BARBARIC PSYCHEDELIC PSIONIC CATACLYSMIC 4E D&D
By Ron Edwards
THE SETTING
It's a physically and metaphysically shattered cosmos: not holding together, and not really meaning anything.
Imagine wilderness, ruins, voids, wastelands, ancient battlefields, crystals, vortices, with some surviving
strongholds and holdouts. Forget all canonical D&D cosmology and imagery. I'm talking about serious Moebius-art
landscapes and mind-shattering voids with barely cohering floating fragments of worlds, phase-isolated echoes of
the past or future, and the occasional inability to tell whether you're in reality or trapped in someone's mind.
The vortices provide the "dungeon" in the game title, freaky three-D spherical manifestations – they grow,
therefore getting more and more levels/interiors, which is awesome.
Tripping yet? Good. This is raw psycho-savage fantasy at the edge of hallucination – or enlightenment. Your
characters are primal, tribal barbarians, with a few monastic citadels here and there. Painted faces, spattered gore,
and psionic blasts! I expect them to get naked sooner rather than later.
ADVENTURES AND GOALS
I've built a constellation of encounters and quests across a landscape of environments, tribes, and monasteries. It's
full of situations concerning different social groups, vivid characters, newly brewing vortices, and mind-trips.
It's also full of threats both immediate and impending, using mostly primal and aberrant creatures, re-skinning the
Monster Manuals freely. Crucially, the array of potential foes includes a variety of conflicting interests. Therefore,
which of these actually get addressed, and when, and which "side" you're on or goal you'll support, is left up to
your decisions and role-playing. It's not about being in fights so you can proceed through the canned "story," it's
about creating a story so you can get into fights.
Therefore all is for naught unless you embrace your character and run with what he or she experiences, and how
he or she changes. Add to and develop what you have. Don't be an insincere thespian. Trip out and be intense,
make decisions that matter, so the fights do too.
CHARACTER CREATION
Starting characters are assumed to be members of the same monastery or of a nearby tribe with a vested interest
in the monastery's well-being.
Races
These are the only player-character races in the setting, using little or no content from canon. No other canonical
races exist, significantly, no humans and no githyanki.
Githzerai
(Wisdom, Dexterity/Intelligence)
Ascetic, ruthlessly practical, forged
in resistance and suffering, free at
last, craving order, new to trust
The githzerai were
eternal slaves before
the universe was
destroyed. Their harsh
and meditative customs
founded tribal and
monastic culture.
Minotaur
(Strength, Constitution/Wisdom)
Bestial yet introspective, struggling
to reconcile ritualized logic with
powerful urges
The minotaurs emerged
from the vortices,
whose logic they
worshipped, to join
tribes and create their
own. They have found
joy and shame in
savagery.
Shardmind
(Intelligence, Wisdom/Charisma)
Living crystalline remnants of
destroyed cosmic order, bursting
with passion and intellect
The shardminds quickly
joined and adjusted to
the tribes and
monasteries. They
idealize and fervently
display their newfound
individuality.
All the races are, literally or effectively, newborn. Ideologically they are poised to discover and shape a new
cosmos, or to disintegrate with it as reality fragments further into complete entropy. Through amassing power and
consequences, every player-character is a challenge to that entropy: a purpose coming into view. They must
choose, not to be good or evil, but what those things actually are. Their personal histories and passions become
cosmic order – or fall into personal and cosmic devastation.
Who are you? What do you want? We play to find out.
Classes
All of our characters are hybrid class.
Choose ONE:
Ardent (Leader): Charisma, Constitution, Wisdom
• Enlightened, Euphoric, or Impetuous
Battlemind (Defender): Constitution, Charisma,
Wisdom
• Resilient, Quick, or Harrier
Psion (Controller): Intelligence, Charisma, Wisdom
• Telepathic, Telekinetic, or Shaper
Hybridize with ONE:
Barbarian (Striker): Strength, Constitution, Wisdom
• Rageblood, Thaneborn, Thunderborn, or Whirling
Monk (Striker): Dexterity, Strength, Wisdom
• Centered Breath, Stone Fist, or Iron Soul
These are the only classes in the setting. There's no magic at all - just forces of nature and disciplined minds. The
limitations apply to everything, including monsters and especially items. The gods: there are no gods. Even the
primal powers are manifested only through the agency of characters like the player-characters and relevant NPCs.
Backgrounds
Choose two or three, but only one from a given bullet point. One benefits you mechanically. Taking no background
in a category is not "nothing," but simply the ordinary craziness of being a particular race and class.
• Geography: Blazestone, Bleakmire, Bloodtangle, Broken Lands, Frostfell, Howling Plains, Maelstrom, Sea
of Dust, Thunderpeaks, Underwild, Wrathwood
o Use, edit, or replace the textual descriptions as you see fit.
• Race
o Githzerai: Cenobite Initiate, Warband Survivor
o Minotaur: Clan Exile, Silenced Beast, Victim of Superstition
o Shardmind: Thought Builder, God Shard, Shard Slayer
• Birth: Found in the Wild, Primal Omen, Refugee, Awakened, Calamity, Created
• Occupation: Renegade, Revered Elder, Sage, Wild Hunter, Astronomer, Seer, Con Artist, Wanderer
• Society: Disgraced, Failed Thane, Isolated
Alignment
4E alignment is not a metaphysical state, an aura, a magical force, or a language. It sets no hard limits upon what
your character will do, nor does it limit classes, powers, feats, or skills. It's merely and only a character's default
outlook and opinions.
• An unaligned person feels strongly about his or her ethics, whatever they may be, and favors utilitarian
strategy – the ends always justify the means.
• Aligned characters rely instead on deontological directives , in which the means absolutely justify the
ends. The aligned concepts are a linear list, not juxtaposed: Lawful Good | Good | Evil | Chaotic Evil. It's
also meristic: there are no overlap zones.
Our characters begin Unaligned; assign an alignment when and if you feel like it.
Refining and finishing
Review your character's race, class and class specification, and backgrounds to get his or her appearance and
attitude percolating. Choose all the following based on expressing it colorfully..
The hybrid class design provides a very broad skill range, even more so using Backgrounds. Only three are Trained,
so this is a strong character-defining step. Don't take powers that grant similar bonuses, as they do not stack.
We're also using the Skill Powers rules, emphasizing that all "powers" are really psionic skills anyway.
All our characters' starting feat is Hybrid Talent. Choose which class it favors.
Starting equipment is constrained into categories by class, but you have plenty of finer-grained choice among
weapons, armor, and other gear. Choose things that you like from the right categories, don't worry about paying
for it. Everyone begins with a Level 1 "magic" (i.e. psi-augmented) item – choose it with an eye toward upgrading it
into something beefier later. If you play a psion, don't forget your Rituals.
Choose an array (build) of score values and assign them relative to race bonuses to support your powers. This
application favors width, as the hybridized classes do not clump up on one or two abilities, but you are free to play
with the options.
More Even Builds
14 13 13 13 13 13
14 14 13 13 13 11
15 14 13 12 12 11
15 15 13 12 11 10
Starting magic items
Starting at second level, so they already have their starting +1 items and two items at Level 3 and Level 5
The default hybrid characters max out at hide armor, but with the Hybrid Talent Armor Proficiency, ardents can use
scale and battleminds can use scale and chainmail.
Armor
• Level 3: defensive (any), ironclad (scale/plate), thought-eater (leather/hide), shaper's (cloth/leather), life
vine (hide), predator (hide), curseforged (chain/scale), delver's (any), eladrin (chain), fireburst (cloth),
sylvan (cloth/leather/hide)
• Level 5: quicksilver (chain), panther spirit (leather), barkskin (hide/scale), bloodthread (cloth), deathcut
(leather/hide)
Weapon
• Level 3: anathema (any), inertial (flail/hammer/mace), ki (any), eager (lt blade/spear), duelist's (lt blade),
flameburst (ranged), frost (any), thundering (any)
• Level 5: mindcrusher (hammer/maul), thoughtspike (hvy/lt blade, spear), flaming (any), lifedrinker (any
melee), lightning (any)
Ki focus
• Level 3: blazing arc, death strike, impeding, windsoul, cascading strikes, four winds
• Level 5: blurred strike
Orbs
• Level 3: frustrated recovery, mental constitution, nimble thought, psychic conversion, inevitable
continuance
• Level 5: life conversion, unfailing concentration, stored energy, sanguinary repercussions
Staffs
• Level 3: evader, impregnable mind, punishing thoughts, war mage
• Level 5: harvester's, psicraft, renewing source, traveler, scourging revelation, storms
Consumables
• Level 3: talent
Arms
• Level 3: bracelets of subtle defense, psyweave cloak, bracers of the perfect shot, shield of protection
• Level 5: bashing shield
Feet
• Level 3: catstep boots
• Level 5: spider climbing boots
Hands
• Level 3: gloves of piercing
• Level 5: gauntlets of ogre power
Neck
• Level 3: amulet of health, safewing amulet
Waist
• Level 5: ironskin belt
Thoughts on the hybrid character class
There isn't a neat match-up of racial attribute bonuses to class-favored attributes. We're killing the long-standing
obsession with 4E character optimization, thoroughly and precisely, and disposing of the corpse. That obsession
was always simple-minded anyway, focused as it was on attribute values, which when all is said and done merely
provide a few scattered +1's.
The Hybrid Talent Feat allows further options for one of your character classes. If you want to draw upon the nifty
features of both, you need this Feat twice.
• Its phrasing doesn't quite permit taking the Feat more than once per class for classes that subdivide the
Hybrid Talent further (e.g. Barbarian: you get either Armored Agility or Feral Might, not both).
• If you don't take it at all, then the Feat you start with better be something you really want, and for a good
reason.
• This makes a good argument for starting at 2
nd
level.
Right at 1
st
level, you make a crucial choice: either take two Power Points, or take an Encounter power for the non-
psionic class – deciding for the moment to forego either the Augments or a significant single-fight power.
• At 3
rd
level, you'll do the opposite and thus even the character out, but the first couple of levels will feel
the burn of whichever you choose not to do.
• Which makes a good argument for starting at 3
rd
level.
Monks are possibly disadvantaged at the lower levels, because the Flurry power can only be used with Monk
attacks, and all Monk attacks are disallowed from the heavier weapons available to the Ardent and Battlemind –
i.e., attack strengths of these hybridized classes don't blend like they do with Barbarian.
• It's not clear whether taking the Expanded Tradition option (from the Hybrid Talent Feat) expands the
Flurry's usage to hitting with any weapon, i.e., attacks from your other class. It doesn't say it doesn't …
• The implication is that either you specialize in the Flurry, with the above option as just a start, or you
leave it as a minor feature of the character.
Either you use a monk weapon for Monk fighting plus a heavier weapon for Ardent or Battlemind fighting, or you
get really, really good at the spear. Either of these benefits greatly from the proper feats, which arrive slowly.
• Monk hybrid heroes therefore are strongly recommended to seek Item bonuses via Boons and Training,
since these tactics and the various ways to boost AC will eat up feats.
• Ki Focus items are practically obligatory. Setting a Minor Quest to get an interesting one is a natural
opening move for a starting monk, and the Superior Ki Focus feat should always be considered, especially
since it may be taken multiple times.
STRATEGY AND SURVIVAL
Playing D&D 4E well means managing several resources through separate encounters and the passing of days.
Here are the units of events and in-game time.
• Encounters: Skill Challenge, Fight, or any combination of the two
o By definition, every encounter is consequential for the player-characters – at the very least, in
terms of risk – and for other characters' goals and circumstances. Skills are just as important as
the chance to hit with an attack.
• Rests
o Short rests: about an hour of relative inactivity.
o Extended rests: at least six hours of actual sleep and no less than twelve hours afterwards before
doing anything interesting.
• Days
o Taking an extended rest obviously means the passage of a day, but the converse is not true, e.g.
if you travel all night or are chained to a wall or something like that.
The strategy lies in how you choose to pace encounters relative to the rests and days. Here are the variables you
have to watch.
• Powers usage. All powers are rated by their usage relative to the fictional time-units.
o At-Will
o Encounter
o Daily
• Hit points, obviously. You have a value called the Healing Surge, which is how many points you get back if
a healer-type character zaps you, and you also have a set number of Healing Surges.
o Once per encounter, you can spend a Healing Surge yourself as an action.
o During a short rest, you can spend as many Surges as you want.
o With an extended rest, you get all your hit points back and all your Surges.
• Action Points. You have very few, usually just one.
o During an encounter, you can spend an Action Point for a free action.
o With an extended rest, you lose your current Action Points but begin the next unit of play with
one.
o If you choose not to take an extended rest after an encounter but rather press on to another,
then you resume with one Action Point. (This is called a Milestone.)
• Power Points. You have very few, usually two.
o During an encounter, you can spend one or more Power Points to augment a psionic ability.
o With a short or extended rest, Power Points are fully refreshed.
You decide at the end of each encounter whether you want to take a rest, and which kind, trading off lost hit
points and remaining Healing Surges with the in-game situation and time.
The game relies on the players exercising their agency over these choices, so the DM cannot have any say in
whether characters can or should press on, or over how many encounters they'll have relative to resting and days.
The players have to decide whether their characters' current status justifies pressing on.
These choices also significantly affect in-fiction time and the course of events. The DM, me, has set up the
landscape of dangerous, touchy, reactive, and flexible circumstances, but it's not my problem to decide how much
you're going to take on relative to your Extended Rests. By definition, I'm always willing to keep going, and it's up
to you to strategize your characters' resources. And I will always bring in the consequences of what everyone and
everything else was doing while you snoozed.
Remember the role-playing? These decisions rely on your passions and strategy, blended to become one thing.
Tactics and rules to know
The essence of good play in D&D 4E is skillful rules use – that you do not just sit and wait for "your turn to go," and
then look up and down your sheet for a "thing to do." The hybridization rules are not kind to character defenses,
and our characters will be easier to hit than typical D&D 4E characters. Play tactically and creatively regarding
player-characters' abilities and options. Plan-B thinking is recommended.
The foes are re-skinned from existing monsters, which are built presuming most player-characters to have higher
hit points and to be wearing chainmail or heavier armor. The combat rules in general assume the presence of
Clerics too, as a ready source of replenished hit points, which Ardents don't quite emulate.
Mobility is favored in our construction over armored defense, because every character presents a highly
individualized spin on battlefield positioning. Stacking bonuses to AC across powers, skills, feats, items, and un-
itemized combat options must be taken to a high art, both during character creation and development, and during
distinct moments of play. Doubly so for optimizing cross-character effects at the right moments and proximities.
(This is where the low-level monk shines, via the Full Discipline powers.)
Fights will be won most likely through second-order, cross-character thinking about abilities, not just taking turns
having your guy point-and-shoot. There are wheels within wheels here, and with thought, you will be acting during
almost every other character's turn in some way.
First, mess with the order of action. The rolled initiative order sets a unique constraining feature for each fight,
albeit including free actions at any point and triggered actions like opportunity attacks.
You can alter the order into a more optimal sequence by choosing to go later than you rolled.
• Readied actions allow tactical and reactive targeting.
• Delaying the whole turn allows someone else to set you up for maximum advantage.
• Both changes permanently change the order, but if everyone does so, then the original order can be
restored if desired.
Although the ordering rules do not let you truncate your own negative conditions and extend positive ones,
messing with the sequence can allow your allies to do so, powers permitting. Keeping your attention on the order
also allows you to take tactically-sound second winds without being a sitting duck.
Second, within your turn, you choose one from each column, and perform them in any order.
1
2
3
Standard
Move
Minor
Move
MInor
Minor
Lay out all your power cards and organize them by standard, move, or minor; let
the colors and the text categorize them further. Don't waste a chance to act.
Spend Action Points and Power Points. You'll always have your starting number
of each per encounter, so use that extra action judiciously, but use it … and
keep an eye on how to alter the current initiative order to optimize it.
Know how your abilities interplay: the bonuses within categories do not stack! The categories are: armor, shield,
enhancement, feat, item, power (class, class feature), proficiency, race. The typeless bonuses are infinitely
stackable, so seek them out, especially combat advantage, flanking, and marks.
Third, know how everyone else's abilities may affect yours, and vice versa, considering the same points mentioned
above. Bursts, zones, and triggers set up temporary "fields" of effects and tactics for allies, so you can end up doing
a hell of a lot throughout a round. See the multi-character handout page as an example.
Fourth, all of the above are profoundly influenced by proximity and sudden movement. Know how these differ and
how they affect your options:
• Shifting, running, moving twice
• Terrain: blocking, challenging, hindering, difficult
Don't take turns merely to attack in isolation – deploy. Coordinate your tactical movement with full-defense
actions, aiding allies, and advantageous positioning; use abilities which set up actions for your allies throughout the
round. Get good at it or I'll butcher you.
Finally, look out for surprises and be ready to adapt.
• Recognize and know the rules-effects of line-of-sight, cover, and concealment, and use them against foes
as they will certainly be using them against you.
• Go ahead and spend actions on perception checks, and communicate about potential sources of trouble.
REWARDS
Life and death
You have oodles of hit points, and each level-up gives you a set number more, not a dice roll. However, the
character options we're using are probably going to get hit oftener than you want, so consider:
• Temporary hit points – add-ons during a fight, a feature of many powers.
• Healing surges – needed early and often, frequently provided by Leader powers; you also get one of your
own once per encounter. Pro tip: keep track.
• Between-encounter healing is very generous, usually racking you right back up to full value.
If your character dies, make up a new one at [level-1], using some logical basis from the events played so far. The
party's collective/average level becomes the gold standard for designing encounters, and characters level up
independently.
Advancement
We don't need to count experience points; you gain a level upon completing a requisite number of encounters and
for completing quests.
• One level = five encounters, with some encounters rated at ½ and some rated at 1½.
o Encounters are built according to the XP system and rated as minor, standard, and major on that
basis, to set the general currency stated above
• Skill challenges bearing significant risk count as encounters
o In our application these apply especially to environmental hazards, including Arcana for
navigating dimensions and hallucinatory locales, and Nature for dealing with untrammeled
wilderness of all kinds.
o The Skill Powers in PH 3 provide a wider range and higher effectiveness for these challenges.
• A Major Quest counts as an encounter, and a number of minor quests equal to the number of players
counts as an encounter.
Anything with consequential risks counts: foes, environment, social situations, and more. If you avoid it, i.e., find a
way not to engage, then it doesn't count, but skillful evasion does, i.e., converting a fight into a skill challenge.
Formal skill challenges use different rules from combat, but an encounter can shift from one to another depending
on what happens in it, e.g., fighting as a tactical component of getting past and away from a foe.
Quests are characters' goals named during play, whether offered by the DM or introduced by anyone else through
role-playing. The former cannot be imposed and the latter cannot be denied. The only requirements are that the
quest's outcome is drastically consequential for other, non-player characters and ambitious, i.e., doesn't look
possible.
Mechanically, they represent both a way to get into a lot of encounters for a reason, and a way to get an extra
encounter or fraction thereof from a series of combats or skill challenges. In other words, play passionately and
proclaim lots of quests, and if one is offered, be sure you really want to do it.
Skill Challenges and Quests
These score an "encounter" in XP terms beyond a prepared fight on a skirmish map.
• They can be initiated through players' announcements rather than GM planning – in other words, have
your characters do motivated and skillful things, especially big things, and you level up with less fights.
• Depending on the situation, they can also result in temporary Boons which permit enjoying magic items'
effects, for a while, that you would otherwise have to sweat blood for.
This contributes in terms of fictional integrity too, as it permits the DM to build fights directly out of what's
happening rather than making bottle fights as if they were located in a series of rooms.
What you can't do is dodge "around" fictionally-legitimate fights via Skill Challenges – if and when an adversary
decides you need to die, he or she or it will take action to make that happen. The context of Skill Challenges and/or
Quests puts meaning into "fictionally-legitimate" which isn't merely "the DM scheduled this fight for this session."
Which is nested in which can get conceptually odd. It's easier for Quests, in that a Minor one is typically within an
Encounter and a Major one typically contains Encounters, but a hefty Skill Challenge could go either way. We'll
have to be clear about when an Encounter is officially over, which might not always be obvious as a fight can
convert into a Skill Challenge or vice versa, or the two can run parallel until one is completed.
The Skill Challenges in the DMG2 tend toward soft outcomes for failure, generally oriented from the need to
succeed in the Challenge eventually and to keep the party going to wherever it's supposed to go. For us, though,
failing them or components within them is going to hurt: lost HP, temporary suspension of item or other bonuses,
and significantly, imposed limits or extra requirements on the next round of Rests.
Streetwise and Thievery need some consideration in our setting; their use in most D&D fantasy doesn't fit at all.
They aren't strongly represented in our classes but aren't wholly absent, and some backgrounds include them.
Leveling up
All the classes are alike in points per level and in how they improve, with the default being that all characters level
up in lockstep. You follow a schedule of added powers and feats, and additions to saving throws and attribute
scores, and that's pretty much it. The cool thing is that you're not stuck with the choices you make along the way,
but can revise your existing abilities with each increase in level:
• Switch around your At-Will powers to the combination you want
• Retrain feats, replacing them with others, and skills, which receive full bonuses for this level
• Re-slot Encounter and Daily powers choosing from all levels accessible to you, including Skill Powers
Ongoing character build work is very dynamic! The psionic classes rely on constantly trading At-Will powers in-and-
out, and that churns up the already rather flexible hybrid advancement rules too.
• After 3
rd
level, whenever your new level rules say you swap an Encounter power, you can swap a psionic
At-Will power instead, as long as you maintain the at-least-one-of-each rule.
• Retraining becomes very tricky and important, because it means you can access those levels per class that
you "skipped" throughout this process.
I'm considering allowing followers based on level – it can't be as simple as "as many levels as you have, in sum,"
tuned as necessary for elites and minions, can it?
Treasure
A given encounter is rated at a rules-specified parcel: coins, gems, and magic items a monetary amount divided in
a certain way, with all the Parcels summing to a grand total specified for the current level.
The setting includes no currency in the ordinary sense, so our version is abstract. I will set the daily expenses of
survival for your characters for any location, and the "money" gained through encounters can be spent to offset
them as the players decide. Specific items listed in the rules may be "bought" in this fashion: light-sticks, rope,
whatever. In the fiction, this represents the ordinary, non-problematic ways of the savage and apocalyptic life-
styles which the characters consider normal, although at times relevant skills will be called into play as well.
Money does not appear as coins or gems at all.
• Coins represent the raw, immediately usable materials for food and shelter, or things suitable for turning
into useful equipment. We'll have a list for such things that can be almost instantly "bought," i.e. crafted,
during an adventure.
• Gems represent irreducible units, i.e., no "change," defined perhaps as items suitable for barter or as
materials which can be purposed only toward one conceivable end.
• No conversions: you can't buy or sell magic items and/or potions.
Magic items are similarly discovered as potential rather than as existing things. Therefore they are effectively
treated as permanent or nearly-permanent Boons, which is fine by the rules as the latter are supposed to be
treated as magic items in the Parcels anyway.
When a magic item is announced, a character may craft the one he or she wants at the designated level, with no
required game mechanics. Use the primal and psionic lists, or alter the concept for other items to suit those
definitions.
• Do it with symbolic action, e.g., soaking your spear in an aberrant creature's blood to turn it into a Vicious
weapon, or using the integument of a powerful creature to make Skins of the Slain armor.
• The only "magic" in our game is psionic power, so there is no distinction between "+2 magic weapon" and
"+2 ki focus" which happens to be a weapon.
• Since gear bonuses don't stack, think in terms of reinforcing different game effects, e.g., this item is all
about how you interact with others, and this other one is all about AC, and this one is about critical
damage, and so on.
Availability via the Parcels is very limited: per collective level, the number of characters minus one, period. This is
the only hint of AD&D's built-in tensions concerning acquisition in the otherwise-egalitarian 4E. The only way to
get "ahead of the game" is to get the Enchant Items ritual and start using it like gangbusters – and you can bet
that's going to set up Skill Challenge and Quests of all sorts. On the plus side, those facilitate leveling-up.
• The Minor Quest + Skill Challenge + Enchant Item ritual, with helping, is perhaps the strongest direct
player agency in the game, as it doesn't have far to expand to account for an entire level's advancement
for the group.
Rituals
Rituals are the most valuable resource item in our setting. The game terms "books" and "scrolls" do not apply
although the rules for them are retained as written. Think of books as tattooing or other inscribed work, and of
scrolls as consumables such as psychedelic mushrooms or a dedicated dream-activity.
All the listed rituals are available, including the Practices from Martial Power 2, re-cast as either psionic or primal.
Both mastering and performing them should be depicted in the most extreme manner possible for the chosen
definition. As all rituals require skill rolls, group participation and helping-rolls are important components, as is the
required time relative to encounters and rests.
To get rituals, roll the monetary reward into them, for both the basic cost to acquire them and the component cost
to use them. The cost is the same for a "book" version which can be re-used but is limited by the character's level,
and the "scroll" version which is one-use but usable by any character.
Acquiring the Enchant Item ritual is especially significant as it is the only way to get more magic items than the
designated parcels described above, which are quite limited.
Others
Player and GM agency are also in play to acquire Boons and Grandmaster Training. I might offer such things or you
might suggest they exist and act upon it via a Minor Quest.
• Boons are source of powers or features similar to magic items, provided as special rewards from powerful
NPCs, or integrated with quests either at the beginning or end. They typically wear off after a couple of
levels. "Littler" Boons are fair results for winning Skill Challenges and other successes at similar scope.
• Grandmaster Training introduces styles and schools to add unique options for existing powers, based on
interesting NPCs and traditions of the setting. Freely conceiving of and inventing such things is
recommended, especially since achieving them is obviously grounds for questing. The feat-based concept
of Styles from Martial Power 2 is especially suited to adapting into our hybrid classes.
You should be starting to see how NPCs, Major and Minor Quests, Rituals, and Boons might work – also that
Grandmaster Training is very much a Tier issue rather than a one-time thing.
THE BIG PICTURE
Higher-level play focuses play into a heroic-mythic arc. 11
th
level puts your character at Paragon Tier, meaning you
choose a specification or path for your character class. So one monk might become, for instance, a Ghostwalker
and another, a Radiant Fist. The one you choose brings a whole raft of added-on powers and concepts. 21
st
level
does the same again for the Epic Tier, much more profoundly – the characters become unique mythic heroes, like
Godmind or Primal Avatar. If they make it to 30
th
level, only one more adventure remains, as the characters strive
for one or another form of immortality.
For hybrid-class characters, all the options from both classes are eligible. A githzerai Ardent-Barbarian chooses any
one of twenty-three Paragon paths (githzerai, Ardent, or Barbarian). For the Epic path, he or she could choose War
Master for Ardent, or any from the nineteen options listed for everyone (subject to individual prerequisites).
The sweep of it all is impressive, especially for Epic level, which in our setting, basically means the characters
become the actual gods of the new world they forge from the wreckage. Our own original pantheon with detailed
origin myths – how cool is that?
Ardent
PARAGON: Argent Soul, Psionic Binder, Stygian Adept, Talaric Strategist, Anarchic Adept, Awakened
Visionary, Catalyst, Incandescent Champion, Phrenic Invader, Siphon
Battlemind
PARAGON: Eternal Blade, Iron Guardian, Steel Ego, Zephyr Blade, Blackstone Guardian, Quicksilver
Demon, Storm Disciple, Talaric Ironjack, Unbound Nomad
Psion
PARAGON: Cerulean Adept, Dreamwalker, Time Bender, Uncarnate, Alienist, Anathema, Firestarter,
Master Summoner, Thrallherd
Barbarian
PARAGON: Bear Warrior, Fearbringer Thane, Frenzied Berserker, Wildrunner, Ancestral Weapon,
Building Thunder, Calm Fury, Death's Thane, Stonefire Rager, Twinclaw Slayer, Winter Fury
Monk
PARAGON: Ghostwalker, Initiate of the Dragon, Mountain Devotee, Radiant Fist, Basilisk's Fury
Adept, Four Winds Master, Soaring Blade, Tiger Claw Master, Transcendent Perfection, Unseen Hand
Githzerai
PARAGON: Rrathmal
Minotaur
PARAGON: Blooded Champion
Shardmind
PARAGON: Shard Disciple
Ardent
EPIC: Warmaster
Battlemind
EPIC: Invincible Mind
Monk
EPIC: Diamond Soul, Grandmaster of Flowers
Everyone
EPIC: Psionic: Godmind, Cosmic Soul, Demiurge, Eighth Seal, Master of Moments, Topaz Crusader;
Primal: Glorious Spirit, Primal Avatar, Fang of the World Serpent, Fury of the Wild, Honored Ancestor,
Mythic Spirit, Reincarnate Champion, World Tree Guardian; Generic: Deadly Trickster, Demigod,
Eternal Seeker, Harbinger of Doom, Lorekeeper
Our plan
We'll play with full prep and experience as the rules decree, but eight-to-ten encounters per level for thirty levels is
for younger people. The plan is snapshot oriented:
• Play at 2
nd
level, level up to 3
rd
, and play to level up to 4
th
o We're starting at 2
nd
rather than 1
st
in order to benefit conceptually from individualized feats
from the start, as all characters must have the Hybrid Talent feat
• Upgrade the characters to 11
th
level (Paragon Tier), play to level up to 12
th
, and then to 13
th
to appreciate
the Paragon-specific benefits at that point
• Choose one:
o Upgrade the characters to 21
st
level, and play to level up once
o Upgrade the characters to 26
th
level, and play to level up once
• Upgrade the characters to 30
th
level at the apex of Epic Tier, and play to level up to 31
st
and for the final
quests