Introduction

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T
hings weren't going the way they had planned. Lars looked up at the 10-foot tall spectre looming above him, its black, tattered cloak billowing inches above the floor, and he felt the blood drain from his face. He knew in his heart that he and his companions could never defeat it. Though the ghostly giant before him had no face within its deeply-shadowed hood, Lars could feel it gloating, anticipating his death.

"Snap out of it," yelled Tabriss, a silver glow surrounding her body, "we've fought worse, and won!" Tabriss moved her hands and chanted under her breath, calling upon the blessings of Lorraine, her goddess. As the spell completed, the silver light moved to settle over Lars's body. Lars felt a warm reassurance settle over him as the spell filled his heart with courage. Now that he could think clearly, Lars could tell that the spectre had messed with his mind, making him despair and lose hope. Lars lifted his shield higher, and glared ferociously at the spectre, growling a challenge at it as he swung his sword overhand into the monster's right side.

The sword hit its target, but seemed to have little effect, passing through the incorporeal body with little resistance. However, Lars could see a small rent in the cloak of the apparition, and knew his weapon could effect it, even if only a little. More importantly, however, the spectre's attention, which had been drawn by Tabriss' divine spell, snapped back to Lars. Lars smiled a grim smile at this, knowing he was far more capable of absorbing the attacks of this monstrosity than his friend was. His heavy armor, massive metal shield, numerous magic items, and fighting expertise made him unnaturally durable against attacks. While Tabriss was no slouch in combat, her defenses were nowhere near as comprehensive as Lars' were.

While all of this was happening, a small figure in dark leathers ran with alarming speed at the spectre, leaping at the last moment and kicking off of a nearby tombstone to gain some extra height. Arnsibel, a Nagdyr prowler, used his momentum to push his bladesilver saber into the specter's exposed back. Unlike a rogue, who relies on stealth and surprise to deliver killing blows, prowlers use speed and unexpected angles to wreak devastation upon their foes. Arnsibel made it look easy. The saber slid into the spectre, once again passing through its ghostly form a bit too easily, and a massive rent was torn into its form. "I was thinking about buying a nice pony when we get back to town. Or maybe a boat."

Arnsibel smiled, thinking fondly of his new boat, and casually stepped out of the way of the spectre's backswing. It's massive arm, the size of a small tree, whipped through the air scant inches from Arnsibel's face, but Arnsibel seemed unimpressed. "Or maybe a dog," he said.

Llodwynn, a dour-looking Oread sorcerer, finished a spell, its blue actinic light shuddering in rapid flickering arcs and reflecting off of his stony features. The spell shot toward the spectre and, unlike the weapon attacks of his companions, dealt terrible damage to the undead titan, seemingly ignoring the spectre's incorporeality. Llodwyn spared a glance for Arnsibel, "To ride?"

"No, silly. You don't ride dogs! You give them names with terrible puns in them and teach them tricks that serve no purpose."

"Of what use is that?" Llodwynn inquired.

"Well, not much I suppose. But they're much fluffier than a boat," said Arnsibel.

"Hey! Here's an idea. Maybe you should pay attention to the fight," Lars suggested, apparently unamused by the exchange.

Just as Arnisbel was about to respond, he heard a keening groan, accompanied by the whipping of cloth in a wind that no one in the cemetery could feel. Glancing over his shoulder, Arnsibel saw that three more spectres were gliding towards the party.

Maybe Lars was right, Arnsibel thought. Things are about to get serious.





Is Epic Path supposed to be 'Epic Pathfinder'?

Well, yes and no. When we started on this little project, extending the very good Pathfinder rules into the 'epic' levels was certainly a goal we had in mind. But even from the very beginning, we wanted Epic Path to be much more than just 'Epic Pathfinder'.

Epic Path is a d20 system game, designed to be run on pen and paper, just like the good old days. 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 probably because we've missed telling you something that's in the SRD. An excellent copy of the SRD can be found here.

The spiritual successor to the 'D&D 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 inspired by Pathfinder, and that's because we found Pathfinder's gameplay to be spot on with the spirit of the game.

So why do all of this?

Many players and referees have commented on the balance issues in D&D 3.5 for decades. Dungeons and Dragons has decades of history, and unfortunately, the rules over time grew to be skewed in favor of some types of play over others.

Tremendous amounts of work went into D&D 4E to correct those imbalance issues, but in the process of doing so, the developers discarded the classic D&D 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.

D&D 5.0 is the latest of the classic d20 games, and in that version, to address the imbalance issues the game designers chose to compress the dynamic range of the game to nearly the minimum possible. Once again, this created a balanced game, but the compressed dynamic range means that a level 20 character really isn't much different from a level 1 character. Whether this is a good thing or not depends upon your philosophy on gaming, but suffice to say, we do not agree with this approach. We feel that characters should grow and change as they advance through the levels, and they should feel heroic through each step of that journey.

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. Epic Path extends the levels all the way to 35, and has systems in place to go even higher than that. So, yes, it is indeed "Epic Pathfinder", in a lot of ways. But we think we've made serious improvements at all levels of play.

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.

We truly stand on the shoulders of giants. That was a pretty tough Acrobatics roll, though.


What's New?

So what's new here? What have we done?

To be blunt, everything is new! It's a whole new game.

First, we worked to make all the classes relevant in and out of 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.

As mentioned, to give that 'Epic Pathfinder' feeling, 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 story 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 right from the start. A first level Epic Path character isn't a delicate flower. It's a genuine hero, ready for heroic challenges!

Some of the highlights are:

  • All character classes: All classes in Epic Path have been written with an eye towards fun, flexibility, and balance. Each class plays uniquely and offers something useful to any party, whether in combat or out. Furthermore, no one class is mandatory in an adventuring party. No one is stuck playing the cleric anymore, unless they want to. And you should! The Cleric is awesome!
  • New Races: All playable races in Epic Path are viable for any class, and each race is distinct from its fellows. Creating custom races for your campaign is also simplified.
  • Skills: All of the skills have been re-written with an eye towards making them more interesting, versatile and more clearly defined. Several skills have been combined: Craft is now part of Profession, while Swim, Climb and Fly were all merged into a single skill called 'Movement'. Bailiwick skills have been added to let each character class shine in their areas of expertise, even outside of combat. There is a new skill called 'Might', which has all kinds of powerful and interesting effects.
  • Feats: We've re-written all the feats, but the classics are still present. In most cases, feats were given a boost, particularly as characters gain higher levels. A number of feats were removed for balance purposes. If you don't see it here, there's probably a reason for that.
  • Weapons and Weapon Qualities: All weapons have been completely re-written and re-balanced from top to bottom. Dozens of new and interesting qualities have been added make sure every weapon has a unique blend of abilities. Even simple weapons are now 'good' and exotic weapons are truly excellent.
  • Armor and Shields have received a similar treatment. Every type of armor is seriously good now, if you're into that sort of thing.
  • Status Conditions: We've re-written all of the status conditions in the game, with an aim towards making each of them distinct and unusually hurtful. Each status condition also lists how it can be cured, in addition to restoration spells or a Paladin's cleansing ability.
  • Monsters: Possibly the largest change in Epic Path is in the monsters you will face. All monsters are completely new and improved. Epic Path monsters are MUCH more challenging, not least because you will now fight many monsters at once. But they're also easier for a GM to run. Even tremendously large fights with dozens of bad guys are possible to finish quickly and satisfactorily. Even better, there are many different 'flavors' of monsters now, represented by giving some monsters
  • Roles. Roles include such things as "heavy" monsters, "killer" monsters, "sneak" monsters, "shooter" monsters, and worst of all, "leader", "threat", and "villain" monsters. Threat and villain monsters are so nasty they have their own henchmen and minions to help them in combat, and are meant to be so tough they can face down an entire party by themselves. After all, the real measure of a great hero is a great villain, and we are certainly providing plenty of those.
  • In addition, many, 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. Out of combat, any character can do the same thing. There's always something for everyone to do!
Weapon damage rules Weapon base damage is doubled at 8th level, tripled at 15th level, quadrupled at 22nd level and quintupled at 29th level. Weapons have many new features, too boot.
Maneuver Offense and Maneuver Defense Score Calculation CMB and CMD are replaced by Maneuver Offense and Maneuver Defense. Maneuver Offense is an abstractions of skill rolls to perform Combat Maneuvers, while Maneuver Defense is calculated from your characters level and various stats. Casters may now calculate Maneuver Offense based on their Caster Stat for magical effects where noted.
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 A Heal skill check restores a character to 0 hit points. Magical healing (including potions) restore hit points starting from negative value.
Stances A new type of special ability, entered with a swift action, disrupted if knocked prone or denied actions. Stances can be gotten from racial abilities, class abilities, feats, skills, etc.
Charge rules A 'charge' attack is now a standard action with a single move. A Charge inflicts a -2 AC penalty, does not grant a to-hit bonus. Movement path clarified and simplified.
Stealth rules Stealth is now a stance(see above). 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 and Resistance 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 per square. This type of "1-for-1" movement greatly simplifies and clarifies all movement and areas of effect. (see below)
Areas of effect rules AOE's are now all squares in shape, with rules on how those squares are placed. Sizes of AOE's adjusted/clarified.
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.
Sunder Sunder is now used for ALL interactions with objects: Hardness and hit points of objects removed from the game.
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. Note that the Races and Classes are VERY different, but the PROCESS is the same.
  • Combat rules - unchanged except for any changes listed above
  • FUN! - Never forget, the whole purpose of Epic Path, or ANY game, is to have fun!