Epic Ravenloft

[Scipio]

Random ideas for messing with epic PC's:

* Give them the wishing imp and stand back
* The villain is keeping a worse evil at bay
* Good people need the villain to stay alive

Looks like DeepShadow beat me to it. I was going to say something about the wishing imp. After its introduction into just one of my games, the players have become very suspicious of any magic item taking the form of a statuette, or that has any level of intelligence. The other two items DS mentioned are classic ways to mess with characters at any power level and should not be overlooked, also.

[MatthiasStormcrow]

Geez, of all the random threads to be here on one of the rare occasions I come poking my nose around here. Silly me, I thought in our experiment we'd pretty much laid this argument to rest. Apparently it can come back from being killed, too.

* Good people need the villain to stay alive

To a varying extent this describes practically every Darklord in Ravenloft, which is one thing (as I argued, once many years ago) makes Ravenloft rather uniquely suited to making life complicated for Epic PCs.

It's a shame the thread which spawned the experiment has been long since lost to the Mists, although from what I remember there were a lot of similarities. Why does the Core needing to be geographically bigger come up in every "Epic" thread, anyhow? Wouldn't it matter even *less* how far apart things are for a party that can probably teleport an awful lot and is going to be more-or-less completely immune to ordinary travel hazards, anyways? I still just don't get the "epic = big world, huge population" thing.

I can keep going, but before I do...can anyone see where epic PC's would make a cake walk out of this? Please, I'd like to hear from those of you who have played epic before.

If there's one thing I can definitively vouch for its that DeepShadow doesn't let anything be a cakewalk, ever.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Geez, of all the random threads to be here on one of the rare occasions I come poking my nose around here. Silly me, I thought in our experiment we'd pretty much laid this argument to rest. Apparently it can come back from being killed, too.

ROTFL! Hey, Captain Cortez! Let's have a reunion!

* Good people need the villain to stay alive

To a varying extent this describes practically every Darklord in Ravenloft, which is one thing (as I argued, once many years ago) makes Ravenloft rather uniquely suited to making life complicated for Epic PCs.

Great point! I think that calls for another list--Bad Guys whose deaths will cause anarchy:

Ivan & Ivana (Gaz IV spells it out)
d'Honaire
Strahd
Drakov
Azalin
Mallochio
Gabby
Othmar
Malken
Loht
Jackie R.
Louise R.
Hazlik
Godefroy
Meredoth

Off the top of my head, the only core lords whose deaths would not be double-edged would be Death and Adam. Even Reise's death would be likely to stir things for the worse, as I showed in Reckonings.

It's a shame the thread which spawned the experiment has been long since lost to the Mists, although from what I remember there were a lot of similarities. Why does the Core needing to be geographically bigger come up in every "Epic" thread, anyhow? Wouldn't it matter even *less* how far apart things are for a party that can probably teleport an awful lot and is going to be more-or-less completely immune to ordinary travel hazards, anyways? I still just don't get the "epic = big world, huge population" thing.

Yeah, I keep wondering that, too.

If there's one thing I can definitively vouch for its that DeepShadow doesn't let anything be a cakewalk, ever.

Heh heh, dispel magic on the water-walking horseshoes! That was friggin hilarious!

Ahem, yes...I'm reminded of a critical point from that game: curses don't need to be justified. It's a higher DC for an unjustified curse, but it's possible. In Cortez's case, he got cursed by a darkling for rallying her crew to his cause with incredible epic-y diplomacy checks. He was just being himself, but it outshone everything she had done as captain for the past decade. He was oblivious to the damage he was doing to her reputation, but she actually felt quite justified in cursing him.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

*grumble*

Okay, this is one of the reasons I'm not always around. I jump into a really juicy topic, and then it dies. Did I kill it?

Anyone want to take a look at my scenario and comment?

[Tenebris]

Apologize for necroing this thrad but the experiement looked quite interesting. Personally, I've never played or DM'd epic level adventures in any setting other then Planescape, which was tailor made for it. However, I intuitively believed it would be possibly, even fairly easy, to challenge epic level pcs in Ravenloft if the DM is true to the spirit of the setting. I guess you could say I've had a hard cap of 20 on Ravenloft theoretically however, and I've never played beyond level 12 in the setting.

One thing that is important to note about epic campaigns, and which I did not see in this thread, is with greater power comes greater responsibility which with a mature group can result in some epic roleplay. When the actions of the PCs can be pivotal to so many every action taken is political, filled with catch-22s, conumdrums, and other such dilemmas. In the one epic level campaign I have played in, which was in Planescape, we spent far more time roleplaying the ramifications of our potential actions then the actual pursuit of such in most sessions. The responsibility of the high level pcs, their stake in the world and the resultant political webs are ultimately self-limiting. As a result, in my experience, these campaigns can often become all about enhancing the story as opposed to chasing the carrot.

I'm working on a level 1-20 Ravenloft story arc, for the reunion of a group I've played with on and off for 20 years. 20 had been planned as a hard cap, but having read this thread who knows? Provided they manage to stay alive, I may just be willing to take them into Epic Ravenloft one day.