paradox42's crazy cosmology

I noticed you have some of the other game system exist in your cosmology. I would think those would be different sets of Akashic Records.

paradox42 said:

Right. Have Raithe the Dreamer regale you with tales of how much his PC (and, I suspect, the player himself) hated the Phasmalich villain I used in the divine part of the campaign.

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What Phasmalich villain? I'm pretty sure no such villain ever existed. Moiranna made sure of that. He's GONE.

Yqatuba said:

I noticed you have some of the other game system exist in your cosmology. I would think those would be different sets of Akashic Records.

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Then, I surmise that in your cosmology, that's exactly what the Akashic Records do stand for! In my setting, the Akashic Records are a bit bigger than just one game system.

How have you handled Epic Spell creation in your games Paradox?? the current system is full of suck and fail and it's retarted hard to duplicate 9th level spells via said method.

Evilmonkeygod said:

How have you handled Epic Spell creation in your games Paradox?? the current system is full of suck and fail and it's retarted hard to duplicate 9th level spells via said method.

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I actually had a dual system in my setting, since I ported my old "10th level spells" from 2nd Edition into 3rd as Ultramagic (among other things, one has to learn individual Ultraspells as feats, and every last one deals ability damage to the caster as part of the casting in addition to carrying an often-hefty XP casting cost). We used Ultraspells, and also Epic spells- though since the Ultraspells weren't really designed around a quantified system the way Epic spells were, the Epic system got used a lot more often as we got way up in the divine levels.

For a base, with the Epic spell system, we used the FeanMerc Epic Spell System, which adds a few extra factors such as removal of saving throws and allowing material components and foci, and more importantly allows the use of existing spells as spell seeds so you're not limited to using the generic (and sometimes badly designed) seeds from the original Epic spell system. We used this one extensively, and also threw in a variant I picked up from reading Sepulchrave's Story Hour here on the ENWorld boards.

Sepulchrave had a game that was going up into high Epic territory, though his characters never reached godhood from what I saw- but one variant he used that I really liked, was that an Epic spell maker can (by stacking enough mitigating factors) reduce the Epic spell's DC to 0- and in that case is allowed to create the spell instantaneously, on the spur of the moment, for no (research) cost in gold or XP. Part of the impetus behind this variant in his game, I think, was the fact that one of his PCs was a NG Druid with the Vow of Poverty feat, who therefore couldn't keep money for researching Epic spells the usual way. Nobody in my games used that feat, but my PCs still created several insta-spells with DC 0, even back before any of them ascended. They most commonly did this by using powerful personal artifacts as material foci, and stacking on a lot of XP and caster-takes-damage costs, but one can do some cool things even without using those.

It's worth commenting on one more aspect of Epic spells. As they got way up there in divine levels, of course, damage became less and less threatening to them, so they tended to use that one more and more- one of the characters who eventually became half of Evolution created a DC-0 Epic Psionic Power he called "Ultraf*ckomnicognition" (I burst out laughing the first time I saw that name and gave him a "really entertain the DM" XP award for coming up with it) which basically works just like Hypercognition except for granting a much higher bonus on the check. This power dealt over 1000 dice of damage to him with each manifestation. Since by this time, he had hit points in the five-digit range, this was considered a trivial cost by him, and he often used this Epic power several times at a stretch to work things out during each of the party's "learn everything we can about the enemy before we fight it so we can take it apart methodically when we actually get around to acting" episodes.

Thanx Paradox. Also, curious about the Incarnations you mentioned back on i believe the first page.

Do you have any examples of them? could one be basically an Incarnation of anything that has a Portfolio in IH:A, or is the list much smaller??

Incarnations are just another tier of deity that happens to focus on one Portfolio more than the rest. Any Portfolio is fair game, unless the DM says otherwise. Every PC in my party became an Incarnation eventually, and they all had to pick a Portfolio to do it with- most picked their own custom Portfolios that didn't appear in the IH at all, but there's no reason IMO to exclude the ones in the IH.

I don't have any stats for an Incarnation handy, but the most important stuff is the Divines and Cosmics they get, which the post on Elder Deities and Incarnations explains.

paradox42 said:

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[*]~25,000 years prior to Grand Nexus (the Great Red Fleet): Fugue Plane Entity leaks the location of the Abyssal side of the Gate to Lower Plane inhabitants prior to Gate opening that time. Devils invade Abyss from the Hells in an effort to succeed where demons have so often failed, but are rebuffed due to extreme power of Material Plane inhabitants on that side. Material Plane inhabitants are incensed enough by the affront that they send a counter-invasion of their own dubbed "the Great Red Fleet" including (among other things) three planet-sized warships bristling with high-tech firepower, which blast their way through the Hells leaving only Dispater of the original Lords of the Nine alive (because he betrayed his race and let them through his territory unmolested), eventually arriving in Nessus itself and killing the original Asmodeus. The being claiming that name in later times was either a surviving Aspect of the original, or an imposter, nobody (else) is ever really sure. Following this, the original Incarnation of Good, ruling from the top of the 666 Heavens, censures the mortals, and for his trouble is the second target of their wrath- the Great Red Fleet turns to the Heavens and storms them just as easily, killing him and leaving the mortals in charge of the Heavens. During the course of the following millennia, the population of devils and angels slowly recovers, but never quite reaches the strength it once had. The next several Abyssal Gate openings see almost no demons dare the portal, out of fear of what the mortals might do.

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The Salvation War on Steroids as a background event. Fitting.

I've been reading this, and I thought... How would The Last Question translate into tabletop terms?

Omeganian said:

The Salvation War on Steroids as a background event. Fitting.

I've been reading this, and I thought... How would The Last Question translate into tabletop terms?

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Holy thread necromancy, Batman! People still read this? (Reminds me- I really need to download these posts and save them locally in case another ENWorld crash happens.)

I came up with the Great Red Fleet idea years before I even ran my 2nd Edition college game, actually, so it long predates the Salvation War- but the parallels are pretty obvious, yes.

As for the Last Question, I'd suggest that that's essentially what happens in a universe like the Downstreamers (in Stephen Baxter's Manifold books) come from: the only thing left is a giant computer running programs eternally, and everything is information. At that point, I'd suggest the computer that remains essentially "upgrades" itself to Time Lord status and becomes a true Eternal- thus answering the Question as in the story.

I really love those Pleromic templates. Very very cool.