Character Builds: Some Game Mechanics Thoughts

Just so everyone knows: this campaign is intended to take the PCs from level one to level thirty! That's right, I said level thirty! So, what to do about character creation . . . I would strongly advise everyone to think very carefully about the future. While it is extremely important to create a good character personality and psychology, it is also important to build a strong character that you will enjoy playing for the long-haul (or at least until I kill you).

With that in mind, think carefully about feat choices and character progression. A weak feat early in the character's career that is useful at low levels (like toughness) will be a serious detriment at high levels. Also, since we will definitely go epic it's important to think about class progression to ensure that your character can acquire cool epic feats starting at 21st level. How do you do that? The easiest way is to pick a core class and run it up for 20 levels. Beginning at 21st level all classes get bonus epic feats every 2 to 6 levels. If you multi-class you have to wait longer for epic feats because you must have 20 levels in a core class (or ten levels in a single prestige class) to get the epic bonus feats.

In addition you should be aware that Base Attack Bonus and Base Saves do not increase after 20th level. Instead all characters get a +1 Epic Attack Bonus every odd level and a +1 Epic Save Bonus to all saves at every even level. What does this mean? Well, if you want four attacks per round you must have a Base Attack Bonus of +16 or greater at 20th level.

Finally, spellcasters should pay careful attention to spell casting progression. There are lots of cool epic feats that require that ability to cast spells at maximum efficiency (as a 20th level core spell-casting class). If you intend for your character to qualify for these feats be sure that you do not delay spell-caster level progression too much with multi-classing and/or prestige classes.

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