Epic Path

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 eachother. 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.

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!

Core Rules and New Rules

• Character Creation
• Core Rule Changes
• Feats
• Languages
• Money and Merchants
• 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
• CR 5 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 Blueprints

Basic stat blocks for creating new monsters from CR 1/2 through CR 40. These include suggestions for converting 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

This is a summary of a much more detailed spreadsheet in which we calculated damage across all classes based on average gear and a reasonable feat build-out. This table is also the basis for the monster stats table above, in which we used these data to derive how tough each monster should be at each CR. As playtesting progresses, these numbers (and subsequently the monster stats table numbers) may change. We think they're pretty realistic, though.

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 significant 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 weakest defenses of all the weapon classes).

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?