Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Epic, mythic and divine rules suck!

The 5e PHB divides character levels into four tiers, based on what the heroes are expected to be saving. These are: save the farm/village (1-4), save the city/kingdom (5-10), save the region/continent (11-16), and save the world/universe (17-20). You may notice that this ignores systems like "epic," "divine" or "mythic." Those systems are stupid and I will give three reasons why below the break.

  • They don't feel epic. The systems do not actually feel any more epic than standard rules, and simply raising the stakes into infinity feels absurd and impersonal. Epic is not a feeling that you can do justice by increasing the numbers, it requires actual commitment to writing an epic scope. You don't even need epic rules to create an epic feel. This gets particularly stupid in Mythic Adventures, which introduce "mythic" monsters like "mythic cockatrices" and "mythic stegosauruses."
  • The math breaks down. The amount of math involved eventually results in requiring scientific notation. We get absurd situations like building a stat block for "the Mortiverse," an infinitely huge, infinitely replicating black hole. The Immortal's Handbook series is full of this stuff. The Epic Legacy Player's Guide, to its credit, deliberately makes a point to avoid that.
  • PCs will never reach those levels. Let's face it, parties typically never reach tenth level. Mythic Adventures actually acknowledge that by adding mythic tiers separate from level, allowing PCs to be mythic from level one. The Epic Legacy Player's Guide, to its credit, includes rules for building starting characters at epic level.

Why not play Dawnborn, Exalted, Godbound, Hero's Journey, Mythender, Of Gods & Heroes, Part-Time Gods, Scion, or Suzerain?

Relevant links:
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)