New D&D 3.5 epic campaign starting up

[James McMurray]

The Cast

• Tarlan, ex-human githyanki mind warrior
• Maevith, half-dragon goliath swordsman on the road to turning himself into a golem
• Cordiss, phrenic human psionicist and pseudo-poltergeist
• Riker, half-fey human archer

Everyone took level adjustment and used LA buyoff, so nobody is actually 20th level yet. To start the campaign off and get everyone used to epic level characters I'm running Storm Lord's Keep from Dragon #310. It's the first epic level adventure WotC wrote. I'll be changing it some to make it a jumping off point for an entire campaign based around the impending death and rebirth of the multiverse.

The play report for our first session. It was pretty short, some folks were late and not everyone had their characdters done, but it did highlight some shortcomings that people were given a chance to rectify in between this session and the next.

[Weave]

Interesting stuff here. I'll be following this with interest. I haven't gotten a good chance to look over the play report, but I'll check it out when I have more time. Out of curiosity, what classes are the "human archer" and "goliath swordsman" taking?

[James McMurray]

A lot more fighter levels than I expected.

I never saw the archer's sheet so I'm not positive what his build was, but there were ranger, scout, and fighter levels in there. His goal was to roll as many d6es for damage per arrow as he could. The fighter was straight fighter 17 but with every strength boost he could find except for Animal Devotion. His final strength ended up being 51.

In between sessions I gave them the opportunity to completely rework their characters, since they've never done anything higher than 14th level and epic has a lot of things you have to be able to do (hence the monk who sat out most of the battle because he couldn't fly). During that time they found the build section of the dandwiki.

• The archer is talking about switching to a master thrower, since apparently 350 damage per round wasn't enough. :)
• The fighter swithced out to a fighter / cleric / prestige paladin / bone knight. His damage went way down but his number of immunities and ability to do non-stabby things went way up.
• The monk is looking to rebuild, despite having been doing 575 damage per round on average. I don't know what build struck his fancy on the wiki, but I do know his current monk / psionic fist came from there.
• The psion uncarnate stayed relatively the same. The player isn't the type to grab other peoples' builds and like what he'd already made.

[Weave]

Good luck with the adventuring. I find epic levels to be insane in terms of power level and very difficult to manage; I usually stop around 14 or 15 as you imply. Even around level 13 things start to get wacky. I think as long as you can account for the change in game dynamic for epic levels you should be fine. The scales need to be amped way up, and rebirthing the multiverse sounds like a delightfully epic campaign. I'm really curious to see how far it will go.  575 and 350 damage per round just blows my mind :P.

[James McMurray]

I've run epic games for 3.5 and 4.0 before, run Scion and Exalted, as well as GMed a couple of epic level arenas over at rpol.net. The power level isn't much of an issue. There's nothing a PC can do that a GM can't triple if he really wants to. My concern is that the newer players seem to be getting caught up in the "MORE POWER!!!11!" aspect of it. They're very story oriented in the other game I've seent hem in (I'm a player there) so hopefully the ZOMG factor will wear off and we'll get to tell some good stories alongside all the heinous battles.

My GM mantra for high power gaming is "let 'em do it." I'd rather have to wing an entire session than stomp on a cool idea. Like when the Scion PCs took Paris Hilton on an impromptu trip to Africa to teach the children how to read (of course, she only brought old issues of Style, People, GQ, and the like). It totally derailed the idea I had but we ended up with an adopted child of Tiger (the god, not the animal) and several cool sessions.

[James McMurray]

Part 2

• The monk finally gets to show his stuff, to devestating effect.
• A new PC is introduced, alongside a new NPC cohort.
• lots of near deaths and by the end of it the NPC cohort is a revenant just waiting to die so she can be revivified.
• There's a lot less detail because I had a very busy week.

[Tangential]

Hmmm, I've runs lot of Epic 3.5 and will be watching this with interest. Shall try to harvest some handy links, and am happy to offer advice as needed.

[James McMurray]

Hmmm, I've runs lot of Epic 3.5 and will be watching this with interest. Shall try to harvest some handy links, and am happy to offer advice as needed.

Any general advice you can toss out? The campaign is still young and while I've run epic games before this is the first time with this group.

[James McMurray]

Part 3

It's been a funky couple of weeks, so it's really short.

[Tangential]

I totally missed this somehow. Well with your specific party, mind-affecting effects are pretty much no go. I'll see about dredging up a bullet list of general advice.

[James McMurray]

I missed a week of updating so it'll be a double one this week (when I can get around to it). They're now done with the storm lord's keep adventure (from Dungeon magazine), so the "real" campaign starts in earnest this week or the next depending on how much prep time I can squeeze out.

[James McMurray]

Part 4

Actually sessions 2 and 3. They finish up the the intro adventure and learn something fundamental (and fundamentally deadly) about he universe.

[Weave]

Interesting stuff! Looking forward to reading more.

Also, I don't know if you're aware, but the links to the characters aren't working for me.

[James McMurray]

Yeah, they probably shouldn't be there at all, or at least give a friendlier 404 message. They're on the todo list and will eventually have short descriptions, pictures if available, and a link to pdfs of the character sheets (unless someone knows a good pdf to html converter, in which case they'll be webpages instead of pdfs because I really loathe unnecessary pdfs online).

[Weave]

I'd like to see what they're built like. I've been mostly convinced that D&D falls apart at higher levels both mechanically and, to some degree, narratively. I'm all for being proven wrong, however :).