flexibility. Extra slot would add 7 6th-level slot equivalents.

One of the reasons I'm advocating auto-maxing of skills, is that fighters have a lot of complicated dice rolls. Worst-case, we're looking at more than 10 attack dice with five-six dice of damage.
Just ten attack rolls is much easier, all around. Maximizing HP should equalize this, more-or-less.
On the other hand, spellcasters will only roll one or two attacks, so I'm considering using something like 2dX * 1/2 CL for 1 die per CL effects and so forth.

[Kerrick]

The ELH is not balanced. Period. It's not even playtested thoroughly - the playtest rules were leaked, and as a result WotC released the book early. That's why there are so many (blatant) errors in it. You could design a system to ELH standard, but you'd still have to convert the ELH mechanics to 3.5 (unless you're still using 3.0?) and rebalance some of the more ridiculous stuff. The problem with using that level of power is that things will quickly spiral out of control - the PCs will be wiping out entire pantheons by the time they're L40, and destroying universes by L60. But, if that's what you're into, that's cool. You could also check out Upper Krust's sire. UK is a high-level designer who has since moved on to 4E, but he's got a lot of "wahoo" stuff for epic on his site, and a couple books (a bestiary and one for deities).

Re the spell system: It looks like you want something based around a spell point/mana point system like Phaedrus mentioned. I'd also look into the psionics system and Arcana Unearthed - both of those allow for "upgrading" spells. As for more spells, I've got some here.

As far as DR: The rule I use is that a magic weapon overcomes 5 points of DR per point of its bonus (a +3 sword bypasses DR 15). If the weapon's bonus is high enough, it can also overcome DR material and/or alignment as a weapon one plus lower (the +3 sword bypasses cold iron or silver, but only up to 10 points, not 15). See here for details.

[Senevri]

I'm not saying what I'm doing is smart or reasonable. Your DR system is nice - and if you adapt the materials to work the other way around, too, it might even fit 3.0 ELH.

I _might_ use 3.5 monsters, but mostly 3.0 epic feats, I think.... My workflow nowadays is using OpenOffice to gather adventure material and then printing it out, so I often print my own tweaked monsters, too.

Frankly, I only have experience in epic gaming up to CL 30, but we'll see.
That being said, gaming from 21 to 40 is effectively equal to gaming from 1 to 20 (in game time), so I'm not sure I see an issue.

In Epic, attacks, saves, skills and cl progress in a linear fashion. There's cheese to be done with epic spells, sure, but if  you don't allow smaller DCs than the examples in ELH, that limits some of the silliness, and since I'm effectively working on an alternate PHB, a lot of normal game abilities which uncapped do become quite crazy, won't be as much of an issue.

As for rebalancing ELH, sure, I'll probably have to do some of that, yes.

Still, it'll be a while 'til I get there. If I get there.

[Senevri]

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AXI4n9sZdlWFZHFiOXp6NV8xMWRnamc5MmN6&hl=en&authkey=CPycvIwB

Question: Which tropes should a character or class or archetype embody? Presume everyone is Badass by default.

[Littha]

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AXI4n9sZdlWFZHFiOXp6NV8xMWRnamc5MmN6&hl=en&authkey=CPycvIwB

Question: Which tropes should a character or class or archetype embody? Presume everyone is Badass by default.

well it looks like I'm not sleeping tonight...

[Senevri]

tropes

well it looks like I'm not sleeping tonight...

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

[SiggyDevil]

Drop the Epic feats down to Level 11+. There, you can use them sooner, and non-casters can almost keep up for a little longer.

[Senevri]

That's a fair suggestion, although out of the scope of what I was working on here.

Still, it's probably a good idea. I think most of the caster-boosting feats required the ability to cast max level spells anyway? Also, lots of skill ranks.

Yeah, I like it.