I feel very blessed to be able to play in the 4e game that I am a part of. My DM Joe (the guy who runs this blog) is one of the most dedicated DM’s I have ever known. The sheer amount of time and effort that he puts in to each session blows my mind week after week and the level of commitment he given to our game astound me.
The players and I are currently at level 22 (epic tier) as of last Friday night and are working our way through the “Scales of War” adventure path. We meet every Friday night to play for a good four to five hours and have been doing so for about two years now. That is two years worth of commitment that each player has given every Friday night give or take a few. From what I have heard this is very rare, whether it be due to epic tier having next to zero support from wizards or the fact that just getting to epic tier takes so much commitment and time and that a lot of groups don’t stay together that long, it still stands that I have heard of very few games making it to epic.
I joined the game at level 5 which was about 6 months from when the game started, this was back in July of 2009, so we have seen a lot of changes come and go to the 4e errata. Heck we have a Drow rogue who used to have Darkfire and Cloud of Darkness but had to choose when the race got changed. When we first started essentials weren’t around and I don’t think the player’s handbook 3 was even out. What I’m trying to get at here is that I have been around for a while and I know that what I’m about to say has a bit of weight behind it so before I say it I just want to make sure the people who read this don’t think I’m pulling this out of my ass. I’m trying to be genuine and constructive in my next few paragraphs so stick with me here.
I have played Kyve the Dragonborn Fighter/Cleric Hyybrid since level 5 to level 22 and after the last session that the party and I played I can safely say epic tier is epic, but in all the wrong ways. I cannot stress this enough so rather than trying to explain my reasoning let me paint a picture for you. With my words.
Killdrak the Dwarven Barbarian, Muffie the Gnome Artificer, Xune the Drow Rogue, Hermy the Half-Elf Paladin, Betteldex the Human Wizard and myself were going up against an undead dragon in the bowels of the Shadowfell in order to get Khaz’s sword, the one that cut off Vecna’s hand, in order to gain entrance into a keep deep in the Shadowfell so that we can kill one of the exarches of Tiamut. Before going into the encounter Hermy uses Wrath of the Gods and gives everyone a +7 to damage for the encounter. I use Augment of War on Killdrak’s hammer for another +12 to damage and the target grants combat advantage and is slowed until the end of Killdraks next turn each time he hits the target and then I use another daily to give everyone a +2 to AC until the end of the encounter and THEN we start the encounter by charging the undead Dragon. Somewhere around round three I get around to using Penance of Blood which gives the dragon vulnerability +5 to all damage until the end of the encounter. Then on my next turn on my next turn I use Sever the Source to give the undead dragon another +17 to vulnerability until the end of my next turn BUT because I used Penance of Blood that vulnerability goes up by +7. This is like round four or five and on top of all of this we tha players are constantly shouting across the table the fact that either we didn’t add the damage up correctly of that our last attack was radiant so Joe should add +15 to the damage we did (the undead dragon is vulnerable +15 radiant). Do you see where I’m going with this? Everyone in the party (especially Killdrak) is starting to feel more like a mathematician than an adventurer. Our rogue is throwing eight d8 with an At-Will +5 against bloodied enemies. This is why I gave Joe a little shout out at the beginning of this post. The guy deserves a freaking medal for all the stuff he does for our game. He makes Chris Perkins proud every single Friday night.
Now I’m not saying all this damage calculating isn’t fun cause it kinda is. It makes epic tier feel epic in a way. I mean Killdrak at one point did 86 points of damage (with an At-Will!!!). But there has got to be a better way. I’m sorry but there are just far too many conditional bonuses, effects, and actions in a single encounter for it to be fun. It makes me pine for the days of heroic tier. I mean every single party member has so many magic items with daily and encounter powers on top of properties that I don’t think we’ve used more than a handful of them ever, simply because we either forget to or just don’t have time to get to them in a session or ever. Muffie hardly ever remembers to used Fade Away, Killdrak’s At-Wills are so much better than his encounters/dailys save for a few conditional bonuses that he rarely uses anything other than howling strike or just a melee basic attack (which does something like either eight d6 brutal 1) and I forget to use many of my items cause of the overload I have on them.
So as you can surmise from what I’ve said in my opinion epic tier is definitely epic, no doubt about that. But it’s epic in the wrong way. Just because you shove a crap ton of damage down enemies throats and have more magical items than the fellowship of the ring on every single party member doesn’t make epic tier epic. At least it doesn’t need to. What I think needs to happen is that we shouldn’t measure how awesome or epic or difficult a tier is by the damage output or pluses to attack rolls. Yes I know epic tier campaigns often take players into the astral sea or some place near the gods and that this is a pretty epic act in it of itself but it is only by the access to your powers that you are able to do this, not your choices, your actions, or your characters arc/development.
I think it would be better if perhaps the tiers were measured in difficulty by their moral choices or their difficulty to discern right from wrong. It’s not too hard to decide what to do when a group of goblins is attacking a village in heroic tier but as the tiers go on the morals choices and predicaments that the adventurers are presented with should scale in their difficulty. The goblin issue isn’t a tricky one but what about a group of Tharizdun worshippers who you have defeated and delivered into the hands of the Deva whom they have been murdering. The Deva choose to let the ones who defeated the Tharizdun worshippers, you, decide their fate. The Deva can either destroy the worshippers minds and completely erase their individuality in the process or they can simply kill them. Which one would you choose? Why? Is there a right answer? What ramifications will this have?
Yeah sure the damage you do should go up as well as your pluses and number of daily items for every tier but only to a point and I think it is a crime that those are the tools by which we use in order to measure how “epic” the tiers are. If there could be a way where players choices and character development defined the tiers (this is a role playing game after all) then in doing so players not only learn about their characters but also about themselves and in this way I feel like D&D can truly become an art form.
Part 2 will be coming soon…
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