"Broken", Part 2

The last time I waxed about large-scale broken mechanics, I covered multiclassing. Today's installment covers "epic" level play.

On the whole, the 3.5 system, and by extension, Boundless Horizons, was developed for level 1-20 play. Level 20 is an arbitrary cap, but a useful one, as by the time you have spellcasters flinging multiple 9th level spells per day (10th level spells in Boundless Horizons), they bypass "heroic" and "legendary" status quite easily, and are rapidly approaching "godlike".

Then again, you have some long-running games, or shorter games with extremely rapid advancement, that might run up against that limit, and then players are stuck with no real means of mechanical advancement, which takes away one of the main tangible rewards associated with overcoming challenges in the game.

So, epic levels were born. Unfortunately, the system that was devised behaves like the "bolt on solution" it actually is. If multiclassing was sub-optimal before, epic makes it worse, further delaying access to epic bonus feats to characters who multiclasses at all pre-epic. Epic does impose a cost on prestige classes, but that more or less just forces players to take them earlier, to ensure that they "max out" the prestige class levels by character level 20 so they can take epic prestige class levels starting at character level 21. Of course, that doesn't help the player who takes a prestige class without an epic progression, such as Wizard 15 / Archmage 5. The fact that this "nerfs" one of the more powerful class combination is a happy accident, but doesn't make it right.

Another part of the problem is immersion. Classes and prestige classes that are well designed should feel "completed" over the normal course of level 1-20 play. Attempting to extend those classes beyond their normal cap breaks that feeling somewhat. Basically, it boils down to: "well, you don't get any new class features, but we'll just let you increase your existing ones and toss you some bonus feats." Not exactly an "epic" feeling.

Unless, of course, you're using the most broken feat in existence: Epic Spellcasting. What may have looked like a good idea on paper rapidly devolves into a rules-legitimized mechanism for breaking the game beyond any level of recognition. Players can create and use spells that make major artifacts look like mere trinkets? No thanks.

So... how to fix the idea of "epic"? One option is to simply not do epic levels at all. This idea certainly has some merit, and there are a few simple ways this could be done. Simply stopping progression is possible, but falls into the problem described in the beginning, above. Taking a page from "E6", one could simply award a bonus feat for each level's worth of experience in lieu of a 21st+ character level. Or, after character level 20, players can gain templates instead of class levels; this would require defining a fair number of additional templates and a means for phasing them in over multiple levels for templates with a level adjustment greater than +1.

Alternatively, 4th edition introduced the concept of "epic destinies", which give a level 21-30 progression akin to a prestige class. This could also work, but would seem to require extensive tailoring to make sense in different game settings. Additionally, there's still an arbitrary cap at level 30, which makes the progression feel uncompleted if the game ends earlier or runs into the "max level" problem that epic play is supposed to address.

Boundless Horizons takes a different tack. Play at level 21 and higher is pretty much exactly like levels 1-20, with just a few caveats. First and foremost, all classes and prestige classes are caped at their normal limits, that is, there are no "epic progressions". Likewise, caster level for spellcasting classes is capped at 20 (though it can be modified by class and racial features, feats, and the like). Since a class can't be progressed past 20th level, all characters gain the Multiclassed feat (allowing each to chose a new base class to take class levels in) as a bonus feat at 21st level (and every 10th level thereafter) since they are being forced to either multiclass or take a prestige class.

Because of the way class feature levels work, starting a new base class at level 21 will generally allow the character to progress through its 20 levels twice as fast. If the character was already multiclassed, his or her class feature levels from pre-epic play would continue to advance as well.

For example, a Fighter 10 (15) / Rogue 10 (15) adds Cleric as a base class from levels 21-30, becoming Fighter 10 (20) / Rogue 10 (20) / Cleric 10 (20) at 30th level. Alternatively, the same Fighter / Rogue could opt to take a prestige class instead of a new base class, such as 10 levels of Shadowdancer, becoming Fighter 10 (20) / Rogue 10 (20) / Shadowdancer 10 at 30th level.

Characters continue to gain their normal benefits of hit points, base attack bonus, base saving throws, and skill ranks by class, just as they did in levels 1-20. Additional iterative attacks are granted at BAB +21 and every +5 thereafter. Characters also continue gain feats at 21st level and every 3rd level thereafter and continue to gain ability score increases at 24th level and every 4th level thereafter.

Many epic feats have been kept; some were removed as they were rendered moot by changes in the core rules, and others were simply removed for balance (Epic Leadership [especially since Leadership in pre-epic is removed as well] and Epic Spellcasting being the biggest offenders). Still others are modified to reflect system changes, but are otherwise the same in intent. Epic feats may be taken by characters of 21st character level or higher as long as they meet the other prerequisites and are never offered as class-based bonus feats.

The game is still primarily intended to be played from levels 1-20, but these changes make extending that play as seamless as possible, and don't involve players being able to reconstruct the game universe at will.