Post/Author/DateTime	Post
X0_Lt_0X 04-20-08, 03:28 AM	Effectively, how long does the Epic Handbook provide a challenge for PCs? We have a campaign that is going to go epic soon, and everyone is going to pitch in and help buy the book, however we wanted to know how long until the critters in the book are too weak for our PCs.
Kain_Darkwind 04-20-08, 03:39 AM	Effectively, how long does the Epic Handbook provide a challenge for PCs? We have a campaign that is going to go epic soon, and everyone is going to pitch in and help buy the book, however we wanted to know how long until the critters in the book are too weak for our PCs. You do realize that all of the epic monsters' stats (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/epicMonstersAndObstacles.htm) are available in the SRD? If you believe their CRs, the highest is listed is 66 (Great Prismatic Wyrm). Making use of both their pseudonatural and paragon templates would allow for a potential +25 on top of that. (Making it CR 91 if added to the GPW) Also in theory, you can advance a dragon infinitely, a prismatic dragon gains +3 CR for every 5 HD it is advanced. Wouldn't bet money on how long that remains accurate though.
Tequila_Sunrise 04-21-08, 05:42 PM	Don't bother buying an ill-conceived book that you don't need. As Kain said, there is the SRD. There are also people like me who spend hours of their free time to write helpful documents (see my Epic Level Handbook and Manual of Monster Construction through the second link in my sig below) for the benefit of their fellow gamers. TS
rob_douglas 04-22-08, 11:54 PM	My favorite parts of the ELH are the sections on Running an Epic Game, and the list of 101 Epic Adventure ideas (pages 103-122). Those are not in the SRD. Epic classes, feats, skills, spells, and magic items, as well as monsters are well covered in a good SRD. I like this one: http://d20srd.org - it also includes links to the pictures of the monsters, which I like. The epic spells in the book have lots of errors, so the SRD is better for those. Some of the Epic Organizations are interesting ideas, but the Epic Campaign they set up around Union as a whole doesn't flow well, and the example adventure pretty much sucks. There are some interesting kernels of Epic ideas in there, but not much. The Appendix on NPCs is not great as they are all non-optimized and rather weak. But having the table of Epic NPCs like in the DMG can make for some quick adversaries - as long as they are not major NPCs. All in all though, it is a favorite book of mine - and that is because every time I randomly open it up, I get some idea to use. A physical book beats the on-line version for stuff like that. ROB
elondir 04-23-08, 11:09 AM	The CRs in the ELH are way off. The Immortals Handbook: Epic Bestiary (3rd party) attempts to fix the problem by applying a mathematical formula, and it works okay, but you discover that a CR 57 i nthe ELH is more like encounter level 29 using its system. Actually, though, I have a feeling that that's about right considering the godly power of epic PCs. I have routinely used CRs in the 18-21 range for 11th level PCs, so it makes sense that a 29th level party could take on abominations without too much problem. The ELH is probably my favorite 3.0 hardback, though. Lots of great stuff, albeit a little unbalanced. The only other gripe I have about it is the fact that you're stuck with the attacks you have at 20th level, so a wizard 20/fighter 20 has two attacks per round, whereas a fighter 20/wizard 20 has four attacks per round. Also the epic spellcasting DCs were calculated wrong, but they fixed that. I would say that the ELH works best for the 20s and low 30s. After that, you're better off creating custom monsters highly tailored to the PCs abilities. Solo monsters of equal EL should be able to live 4 rounds.