new armor special abilities

Khisanth the Ancient · Dec 17, 2009

Belzamus said:
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 · Dec 17, 2009

Belzamus said:
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.

Beefermatic · Dec 10, 2013

paradox42 said:
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.

I entirely agree with you and have done something similar in my campaign. I advance energy types by simply making them equivalent to the cosmic/ trancesndent/ etc abilities but firy for example versions of it. Physics wise, they still act like whatever their parent element is, for example, cosmic fire would not destroy magic barriers like divine energy does, however you could set someone on Cosmic fire, and they'd take d20s of damage, all considered divine, but it would effect vulnerabilities the same as it's parent element, but encounter none of the drawbacks of elemental damage. (Cosmic Fire would still deal double damage to a Cold Subtype creature as if it were standard fire, however fire subtypes would receive no such immunity, nor would hardness effect the damage at all.)

Beefermatic · Dec 10, 2013

paradox42 said:
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.

I entirely agree with you and have done something similar in my campaign. I advance energy types by simply making them equivalent to the cosmic/ transcendent/ etc abilities but firy for example versions of it. Physics wise, they still act like whatever their parent element is, for example, cosmic fire would not destroy magic barriers like divine energy does, however you could set someone on Cosmic fire, and they'd take d20s of damage, all considered divine, but it would effect vulnerabilities the same as it's parent element, but encounter none of the drawbacks of elemental damage. (Cosmic Fire would still deal double damage to a Cold Subtype creature as if it were standard fire, however fire subtypes would receive no such immunity, nor would hardness effect the damage at all.)

Upper_Krust · Dec 25, 2013

Beefermatic said:
I entirely agree with you and have done something similar in my campaign. I advance energy types by simply making them equivalent to the cosmic/ transcendent/ etc abilities but firy for example versions of it. Physics wise, they still act like whatever their parent element is, for example, cosmic fire would not destroy magic barriers like divine energy does, however you could set someone on Cosmic fire, and they'd take d20s of damage, all considered divine, but it would effect vulnerabilities the same as it's parent element, but encounter none of the drawbacks of elemental damage. (Cosmic Fire would still deal double damage to a Cold Subtype creature as if it were standard fire, however fire subtypes would receive no such immunity, nor would hardness effect the damage at all.)

You can see the elegance and beauty of the different strata in action right there. Very easy to upscale.