Introduction
- Go back to the Epic Path page.
What Is Epic Path?
Epic Path is a D20 system game, and everything here is based upon the hard work and love of the game of thousands of players over decades. We all love this hobby and have a ton of fun with it, and everything published here is with one goal in mind: Fun!
These rules are designed as enhancements and balance tweaks for the marvelous D20 engine. The 'core rules' of the D20 system are embodied in the D20 System Reference Document(SRD). If there's anything unclear in these rules anywhere, it's because we've missed telling you something that's probably in the SRD. An excellent copy of the SRD can be found here.
The spiritual successor to the 'DnD 3.5' game is Pathfinder. We cannot praise Pathfinder enough, as we were developing, balancing, and re-tuning these rules we were continually impressed by how much thought and hard work went into everything that Pathfinder did. Huge sections of the game rules are untouched from Pathfinder, and that's because we found them to be spot on, just the way they are.
Many players and referees have commented on the balance issues in D&D3.5 for decades. Tremendous amounts of work went into D&D4E to correct those imbalance issues, but in the process of doing so, the developers of that (mechanically quite good) game discarded the classic DnD spell-casting system and made all the classes feel very similar to each other. This created a mechanically sound game with excellent balance, but it threw away the 'soul' of the game in the process.
Pathfinder attempted to bring the D20 system back to its roots, and succeeded wonderfully in doing so. But, once again, imbalance issues showed up.
We began writing Epic Path to re-tune and re-balance the ENTIRE game, across all classes, to all levels, while still keeping the wild and crazy soul of the game completely intact. We've had to make some large changes, but we've run analyses of all of these changes and we think we're on the right track. This job was made much easier by the tremendous amounts of work Pathfinder put into the spellcasting system, the excellent ideas embodied in all the various D20 system games, and the thousands upon thousands of fans whose work we have built upon in working on these rules. Nothing here would ever have been possible without the fans of the game and all those thousands of great, creative ideas.
So what did we do? First, we worked to make all the classes relevant in and out of combat at all levels. We worked very hard to make all the classes perform well in combat at all levels. We used every mechanism we could think of to make all the classes interesting and unique. We tried to make sure that for every main role (damage dealer, healer, buffer, and tank) there were multiple classes that could do the job either well or 'ok'. No longer must every party have a cleric. No longer must every party have an arcane spell-caster. Obviously, it's still possible to make parties that won't work perfectly, but it's much harder to find a combination that simply can't function.
We worked very hard to make sure that the game stayed 'within a d20 roll' between the various classes and at all levels. This means fewer cases of needing only a 20 to hit the monster, or fights where a strong tank makes the encounter completely trivial. Fewer fights where one class is singly made useless because the monster is immune to their brand of combat.
Many of the classes are radically different, although we tried very hard to preserve the 'feeling' of the old favorites. Rangers are still rangers, although they are mechanically completely different than they've ever been before.
We've expanded character development all the way to level 35 and beyond. But we have not neglected the lower levels! Indeed, far more development effort went into levels 1-20 than was expended on the Epic stuff. We wanted EVERY player, at ANY level to feel like they could step into a high-fantasy epic and hold their own right beside the characters of literature and screen.
Even at first level, an Epic Path character is already a person to be reckoned with, a budding hero (or heroine!) worthy of the greatest stories ever told. We deliberately sought to create that larger-than-life swashbuckling heroism even at first level. A first level Epic Path character isn't a delicate flower, it's a genuine hero, ready for heroic challenges!
What's New?
The following elements of core Pathfinder gameplay are radically different in Epic Path. Differences between this wiki and those presented in the Pathfinder Core Rules or the d20pfsrd website will exist. Please refer only to this wiki as the authoritative reference for these elements:
- Note: Other than Humans and the new races, the races on the d20pfsrd are still rules-as-written in Epic Path. Some races may need GM approval first, or require some modifications. Alternate racial abilities will always require GM approval first.
- Magic Item Level Restrictions
- Note: If you come across a spell or ability on the d20pfsrd that inflicts any sort of status condition, you should consult the GM as it is very likely that it will need to be reviewed before being allowed into Epic Path. The most significant change is abilities or spells which inflict the 'staggered' condition which will nearly always change.
- In addition, many rules have been modified or clarified (see table below). Please refer to the actual rules section for full details, as the synopsis provided here is not a complete picture of the rule change.
Quick Rule Change Overview
| Rule Change | Synopsis |
|---|---|
| Retraining | When you level, you may swap out one non-prerequisite element of your character (feat, skill points, etc.) for something else. |
| Weapon damage rules | Weapon base damage is doubled at 8th level, tripled at 15th level, quadrupled at 22nd level and quintupled at 29th level. |
| CMB calculations for small races | Small races may use DEX mod instead of STR mod when calculating CMB. |
| Action points | Players get one action point per encounter, and may use it to gain a free standard action, reroll a die, or add a d6 to a result. |
| Injury and death rules | Heal checks restore character to 0 hit points, magical healing (including potions) restore starting from negative value. |
| Stances | A new type of special ability, entered with a swift action, disrupted if knocked prone or denied actions. |
| Charge rules | Now a standard action with a single move. -2 AC penalty, no to-hit bonus. Movement path clarified and simplified. |
| Stealth rules | Stealth is now a stance. Rules expanded and clarified, to include rules for targeting stealthed or invisible enemies. |
| Forced movement rules | Rules for "push", "pull" and "slide" forced move types. Forced movement never provokes attacks of opportunity. |
| Damage types | Clarified types of damage, removed the "Epic" damage type and added a "Primal" damage type. |
| Distance and movement rules | Diagonal movement only costs 5 feet of movement. |
| Areas of effect rules | AOE's are now all squares in shape, with rules on how those squares are placed. Sizes of larger AOE's reduced. |
| Three-dimensional movement rules | Medium creatures occupy a 5'x5'x5' cube of space, diagonal vertical movement is still 5 feet of movement per square. |
| Rolling Damage | Players may always take average on any damage roll or even individual dice within the damage roll. |
What Stayed The Same?
- Character Creation - largely unchanged, but refer to the Character Creation page for details.
- Combat rules - unchanged except for any changes listed above
- Skills - unchanged, though the sections on Diplomacy, Stealth and the Linguistics skill are new.
- Spells - mostly. Note that any spell in the d20pfsrd that inflicts a status condition should be reviewed by the GM before use. In particular, spells which inflict "staggered" and "sickened" will need review.
What has been removed?
- Any class not listed on this wiki is out of the game.
- Any feat not listed on this wiki is out of the game. Any feat listed with a "removed from game" entry is, in particular, not available. If you find a 3rd party feat you're interested in, talk it over with your GM, but expect the answer to be "no".
- Favored class bonuses are out of the game, except for the +1 skill point or +1 hit point per level.
- Multi-classing and dual-classing are out of the game. These may be added back in after more play-testing has been done on the base classes.
New House Rules
Rolling Damage
The Epic Path rules make it pretty common for high level characters to have damage rolls involving a LOT of dice. In order to prevent 5-minute lulls in combat while the rogue adds up all thirty of her d6's, we are implementing the following rule: Players can always take average on as many damage dice as they wish.
We suggest that an even number of dice be selected for averaging, so that rounding (down) doesn't penalize the player's potential damage. For example, if you are rolling 21d6 damage, you could roll 10 dice and average 11 dice, for a roll of 10d6+38 (38.5 round down). Or you could roll 9 dice and take average on 12 dice, for a roll of 9d6+42. Of course, you could also just take the average of 73 (73.5 round down) for all 21d6, but most people like to roll at least some dice.
Players using weapons with the brutal property add +1 to the normal average for their die size. Thus, a cruciate mace, dealing a d8 with the brutal property, has an average of 5.5 on the die, instead of 4.5. There are three feats which modify the brutal property, Improved Brutality, Greater Brutality and Epic Brutality. The first two add another 0.5 to the average result of the die. Thus, a cruciate mace with Greater Brutality deals an average of 4.5 + 1 (Brutal) + 0.5 (Improved Brutality) + 0.5 (Greater Brutality) for a whopping average of 6.5 on each damage die rolled. Epic Brutality, as always, maximizes all your brutal dice.