Avatars: epic(ish) play at lower levels

[Meatboy]

This is a little addition I am trying to perfect for a HB campaign I'd like to run. The basic premise is that the PCs all carry in them the divine essence of dead gods. This makes them significantly more powerful than normal characters. I don't want this addition to characters to increase their ECL but I think it should increase the CR, especially for NPC avatars. Well here is a brief run down of my idea. It is definitely not complete, but I would like feed back on what I have so far or even just thoughts on feasibility.


Avatars
Avatars are beings whose blood is the blood of gods. Avatars are blessed with powers and abilities beyond those of lesser mortals. The abilities of avatars are an addition rule set meant to be overlaid on top of the existing DnD rules. Basically they are supposed to work similarly to action points with more benefits. Avatars gain an extra stat called essence and this is what grants them their extra powers.

Essence can be used in to different ways. The first called free essence most closely resembles action points. Characters can temporarily spend their free essence to enhance rolls or bring about certain one time actions, like using it to do more damage, increase threat ranges or even to power spells. The exact ways an avatar can use their essence are determined by what domain they are. So an avatar of destruction has access to different powers than an avatar of magic.

The other way essence can be used is by investing essence. By investing essence an avatar permanently loses a point, or more, of essence but gains a permanent bonus to things like stats, AC and what not. So an avatar of strength could invest most of their essence to have a super human strength score but would lose out on the ability to use any abilities that require free essence.

Avatars begin the game with 3 points of essence and gain an extra point every level. They can only use one point of essence per turn per level. To regain free essence once it is used requires a full round action to “draw” essence from the surrounding world. While drawing essence an avatar is considered flat footed. An avatar regains essence at a rate of their charisma modifier to a minimum of +1 for every turn spent drawing essence. An avatar cannot draw more essence than their free essence total.

Basic Abilities
All avatars are able to spend free essence on these basic powers.

Divine providence:
As an immediate action an avatar may add +1, per point spent, to any of their rolls, even after the roll, altering reality in their favor.

Divine life:
As a move equivalent action an avatar can heal 1d4 hp, per point spent. This action provokes AoO.

 

[The Lost Muse]

That's a neat little mechanic you've got there. Are the domains similar to clerical domains?

If all the players have access to avatar abilities, then you don't really have to worry about ECL, other than in balancing encounters.

 

[Meatboy]

Yes the avatar domains are going to closely follow the basic domains given in the PHB, at least as far as the general theme of the domain goes. I don't think I will use all of the domains but I want the basic stuff like war, magic, protection, destruction etc. Each domain would grant a small list of ways to use essence, probably 2 or 3, and would be used as a prerequisite for domain specific feats.

Here's an example.

Destruction
Imbued with the divine essence of destruction your character is able to call upon their birthright and cause devastation unknown to lessers mortals.

Fall of Ages
By calling on the power of destruction you may spend free essence, as a free action, to increase the power of your melee attacks. For every free essence spent you gain an extra 1d6 damage. You must declare your use of this ability before the attack roll is made. If the attack misses then the essence is wasted.

Gate Crasher
You can, as a free action, spend your free essence to deal heavy damage against objects. For your first essence point spent you deal max damage on any unattended object that you strike. Every additional essence increases the multiplier, so two essence points deals double damage, three points x3 damage etc. Attended objects get a save vs this effect, they use the highest save of their attendee.

 

[The Lost Muse]

I'm very impressed - do you have everything finished already or is it a work in progress?

FWIW - I don't think these abilities will really make a difference to CR as action points do not (although in Eberron at least, NPC's are supposed to have a feat to use action points)

 

[Meatboy]

This is all a WIP at the moment. I have a few notes and a lot of stuff just waiting to be written down. Though I am pleased that there is some interest in it and hopefully that will drive me to get more written down. I'll post more domains as I figure out what they need or should do.

 

[Meatboy]

Here is the next one.

Death
As a child of death you hold sway over the lives or unlife of others.

Mark of Death
As a standard action you may “curse” an opponent by spending one free essence. This opponent takes a -5 penalty on their next saving throw. For every additional essence spent this penalty increases by -2. This ability only affects creatures within 30 feet that you can see. You may spend an extra essence point to increase this range by 30 feet for every extra point spent only on range.

Eternal Rest
This ability only affects undead creatures. You can force, as a full round action, one undead creature within 30 feet to make a saving throw, using their highest save, or be destroyed. The DC for this ability is 10 for the first essence spent. For every additional essence point the DC increases by +2. You may spend an extra essence point to increase this range by 30 feet for every extra point spent only on range.

 

[modred]

You might wanna add something to Eternal Rest to make it so it only works on undead with less or roughly equal Hit Dice to you, or something. Wouldn't want a low level character to be able to take out anything really powerful with it.

Dunno, could just be me being paranoid, or biased; I never liked death effects, and I have a liking for the poor undead, soo..

what level would a character with the Death domain be able to get Eternal Rest? do they just immediatly get all of the powers of all of their domain?

 

[Meatboy]

the way I have it now is that they get access to the domain powers at level 1. I put the original DC at 10 so that powerful undead would more than likely save against it. They also get to use their highest saving throw no matter what undead they are. It is also a full round action and you only get to use it against one undead within 30 feet. I think that these factors help to keep the power in check.

If you have any suggestions for other death domain abilities I am all ears. I am not totally satisfied with these ones. Almost everything I could think of for death was far too overpowering. That is why I limited eternal rest to only be used against undead.

 

[modred]

well, I'll try to suggest something, but they aren't exactly in the same spirit as your ones are;


Undeath Restorate
As a standard action, you can fill 10 ft. burst around you with negative energy at the cost of one free essence. This effect causes 1d6 points of damage to living creatures, but heals undead instead of harming them. For every additional essence you spend on this ability you can either increase the damage by two or increase the range by 10 ft.

Undeath Simulacrum
As long as you have essence invested in this ability, you are healed by negative energy, and harmed by positive energy. For every essence you spend on this ability, you gain resistance to positive energy which increases by five per essence invested.

Life to Undeath
At the cost of free essence, you can transform a living creature within 30 ft. into an undead. The target must make a Fort save (DC 10+invested Essence) or die. Targets killed by this effect come back as undead within 48 hours. The exact race of undead is determined by the GM. You cannot use this spell to target a creature with more hit dice then yourself.
This is a: Necromantic, Death-Effect.

Manipulate the Unliving
This effect allows you to control the actions of 1d4 hit dice of undead at the cost of one free Essence. For each additional essence spent, the amount of undead controlled increases by 1d4. This effect does not allow you to control intelligent undead, only mindless undead can be effected.

Qualify for Life Insurance
If you expend on free essence on this ability, and then die during the next hour, you will instantly be revivied at -5 hit points. For each additional essence you expend on this ability, you can either increase the duration of this effect by one hour, or increase your hit points after being revivied by 5 points per essence.

Vampirificate
At the cost of one free essence, you can deal 1d4 negative energy damage to one creature with a melee touch attack. You gain temporary hit points equal to half the damage dealt. These hit points last for one hour. For each additional essence spent, you deal an additional 1d4 points of damage and gain more temporary hit points for it.

Your Soul Is Mying!
You drain the energy of the souls of nearby recently departed creatures.
For every creature within 10 ft. of you that died in the last two rounds, you regain one point of Free Essence that you have expended.
Creatures who's souls have been thus drained, are more diffacult to revive. Bringing them back to life requires a Wish, Limited Wish, Miracle or True Ressurection spell.



Have you read Magic of Incarnum? the magic in it works vaguely similar to this one (I only noticed this when I was typing up these things, it might just be that I made them wrong). You might be able to adopt a rule limiting the maximum Essence that can be invested in any one power at a time; if that were likely to become a problem (sorry, I didn't read your rules thouroughly enough to see if it would)

Hope one of these might help give you an idea. But, it's your campaign. I got them by stealing ideas from the spells in the Undeath Domain from Libris Mortis. I just made up all the numbers for them, so they could be off, I don't know. It would be pretty easy to find numbers in the books for this stuff. I know Manipulate the living is way off. You can't control 12HD of undead at first level, that's just ridiculas.

as sources for these things you could use either Necromantic Spells (wizard or cleric spells, since both have them) or special qualities of Undead creatures (I included abilities based off of Vampires and Liches, the two most prominent in my mind. though that's because I'm making stats for some). If you have any difficulties thinking of anything.

I definately advise rethinking the names of any of these you choose to use (if any). The aren't very good

 

[Meatboy]

wow thanks for the ideas, they give me more than a few ideas for the death domain, and yes there is a limit on essence. You only get to spend one essence per round per level.