ECL characters and epic feats

[Nymera]

I'm not sure if this is already a thing, so I'm sorry if it is!

High ECL characters (+3, +4) are treated as though their ECL is character levels. (Which is fair!)  They have a lower hard level cap, and they apply for ascension earlier since ECL counts towards when they become Epic level.

But, that's not applied for feats due to ecl not being part of the engine.  Level 18, for a +3 ECL, is really level 21 in all other ways.  

So my question/suggestion is, would they be able to request a feat swap for any epic feat they meet the requirements for, at that level?  They're epic characters at that point, as far as all the drawbacks are concerned.

[Deleted]

Per pen and paper rules, ECL is not counted toward your feats.  You earn feats by CLASS level, not character level.

[Nymera]

Mar 25, 2015 10:29:32 GMT -5  @belladonna said:

Per pen and paper rules, ECL is not counted toward your feats.  You earn feats by CLASS level, not character level.

I hear ya Bella, but that's not our implimentation of ECL.  ECL is just an xp penalty in pen and paper to slow progression and keep a party leveling at relative power.  

In CD, since it's a PW and everyone levels seperaretely, we treat it as actual levels.  With good reason; if we didn't, ECLs over time would be too powerful.  But by changing this, we have also shorted them a bit on potential epic feats due to the lower max level cap.

If a character is treated as being epic level in our system, and suffers the xp cap penalties of being epic level, why can they not take an epic feat?

[Deleted]

Uhm, No, we don't treat character level the same as class level.  If we did, then there wouldn't be the level caps at character levels instead of class levels.

ECL is not "just an xp penalty" in Pen and Paper.  It's an added set of levels that count toward your total level.  Our implementation is as close to that as we can do with the restraints of NWN1.

The ONLY exception to this is the tier system, whereby ECL characters gain access to tiers by character level instead of class level.

[Nymera]

I think I may have misunderstood how we define "epic characters".  Because we do have a situation where you have post-ascension characters unable to qualify for epic feats who's only requirement is the character being of epic level, if they have a high enough ECL.  That's not normily a scenario in pen and paper, since there isn't an "ascension" cap by default and your epic-ness is determined only by class level.

If that's intended, alrighty, and not a big deal.  I never suggested moving feats around if there was any misunderstanding, that's hard-coded and too crazy to bother with.  I suppose too, this only affects a small percentage of the playerbase anyway.

[Nymera]

Upon further reflection, I can better see the logic behind why it exists this way.  There are a lot of instances where a certain character/class level is required for a feat.  Epic feats just require 21 class levels, and has nothing to do with ascension.

[Deleted]

... Kirin, you ninja-ed my reply.  >.>  

[Nymera]

Mar 25, 2015 17:32:42 GMT -5  @belladonna said:

... Kirin, you ninja-ed my reply.  >.>  

Sometimes it's just more efficient to debate yourself!   

[Fire Wraith]

Some of that is pure engine limitation. In other things, we have done some swaps in the past, as standard PNP did exactly that - I seem to remember one of the FR sourcebooks had a Frost Giant with class levels who had epic feats/etc, even though she had less than 20 class levels, because her ECL/etc pushed her over 20th.

Overall it would probably depend on what was being asked for.

Remember, with Epic Spells, you still need access to level 9 spells, for one - but a Level 17 ECL 4 Wizard would be eligible, whereas a Level 17 ECL 2 wouldn't be, nor would a level 15 wizard 4 fighter who was ECL 4.

Make sense?

[sinisteromnibus]

Mar 26, 2015 1:25:48 GMT -5 Fire Wraith said:

Some of that is pure engine limitation. In other things, we have done some swaps in the past, as standard PNP did exactly that - I seem to remember one of the FR sourcebooks had a Frost Giant with class levels who had epic feats/etc, even though she had less than 20 class levels, because her ECL/etc pushed her over 20th.

Overall it would probably depend on what was being asked for.

Remember, with Epic Spells, you still need access to level 9 spells, for one - but a Level 17 ECL 4 Wizard would be eligible, whereas a Level 17 ECL 2 wouldn't be, nor would a level 15 wizard 4 fighter who was ECL 4.

Make sense?

Not to conflate or confuse things here, but to chime in to make sure I have clarity for my own sake:

So, say you have a 17+ ecl 4 fighter. Assuming you meet all the other prereqs (str 25+, weapon focus, cleave, great cleave, imp crit, overwhelming crit) in such a scenario as you describe above, would the character be eligible to have devastating critical added before hitting 21? I'm not certain if this feat actually requires you to have the 'Epic Character' feat you get at 21 (wiki doesn't say) but it does say it is an epic feat.

[suddenperihelion]

Mmm. It's a little ambiguous, but my reading of the p&p rules is that an ECL 17+4 character is an epic character. And epic characters can select epic feats, as long as they meet the other prerequisites.

"Epic characters—those characters whose character level is 21st or higher—are handled slightly differently than nonepic characters. While they continue to gain most of the customary benefits of gaining levels, some benefits are replaced by alternative gains." (DMG 3.5e)

"MONSTERS AS EPIC CHARACTERS: The epic rules in this section also work for monsters with character levels, using the creature's effective character level (ECL) instead of just its class levels." (DMG 3.5e)

"EPIC FEATS: The following feats are available only to epic characters." (DMG 3.5e)

(Emphasis added)

The problem is, this reading of the rules is extremely difficult to do in NWN, both because it would require lots of extra LETOs, and because this reading would /also/ suggest that the ECL epic characters gain epic save and BAB progression instead of normal save and BAB progression. And that stuff is hardcoded. Because of those technical constraints, most NWN servers (understandably) opt for the less reasonable but more technically feasible interpretation of the rules - namely that you need 21 'hit dice' to start getting epic progression instead of normal progression.

[Fire Wraith]

That's my reading at least.

I'm pretty sure the example I'm thinking of is in Lost Empire of Faerun, which is the one FR book I can't find my physical copy of -.-

[sinisteromnibus]

Mar 26, 2015 7:10:15 GMT -5 suddenperihelion said:

Mmm. It's a little ambiguous, but my reading of the p&p rules is that an ECL 17+4 character is an epic character. And epic characters can select epic feats, as long as they meet the other prerequisites.

"Epic characters—those characters whose character level is 21st or higher—are handled slightly differently than nonepic characters. While they continue to gain most of the customary benefits of gaining levels, some benefits are replaced by alternative gains." (DMG 3.5e)

"MONSTERS AS EPIC CHARACTERS: The epic rules in this section also work for monsters with character levels, using the creature's effective character level (ECL) instead of just its class levels." (DMG 3.5e)

"EPIC FEATS: The following feats are available only to epic characters." (DMG 3.5e)

(Emphasis added)

The problem is, this reading of the rules is extremely difficult to do in NWN, both because it would require lots of extra LETOs, and because this reading would /also/ suggest that the ECL epic characters gain epic save and BAB progression instead of normal save and BAB progression. And that stuff is hardcoded. Because of those technical constraints, most NWN servers (understandably) opt for the less reasonable but more technically feasible interpretation of the rules - namely that you need 21 'hit dice' to start getting epic progression instead of normal progression.

To be honest: for the reasons you cited I think it's best we divert from the core books on this one. As FW and suddenperihelion both noted, the epic system is kinda hard-coded into the engine and exceptionally difficult to change. Thus, the only way to give ECL characters epic feats/progression would be to rig it through LETOs...which would make our already busy LETO'er even busier and mean more time between other LETOs like ECL setups and what-not.

So...as much as I'd love for Voss to be able to get Dev Crit before hitting 21st, I don't think it's worth changing a system that works well enough if it means inconveniencing so many.

[NorthWolf: Doge Edition]

The system is not as hard coded as seems to be believed. All epic feats are accessible through feat.2da and can be given different requirements. Creating an underlying system to support selecting epic feats pre-epic levels would be entirely viable. The only limitation I can think of is that the ECL modified PC would need a feat added at a certain level VIA LETO, but this is one of those things that NWNX can solve. On the other hand, using epic AB/save progression is a lot less viable without extensive scripting, admittedly.

[suddenperihelion]

The hardcoded part is the AB/save part. In some sense, nothing is "hardcoded" - if you are working with enough NWNX and custom server or client modifications, anything can be changed; in this case, you could put in a custom scripted "level up" function that replaces the default level-up benefits with the corrected levelup benefits using NWNX. But that seems like a lot of work for something that would produce very small benefits (we're really talking about a fairly small change that only lasts a couple levelups).

As for the proposed system of creating a new system for pre-epic selection of epic feats, that's certainly an option. But it's not so clear to me that scripting up an automated system (and making sure it played nice with all the cls_feat_*.2da files) would be all that much less labor-intensive than the LETO route.