Epic Path

Modifying Pathfinder with new classes, rebalanced damage, and levels out to 35 (and beyond).

Core Rules and New Rules

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 flat-out perfect! Well done!

What is Epic Path? Well, obviously, we've expanded character development all the way to level 35 and beyond. Of the two principal writers, one of us is a maniacal lover High Epic Games, and this has been reflected in this work. But we have not neglected the lower levels! Indeed, as much or more development effort went into levels 1-8 as were expended on the Epic stuff. We wanted EVERY player, at ANY level to feel like they could step into a Hollywood fantasy epic and hold their own right beside those characters on the 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. In our playtesting, we deliberately sought to create that larger-than-life swashbuckling heroism even at first level.

We've been gaming for a long, long time, and even we were pleasantly surprised by how things worked out.

So join in! We think you'll have a great time!

• Character Creation
• Languages
• Core Rule Changes
• Money and Merchants
• Feats
• Status Conditions

To Do

Things That Still Need More Development

Races

These are races for Todd's Celegia campaign, and are not playable in Reese's Fane campaign. However, We're putting them on this page to keep all the Epic Path stuff in one place, and to also garner feedback. Please let us know what you think.

• Arrakanza - A race of savage nomads living in the grass sea, known for their speed and fondness for pain.
• Fane Dar - Humans whose ancestors commingled with Spirits (think Princess Mononoke), powerfully strong, with a matriarchal society.
• Human - Humans are the dominant race, and have been tweaked to be more competitive with the other races.

Classes

The only classes we haven't made many changes to are: Barbarian, Druid, Sorcerer and Wizard. Even these have been tweaked somewhat. All other classes are radically different in both mechanics and playstyle. Take a look! There will eventually be more classes added.

• Alchemist: Fairly complex to design, fairly complex to play. Alchemists have a huge array of abilities, and you have to choose where to spend your resources.
• Barbarian: Modestly complex to design, stone-simple to play.
• Bard: Simple to design, complex to play.
• Brawler: Intentionally designed as a simple class to play, but a challenging class to play well.
• Cleric: Fairly simple to design, but complex to play, like all casters, and has a much stronger melee focus as well.
• Druid: Can be very complex to design and very complex to play.
• Fighter: By far the most complex melee class to design and quite challenging to play, but can accommodate almost any play-style.
• Monk: A simple class to design, there's very little beyond feats and skills to pick out.
• Paladin: Fairly simple to play and run, and can even serve as a capable backup healer.
• Prowler: Fairly simple to design, but challenging to play.
• Ranger: Moderately complex to design, but easy to play.
• Rogue: Complex to design, and moderately challenging to play.
• Sorcerer: Modestly complex to design, but challenging to play. Resource rationing is key.
• Warlord: Simple to design and simple to play, though nuanced play is rewarded.
• Wizard: Moderately complex to design, but very challenging to play. Anticipating and preparing the right spells is tough.

Spells and Class Abilities

• Spells

Weapons, Armor and Equipment

• Weapon Skill, Size and Handiness
• Weapon Properties - Added some new ones, slightly altered Sunder

• Unarmed and Light Melee Weapons
• 1-Hand Melee Weapons
• 2-Hand Melee Weapons
• Ranged and Thrown Weapons - and ammo listings

• Armor and Shields

Magic Items

• Magic Item Crafting Rules
• Magic Item Level Restrictions
• Magic Item Properties
• Dweomermetals And Other Special Materials
• New Magic Items

Fane Bestiary

• CR 1 Creatures
• CR 2 Creatures
• CR 3 Creatures
• CR 4 Creatures

Statistical Nerdery

These are some tables I've been using for reference when tweaking the character classes.

Monster Stat Comparison

The monster analysis was created by comparing the counter-stat from the PC Statistics By Level table. For example, the average monster AC is based on the average PC to-hit numbers, and an assumption that high to-hit PC's should hit approximately 75% of the time unbuffed. Monster hit points were determined by taking the average PC damage per round, and deciding that most fights will include one monster per PC and the fight should last around 3 rounds.

Blank Monster Templates

Basic stat blocks for creating new monsters from CR 1/2 through CR 40. These include suggestions for adjusting Pathfinder and D&D4E monsters to Epic Path rules.

Gear Estimations By Level

This is a broad estimate of the bonuses the various classes would get from gear, broken out by level, and loosely based on the wealth-by-level table in Pathfinder. This is by no means meant to represent anyone's real gear, just a general baseline for how big the to-hit, damage and AC bonuses get as PC's level up.

PC Statistics By Level

I've got a giant Excel spreadsheet with all of the classes worked out to level 35, showing how much damage they do based on average gear, and a reasonable feat build-out. If anyone wants to see it, I can throw it up onto a server somewhere for people to download. The linked page shows averages across all classes under the new rules.

In general, non-caster classes have been boosted a LOT over RAW Pathfinder. The general attitude has been to buff weak classes rather than nerf strong classes. The only nerfs that have occurred in the above classes are:

• Limiting smite to no more than 4 attacks per round (at high levels), and removing smite's AC boost. (We did, however, give Paladins more uses of smite, and it affects pretty much anything now, instead of just evil things.)
• Removing all occurrences of Pounce or Pounce-like abilities
• Removing all versions and variants of the Vital Strike feat
• Removed a bunch of the extra super bonus attacks that ranged weapons got, since they replicated Pounce (full attacks every round without wasting actions on moving), which skewed damage way too high. Bows are competitive with melee, but melee is slightly better, to make up for the fact that melee folks get hit a lot more.

In all of these cases, the nerfs were a direct result of giving all weapons more dice at 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th levels. This allowed us to balance all the weapon classes (as opposed to pure caster classes) without having to worry about some of the extreme burst damage possible from abilities like the Barbarian's pounce attack from the Bestial Rage path. Under RAW Pathfinder, Barbarians were the kings of damage. Under these house rules, melee rogues are the kings (since they have the crappiest defenses of all the weapon classes).

Again, if anyone wants to see the numerical basis for all the changes, I can make that available.

Monster Roles

Monsters need a little class, too, and these roles should give you a good idea of just how much more powerful the base classes are, after all our tweaking. Roles are generic sets of abilities that are applied AFTER templates, and stack WITH templates. These guys will keep the players wishing they had even more dice than the 30d6 the rogue rolls on his first sneak attack of the fight.

New Templates

There are lots of templates out there, but after a pretty thorough review, we're seeing that many of the templates are of fairly limited scope, or thematically matched to a given campaign setting, or just pretty darn weak. So here's a new 'generic' template with plenty of muscle that can be added to just about any monster to give it some more zest.

Campaign Milieus

What are adventurers called when they're low level? Is there life after Epic? At what level should my hero start sitting down on thrones and dubiously accepting the crown?