Epicness

I, for one, love high-level play, and I made sure to tell WotC_Bruce on his blogpost about it.

I haven't had much experience from the player point-of-view, though I'd love to; I think I could do the higher levels of any class proud, bringing the pain down on the greatest foes, the darkest demons and the craziest gods. As a DM, though, I have taken numerous characters, of players past and present, through the upper reaches of power. Granted, I've also stymied many a party from reaching those vaulted heights, and sometimes, we, as a group, have had to labour to get there (such as going through four? parties to eventually see the 3rd edition eight-part official campaign to its conclusion).

As a DM, the high levels are a way to break through some of the humdrum that can occur when facing simple mortal enemies. It allows planar travel to become a little more common (and survivable), providing whole new realms to explore. It provides for greater setbacks in the party, greater wrongs to right. And it provides the opportunity to stand toe-to-toe with evil incarnate, or to dance with the gods.

As hinted at the end of Cordell's post, players have often found issues with higher-level play, some a little more obvious than others. He uses the term "broken". I can't say that I've ever found it broken, but there were points where room for improvement could have been made.

In 3rd edition, for instance, epic characters, whether fighter or wizard, had multiple attacks, and the effectiveness and purpose of them could be questioned. And as might be expected, epic level combats were of epic length; one combat would be an entire evening's event. But what can be done about that? You don't want to just scale up the hitpoints and the damage dealt at the same pace, do you? Won't players see through dealing 50 damage to a 400 hitpoint target as just the same as dealing 5 damage each hit to a 40 hitpoint target? I believe so, and I believe the 3rd edition designers did, too; thus hitpoints rose faster than damage, and SR and saving throws required some effort to keep pace as well, much to Griff's chagrin.

We never did get a chance to try the 4e epic levels, which is a shame. I'd have liked to see how 21st level and above worked out. Having played with the character creator quite a bit, back in our 4e days, I did make quite a few characters (or rather, notable NPCs) all the way to 30th level, and surveyed their advances and "snapshots" at various points. Unfortunately, I never did compare then to like opponents at those levels, to get a sense of how an encounter might ave played out. Anyone have any info about epic 4e?

I think regardless of the poll taken on the blogpost, epic levels are an obvious must. There's no reason to exclude them -- players who detest them can just start a new party when they tire of their advancement to godhood -- and there's every reason to include them, because who hasn't wanted to take on Orcus or Demogorgon at least once? Perhaps this next incarnation can get them right for those opposed, without alienating those like myself who had had little to complain about.

Holy man

My favorite class, bar none, is the cleric. Crwth has been a cleric in his every appearance in D&D, and when he appears in other worlds (MMOs, etc.) he gravitates to the cleric/holy-man/healer role appropriate to that world.

Bruce Cordell asked in a recent blogpost about the reader's viewpoint on the cleric. Healer, or holy warrior?

I've always played Crwth as the heavy-armored cleric who wades into battle, taking some swings, providing some flanking, but mostly acting as field medic. Crwth the Cleric is like the IT in your company: doesn't bring a lot of tangible value to the endeavor, but the rest of the group couldn't function without him.

My wife plays a cleric the opposite way (she's not a D&D player except for Neverwinter Nights, but it's D&D enough). She has every slot filled with searing light, harm, holy word and fire storm. Once she's done mopping up the battlefield with the enemy, she might dig her party members' bodies out from underneath and pour one of their own potions down their necks.


The poll accompanying the article discusses the alternatives provided by 3.5 and 4e regarding how healing places in the cleric's turn. Third edition provided the spontaneous casting of healing spells (provided you were a Good cleric), which at first glance provided extra functionality to the battle medic I played. However, while I would happily go through the cleric spell lists, choosing select spells that sounded powerful and impressive, I could probably count on one hand the number of times those spells did NOT get converted to a healing spell via spontaneous casting. No matter how good it sounded to blast out a flame strike against a difficult enemy, it was instead saved for a Cure Critical Wounds to help out whichever party member went toe-to-toe with said enemy instead.

4e was definitely geared towards me as a cleric, providing ways to heal the party while still doing some magical damage to foes. But while we didn't exhaustively play 4e to 30th level, I did feel that 4e Crwth was always lacking in healing effectiveness, that I was giving up some of that total healing that I could accomplish by being given this other way of participating. Even with every character having their own healing surges and second winds, I still had the feeling (not backed by numbers, mind you) that we were worse off as a party in the healthcare department.


Along the same topic, Cordell also comments on the idea of holy damage vs. radiant damage. The difference, to me, was minor. Radiant is described as "light charged with uncommon energy", so that could include holy-backed energy, as well as "mystical moonlight or starlight, and the alien light of far realms". To me, all of these other lights are still the realm of the gods -- the moon, the stars, other realms. Perhaps it hasn't come from a prayer-backed source, but the deities are behind it regardless. Granted, this doesn't differentiate between good gods and bad - radiant doesn't have any alignment behind it. That's why I feel that holy/unholy is the better way to go, and yet the non-devout can still harness it through other means. That's just my opinion, of course, but you can guess how I voted in his poll.


And finally, in the same vein, there's the Angry DM's response to Cordell's healing post, and his take on healing overall. It's quite the interesting read, but I won't address his points for now; I mention it to bring together the discussion of such things as they stand in the early stages of #dndnext, D&D 5, or whatever they end up calling it.


So my overall view of what I want the new cleric to look like? The same as he was in 3.5. That's right, I thought the cleric in 3.5 was just fine, with his limitations and decisions. 4e was nice in that I felt more participatory in the damage-dealing (well, not really; I still can't roll worth a damn when it comes to attacks), but I felt less participatory as the field medic because everyone could heal themselves. I don't begrudge the party member who carries Cure Light Wounds potions, but leave the rest to me!

Of course, as long as they allow me to heal in some capacity, any capacity, I'll be there, no matter what the rules provide.