new armor special abilities

[Khisanth the Ancient]

I needed new special abilities for some artifact armor, so I made these. What do you think the market prices should be?

Chromatic
The armor shifts constantly between the seven colors of the spectrum.

The wearer may choose one energy type (acid, cold, electricity, fire, negative, positive, or sonic); the armor provides resistance 50 against this energy type. The resistance may be changed only once per hour.

Caster Level: 25th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, protection from energy; Market Price: +9 bonus

Coruscating
Constant shimmers play over the armor's surface.

When the wearer is hit by a melee weapon, the attacker must make a Reflex save (DC 30 + wearer's Charisma modifier) or take half the attack's damage as force damage.

Caster Level: 40th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, fire shield, shield; Market Price: +20 bonus

Forcefield
A nimbus of subtle energy surrounds the armor.

The armor constantly generates a double-strength force field, as the Force Field divine ability, surrounding the wearer. The force field has 100 hit points and heals 2 hit points per round.

Caster Level: 40th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, Force Field (divine ability); Market Price: +10 bonus

Intensifying
The armor seems somehow more real than the objects surrounding it.

This armor functions only for creatures with damage reduction; their damage reduction is doubled.

Caster Level: 60th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, stoneskin; Market Price: +25 bonus

Nova
The armor burns with a fierce light.

When the wearer is critically hit, a disintegrating blast of radiation radiates from the armor. All within a 1000-foot radius must make a Fortitude save (DC 40 + wearer's Charisma modifier); those who fail the save take 80d6 damage and 1d6 Strength and Constitution damage; those who succeed take 10d6 damage and no ability damage.

The wearer can choose not to activate the nova, and this is not an action. The nova can trigger only three times per day.

Caster Level: 60th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, disintegrate; Market Price: ???


Panchromatic
The armor displays all the colors of the spectrum at once, sometimes separately, sometimes merging into brilliant white light.

The wearer may choose one energy type (acid, cold, electricity, fire, negative, positive, or sonic); the armor provides resistance 100 against this energy type. The resistance may be changed only once per hour.

Furthermore, when the wearer is damaged by an acid, cold, electricity, fire, negative energy, positive energy, or sonic attack, the armor thereafter grants resistance 100 against that energy type for 1 hour. Energy damage of a different type while the resistance is active will produce resistance 100 to that energy type without affecting the previous resistance.

Caster Level: 40th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Epic Magic Arms and Armor, protection from energy; Market Price: +15

[paradox42]

The system UK used in creating his Epic weapon abilities in the Bestiary makes your Forcefield ability pretty easy to determine, fortunately: Divine Abilities are priced at +5 or +6, so since your Forcefield effectively grants two of them, I'd peg it at +10. I don't think it's worth higher than that, because Force Field itself is actually a fairly weak ability as you get above level 60 or so, and because stacking copies of one single ability in an item (even if it is a stackable one like Force Field) is nearly always less useful than combining two different abilities.

The others are more difficult to gauge. Panchromatic is obviously going to be easy to figure out once you have Chromatic, but that still leaves Chromatic to be determined. Nova looks like a weak Atomic Burst, in terms of comparing to Divine & higher powers; likewise, Coruscating looks like a weaker Specular. Intensifying's value obviously goes up for more powerful wearers, but does that make it worth a lot more as an item ability? I'm not sure.

[Khisanth the Ancient]

Originally Posted by paradox42

The system UK used in creating his Epic weapon abilities in the Bestiary makes your Forcefield ability pretty easy to determine, fortunately: Divine Abilities are priced at +5 or +6, so since your Forcefield effectively grants two of them, I'd peg it at +10. I don't think it's worth higher than that

OK, cool, that sounds good.

Yeah, it would be a lot more useful on, say, a Demi-deity than a Demiurge!

The others are more difficult to gauge. Panchromatic is obviously going to be easy to figure out once you have Chromatic, but that still leaves Chromatic to be determined.

I was initially thinking Chromatic should be +9, since the 'resistance 50 to one thing' (Fire Warding, Sonic Warding, etc) are +6, and increasing that by half; but I don't know if that's the right way to do it.

Intensifying's value obviously goes up for more powerful wearers, but does that make it worth a lot more as an item ability? I'm not sure.

I don't know. If it would help, it could just be a unique ability for this particular artifact - the armor of a very powerful Old One (as powerful as some First Ones; 220 HD, but with a template of mine giving it extra DR and divine/cosmic abilities). It would boost his DR to 2200/- ... which seems scarily high, but I don't think it's too much for a being who sliced and diced an (admittedly low-end) First One so that it could be imprisoned.

[Upper_Krust]

Howdy Khisanth dude!

Chromatic: You know, I'd make the colour selectable, otherwise this will be next to useless.

Corruscating: Probably Cosmic (ie. +25), although I was thinking +19 because Force is slightly weaker than Divine.

Intensifying: Probably Divine, I agree with Paradox42 here, multiplying can be tricky to gauge (usually I say Cosmic = x2), and in this case we have an ability which some characters may not even possess.

In fact regarding multipliers in general, you might want to make such items provide a base figure, with a stipulation that they multiply if greater than the base figure.

So it grants DR 50/- unless DR is 30 or more already in which case it doubles...which is itself a cheat of sorts since it would be better to just add a static figure - although I suppose I brought this on myself when I introduced all the cosmic multiplying abilities.

Nova: is complex, but should be discernable if you work it out as a spell first, then convert it to an item.

Panchromatic: I can see the reasoning behind using Resistance rather than Immunity, but it doesn't half complicate things.

[Belzamus]

Originally Posted by Khisanth the Ancient

I don't know. If it would help, it could just be a unique ability for this particular artifact - the armor of a very powerful Old One (as powerful as some First Ones; 220 HD, but with a template of mine giving it extra DR and divine/cosmic abilities). It would boost his DR to 2200/- ... which seems scarily high, but I don't think it's too much for a being who sliced and diced an (admittedly low-end) First One so that it could be imprisoned.

Just to chime in real quick here, unless you've heavily modifier the system, 2,200/-- for an entity likely in the ECL 400 range is still far below the average damage they can expect to take from any being that actually cares enough about physical attacks to want to hurt them. Obviously I can only provide examples from my own experience, but just pulling up on of my weaker Old Ones who is largely a caster, averages 3,000 damage a hit. In contrast, the ones focused on fighting average between 10,000 and 40,000 a hit. Jump up to First One and several hundred thousand damage a hit isn't out of the question.

This, of course, is a function of the sad DR values in Ascension more than anything, though.

Also, is your ability not identical to Pugnacious? (A Cosmic) Seems pretty easy to price in that case. (+36, I'd imagine.)

[Khisanth the Ancient]

Well, he doesn't *normally* fight First Ones-- that was a one-time, legendary deed. (And it wasn't a particularly combat-optimized First One anyway.)

So: maybe +20 for Coruscating, +25 [Cosmic] for Intensifying, +9 for Chromatic (if I make it selectable per UK's suggestion). Does that sound good? Should Panchromatic be +12, or +15? Probably the former...

Nova, still not sure -- have to look at the equivalent epic spell DCs. Not now though, too busy in RL...

[Upper_Krust]

Hi guys!

In hindsight I probably should have made the DR:

Elder One = DR 1/2
Old One = DR 1/3
First One = DR 1/4

Demiurge I = DR 1/10
Demiurge II = DR 1/20
Demiurge III = DR 1/30

Time Lord = DR 1/100
High Lord = multiple of Time Lord (e.g. Tetragrammaton would have DR 1/400)

[Belzamus]

Originally Posted by Upper_Krust

Hi guys!

In hindsight I probably should have made the DR:

Elder One = DR 1/2
Old One = DR 1/3
First One = DR 1/4

Demiurge I = DR 1/10
Demiurge II = DR 1/20
Demiurge III = DR 1/30

Time Lord = DR 1/100
High Lord = multiple of Time Lord (e.g. Tetragrammaton would have DR 1/400)

That...would make things interesting, to say the least. Especially toward making the adamic and nehaschismic dragons tougher.

That would even kind of fix the absurd explosion of virtual size categories past 400 strength or so.

[Khisanth the Ancient]

OK, here's a first draft of what the artifact armor for the Sun would look like:

Chromosphere: The greatest of all armors made within Time, the personal craftsmanship of Kadmon once worn by the Eternal Warder himself, then given to the Sun in preparation for his battle against the great horde of Teteoinnan's children. Chromosphere would appear as a mighty suit of plate glowing orichalcum-red, save that the varicolored light that shines from it is too bright for mortal, or even Immortal, eyes to see through to the metal beneath.

Chromosphere is +100 coruscating intensifying negating nova panchromatic orichalcum plate mail. In addition, any time the wearer reduces a Sidereal or other being with 24 divine ranks or more (or the equivalent - such as young or older Adamic Dragons) to 0 hit points or below, the wearer is healed of 5,000 damage - receiving any excess healing as temporary hit points which last for 24 hours if not lost first. This latter ability has given the armor its older, legendary name by which it was called among the hordes of Teteoinnan - Star Eater.

I'll post more about the Sun etc. in the "Great Wall is Broken" thread as I finish it... roughly, I have him as a 220 HD (110 integrated fighter levels) Old One, with lots of extra nastiness from his double blessing from the Demiurges (translates into 20 extra Divine Ability slots).

[Belzamus]

Honestly? It seems kind of weak. An Old One is looking at somewhere between 200K and 500K hp, on average. 5,000 wouldn't even really show up on the radar. 500,000 would be pretty cool, though. Or just full healing.

That brings up an interesting point though, that healing at that level is increibly difficult. Sidereals are forced to rely methods that take them ages to recover with; in many cases, it'd be faster just to have their manifestation commit suicide and rejuvenate in their godly realm.

[Khisanth the Ancient]

Originally Posted by Belzamus

Honestly? It seems kind of weak. An Old One is looking at somewhere between 200K and 500K hp, on average. 5,000 wouldn't even really show up on the radar. 500,000 would be pretty cool, though. Or just full healing..

True. I was thinking that Young (or even Adult) Adamic Dragons would be gnats to a being like that, so I wouldn't do full healing ... 25,000 or 50,000 might be good though.

[paradox42]

Originally Posted by Belzamus

That brings up an interesting point though, that healing at that level is increibly difficult. Sidereals are forced to rely methods that take them ages to recover with; in many cases, it'd be faster just to have their manifestation commit suicide and rejuvenate in their godly realm.

Easy solution: Iatric [Effect] is only Divine; make Cosmic and higher versions of it. We even have templates for how the magnitude should change, in the form of Divine [Effect] -> Cosmic [Effect] -> Transcendental [Effect]. The existence of Ultima [Effect] also suggests that you could do a "repeating" version at the next higher tier, such as a Cosmic version of Iatric that is exactly like Iatric except that it repeats for [Divine Rank] rounds.

We did similar things in my game when we started to seriously get into divine rankings above 4, because the players were noticing all kinds of gaps in their available choices. As a somewhat complicated example, we've had house rules for what I call "advanced energy" types for longer than I can even remember to tell you, which are considered essentially equal in value to Force (in point of fact, Force is one of the types). An example of one of the other types that everybody's game has is the type called Disruption, which is defined as being "the energy type that Disintegration uses." Now, long ago I made an Advanced Energy Substitution feat that lets you change the energy type to one of the advanced types, at the cost of a +1 spell-level bump; this means that you can (with AE Substitution (Force)) change a Fireball to a Forceball at the cost of making it 4th level. Now, Ascension gave us Energy [Effect] which deals d6 damage per HD, and Force [Effect] which deals d4 damage per HD; since my game featured Force as merely one of several more powerful energy types, it was an obvious extension to just say that Force [Effect] is really just one of the Advanced Energy [Effect] types. So in my game, gods can take Force [Effect] if they like, or Disruption [Effect] which is identical except for dealing Disruption damage instead of Force.

My point here is, don't treat the system as an absolute- it's better to treat it instead as a base for jumping off and making the stuff you need. Ascension's math is very elegantly set out and tends to be quite internally self-consistent; this in turn makes it relatively easy to extend.