Keith is awesome - so I will take what you say to heart. Sometimes a chapter just rubs you the wrong way.
Good to hear. From what I can tell, EPIC4-2 has the potential to be the best Epic adventure so far, by far, and it really won't disappoint on the story side. I know very little about it (just the general idea that we came up with), but from what I do know, and the evil ideas that those two come up with... it gives me the shivers.
Keith/Dan/Mickey/Josh/Bruce - Sorry to put on the pressure! Good luck!
Dave Kay LFR Writing Director Retiree dkay807 [at] yahoo [dot] com
On the topic of "unkillable enemies" - I do not mean that we couldnt kill them because they were too powerful. I mean our table could easily have killed them, but the authors created "get out of death free" cards for them. These would be: Corellon (as a trap in Epic 3-1), Sinmaker in Epic 3-2 (unstatted in the playtest - we looked up Aspect of Grazz't and decided he was easily overcome), and Lolth in Epic 3-3 (we again looked up her stats and had a DM gracious enough to run the combat for us). In Epic 4-1, I of course mean Tsien - once she is unconscious, she dies pretty quickly (cant take free actions to deal damage to us). But given the "discorporate" feature (a power completely undefined in the rules) she just goes away with no negative side effects whatsoever.
In case of Lloth and Sinmaker, the DM certainly never placed the miniature on the battlefield, because there was not supposed to be a battle. In this case the complaint then is not, 'everything on the battlemap should be defeatable', it is, everything we meet in the adventure should have stats with good terrain effects because we might decide to kill it. That though is always something were designers/developers have to balance the time detailing AND testing* combat-stats (which includes stuff like terrain** and tactics and is much more than a simple stat block) with the chance of people actually getting in a fight. We simply don't have the time, energy and resources to detail every possibility.
* A huge time drainer at EPIC levels. ** Definitely important when dealing with a deity at her own home turf.
Leaves us Corellon and Tsien, I cannot deny that in case of Tsien you are correct IMO, although I personally have no problem with the occassional plot-protected villain in a shared campaign world, because ultimately, it at least saves you (and the handful of other groups who can actually kill her) the trouble of wondering how the hack she returned even though you killed her, petrified her body and bound her soul to a gem to prevent ressurection. It is also a trope of many stories, including your own favorite Buffy.
As for Corellon, I disagree this is the same situation. The far majority of PCs could not possibly affect Corellon directly. Designing him as a trap/skill challenge makes sense from a story perspective (Corellon is not as his best), while also giving the majority of PCs at least the change to interact with him. There is also no reason to go for the full kill, but then again, I admit that my personal dislike for the ease with which PCs can decide not to kill something in 4e, makes me prefer this method to giving full level 21+x monster stats and having the PCs wittle away hit points and say that they knocked him unconscious at 0 hit points instead of discopperating him. (It is also a hell of lot easier to design a trap-like construction than an actual level 35 solo.)
As for discorporate, check the various MMs with deity stats. It is defined there. Creatures at deity level require more than simple damage to be killed. Sure, it is a plot device, but one that is part of the core design of 4E and hence LFR. It is not something we cooked up at the administrator level of LFR.
Im not saying you cooked up "discorporate" - lots of 30+ monsters have it. But it is still completely undefined. We got around it with Lolth because it not part of her "form A" and she was never able to take "form B". But generally its ridiculous for a god at home (or Tsien on her floating island) to "discorpate".
I understand your writing challenges - those are fair issues to consider for sure. And it is common plot devicium to introduce an character that simply cannot be killed until you accomplish steps a,b,c etc. (mayor had to ascend, needed some magic orb to make glory vulnerable etc.). But if the enemy is clearly one the players will want to fight it's pretty annoying to stop them from doing it all together. Id rather (as with the mayor or glory) have the best warrior in our group stomped handily by that bad guy to prove that the challenge is beyond us until we find another way.
Sinmaker certainly is on the battlefield, he has to escape through the portal the same as you. And again, he is a) clearly evil and b) clearly responsible for a poison that killed thousands and threatened a good god. So many lawful stupid paladin types will immediately take steps to finish him off.
When you recieve the mission, "Stop Lolth's aggression" the most direct way of doing that is to kill her. So when the boxed text starts describing her, most confident and heroic players will immediately respond, "roll initiative".
And for the most part, with Correllon I agree that it wasnt as clear, he is after all a good guy. But many PCs will take the "its a rabid dog, you gotta put it down" point of view. And some (definitely not my own Sharn possessed Battlemind who only wants to kill for the fun of it, wink wink) pc's will not care about whether he's a good guy or not - that's godhood on the battlemap! get it!
IMO, you can't kill a deity simply by chopping at her hitpoints, whether on their own plane or not (though there are versions of the game where killing a deity on their home plane is a requirement). To kill a deity should require special means. Certain artifacts, or certain conditions (such as being a god or primordial, though even that is not always enough). Otherwise, deities are just bigger monsters with more hp, which can't really be the intent (Personally, I am not in favor of giving deities stats at all).
IMO, you can't kill a deity simply by chopping at her hitpoints, whether on their own plane or not (though there are versions of the game where killing a deity on their home plane is a requirement). To kill a deity should require special means. Certain artifacts, or certain conditions (such as being a god or primordial, though even that is not always enough). Otherwise, deities are just bigger monsters with more hp, which can't really be the intent (Personally, I am not in favor of giving deities stats at all).
Gomez
Well the Avatar trilogy and other Forgotten Realms canon materials would disagree with you. Sometimes all it takes is a nicely placed backstab. Kelemvor Mystra (Midnight) and Cyric were all normal mortals when they took down gods and/or ascended to Godhood themselves. I mean, yeah there were obviously other adventure related factors involved - but that's pretty much what it took. These aren't big G gods. They are little g gods, and in myth and folklore, little g gods get killed all the time. Even boss gods of pantheons are vulnerable (hence Winky errr... Odin).
Should heroic tier characters be killing gods? No obviously not.
Should paragon tier characters be killing gods? Nah probably not - but they should be kings/queens by thier own hand by level 20. Or the rough equivalent. I get the feeling that we sort of ignored that for the most part in LFR - we are still jockeying for favors at p3, instead of becoming the 2nd ed. Elminister's of our world.
But once you are epic, its a whole new ballgame. Demi-gods, heroes with thier own constellations in the sky, masters of time and space - these are all epic destinies. Are you telling me Demi-Gods cannot kill Gods? Or that Doctor Who (master of moments) cannot defeat the original evil of the universe (see Satan Pit)? If you take that off the table, you are basically saying heroes aren't really epic. They are just slumming it for gods now instead of slumming it for city councils.
If you are a god, and 5 epic heroes roll up on your floating crystal castle in Asgard, you should be very concerned. You should be wondering if bribing them with a life of eternal praise and 1000 virgins will be enough to keep them from trying to take your head. One epic hero and one fallen valkyrie was enough to bring down the entire Norse pantheon in the Ring Cycle. 5 epic heroes? They are gonna start some serious astral ****.
One epic hero and one fallen valkyrie was enough to bring down the entire Norse pantheon in the Ring Cycle. 5 epic heroes? They are gonna start some serious astral ****.
That is one way to approach it... it should be noted that the Ring Cycle is a relatively modern version of Norse mythology written by Wagner in 1853. In more "original" viking myths (in as far as you can talk about original when discussing myths from an era without the written word), it took several deities, primordials and their half-deity/half-primordial off-spring to trigger Ragnarok. It certainly did not involve mortals that became deities. It should also be noted that in the FR it took rather special circumstances and weapons for mortals to rise to godhood. So while both types of stories exist, and I personally don't prefer one or the other, there is no reason to assume FR canon fits one or the other.
On the topic of "cliffhangers" - I would point to one of my all time favorite fantasy serials - Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Every episode had a distinct beggining middle and end, even though each season had an overarching plot with a meta-leval villain. In my humble opinion, that is how the epic campaign should feel.
One the most recent examples of non-episodic ficiton would be Lost. There are people that hated it because it didn't conform well enough to the trope of introduction, conflict, resolution. That didn't make it wrong and a lot of other people loved it.
You're also assuming that the Epic Campaign, while run in parts, has to conform to the "serial" format.
I think the point others are trying to make, is that some writing has certain conventions, but writing outside of those conventions isn't _wrong_ it is just a different style. Some folks love introductions via in media res, other hate it. Some like having anti-heroes, some don't. Writing is a huge continuum and to have you sit there and say "if it isn't going to be X, it isn't right" ... well, that's a bit harsh at the very least.
On the topic of "unkillable enemies" - I do not mean that we couldnt kill them because they were too powerful. I mean our table could easily have killed them, but the authors created "get out of death free" cards for them. These would be: Corellon (as a trap in Epic 3-1), Sinmaker in Epic 3-2 (unstatted in the playtest - we looked up Aspect of Grazz't and decided he was easily overcome), and Lolth in Epic 3-3 (we again looked up her stats and had a DM gracious enough to run the combat for us). In Epic 4-1, I of course mean Tsien - once she is unconscious, she dies pretty quickly (cant take free actions to deal damage to us). But given the "discorporate" feature (a power completely undefined in the rules) she just goes away with no negative side effects whatsoever.
Gods sometimes have powerful magicks. Scratch that, gods almost always have powerful magicks when in their own domains. That doesn't mean that you can't kill them but it might take a bit more than the usual face slap.
Killing Kardarach (who we already killed in 6 seconds flat in paragon tier play) again without learning the words of creation/destruction or any other useful information was more than a let down. In all seriousness, when the module ended, I was shocked. I though there was at least one maybe two more fights on the way, and had sat on my daily powers waiting for the "boss" fight. I honestly didnt understand why we would marshal an entire army of allies from across the realms for what was really a black ops Tsien assassination.
We could go on an on about how "broken" 4E is, especially at certain levels of play and how monsters are underpowered, etc. It wouldn't change the fact that rolling in on a monster and killing it in six seconds doesn't mean you're going to be able to do that to every monster. Welcome to deux ex machina (literally).
And with the exception of the paragon expedient of not allowing players to have a Spelljamer, I have never understood why the Mistress of the Night (aka Therapist of Kelemvor aka Star Destroyer), ended up being taken away from the players, over and over again. The fact that this happened again in Epic, when players really SHOULD have access to a spelljammer just pushed me over the edge.
That's just going to have to be a difference in home play vs organized play. In my home game, my paragon characters have an astral skiff already, courtesy of some Gith they killed. (it's the equivalent of a spelljammer, really). In an OP campaign, that sort of thing is just silly given that you might end up with six spelljammers at one table.
I agree that maybe it should be possible, but the mechanics for it are something I think the staff are just taking a pass on, and that's their prerogative. Just like they can decide how many magic items a PC can earn (slots), how much you can retrain (liberally, even more so than the rules), and whether or not you have access to certain potions (um, really, you hadn't noticed that restriction?). It's what any DM gets to do and in this case, the staff are the campaign master DMs.
If you are a god, and 5 epic heroes roll up on your floating crystal castle in Asgard, you should be very concerned. You should be wondering if bribing them with a life of eternal praise and 1000 virgins will be enough to keep them from trying to take your head. One epic hero and one fallen valkyrie was enough to bring down the entire Norse pantheon in the Ring Cycle. 5 epic heroes? They are gonna start some serious astral ****.
Examine the structure of those stories and then examine the way the D&D game is built. The assumption with Epic Destinies is not that you'll assume the mantle of godhood at level 21. It is that you will have struggles and dangers to face, of immense proportions, and then, approaching your final denouement around level 30, you will achieve your immortality.
How shocking then, if you become a Demigod and by level 21 (sorry, 23!) have slain Lolth and become the new master/mistress of the Demonweb pits. Ok, maybe you wish to do that, but I believe then you're no longer an adventurer, feel free to retire your new god.
While it might require some suspension of your normal desires, stick with the trope introduced by the game itself.
Examine the structure of those stories and then examine the way the D&D game is built. The assumption with Epic Destinies is not that you'll assume the mantle of godhood at level 21. It is that you will have struggles and dangers to face, of immense proportions, and then, approaching your final denouement around level 30, you will achieve your immortality.
How shocking then, if you become a Demigod and by level 21 (sorry, 23!) have slain Lolth and become the new master/mistress of the Demonweb pits. .
Hehehe. I agree with most of those comments, really I do. But you have 10 adventures to go from King to God. Basically, at this point, the heroes are on the "fast track" to world shaking.
So I imagine things like typical plots from Hercules the legenday journeys are approrpiate to adventures at this tier - meaning we are directly being interfered with by Gods who really are genuinely concerned that we are a growing threat to them. Does Hercules try to knife Hera every time she comes on the scene? No of course not.
But if Hera (Lolth) tried to murder Zeus (Corellon), and Zeus outfitted Hercules with Hera - killing gear and sent him on a mission of ass-kickery... well it just strains belief to think Hercules wouldnt try to kick her ass. And then as we kill Hera, we find out Hades (Tsien) is sitting back pulling all the strings and planning to attack the mortal realm? Well guess what, Hades is gonna get an asswhooping too. As it turns out, Hera's treasure horde had a set of Hades asswhooping gear.
So when Hades (tsien) shows up and is all like "look at me drinking all the god-juice muahahaha", and we are in a room full of totally drinkable god-juice and outfitted to kick some Hades butt to boot... Well I call shenanigans on discorporating and stealing our Tardis. SHENANIGANS I SAY!
