In the epic handbook they had examples of things that can be done with skills at levels past 30 which included things...

In the epic handbook they had examples of things that can be done with skills at levels past 30 which included things up to, and including, climbing up shear smooth surfaces, swimming up a waterfall, and slipping between the spaces of a force cage.

If caster characters can effectively bypass the use of skills with magic shouldn't it make sense for non-casters to be able to do fantastic things with the skills they do have to rely on?

My idea for this would be to tie the level of thing you can do with the revelent modifier for that stat so strength related skills done with a +5 modifer should allow for such characters to do things like leap over a building with a standing jump, suplex a dragon and benchpress boulders otherwise basically replicate certain spells as long as they make the appropriate skill checks or possibly when they crit on the skill.

Could this be made to wor in the framework of 5th edition.

My knee jerk reaction is don't play DnD, but this seems a fairly simple problem of just altering skill DCs to appropriate levels; and informing players of what they're capable of.

As long as the things they can do are appropriate for their level it makes sense that at a level where a wizard can cast invisibility a rogue can crit their stealth and basically become invisible themselves at the same level.

How do you handle characters who max stats at chargen?

at level thirty you are literally more powerful than a fucking god. Roll a level five character in Exalted and just play that.

>Could this be made to wor in the framework of 5th edition.

You could do it, but you need to keep in mind that the scaling of 5e is very low. This means that what you set as a reasonable DC for such an epic feat will be a merely hard DC for someone not supposed to be so epic. The difference between a level 1 and a level 20 fighter's athletics is somewhere around 6. So if you want a level 20 fighter to be able to throw boulders on a 10+, a level 1 could do it on a 16+.

Works properly with 4e scaling though.

5E is pretty much all about characters not being as stupidly powerful as 3E. You just don't get that good.

(Apart from some abilities that are simply insane, like Rogues only taking half of all damage past 5th level)

It's a reaction. If you are hit more than once, you take full damage from those hits.

It also takes away your off-turn backstab, which is huuuuuge for rogues.

So yeah, not really that great.

Legend did something like that
When the caster got Flight the martial got a high enough acrobatics bonus to wuxia leap or a high enough balance skill to stand on air

>at level thirty you are literally more powerful than a fucking god

I mean, a pussy god, maybe, but Deities & Demigods provided stats for gods, who were usually levels 40-60, and had Divine Rank on top of that and salient divine abilities that let them do things that no mortal could ever do.

Like, let's use Demeter as an example of a relatively middling (Divine Rank 10, level 40) god.

Oops, forgot her hit points.

Hit Dice: 20d8+160 (outsider) plus 20d8+160 (druid) plus 20d4+160 (Abjurer) (880 hp)

This all comes from pgs. 112-113 of Deities and Demigods, incidentally.

We are... talking about 5e, though.

Well...the guy's still wrong, because level 30 doesn't exist in 5e, and even if it did, there's only been one god with published stats - Tiamat - and being level 30 would only put you roughly at her level, not over it. And Tiamat is a relative weakling in D&D's cosmology. And if I recall correctly the published stats aren't even for Tiamat herself, but rather some kind of avatar.

To put this simply, this would work in 3.5, where the numbers for these things go far higher. In 5, it simply wouldn't be possible to balance this properly since you either have proficiency with a skill or don't.

Making it a series of checks based on the action is another idea that could mitigate that. thinking up a quick set of consequences depending on where in the process it fails, sorta like a QTE of sorts. And lowering the amount of steps as you see fit depending on level.

>at level thirty you are literally more powerful than a fucking god. Roll a level five character in Exalted and just play that.

Not really. I mean a party of you can take on a god, especially if you're kitted out, but just you by yourself? Nah, you're not mightier than a god.

>being level 30 would only put you roughly at her level
No it wouldn't, unless you had a boatload of magical items. Being level 30 would put you and your 3 friends at her level.

>unless you had a boatload of magical items

Who doesn't have this by that point?

>Being level 30 would put you and your 3 friends at her level.

In a stand up drag out pit fight to death.

5e doesn't naturally give magic items that aren't consumable so you'd have to go by your dm. That being said, i mean a literal boat load of magic items to use in preparation cause you won't get more than 5 rounds with the bitch alone. You'd need a bag of holding per inch of body.

If this were 3.5, that wouldn't be too farfetched

True but my current going is assuming a martial, so someone who really can't break the action economy against her. Even with the +5 shit of "fuck bounded accuracy" a fighter would still get fucked by breath weapons and legendary actions unless you also have the "5 rings of fuck the elemental planes".

>stat modifiers represent exponential increase in ability with that stat (someone with 18 STR is more than four times as strong than someone with 12 STR)
>each only adds an additive bonus of 5% to the success rate of a roll
Top stupidity, I agree OP but it would be hard to manage numerically

Yup.
Play d&d until level 20, then switch to Exalted ntil Essence 6 (the game just breaks after that worse than epic d&d>) then switch to Nobilis

For 3.5 I guess rolling class-level/3 d20 to add to a class skill roll can work well.
You probably want to limit to a few times per day.

Making it something that can be done only a few times per day seems like a sensible thing to do. I was also thinking what if certain spells wizards use were instead rolled into a skill check? Detect Magic, Read Magic and such being a magic skill that anyone can take.

You could have class bonuses to skills to reach the DC needed for epic rolls instead.

>Tiamat is a relative weakling in D&D's cosmology

Enh, she's a tier below creator gods, planar overbeings, and ur-gods. As a primary deity of a non-joke race, she should be on par with folks like Corellon Larethian and Moradin. That's not weak, that's baseline pantheon. Weak would be Juiblex or Yeenoghu.

Just add Epic level skills as a separate skill list.

>Epic Escape Rope, liberate yourself from any rope, even abstract ones
>Epic Diplomacy/Intimidate, affect nations as a whole
>Epic Knowledge (Nature), be aware of any natural event, from the microscopical to the great magnitudes
>Epic Apprisal, be aware of the value of things beyond time

>If caster characters can effectively bypass the use of skills with magic

That doesn't apply to me or my campaigns since I require all spells cast to require a spellcraft check or they fail. (class stat + spellcraft skill vs 15 + spell level)

This is offset by the fact that you don't forget spells.