The Next Epic, part four

“So then he dropped a planet on me. That’s when I got angry.”

Tradition and innovation have always been natural opposites, as one seeks to maintain an existing set of practices while the other seeks to revise them, or even create new practices entirely. For Dungeons & Dragons, tradition had been a much stronger motivating force until the advent of Third Edition, when innovation was given a much greater role during its design.

This isn’t to suggest that Third Edition put no importance to the game’s traditions; it quite clearly did, but was willing to change things to a much greater degree than any of its previous incarnations. Moreover, innovations to the game had been widely propagated by third-party publishers using the Open Game License.

When the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons was released in mid-2008, it was clearly mindful of these changes, and so introduced some innovations of its own. Yet at the same time, it kept a close eye on its history, and sought to reintroduce ideas from previous editions that Third Edition had eschewed, both big (different stats for monsters than for PCs) and small (the five-point alignment from the Holmes Basic D&D Set). This was particularly true where epic levels and divine ascension were concerned.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS FOURTH EDITION

The Fourth Edition of the D&D game was, insofar as epic levels were concerned, a clear break from its immediate predecessor. Notably, epic levels were included in the Player’s Handbook. Though still referred to as “epic,” levels 21+ were now part of the core game, rather than being relegated to a separate source-book.

More striking was that a hard cap on levels was re-instituted, using the same thirty-level limit as Second Edition. Now, when a character hit 30th level, there was no further advancement to be had…with one exception. While characters of the “heroic tier” (levels 1-10) were defined solely by their class, and characters of “paragon tier” (levels 11-20) used a paragon path (a sort of sub-class) to further differentiate themselves from their fellows, “epic tier” characters (21-30) selected an epic destiny. (While Fourth Edition would pay epic tier considerably less attention than the preceding tiers, the third-party community wrote some very noteworthy materials for this level of play.)

An epic destiny, unlike a paragon path, wasn’t explicitly tied to a particular class. Rather, it was a thematic choice for what sort of larger-than-life archetype you wanted your character to become, and gave you powers to that effect. Moreover, each epic destiny had a specific “destiny quest” that your character could follow which presented a built-in option for how to retire them from the game after achieving 30th level.

Much like the Paths to Immortality of Basic D&D, the destiny quest of epic Fourth Edition characters was optional (and had no hard-and-fast mechanics associated with performing or completing it), but remained the only form of advancement once there were no more levels to gain. The nature of the quests varied, but completing them always involved your character moving beyond the game world.

Indeed, sometimes this was a literal ascent beyond the mortal realm. One of the epic destinies in the Fourth Edition Player’s Handbook was “the demigod.” Upon completion of your destiny quest, you literally became a nascent deity, heading to the dominion of a divine sponsor (or founding your own). While this particular epic destiny could be taken by any class, it’s notable for being the first time in D&D that whether or not you could try and achieve divine ascension was part of a class(-related) mechanic, as opposed to being purely orthogonal to your character’s advancement.

Likewise, the nature of divine statistics in Fourth Edition reinforced the mandatory nature of retiring a divine character. As mentioned above, monster stats and PC stats in Fourth Edition were different, unlike how Third Edition used the same statistics for both. As there were no standardized rules presented for deities in Fourth Edition – rather, what gods were presented were given unique monster stat blocks – that meant that there really were no mechanical options for presenting divine characters as anything but challenges to be fought.

With a Second Edition-inspired take on epic characters, and a method of divine ascension that was similar-yet-different from any previous iteration of the idea, Fourth Edition’s options for exceptionally high-level characters were clear and unambiguous in their presentation. That put its it in stark contrast with its major competitor…

PATHFINDER

The Pathfinder game was released in 2009, after an extensive public playtest. A revised version of D&D Third Edition (which itself had a revision almost halfway through its life-cycle) released by Paizo Publishing under the Open Game License, many gamers consider Pathfinder to be a form of D&D. This acknowledgment, along with its wide-spread popularity, is enough to earn it scrutiny here.

…unfortunately, that scrutiny, in regards to epic levels and divine ascension, finds Pathfinder to be somewhat lacking. As of the time of this writing, Pathfinder has eschewed the issue of level 21+ characters entirely. Moreover, the question of divine ascension (and the powers and abilities of gods, either as PCs or NPCs) has been left similarly unexamined.

However, this may change in the very near future. August of 2013 will see the release of Mythic Adventures sourcebook for Pathfinder. While we’ve already been told that this will not address the question of level 21+ characters per se, it will address how characters can gain (reportedly up to ten) “mythic tiers,” which are treated as being similar to levels in that they will grant characters greater powers and abilities. The difference is that mythic tiers are gained separately from levels, and can be earned at almost any point in a character’s career.

Beyond Mythic Adventures, there’s no predicting if Pathfinder will address epic and divine characters. While the game is based on D&D Third Edition, it has so far not used any of the epic or divine material from that game, likely for good reason given the unpopularity of those rules (though at least one third-party publisher has released epic-level material specifically for Pathfinder).

Of course, Pathfinder isn’t the only game for which the question of exceptionally high-level play remains an unknown.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS NEXT

To date, it’s uncertain precisely what stance D&D Next will adopt in regards to epic levels and divine ascension. So far, the playtest packets seem to be utilizing a default cap, in that levels above 20 (and how to have characters undergo apotheosis) are simply unaddressed.

As part of a playtest, that’s not particularly surprising, as they’re still trying to work out the basics of how the game should be constructed. Once the game is released, however, these questions will need to be addressed, as they’ve been part of the game across every edition. While they’re likely to be separate modules, there’s no way of knowing what the specifics will be until then.

While some players and DMs won’t care for these levels of game-play, for others the release of these rules can’t come soon enough, as they long to take their characters to the very limits of what the rules allow…and then surpass them.

For them, the game doesn’t get any more epic than that.