Quote from: Psikerlord;968325Yeah 4e was great up to about 10th time wise. We found it slowed down a lot 11th - 20th. didnt get past that

Yes, I found Epic Tier was playable but wasn't really worth it, so my new 4e campaign is designed to go for the BX levels, 1-14, with 15-20 existing in the setting but a hard cap at 20.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;968363I think they assumed that you'd have a cleric.  With the cleric they're a bit tough for their CR, without a cleric they're freakin' crazy for their CR.  (you might be okay if you have bunches of holy water)

5e Shadows are insanely dangerous for their CR too; in fact 5e 'drainer' undead in general seem heavily under-CR'd especially considering Turn Undead is 1 per SR and many groups these days have no Cleric.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;968234A lot of monsters don't have a resistance, but have an insta-'kill' power.

In what edition? Pre-3e that was not as many as some make out. Many poisonous types had an instakill on a failed save. Think at least one of the undead had a save or die of fright. Pretty sure beholders disintegrate ray was instakill on a failed save? I dont count medusas and other petrification types as that can be reversed. Traps were a bigger threat.

I'll go through the AD&D MM and check later. I know the giant spiders, Centipedes and scorpions poison is fatal as it came up alot DMing Queen of the Demonweb Pits. Pretty sure the giant Poison Frog, Sting Ray and Wyvern are too. Catoblepas and Beholders had a death ray.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;968267If those monsters exist in the world, you're bound to encounter them. Possibly even before you're ready for them. Nobody said you had to stand toe-to-toe and fight it out. If you can't hurt it, run.

It seems like people don't understand that monsters with immunity exist so you encounter them when you can't hurt them. Those monsters are far more interesting if you run into them when you can't hurt than when you can.

That goes wayyyy back too. TSR staff had some stories of GenCon sessions and players just not freaking understanding things other than attack. They never tried to run away, surrender, bribe, or just say "Just wandering through." Others made no effort to check for traps or test things first.

My irks is with DMs who drop some TPK capable monster on the group "because the table told me to!" and dont give the group any options. If I rolled up a red dragon on some 1st level PCs then Im sure as hell not just going to have it vaporize them. Check surprise. Maybee it didnt see them? Maybee it lands and talks or extorts money from them, or asks directions to the nearest princess.

Or, one of my favorite uses one... It was a dead dragon. The players spent alot of time afterwards worrying about what killed the dragon and trying not to get its attention.

Of course if the players screw up and attract the dragons attention, insult it, fail to freaking hide before it spots them, etc, then that is their own choice and roll new character when the smoke clears.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;968333I was thinking of level drain (Wraiths and Vampires in AD&D), or in later editions, creatures that attack a stat directly (3.x's woefully miscalculated Shadows.)  And apologies, when I speak of insta-kill, I mostly mean abilities that bypass HP, which if unlucky CAN badly hurt PC's.

A lot of those types of abilities hit things that don't scale as fast as HP, or don't scale at all for the most part.  Remove Curse, Regeneration, Lesser and Greater Restoration all these are high level clerical spells.

Level drains allways been an issue with D&D. But there are some options and its not like theres no disparity in levels allready in AD&D classes. Or due to starting over.

But the real problem is when you get undead repeatedly drain levels. And most can. A single wraith is annoying. But a Vampire or Specter can drain 2 levels a hit. And depending on where you run into them then that could be a whole bunch at once if the DM isnt paying attention to how #appearing works. Still though... even a few can wreak havoc on a party.

I suppose if you wanted high-level play, but without high-level spells, you might want to make an alternate source of remedy for curses, level drains, and petrification.

I like the concept of level drain, much like saving throw for items--a tension between accumulating advantage and it being taken away. Hopefully that harsh situation where someone gets caught against a couple of specters and loses 4-6 levels in an instant is a rare as finally getting that holy avenger (intelligent, that you've named and such) and losing it to a bad roll on the next fireball you're hit with.

The problem I had with the epic rules, mythic rules, whatever... they do not feel any more epic than the regular rules.

I think that is an artifact of having levels. The gritty tone of typical dungeon crawls feels, IMO, totally at odds with having character levels. In 2e NPCs were generally 0th-level, making the PCs superhuman in comparison. 3e/5e forces everything to have hit dice and/or classes, resulting in things like the king of a nation being a 10th level noble and having the resulting combat capabilities. The fiction that inspires D&D was not written with levels in mind, so we end up with Aragorn, Conan and Gandalf being under 6th level if you take articles like "calibrating your expectations" seriously.

Martial classes seem limited to just standing and whacking stuff; the rules do not seem to support cool action movie stunts, much less genuinely mythic stunts like swallowing rivers and chopping mountains in half. Even something as simple as a great big red dragon throwing houses at the party requires thinking outside the rules. I think something like Risus would support epic level play better than any variation of d20, since it doesn't segregate character capabilities into neat little boxes. If the fighter wants to chop a mountain in half or whatever else they can think of, then their roll needs to meet a target number beyond mundane limits.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Potions and scrolls can help for those high level non-magic groups.

The main thing people forget is that lost levels are just... lost levels... And as noted above AD&D had a fair amount of disparity in PC levels.

Quick example. The Cleric and Druid just hit level 10. The Fighter and Monk are still level 9, but just 50k EXP from 10. The Paladin is 250k from 10. The Ranger 200k. The Magic User is about half way into level 11. The Illusionist and Thief and Assassin just hit 11.
So you have a 9th level Fighter, a 10th level Cleric and an 11th level Magic user and Thief in the same party.

Lets say the MU gets level drained down to 9. In the time it takes the Fighter to get to 11 the MU will have caught up and hit 11 as well.

Quote from: S'mon;968394Yes, I found Epic Tier was playable but wasn't really worth it, so my new 4e campaign is designed to go for the BX levels, 1-14, with 15-20 existing in the setting but a hard cap at 20.

I only had 1 campaign with 4e at the Epic tier and well....it was pretty damn epic. That said the PCs were all taken from various cartoons and video games in a mash up world where the enemies of their worlds come together and try to take over the Cartoon-Cosmos. We had Snake Eyes from GI Joe, She-Ra from her cartoon, and Link from Zelda. Was it pretty crazy and insane? Yes. But it was a lot of fun and didn't totally get bogged down in rules and combat either.

Quote from: Omega;968446In what edition? Pre-3e that was not as many as some make out. Many poisonous types had an instakill on a failed save. Think at least one of the undead had a save or die of fright. Pretty sure beholders disintegrate ray was instakill on a failed save? I dont count medusas and other petrification types as that can be reversed. Traps were a bigger threat.

I'll go through the AD&D MM and check later. I know the giant spiders, Centipedes and scorpions poison is fatal as it came up alot DMing Queen of the Demonweb Pits. Pretty sure the giant Poison Frog, Sting Ray and Wyvern are too. Catoblepas and Beholders had a death ray.

I'm confused as to why these things are even seen as problems in the first place.

Inevitably "not sucking at high levels" to me means "How can you continue to challenge PCs as they grow ever more powerful?"

An asp with a bite that does 1 hp of damage but with a save or die poison is not so ridiculously powerful for 1st level characters. In fact, they're probably even a lesser threat than a creature that just deals a good amount of straight-up damage. Yet even a 50th level character has a 5% chance of being killed by one bad roll, meaning the creature still poses a significant threat. Level drains are a pain no matter how high your level is--perhaps even more of a pain as it represents greater XP loss the higher level you are. This means certain undead provide a good, healthy fear of the living dead for parties of all levels.

These are the things that make the game work at high levels.

Quote from: Batman;968598I only had 1 campaign with 4e at the Epic tier and well....it was pretty damn epic. That said the PCs were all taken from various cartoons and video games in a mash up world where the enemies of their worlds come together and try to take over the Cartoon-Cosmos. We had Snake Eyes from GI Joe, She-Ra from her cartoon, and Link from Zelda. Was it pretty crazy and insane? Yes. But it was a lot of fun and didn't totally get bogged down in rules and combat either.

How did you avoid the 3 hour combats? I tried reducing enemy hp but still anything that could remotely challenge level 24-29 PCs was easily 2-3 hours.

Quote from: Lunamancer;968613I'm confused as to why these things are even seen as problems in the first place.

Its not to me and most others. But there is a vocal faction in D&D and some other RPGs that flip their wheels at the idea of "save or die" elements. Hence the derogatory "save or suck" phrase some use.

Different viewpoints and play styles. Which is perfectly fine until someone starts trying to force their "one true way" on others.

Quote from: S'mon;968614How did you avoid the 3 hour combats? I tried reducing enemy hp but still anything that could remotely challenge level 24-29 PCs was easily 2-3 hours.

Having never seen 4e combat in action. What is it about 4e's combat that could possibly be dragging the battles out like that?

Quote from: Omega;968624Having never seen 4e combat in action. What is it about 4e's combat that could possibly be dragging the battles out like that?

Did you ever play Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics? 4e combat is that, but on a tabletop. Biggest killers:

1. Enemies have a fuckton of hp
2. Players have a fuckton of healing
3. Hardly anyone does a lot of damage on a round without stacking auras, bonuses, and other effects
4. Player powers are significantly more effective when the players optimize their positioning, combat advantage, and even turn sequence, leading to every round generating tedious analysis and discussion of the board position, not unlike Risk, Axis & Allies, and other complex board games.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;968363I think they assumed that you'd have a cleric.  With the cleric they're a bit tough for their CR, without a cleric they're freakin' crazy for their CR.  (you might be okay if you have bunches of holy water)

A lot of adventures and game material assume that there's A cleric in the party and usually a thief the difference is that A good fighter can often do what the thief would in those situations the cleric not so much.

Quote from: S'mon;9683985e Shadows are insanely dangerous for their CR too; in fact 5e 'drainer' undead in general seem heavily under-CR'd especially considering Turn Undead is 1 per SR and many groups these days have no Cleric.

I'd say its monsters lagging behind party composition changes.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;968494I suppose if you wanted high-level play, but without high-level spells, you might want to make an alternate source of remedy for curses, level drains, and petrification.

I like the concept of level drain, much like saving throw for items--a tension between accumulating advantage and it being taken away. Hopefully that harsh situation where someone gets caught against a couple of specters and loses 4-6 levels in an instant is a rare as finally getting that holy avenger (intelligent, that you've named and such) and losing it to a bad roll on the next fireball you're hit with.

It depends on the group most of the people I've ever played with level drain as in actually loosing levels did nothing but piss people off and cause drama.
That why I rather prefer the level drain as A permanent hard to remove negative level concept you get 99% of the effect at the moment with out screwing up the way the party adventure for the next 12 sessions(exaggerated for effect).
Item saving throws it gets more complex.

Quote from: Batman;968598I only had 1 campaign with 4e at the Epic tier and well....it was pretty damn epic. That said the PCs were all taken from various cartoons and video games in a mash up world where the enemies of their worlds come together and try to take over the Cartoon-Cosmos. We had Snake Eyes from GI Joe, She-Ra from her cartoon, and Link from Zelda. Was it pretty crazy and insane? Yes. But it was a lot of fun and didn't totally get bogged down in rules and combat either.

That sounds super cool bats.