Why so much hate on Epic levels?

[Phelix-Mu]

Was that the book that has those monsters with scientific notation for their statistics, that are sometimes brought up on the board? Such as the, I think, Neutronium Golem that moved at near lightspeed and killed entire solar systems with its death?

Oh...that's sounds like a pretty cool monster theme there. Mmm. Dark matter golem or something. Hmm. That would be a pretty cool BBEG for a campaign. Kind of like a nice mix between that one planet-sized Elder Evil and Ideon, the planet-sized mecha. As the golem's eon's long self-repair system nears being able to bring the golem back online after being damaged in the distant past, the laws of physics start to go haywire. Party must investigate to find out why. Eventually, they discover a new heavenly body...but, wait..."that's no ordinary moon." Load everyone onto a spelljammer helm and Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

Haha. Thanks, Eldan, that's a whole campaign idea. And I didn't have to even have to read whatever book it is you were talking about (which sounds dreadful).

[NichG]

Was that the book that has those monsters with scientific notation for their statistics, that are sometimes brought up on the board? Such as the, I think, Neutronium Golem that moved at near lightspeed and killed entire solar systems with its death?

So there's actually two books - one is a bestiary, the other is a system for building characters at epic through post-deific power levels (e.g. things like Ao). Its kind of sad that everyone remembers the monster design, which was basically a list of extremely high-numbered creatures (like the Neutronium Golem), but people don't actually remember the things like the expanded/tiered list of epic feats and salient divine abilities, some of which seem to be quite thematic for epic level play. The Immortals Handbook numbers are pretty broken, but as a place to scavenge ideas for epic-tier powers and abilities I've found it quite useful.

But you really do have to watch the mechanical side of things, because they're all over the place.

For example, Sideways Stealing, an epic feat that allows you to steal two-dimensional things - stripes from a tiger is one of the examples used in the book. Very thematic for something an epic level rogue might be able to do. There's another one that makes it so that you are immune to stat loss from diseases and instead you get a bonus to any stats a disease would damage (most recent disease only) - but if you didn't think to fix up the mechanics so that it was a flat bonus rather than turning the disease's penalties into bonuses, then you'd really be in trouble.

At a slightly higher tier, you get things like 'Malaclypse', which lets you wield cursed items but change who gets hit with the penalties of the item, 'Dream Stealer' where those rewards which the target of the ability gains instead go to you, etc.

[Gemini476]

The biggest problem with Epic is the lack of material. Most published material is for the lower levels, with a bit of thinning out the closer you get to level 20 - Epic often gets left out in the cold when the cool classes and monsters are handed out.

The same thing happened for 4e, too. Maybe Wizards of the Coast just don't really know what they're after with Epic.


Another problem with Epic is that the rules start to break down. But that's alright, because magic broke at level seven and the mundanes turned irrelevant in the teens. Epic Spellcasting is nonfunctional, but magic was already crazy four levels ago when the Wizard first cast Genesis.


Honestly, if I wanted to play Epic I'd play some game that actually had support for that level of play, like Exalted or something. (At least you don't need to worry about game balance in the switch from 3.5 to Exalted 2e.)
Or Amber Diceless, like someone said earlier in the thread. Or Nobilis.

Really, there are a ton of games that do the rules at that scale of play better than Epic, and that's because they were made with that in mind rather than be tacked onto the end of Murderhobo Simulator: Caster Edition. Not that there's anything wrong with being a murderhobo sim: it's just that the scale of the early game is so small that the huge scale of Epic just turns into bigger numbers around the board.

...Maybe I'll dig out a copy of Wrath of the Immortals some day, just to see how Basic tried to handle this stuff. I doubt it was very successful, but still.

[Cirrylius]

Was that the book that has those monsters with scientific notation for their statistics, that are sometimes brought up on the board? Such as the, I think, Neutronium Golem that moved at near lightspeed and killed entire solar systems with its death?

And IIRC, it was only Medium

Even if you don't like the material, it's a fun read; one of the high (even in that system) level encounters involve a Nexus Dragon, i.e. a miles-long roughly draconic entity made of an ever-expanding region of force and shaped space-time...

...being used as a whip by a Macro-Human of vastly higher capabilities.

[Urpriest]

So there's actually two books - one is a bestiary, the other is a system for building characters at epic through post-deific power levels (e.g. things like Ao). Its kind of sad that everyone remembers the monster design, which was basically a list of extremely high-numbered creatures (like the Neutronium Golem), but people don't actually remember the things like the expanded/tiered list of epic feats and salient divine abilities, some of which seem to be quite thematic for epic level play. The Immortals Handbook numbers are pretty broken, but as a place to scavenge ideas for epic-tier powers and abilities I've found it quite useful.

But you really do have to watch the mechanical side of things, because they're all over the place.

For example, Sideways Stealing, an epic feat that allows you to steal two-dimensional things - stripes from a tiger is one of the examples used in the book. Very thematic for something an epic level rogue might be able to do. There's another one that makes it so that you are immune to stat loss from diseases and instead you get a bonus to any stats a disease would damage (most recent disease only) - but if you didn't think to fix up the mechanics so that it was a flat bonus rather than turning the disease's penalties into bonuses, then you'd really be in trouble.

At a slightly higher tier, you get things like 'Malaclypse', which lets you wield cursed items but change who gets hit with the penalties of the item, 'Dream Stealer' where those rewards which the target of the ability gains instead go to you, etc.

Sideways Stealing sounds potentially Epic, but also really emphatically not the sort of thing that makes any sense in D&D. Stealing spell effects is plausible (make Incantatrix a Rogue PrC ), but what, mechanically, would stealing a tiger's stripes even do?

The disease one is either a small ability score bonus that could fit in pre-epic, or the same problem as Cancer mage but for any stat and as a feat. The curse one is similar, in that it's either not justifiably epic or it's just dumb. Even Dream Stealer falls into that category.

This, broadly speaking, is my problem with epic: in general, the only reason for something to not be reasonable for the 1-20 range is because it's too dumb for the 1-20 range. Otherwise, it could have just been written as nonepic in almost every case.

[atemu1234]

Epic Spellcasting is meant to have the highest possible level of DM oversight for a reason. I mean, it's powerful, but if your DM isn't horrible, you stand a shot. Also, I personally built the campaign setting for my group to fit things from all campaign settings with a healthy overdose of epic level stuff. I mean, for example, one of the PCs is a level eighty dwarf fighter, in charge of a nation. Building enemies for him is the most fun I've ever had in a game, quite simply because it stopped being "how do I make a balanced encounter" and "how can I screw him over in the worst ways possible?" He once faced down a city full of dragons, at least fifty supra-advanced great wyrm dragons, with an army of soldiers, and survived! If a DM doesn't want to use epic stuff because they feel like the system isn't built for it, then make your own campaign setting with the epic stuff omnipresent. Or don't. Up to them. But complaining about epic spellcasting because it makes the casters overpowered (from a DM) is a little hypocritical. You make as much stuff as you want. Let the PCs do it too.

[NichG]

Sideways Stealing sounds potentially Epic, but also really emphatically not the sort of thing that makes any sense in D&D. Stealing spell effects is plausible (make Incantatrix a Rogue PrC ), but what, mechanically, would stealing a tiger's stripes even do?

You get a thin scroll bearing the pattern of the tiger's stripes, which could be wrapped around ones-self as a shawl to take on the appearance of a tiger, or placed against a surface to imbue it with that pattern. Its not mechanical, but that's not actually a downside. At epic level, individual-scale mechanics should probably be irrelevant anyhow because the sorts of stories you're telling absolutely require more thought-out, connected logic than a set of game mechanics can provide.

E.g. if at epic level you say 'I go and burn down a city' I as DM should be less concerned with the gory details of how you actually burn down the city - you're epic level, even as a Fighter you can stand there and just pick off people one at a time without them having any real recourse. What I need to concern myself with is what the consequences are for the world as a whole, or even the multiverse as a whole (in terms of e.g. changing the various balances of faiths), now that that city has been destroyed. The multiverse-scale consequences are likely to be the equivalent of 'take 1d4 damage', but thats basically where the real game is being played.

The disease one is either a small ability score bonus that could fit in pre-epic, or the same problem as Cancer mage but for any stat and as a feat. The curse one is similar, in that it's either not justifiably epic or it's just dumb. Even Dream Stealer falls into that category.

This, broadly speaking, is my problem with epic: in general, the only reason for something to not be reasonable for the 1-20 range is because it's too dumb for the 1-20 range. Otherwise, it could have just been written as nonepic in almost every case.

The thematics are different, which is non-trivial. Thematically as a Lv10 character if you have, say, Malaclypse, its because you have some particular spell that twists the nature of cursed items so you can borrow the curse and send it out. As an epic character, its because your relationship with the universe is fundamentally different - the curses see you as their child, or some other Nobilis-esque idea.

I feel that sort of mindset is important for making epic actually interesting to play. Its not about the game mechanics getting bigger numbers, its about the feel of the game being less 'skilled/powerful people' and more 'beings whose natures cause them to warp the world around them.

[Flickerdart]

...Its not mechanical...individual-scale mechanics should probably be irrelevant anyhow...I as DM should be less concerned with the gory detail...

This is exactly why there's so much hate for Epic levels. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

[Urpriest]

You get a thin scroll bearing the pattern of the tiger's stripes, which could be wrapped around ones-self as a shawl to take on the appearance of a tiger, or placed against a surface to imbue it with that pattern. Its not mechanical, but that's not actually a downside. At epic level, individual-scale mechanics should probably be irrelevant anyhow because the sorts of stories you're telling absolutely require more thought-out, connected logic than a set of game mechanics can provide.

E.g. if at epic level you say 'I go and burn down a city' I as DM should be less concerned with the gory details of how you actually burn down the city - you're epic level, even as a Fighter you can stand there and just pick off people one at a time without them having any real recourse. What I need to concern myself with is what the consequences are for the world as a whole, or even the multiverse as a whole (in terms of e.g. changing the various balances of faiths), now that that city has been destroyed. The multiverse-scale consequences are likely to be the equivalent of 'take 1d4 damage', but thats basically where the real game is being played.

What that says is that the rules for this are fundamentally different, not that you can't write rules for them. And if the rules are too fundamentally different, then you run the risk of playing a game that has no reason to be based on D&D mechanics in the first place.

As for stealing images so you can wear them...honestly, I could see that as a pre-epic PrC capstone for some appropriate class, like a PrC for changeling illusionist/rogues or the like.

The thematics are different, which is non-trivial. Thematically as a Lv10 character if you have, say, Malaclypse, its because you have some particular spell that twists the nature of cursed items so you can borrow the curse and send it out. As an epic character, its because your relationship with the universe is fundamentally different - the curses see you as their child, or some other Nobilis-esque idea.

The fluff you described sounds fine for a 14th level hexblade, so I don't really see the epic-ness here.

I feel that sort of mindset is important for making epic actually interesting to play. Its not about the game mechanics getting bigger numbers, its about the feel of the game being less 'skilled/powerful people' and more 'beings whose natures cause them to warp the world around them.

I don't see that as an especially "epic" theme either. For example, if Polyhedron had released a mini-campaign-setting (or whatever you call the stuff Polyhedron did) about anarchs in Limbo, it would have explored similar themes.

If anything, I see this as something you could explore via an orthogonal progression, like the Mythic system in Pathfinder or the Birthright rules, rather than just by extending the level progression.

[NichG]

This is exactly why there's so much hate for Epic levels. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Actually I'd say that a lot of the poorly run epic games are poorly run specifically because they don't realize what details matter or not anymore. A game of Lv30 characters going through a dungeon isn't really the same as 'epic' - you're playing to the weaknesses of the situation rather than its strengths.

What that says is that the rules for this are fundamentally different, not that you can't write rules for them. And if the rules are too fundamentally different, then you run the risk of playing a game that has no reason to be based on D&D mechanics in the first place.

The feel of D&D is fundamentally different at Lv10 than it is at Lv1, so having something where the feel of the game changes in fundamental ways as you advance is... well, kind of what D&D is about. You start as farmers, then you become heroes, then you become superhuman, then you become myths, then ...

Certainly this may be why some people don't like playing epic levels, if they really liked the feel of Lv8 or Lv13 or whatever. Its pretty well established that D&D has certain sweet spots where things work best for certain genres, so it makes sense that people would have particular tastes. But it doesn't mean that, e.g., there's something fundamentally bad about taking the game to a place where you have to break down all the assumptions of the previous levels and reinvent how you look at the game. I would say if you aren't doing that by Lv9 you're going to start having problems anyhow.

As for stealing images so you can wear them...honestly, I could see that as a pre-epic PrC capstone for some appropriate class, like a PrC for changeling illusionist/rogues or the like.

The fluff you described sounds fine for a 14th level hexblade, so I don't really see the epic-ness here.

Well to be fair, you can start epic plotlines and thematics before hitting Lv21 if you like, since it is primarily a thematic difference not a mechanical one. So if it sounds fine for a Lv14 character to you, then go for it. I don't think this is something you can understand by looking at the power level of abilities and assigning them to a character level. Its a thematic boundary, not a mechanical one.

I'd put it in terms of saying, for something pre-epic in theme, they do what they do because they are supremely good at something - they're incredibly skilled or well trained or gifted or whatever, but they're still 'just' doing the same things as other people. Anyone can become a Lv14 Hexblade and learn a very subtle manipulation of curses. So if you give a Lv14 Hexblade that ability, you're saying that this sort of relationship with curses is a technique or something anyone can learn given a lifetime of adventure and practice.

On the other hand, in the epic range, each character is something the universe has never seen before. Someone who wraps curses around themselves like cloth, or who steals the color of Sif's hair and holds it ransom, or the like is basically overtly doing the impossible - its somehow their nature/circumstance/strength of being that forces the impossible to be possible, and as part of that it isn't easily copied or taught. While mechanically if something is a feat anyone could take it, thematically it'd make sense to e.g. restrict each of these abilities to one or at most a handful of characters anywhere. This idea of forcing the impossible to be possible or changing the nature of the universe by one's existence dovetails with the idea that at epic level you're rewriting reality with your actions - if you have an adventure and do something, then those acts become the template for all of the 'whys' that come later that determine how the world is. Troll regeneration becomes weak to fire everywhere in the multiverse because you had an adventure where you maimed the god of the trolls with a fire whose property is that its wounds cannot be healed - that kind of thing.

I don't see that as an especially "epic" theme either. For example, if Polyhedron had released a mini-campaign-setting (or whatever you call the stuff Polyhedron did) about anarchs in Limbo, it would have explored similar themes.

If anything, I see this as something you could explore via an orthogonal progression, like the Mythic system in Pathfinder or the Birthright rules, rather than just by extending the level progression.

That's because Limbo is a plane whose nature is to be warped. Its not really the same thing at all - instead of overcoming the nature of what is, its just playing into a nature which is inherently different but still dominant.

[Urpriest]

The value of uniqueness is an interesting point, and one I hadn't considered...but the epic rules don't help with that. If there's a level 80 Fighter in the world, that means that there were 13 level 79-appropriate challenges, 13 level 78-appropriate ones, etc...basically, continue the level progression and you have to level up the world too, at which point you stop really being unique, especially if what you are mechanically isn't "Loki" but "a level 80 rogue".

I think you've convinced me that there's a certain amount of room for uniqueness...but that should all be fine in the low-Epic. The kinds of thematic ranges you're trying to create shouldn't take more than ten new levels or so in total. As an example, check out the Epic Destinies for 3.5. Heck, if you took the Epic Destinies and tacked them on at the end of the normal 20 level progression you'd probably replicate what you are going for better, since you wouldn't have the numbers and level-appropriate encounters getting in the way of your vision.

Really, how many distinct levels do you need for this concept? Can you tell me the difference, thematically, between a level 40 Fighter and a level 80 Fighter?

[NichG]

The value of uniqueness is an interesting point, and one I hadn't considered...but the epic rules don't help with that. If there's a level 80 Fighter in the world, that means that there were 13 level 79-appropriate challenges, 13 level 78-appropriate ones, etc...basically, continue the level progression and you have to level up the world too, at which point you stop really being unique, especially if what you are mechanically isn't "Loki" but "a level 80 rogue".

I think you've convinced me that there's a certain amount of room for uniqueness...but that should all be fine in the low-Epic. The kinds of thematic ranges you're trying to create shouldn't take more than ten new levels or so in total. As an example, check out the Epic Destinies for 3.5. Heck, if you took the Epic Destinies and tacked them on at the end of the normal 20 level progression you'd probably replicate what you are going for better, since you wouldn't have the numbers and level-appropriate encounters getting in the way of your vision.

Really, how many distinct levels do you need for this concept? Can you tell me the difference, thematically, between a level 40 Fighter and a level 80 Fighter?

Well, are you asking how I would do this in the context of D&D, or how I would design an arbitrary system to best represent the thematics I'm describing mechanically? If I wanted to optimally represent the 'uniqueness' thematic emerging from the underlying structure of D&D, I think the way to do it would be to have the system itself switch over from level-based to point-buy once you hit Lv20. At least, in the campaigns I've played in where that sort of thing was done well, thats basically what happened - the GM assigned an XP cost to certain powers and allowed them to be purchased in a modular fashion. You could still level up if you wanted to shore up your numbers or expand into other PrCs, but the modular abilities were attractive enough that most of the XP in the campaign went there. As far as numbers go, by the end of the one campaign the characters each had about 1.5 million XP total. I'd say maybe 30% of that went into levels (I ended up in the low thirties level-wise, and I think the highest was 40-ish) and 70% went into abilities, of which the most expensive had something like a 300k price tag.

In some sense, thats what Epic Spells are kind of trying to be. You could gain 5 levels, or you could research a single Epic Spell that lets you do something utterly crazy. Of course, because the epic spellcasting system is all over the place, it probably doesn't really end up being like that in practice.

In my own campaigns, the highest level that had any concrete thematic effect was something like Lv45, which was what one character needed in order to manage to finagle his way into the Dragon Ascendant PrC and complete it. At a lower level, he would not have been able to actually complete the PrC and get the faux divine rank associated with its capstone.

Incidentally, a separate issue 13 CR-equivalent encounters per level is that it makes sense when gaining a new level represents a significant fractional increase in your power level. This is both true numerically (Lv2 is a ~25-50% power boost over Lv1 dependent on ability score modifiers), and also due to new synergistic abilities coming online every few levels (e.g. access to higher level spells). ' Much like the other numbers in epic D&D, the math has left its regime of validity, so I wouldn't try to hold to that. Gaining a level every session would actually be 'slow' if you were Lv100 already - but this goes back to mechanical problems with the levels system/etc when you push it too far.

[Prime32]

I'd put it in terms of saying, for something pre-epic in theme, they do what they do because they are supremely good at something - they're incredibly skilled or well trained or gifted or whatever, but they're still 'just' doing the same things as other people. Anyone can become a Lv14 Hexblade and learn a very subtle manipulation of curses. So if you give a Lv14 Hexblade that ability, you're saying that this sort of relationship with curses is a technique or something anyone can learn given a lifetime of adventure and practice.

On the other hand, in the epic range, each character is something the universe has never seen before. Someone who wraps curses around themselves like cloth, or who steals the color of Sif's hair and holds it ransom, or the like is basically overtly doing the impossible - its somehow their nature/circumstance/strength of being that forces the impossible to be possible, and as part of that it isn't easily copied or taught. While mechanically if something is a feat anyone could take it, thematically it'd make sense to e.g. restrict each of these abilities to one or at most a handful of characters anywhere.

But the real world caps out at level 6. You're "something the universe has never seen before" at level 7, not level 21. I mean, a 7th-level barbarian can get so angry he turns into a bear.

[Jeff the Green]

But the real world caps out at level 6. You're "something the universe has never seen before" at level 7, not level 21. I mean, a 7th-level barbarian can get so angry he turns into a bear.

Eh, at level 3 a swordsage can teleport without magic. A level 1 Crusader can hit someone so hard it retroactively nullifies the damage it did to him six seconds before.

[NichG]

But the real world caps out at level 6. You're "something the universe has never seen before" at level 7, not level 21. I mean, a 7th-level barbarian can get so angry he turns into a bear.

No, you're something the real world hasn't seen before at Lv7. In the context of the game world, 7th level characters aren't even all that rare. If we go by the real world, you're actually something the real world hasn't seen even at Lv1 if you have any sorts of supernatural abilities.

[Jeff the Green]

No, you're something the real world hasn't seen before at Lv7. In the context of the game world, 7th level characters aren't even all that rare. If we go by the real world, you're actually something the real world hasn't seen even at Lv1 if you have any sorts of supernatural abilities.

Or even if you don't. Remember that Ex abilities can violate the laws of physics.

Also, that's dependent on the game world. In Eberron, double digit characters are pretty rare.

[Yawgmoth]

But the real world caps out at level 6.

These are the dumbest arguments, right beside "gandalf was only level 5" and Int <=> IQ ratios. The real world can't be mapped to D&D because people IRL don't "level up" and suddenly become better fighters and more resilient and more skilled at what they do and and and. They also don't pick up new abilities at predetermined moments in life (i.e. feats), nor are we limited in how many we get to know. It's absolutely ridiculous to even attempt such a conversion, much less expect anyone to agree with it.

As for epic rules, everyone saying that you can't/shouldn't be concerned with individual mechanics or that X things don't really need stats is only highlighting the major problem with epic games: the system doesn't work for it. What mechanics exist are crap, and the mechanics that are missing are necessary for such a game to function. If you strip off caring about individual characters or small group interests, you're not playing D&D. If you stop statting out major plot points and resolve things through logic chess, it's not really D&D anymore. Whether or not such a game has merit or is enjoyable is completely immaterial to the main issue, which is that the system just breaks down after a certain point and that point is well before epic. This unfortunately makes the best advice for epic games "play a different system, one that is equipped for that style of game."

[Naanomi]

The value of uniqueness is an interesting point, and one I hadn't considered...but the epic rules don't help with that. If there's a level 80 Fighter in the world, that means that there were 13 level 79-appropriate challenges, 13 level 78-appropriate ones, etc...basically, continue the level progression and you have to level up the world too, at which point you stop really being unique, especially if what you are mechanically isn't "Loki" but "a level 80 rogue".

Not that I don't agree, but thematically one imagines that past a certain point you just head for the Planes to find your challenges... a good month long vacation in the deepest parts of the Astral or Far Realm (or just repeated trips to the Mirror Realm?) could fill your quota right?

[The Oni]

Thing about it is that most people don't ever make it to Epic levels, unless they're starting really high and/or fasttracking XP. The game is meant to end before twenty; if it was meant to go higher the base classes would go past twenty-one.

[NichG]

Or even if you don't. Remember that Ex abilities can violate the laws of physics.

Also, that's dependent on the game world. In Eberron, double digit characters are pretty rare.

So I was about to just brush this point off, but there is something key to this.

Namely, you could run Lv7 as 'epic themed' if you wanted in the sense of what I've been talking about by e.g. saying 'every PC class in the game can only be taken by one PC, no NPCs have class levels beyond NPC classes, etc'. That would certainly make a game/setting where the PCs were perforce unique, and you could run their abilities as being the sort of 'warping of the world' that I was talking about. The physical embodiment of Death is not some nasty thing with SDAs, but is a cleric with Slay Living at will, etc.

The problem is, you'd be working against the understanding that the community has developed about D&D over the past however many years. A cleric or a wizard is fundamentally familiar. Even if the DM says 'there aren't any others in the world than you', its treading over ground that the player has almost certainly tread before, and has preconceptions about - it's going to be very hard to convince someone who has played any D&D at all that, say, Fireball is thematically a world-shattering ability, and the game that results will probably be hard to take seriously in any real way.

So if you went this route you'd really need to lie to the players quite a bit to make it work. Hide D&D under a complete rebranding of the names of everything so you haven't even told them you're running D&D.

On the other hand, Lv21+ games are rare. Most players don't know what to expect from them, so you can use the contrast with the Lv<20 games they have played in to enhance the experience and make the thematic distinctions much more clear. Basically, the fact that people have played a Lv10 character in the same system helps you make playing a Lv25 character feel distinct.

As for epic rules, everyone saying that you can't/shouldn't be concerned with individual mechanics or that X things don't really need stats is only highlighting the major problem with epic games: the system doesn't work for it. What mechanics exist are crap, and the mechanics that are missing are necessary for such a game to function. If you strip off caring about individual characters or small group interests, you're not playing D&D. If you stop statting out major plot points and resolve things through logic chess, it's not really D&D anymore. Whether or not such a game has merit or is enjoyable is completely immaterial to the main issue, which is that the system just breaks down after a certain point and that point is well before epic. This unfortunately makes the best advice for epic games "play a different system, one that is equipped for that style of game."

D&D is very moddable and gives a large number of design hooks for new abilities, which really does make it a very good substrate for this in my experience. Generally the way the 'play a different system' train of thought goes is to jump for something rules-light, but thats actually probably the worst thing you could do in this case. You need something which is very rich at the underlying level to make wide arrays of options feel distinctive at the top level. Part of this is setting up assumptions and then knocking them down - identifying the things that you can't do tells you where you can add abilities to do those things that will be surprising.

So if you really did want to use a different system for this, it's a very nontrivial thing to go find one. First of all, you need something that has a 'low level' epoch of play (and the sort of exponential power scaling of D&D is pretty unique as far as game systems go). Secondly, you need something where the underlying game mechanics are sufficiently complex and sophisticated that you have lots of mechanical hooks to create a wide array of abilities from. Thirdly, you need something where the players are familiar with how it plays in the low end so that the contrast with the high end is actually meaningful.

Given those particular requirements, I think its a lot easier just to mod D&D.

[Urpriest]

Well, are you asking how I would do this in the context of D&D, or how I would design an arbitrary system to best represent the thematics I'm describing mechanically? If I wanted to optimally represent the 'uniqueness' thematic emerging from the underlying structure of D&D, I think the way to do it would be to have the system itself switch over from level-based to point-buy once you hit Lv20. At least, in the campaigns I've played in where that sort of thing was done well, thats basically what happened - the GM assigned an XP cost to certain powers and allowed them to be purchased in a modular fashion. You could still level up if you wanted to shore up your numbers or expand into other PrCs, but the modular abilities were attractive enough that most of the XP in the campaign went there. As far as numbers go, by the end of the one campaign the characters each had about 1.5 million XP total. I'd say maybe 30% of that went into levels (I ended up in the low thirties level-wise, and I think the highest was 40-ish) and 70% went into abilities, of which the most expensive had something like a 300k price tag.

In some sense, thats what Epic Spells are kind of trying to be. You could gain 5 levels, or you could research a single Epic Spell that lets you do something utterly crazy. Of course, because the epic spellcasting system is all over the place, it probably doesn't really end up being like that in practice.

In my own campaigns, the highest level that had any concrete thematic effect was something like Lv45, which was what one character needed in order to manage to finagle his way into the Dragon Ascendant PrC and complete it. At a lower level, he would not have been able to actually complete the PrC and get the faux divine rank associated with its capstone.

Incidentally, a separate issue 13 CR-equivalent encounters per level is that it makes sense when gaining a new level represents a significant fractional increase in your power level. This is both true numerically (Lv2 is a ~25-50% power boost over Lv1 dependent on ability score modifiers), and also due to new synergistic abilities coming online every few levels (e.g. access to higher level spells). ' Much like the other numbers in epic D&D, the math has left its regime of validity, so I wouldn't try to hold to that. Gaining a level every session would actually be 'slow' if you were Lv100 already - but this goes back to mechanical problems with the levels system/etc when you push it too far.

See, I agree with you, but I think a consequence is that epic per se is unnecessary. Once you pass a certain level, you should start gaining thematic abilities like the Epic Destinies, not gaining more levels. They represent different things, and aside from the occasional PrC qualification (which I'm sure could have been min-maxed to a lower level), higher levels themselves don't help you reach new thematic points.

Not that I don't agree, but thematically one imagines that past a certain point you just head for the Planes to find your challenges... a good month long vacation in the deepest parts of the Astral or Far Realm (or just repeated trips to the Mirror Realm?) could fill your quota right?

The gods themselves are only level 60 max. The planes don't give you anything more scary to fight than the Material: compare the biggest non-ELH demons and devils to the biggest Dragons, or Elder Brains or the like. Even the Far Realms are only covering CR 27 or so, while you're still in the realm of things that can be fought anyway. There just aren't things in the multiverse that make sense for a level 80 character to fight, beyond things so boring and unnecessary that their only thematic characteristics are "big" and "old" like Draeden.

[NichG]

See, I agree with you, but I think a consequence is that epic per se is unnecessary. Once you pass a certain level, you should start gaining thematic abilities like the Epic Destinies, not gaining more levels. They represent different things, and aside from the occasional PrC qualification (which I'm sure could have been min-maxed to a lower level), higher levels themselves don't help you reach new thematic points.

I'd phrase it differently - specifically that 'epic as a level-based system is unnecessary'. I think that what we're describing - epic destinies, modular abilities, a completely new 'type' of plotline - very much does require a different way of thinking about it and different sets of things that make it good material for an expansion book. As far as levels, I'm generally of the feeling that if you get into this range of play and want to spend your resources picking up another couple of levels, finish off a PrC, whatever, that's not really an issue - its fine just to use the logical continuation of the existing mechanics for that and there's no real reason to forbid it.

Incidentally, Dragon Ascendant has a 30 BAB prereq and is a 12 level PrC, so I don't really see how to get it below Lv43 at the soonest.

The gods themselves are only level 60 max. The planes don't give you anything more scary to fight than the Material: compare the biggest non-ELH demons and devils to the biggest Dragons, or Elder Brains or the like. Even the Far Realms are only covering CR 27 or so, while you're still in the realm of things that can be fought anyway. There just aren't things in the multiverse that make sense for a level 80 character to fight, beyond things so boring and unnecessary that their only thematic characteristics are "big" and "old" like Draeden.

There are certain logical hierarchies you can construct, which is actually one of the things the Immortals Handbook tries to do (not incredibly successfully in that particular case, IMO, since it has you doing things like fighting the physical embodiments of multiverses with multi-lightyear movement rates and things that just end up feeling more silly than distinctive). But basically, this is tied to cosmology - in general, you probably need to go deeper into the cosmology for a really epic game than what's available in Manual of the Planes and start addressing things like 'Why is the universe the way it is? Aside from the deities, who are a dime a dozen, who actually had the power to set things up this way and create the current order?' and the answers to those questions will lead to the logical source of valid challenges.

Beyond that, scale can be used. Fighting against the physical manifestation of the secret death-wish of all living things on a material plane, for example.

[Urpriest]

I'd phrase it differently - specifically that 'epic as a level-based system is unnecessary'. I think that what we're describing - epic destinies, modular abilities, a completely new 'type' of plotline - very much does require a different way of thinking about it and different sets of things that make it good material for an expansion book. As far as levels, I'm generally of the feeling that if you get into this range of play and want to spend your resources picking up another couple of levels, finish off a PrC, whatever, that's not really an issue - its fine just to use the logical continuation of the existing mechanics for that and there's no real reason to forbid it.

Incidentally, Dragon Ascendant has a 30 BAB prereq and is a 12 level PrC, so I don't really see how to get it below Lv43 at the soonest.

BAB cheese is the stinkiest cheese, but with liberal enough readings it's doable. That said, I feel like if you've got a point-buy-ish system for abilities, you'll have a less silly way of achieving DvR 0 for a PC.

Epic without higher levels isn't epic in the sense we're discussing in this thread, it's a different system altogether. A few additional levels are fine, you've convinced me of that. But I don't think there's any reason to go past 30, espeically when the bulk of your proposed system isn't level-based anyway. That keeps you within the thematic space of D&D, which, well, see my next point:

There are certain logical hierarchies you can construct, which is actually one of the things the Immortals Handbook tries to do (not incredibly successfully in that particular case, IMO, since it has you doing things like fighting the physical embodiments of multiverses with multi-lightyear movement rates and things that just end up feeling more silly than distinctive). But basically, this is tied to cosmology - in general, you probably need to go deeper into the cosmology for a really epic game than what's available in Manual of the Planes and start addressing things like 'Why is the universe the way it is? Aside from the deities, who are a dime a dozen, who actually had the power to set things up this way and create the current order?' and the answers to those questions will lead to the logical source of valid challenges.

Beyond that, scale can be used. Fighting against the physical manifestation of the secret death-wish of all living things on a material plane, for example.

See, the problem is that here you're introducing things that just don't fit into the thematic space of D&D. Take the Neutronium Golem, or similar "humongous thing measured in light-years" entities. Those miss the point that in D&D, space is small. Space isn't filled with neutron stars and black holes and galaxies, it's filled with phlogiston and gnomes in ships powered by giant hamsters. Space in D&D is just a lower-level place than planescape, thematically speaking, a prosaic Prime locale only slightly bigger in scope than the worlds it connects.

Then you've got the planes, the real high-level thematic space of D&D. There, you've got the difficulty that the top of the scale is already mostly occupied. At most you've got, as you say, the architects...but unless you're in the Gurren Lagann-verse, you don't fight the architects. They're background entities, and there are only a few of them. You have a final adventure that unveils the truth behind the world, and that's as far as you need to go in that direction, because there's only a need for one ultimate answer there before you're just putting on scale for scale's sake like the Immortals Handbook.

Death gods themselves are in the level 60 range, and that's probably unnecessarily inflated, considering that you can comfortably represent demon lords at level 30 or so. The secret death wish of all things on the material plane is actually a lower-tier entity. Being not anthropomorphic enough to hold an important position in D&D's genre, and not political enough due to all of the politics of beings of that scale involving actual gods, you're looking at something Elder Evil-esque, and that doesn't need to be very far past 20 really.

It's also another "campaign-ending fight" rather than the "Tuesday" that an epic progression needs. Remember, not every session is the end of a story arc. What does an epic level filler episode look like, in your view? Because I could imagine a level 20 filler episode, or even maybe a level 30 one, but I can't think of enough to fill that space past there.

[cosmonuts]

GM arbitration is unfortunately very inconsistent and nearly impossible to quantify in any meaningful way. So the only thing people can go by when discussing rules on the internet is what those rules actually allow.

This is true, but I think we can agree that GMs in general won't allow enormous amounts of DC mitigation the standard way (get casters via leadership, uncanny forethought an epic slot, supernatural spell an epic spell).

In which case mythal is still broken, but I think the others are generally fine. Feel free to correct me, though; it may be the case that I can make a horrendously powerful DC 30 spell without needing mitigation at all.

[NichG]

See, the problem is that here you're introducing things that just don't fit into the thematic space of D&D. Take the Neutronium Golem, or similar "humongous thing measured in light-years" entities. Those miss the point that in D&D, space is small. Space isn't filled with neutron stars and black holes and galaxies, it's filled with phlogiston and gnomes in ships powered by giant hamsters. Space in D&D is just a lower-level place than planescape, thematically speaking, a prosaic Prime locale only slightly bigger in scope than the worlds it connects.

Then you've got the planes, the real high-level thematic space of D&D. There, you've got the difficulty that the top of the scale is already mostly occupied. At most you've got, as you say, the architects...but unless you're in the Gurren Lagann-verse, you don't fight the architects. They're background entities, and there are only a few of them. You have a final adventure that unveils the truth behind the world, and that's as far as you need to go in that direction, because there's only a need for one ultimate answer there before you're just putting on scale for scale's sake like the Immortals Handbook.

Well, IMO, one of the hallmarks of this is that you do fight the architects and the sort of thematic range I'm talking about can in fact get Gurren Lagann-ish. This particular epic theme does have a ceiling, but that ceiling is basically the point at which your characters have achieved the ability to rewrite the universe in their image. Once you've crossed that particular threshold, then the fundamental questions become ones of philosophy, morality, and meaning - e.g. things like 'is it right to create creatures who suffer?' or 'should death be a thing?' or 'if I can rewrite time, and my solipsisms are actually true, does anything have meaning anymore?' - and that's a different thematic range (the 'next' one in series after epic if you believe they're linear).

So fighting/becoming the architects is basically the transition moment into that next thematic range. And then of course you can in fact run games in that thematic range, but it requires a whole different set of assumptions/structures, much like epic did. A game in that zone looks a lot like DMing, basically.

Death gods themselves are in the level 60 range, and that's probably unnecessarily inflated, considering that you can comfortably represent demon lords at level 30 or so. The secret death wish of all things on the material plane is actually a lower-tier entity. Being not anthropomorphic enough to hold an important position in D&D's genre, and not political enough due to all of the politics of beings of that scale involving actual gods, you're looking at something Elder Evil-esque, and that doesn't need to be very far past 20 really.

It depends on cosmology, which is kind of my point. There's nothing stopping you from making 'the secret death wish of all beings' a higher tier entity than, say, Nerull, because Nerull is a personage. Its sort of like the question of whether or not 'magic' should be a higher tier structure than 'Mystra'. In this particular take on it, the gods themselves are basically office-holders, the equivalent of clerics of fundamental concepts; when you kill the god of death, that doesn't make death stop being a thing in the multiverse. Another god of death emerges, because you haven't altered the underlying structures that make death happen - whether its via belief in a Planescape-esque fashion, or some physical reality. So the next tier above gods is a class of entities that are basically what one might call 'lynchpins for concepts' - take them out and their concept itself goes away or changes hands.

For example, a high-epic quest might be 'I want to change the alignment system - I don't like how Good works right now'. In standard D&D cosmology, alignment is a higher-tier structure than the various aligned gods.

It's also another "campaign-ending fight" rather than the "Tuesday" that an epic progression needs. Remember, not every session is the end of a story arc. What does an epic level filler episode look like, in your view? Because I could imagine a level 20 filler episode, or even maybe a level 30 one, but I can't think of enough to fill that space past there.

Well, let me split this into 'low-epic', 'mid-epic', and 'high-epic'.

Low-epic (Lv21-24 lets say): Filler episode is something like dealing with a new planar race that is invading the world, stopping an illithid plot to travel back in time and extinguish the sun, personally founding a kingdom/church, etc. The high points/boss fights might involve something like conquering a layer of the Abyss, taking out a demon lord, etc.

Mid-epic (Lv25-30): Filler episodes is something like investigating why souls have stopped flowing to all the afterlives, stopping a demiplane from falling from the Ethereal into the Plane of Fire, negotiating an armistice between a pantheon of deities, prison break from the Demiplane of Imprisonment. The high points/boss fights might involve taking out minor deities in direct combat.

High-epic (Lv31+): Filler episode is something like seeing why deities are going mad, travelling back in time to witness the forming of the Pact Primeval (and messing with it), dealing with anomalies in the Plane of Fire causing all fire everywhere to behave strangely, fighting against a thought-virus which has caused a feedback loop in the beliefs of an entire crystal sphere and is causing issues elsewhere, journeying to an alternate copy of the multiverse through the Plane of Mirrors in order to revive Aoskar, fighting Elder Evils in their full forms (the gods are afraid of them, so...), freeing the Lady of Pain from Sigil, taking over the duties of a Concept for awhile for some reason. High points/boss fights might involve taking out concepts themselves (end Fear everywhere) or creating new ones (there is now a concept called Spiral, cue Guren Lagann...).

At the end of all this, the campaign ending fight would be something like going after the architects of the concepts themselves or trying to capture the source of all power/fountainhead of creation/whatever mythical representation of the ability to determine all things about reality that you might want to use.

[Urpriest]

See, I don't see "fighting concepts" as working for those scales. If you're fighting a concept in a D&D-like world, it's because some god or caster or the like has brought it out to fight you. The god or caster is the interesting part, because they're a person, with goals, interests, political aspirations, involvement with the world, etc. The concept is just a superweapon being used by the god/caster, and shouldn't steal its master's spotlight.

[Yawgmoth]

D&D is very moddable and gives a large number of design hooks for new abilities, which really does make it a very good substrate for this in my experience. Generally the way the 'play a different system' train of thought goes is to jump for something rules-light, but thats actually probably the worst thing you could do in this case. You need something which is very rich at the underlying level to make wide arrays of options feel distinctive at the top level. Part of this is setting up assumptions and then knocking them down - identifying the things that you can't do tells you where you can add abilities to do those things that will be surprising.

That's not actually true. There's plenty of crunchy systems out there that handle playing Beings of Phenomenal Cosmic Power that at least have the option for lower level play. It's easy to scale down effects, but there's a definite ceiling wherein the math just stops working and playing the game is functionally no different than flipping coins while staring at an excel spreadsheet.

So if you really did want to use a different system for this, it's a very nontrivial thing to go find one. First of all, you need something that has a 'low level' epoch of play (and the sort of exponential power scaling of D&D is pretty unique as far as game systems go). Secondly, you need something where the underlying game mechanics are sufficiently complex and sophisticated that you have lots of mechanical hooks to create a wide array of abilities from. Thirdly, you need something where the players are familiar with how it plays in the low end so that the contrast with the high end is actually meaningful.

Given those particular requirements, I think its a lot easier just to mod D&D.

I disagree. As I said above, there's a lot of crunchy systems wherein the mechanics at least try to be built with an eye towards power levels approaching DC or Marvel just before a continuity reset. D&D is not an easy system to mod because the parts where it actually functions well are quite small in comparison to the design space it tries to occupy. D&D does not handle "gritty realism" well because magic takes most of that out. You can't take magic out because the monsters are designed with the expectation of magic, specifically magic items. D&D similarly does not handle large scale intrigues well because the assumption is on "these 3-5 people and their personal exploits". Once you start worrying about armies and continents, it breaks down into either rolling thousands of dice or handwaving it; handwaving is not mechanics and thus is not something one should consider here.

If someone wants to play a modern game with a lot of politicking, I'm not going to suggest D&D; I'm going to suggest V:tR.
If someone wants to play a game of nascent godlings competing with similar forces, I'm not suggesting D&D; I'm suggesting Exalted.
If someone wants to play a kitchen sink game where everything is possible and nothing really needs to make sense to be viable, my vote is going to RIFTS, not D&D.
If someone wants to play a game about kung-fu fighters in a vaguely asian setting, it's not going to be OA, it's going to be Legends of the Wulin.
If someone wants to play an 80s fantasy cartoon plot with a vaguely video game feel to progression, then I might suggest D&D.

[NichG]

See, I don't see "fighting concepts" as working for those scales. If you're fighting a concept in a D&D-like world, it's because some god or caster or the like has brought it out to fight you. The god or caster is the interesting part, because they're a person, with goals, interests, political aspirations, involvement with the world, etc. The concept is just a superweapon being used by the god/caster, and shouldn't steal its master's spotlight.

Hm, at this point maybe we'll just have to disagree? I think this is a matter of taste. For me, I rather like games that involve very alien intellects/circumstances. What sort of motivations might 'fear' or 'death wish' or whatever have, independent of sort of person-scale things like 'I want to rule this kingdom' or 'I want to get back at the people who wronged me'. In D&D, even the gods tend to be petty like that - their mindsets are very 'mortal'. So there's a lot of room for things whose relationship with the universe is fundamentally based on different assumptions, and I think 'those should all be weapons of a person with human-like motivations' is pretty limiting.

I also don't particularly have any attachment to the specific D&D cosmology as written, especially when running a game that intends to get to epic scale. Everything can and will be redefined to suit the needs of whatever ideas that particular campaign is exploring. And I don't think that's particularly unusual either - Eberron doesn't have the same cosmology as Faerun or Dragonlance or Greyhawk.

That's not actually true. There's plenty of crunchy systems out there that handle playing Beings of Phenomenal Cosmic Power that at least have the option for lower level play. It's easy to scale down effects, but there's a definite ceiling wherein the math just stops working and playing the game is functionally no different than flipping coins while staring at an excel spreadsheet.
I disagree. As I said above, there's a lot of crunchy systems wherein the mechanics at least try to be built with an eye towards power levels approaching DC or Marvel just before a continuity reset. D&D is not an easy system to mod because the parts where it actually functions well are quite small in comparison to the design space it tries to occupy. D&D does not handle "gritty realism" well because magic takes most of that out. You can't take magic out because the monsters are designed with the expectation of magic, specifically magic items. D&D similarly does not handle large scale intrigues well because the assumption is on "these 3-5 people and their personal exploits". Once you start worrying about armies and continents, it breaks down into either rolling thousands of dice or handwaving it; handwaving is not mechanics and thus is not something one should consider here.

Handwaving is perfectly fine. If we're talking about 'what system is best' then something that can actually do it well would trump handwaving, but if we're talking about how to make a functional campaign then handwaving absolutely is a powerful tool to do so. There's no such thing as perfect gaming, and having the inflexibility that everything must be codified and written down in the rules is going to strongly limit what you can actually pull off and make entertaining.

My advice on how to run a good D&D campaign would start with 'never be afraid to throw out RAW'. That doesn't mean that D&D is a bad starting point, it means that I think D&D is closer to what I'd consider 'reasonable gaming with a D&D-like feel' than other systems. Using FATE or GURPS or whatever would lose far more than having to discard a few broken bits of RAW.

Anyhow, being able to get D&D to do all sorts of things just requires an understanding of how the system works. If you want to do low magic, you actually can do so, but you have to understand that its not as simple as making no magic items. Eliminate all full casters/spellcasting, and replace the mechanics of classes with partial spellcasting to instead have (Ex) at-will abilities based on the sorts of spells they should be getting. Avoid incorporeal enemies and enemies with flight. Give save-or-die-ish effects a two round grace period where the effects can be undone with a Heal check. Take certain things that generally magic is used for and shift them onto skills (e.g. reverse petrification is a Heal check, removing a curse is a Knowledge(Arcana) check, etc). Consider the party's effective level to be about 50-60% what it should otherwise be, and customize encounters not just based on CR but based on what you know the characters in the party can in fact handle. Add a few more mundane-ish homebrew classes, possibly make Leadership a bigger deal, and create a system for non-magical items 'of high quality' with magic-ish bonuses.

No, its not as simple as the 'I refuse to give out magic items!' that most people try when they first try low magic, but if you understand the system and what makes things easy/hard, its pretty simple to make something that works.

If someone wants to play a game of nascent godlings competing with similar forces, I'm not suggesting D&D; I'm suggesting Exalted.

Only relevant one to the question of 'epic', so I'll address this in particular. Exalted is a much flatter system than D&D - it doesn't handle the sorts of power gaps that are part and parcel of D&D very well. Furthermore, mechanically speaking the combat system is pretty screwed up; not really any better than the broken math of D&D at epic levels, if for different reasons (perfect defense economy). Most of the charms are also a lot more boring than the stuff you tend to find in D&D because there is less to connect to mechanically; adding tons of dice to things is not really sophisticated game design.

In D&D, effectively each character has between four and eight separate lines of defense: DR, AC, Saves, HP, regeneration, SR, resistances, miss chance. Out of these, there are roughly three categories of defenses that behave mechanically different: 'reduction' like DR and resistances, 'buffers' like HP, 'evasion' like AC/Saves/SR - and regeneration is a sort of special fourth. That's pretty mechanically rich. Add on to that specific immunities, which become more important at high levels, and also differential mobility (flight/incorporeality/burrow/etc), and even just looking at simple combat interactions its already pretty mechanically rich. Now to that you can add the huge breadth of utility powers that D&D has; I don't think I've seen a game system that comes close as far as the types of non-fighting things you can do. There's everything from birth control to creating planes of reality to raising armies of minions to causing crops to grow faster to communicating over long distances to finding anyone/anything anywhere to seeing the future to forming materials into any shape/building structures rapidly to ...

So yeah, I'd start with D&D over Exalted for this particular theme any day. No contest.

[TuggyNE]

Well, let me split this into 'low-epic', 'mid-epic', and 'high-epic'.

Low-epic (Lv21-24 lets say): Filler episode is something like dealing with a new planar race that is invading the world, stopping an illithid plot to travel back in time and extinguish the sun, personally founding a kingdom/church, etc. The high points/boss fights might involve something like conquering a layer of the Abyss, taking out a demon lord, etc.

Mid-epic (Lv25-30): Filler episodes is something like investigating why souls have stopped flowing to all the afterlives, stopping a demiplane from falling from the Ethereal into the Plane of Fire, negotiating an armistice between a pantheon of deities, prison break from the Demiplane of Imprisonment. The high points/boss fights might involve taking out minor deities in direct combat.

High-epic (Lv31+): Filler episode is something like seeing why deities are going mad, travelling back in time to witness the forming of the Pact Primeval (and messing with it), dealing with anomalies in the Plane of Fire causing all fire everywhere to behave strangely, fighting against a thought-virus which has caused a feedback loop in the beliefs of an entire crystal sphere and is causing issues elsewhere, journeying to an alternate copy of the multiverse through the Plane of Mirrors in order to revive Aoskar, fighting Elder Evils in their full forms (the gods are afraid of them, so...), freeing the Lady of Pain from Sigil, taking over the duties of a Concept for awhile for some reason. High points/boss fights might involve taking out concepts themselves (end Fear everywhere) or creating new ones (there is now a concept called Spiral, cue Guren Lagann...).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to go much beyond level 35, or 40 at the latest. What might you be doing at level 60, which should be as much of a sea change in campaigns as going from level 1 to level 21 is?

I submit that Epic ends before level 40 (and usually well before that; whether the ending point is 30, 35, or 40 is up to some dispute I guess). The game just can't go on, because there is an immense paucity of the needed concepts, and even the aggregate of thousands of years of human imagination still cannot fill that.

[NichG]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to go much beyond level 35, or 40 at the latest. What might you be doing at level 60, which should be as much of a sea change in campaigns as going from level 1 to level 21 is?

I submit that Epic ends before level 40 (and usually well before that; whether the ending point is 30, 35, or 40 is up to some dispute I guess). The game just can't go on, because there is an immense paucity of the needed concepts, and even the aggregate of thousands of years of human imagination still cannot fill that.

Arguably, because of how levels work in epic, 40 to 20 isn't as big of a (mechanical) difference as 20 is to 15 even, which is part of the reason why epic in principle stretches out much further (and why Urpriest and I were discussing alternate advancement methods from gaining levels to really do epic right). If you aren't actually putting new modular abilities into the system, then I'd say that pretty much no matter what your character level is - 30, 40, 100, 1000, etc, it doesn't help you actually participate in the 'high epic' category I listed. Basically the concepts there absolutely require new things to be added into the system so that characters can even interact with them in any mechanical sense.

But once you add new abilities, the campaign pacing (in the sense of a range of levels) is roughly right for things to cap out around 35-40. Beyond that, there is a post-epic that you could do, which is that each character is basically DMing the universe but the game would somehow focus on the philosophical conflicts that arise from that. It'd be very much like forum god-games.