Challenging Challenge Ratings...again

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya paradox matey!

That is indeed an interesting take. And it's another example of good ideas arising from cross-pollination between the editions- certainly it looks to be worth trying, to me.

Yes it looks so much simpler, I'll try and get this typed up soon and sent off to Alzrius, although I may be a bit busy over the next 4-5 days.

I'm thinking I'll just give version 6 away free, although I'll still have it in Godsend.

I have one of my parties set to attack a Phasmalich (thanks Alzrius!) probably this weekend, so maybe I can use this to throw in a couple of minions he has waiting to help. The fact that they're going after him because he's casting a ritual to awaken a Ruin of Ages (thanks Philip for another favorite from the Epic Monsters thread!) actually brings in a beast well beyond the Solo level, but really the point of the fight is that they're trying to stop him and ideally shouldn't see the undead city at all.

What level encounters are you prepping for...and how many PCs?

I have a table going all the way up to Level 100. I have also added a "Cohort" column so it goes

Minion < Cohort < Standard < Elite < Solo

Each step right is equal to two monsters to its immediate left.

So a Cohort is worth 2 minions, an Elite monster is worth 4 Cohorts etc.

e.g. The Level 50 row suggests:

Minion 16
Cohort 25
Standard 33
Elite 50
Solo 67 (round fractions up for Solo's)

Of course preferably v6 CRs rather than v5.

 

[Kerrick]

Question for you, UK (when you have the time):

I was looking over the Multiweapon Fighting feat chain. Now, you changed it so that each applies to only one weapon (which I heartily agree with), but I found something odd. Let's use the marilith as an example:

It's listed as Primary longsword +25/+20/+15/+10 and 5 longswords +25. Disregarding for the moment the fact that the numbers are wrong (it should be +23 with the primary and +19 with the secondary), if we apply the changed version of IMWF, it would look something like this (with the correct values):

Primary longsword +23/+18/+13/+8 and secondary longsword +18/+13 and 4 longswords +17.

As you can see, IMWF only grants a +1 bonus and a second attack for that secondary weapon. I was thinking the secondary attack could be at the same attack bonus as the primary, and all tertiary attacks (the other 4 longswords) would remain at -6. Thoughts?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Kerrick!

Where is this Improved Multiweapon Fighting feat from? I don't remember assigning a +1 value to such a feat...is it one of mine? My 3E memory is off.

 

[Kerrick]

It's from the ELH. You talked about the Perfect MWF feat here and said that it was broken because it treats all the hands as offhands. Your example used a marilith; with six arms and four feats (MWF, Greater MWF, Improved MWF, and Perfect MWF), she'd have 24 attacks/round. Your suggestion was "Every additional arm/limb should require one feat for every additional iterative attack."

Assuming I'm doing the math right, the marilith would have +23 with the primary weapon (25 - 2) and 19 (25 - 6) with all the offhand ones. IMWF and up grant a second attack with the offhands at an additional -5... and I just realized where I screwed up. It should be Primary +23/+18/+13/+8 and Secondary +19/+14 and 4 longswords +19. Never mind - it's been a long week, and I've been sick with some kind of throat infection, which I'm finally getting over.

 

[Upper_Krust]

It's from the ELH. You talked about the Perfect MWF feat here and said that it was broken because it treats all the hands as offhands. Your example used a marilith; with six arms and four feats (MWF, Greater MWF, Improved MWF, and Perfect MWF), she'd have 24 attacks/round. Your suggestion was "Every additional arm/limb should require one feat for every additional iterative attack."

Assuming I'm doing the math right, the marilith would have +23 with the primary weapon (25 - 2) and 19 (25 - 6) with all the offhand ones. IMWF and up grant a second attack with the offhands at an additional -5... and I just realized where I screwed up. It should be Primary +23/+18/+13/+8 and Secondary +19/+14 and 4 longswords +19.

Kerrick mate I solved all these problems in Ascension.

I have 123 new epic feats in that book as well as the 200+ new divine abilities, 100+ cosmic abilities, 50+ Transcendental abilities and 25 Omnific abilities.

Never mind - it's been a long week, and I've been sick with some kind of throat infection, which I'm finally getting over.

You know thats weird, been getting a touch of a sore throat this week myself. Anyway, hope you are over the worst of it.

 

[Kerrick]

I'm almost to the end of the epic monster conversions... and I come across the vermiurge. It's a really interesting monster - one of the better ones in the book - but I can't pin down its type. The book says aberration, but it's a 10-foot-long scorpion with four pincers and wings that has a constant crown of vermin aura. This would suggest vermin (duh). But, by the HD guidelines, I'd have to make it Colossal to give a decent number of HD (it has 42 in the ELH; I'd probably drop it to around 35, but that's still Colossal). It also has immunity to mind-affecting (a vermin trait), even though it's intelligent. I thought about making it an outsider, but that didn't quite fit either. Abomination seems the closest, but what god would create a vermin abomination? I'm stumped. Any ideas?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Kerrick mate!

I'm almost to the end of the epic monster conversions... and I come across the vermiurge. It's a really interesting monster - one of the better ones in the book - but I can't pin down its type. The book says aberration, but it's a 10-foot-long scorpion with four pincers and wings that has a constant crown of vermin aura. This would suggest vermin (duh). But, by the HD guidelines, I'd have to make it Colossal to give a decent number of HD (it has 42 in the ELH; I'd probably drop it to around 35, but that's still Colossal). It also has immunity to mind-affecting (a vermin trait), even though it's intelligent. I thought about making it an outsider, but that didn't quite fit either. Abomination seems the closest, but what god would create a vermin abomination? I'm stumped. Any ideas?

I fail to see the problem with Aberration. However, the concept probably fits Outsider the best since its sort of a god of vermin (IIRC).

 

[Kerrick]

There's nothing really "wrong" with Aberration; it's certainly nonstandard in form, though very close to an actual creature. I just can't quite wrap my mind around those things living on the Prime, wandering around the wilderness. I dunno... maybe it's just me, but something that's described as a god of stinging insects (and has a huge aura of insects around it and a load of insect-related SLAs) should be more than just a critter on a random encounter chart.

By the same token, outsider could work - I actually considered that, too. But then, where does it live? Alignment is "Usually lawful neutral", which makes little sense, and they can speak Terran, which makes even less.

I finally decided to go with abomination (vermin) - they can then actually have divine rank, and it makes more sense given their abilities. It worked out pretty well, I think.

 

[Alzrius]

I finally decided to go with abomination (vermin) - they can then actually have divine rank, and it makes more sense given their abilities. It worked out pretty well, I think.

Have you converted abomination to being its own creature type? Because it's normally a subtype (effectively).

 

[Kerrick]

No, I made it a subtype. The vermiurge is a Vermin (Abomination) - I listed those backwards in my previous post.

On a side note, abominations are pretty well in a class of their own, so I treated them as a monster type when I made up my monster design rules - they fall under "Unnatural", along with constructs, elementals, and undead. Effectively, unnatural creatures have far more HD (and generally higher stats) than normal creatures of the same size.