I've come to a conclusion

[Belzamus]

Divinity templates are unbalanced.

Theoretically, one ECL 320 character should be equal to another. This is not the case.

I just finished writing up one of my characters, an Amidah Fighter 20/Warblade 20/Weapon Master 40/Iaijutsu Master 10/Battle Ascendant 20 with another custom template and every martial divine ability and epic feat in Ascension.

Not only that, his custom template, Blessed of the Hellspawned Night, gave him the following:

His ability scores have been increased to their inherent maximum and doubled
He is treats Vile and Permanent Damage as normal damage
He is constantly under the effects of True Seeing and Freedom of Movement
He cannot be undermined by time travel and can battle foes with Time Dilation normally
He is immune to Mind-Affecting Effects and Death Effects.
He is healed by Cold Damage and Unholy Damage
He has no need to sleep, eat, or breath
He does not age and is effectively immortal
His sense extend out to 4,400 ft. and across planar boundaries
He gains a Melee Touch attack useable once per round that simulates an Intensified Harm, Intensified Destruction and Intensified Disintegrate Spell with no save, dealing permanent damage
He cannot be permanently destroyed except by a being of Divine Rank 20 or higher
His martial maneuvers are always available

And he is STILL massively outclassed by anything else I've statted in his alleged vicinity.

The biggest problem, really, is that this is an extreme. He is, really, not a mortal character. Supposedly, one should be able to play a 320th level fighter and be just as useful as an Elder One with the Double War portfolio.

Right...

Any ideas to address this? I think the Amidah should allow access to Cosmics as esoteric abilites, that would likely help tremendously.

And I'm not saying he's absolutely horrible. He an (un)holy nightmare in melee, he just...has 20,000 hp when he should about 150,000 at that level at least.

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

I think it's a matter of stacking templates, partially. Usually when you put two 'big' templates on one character, it's hard to get an appropriate level for the result, because it hits as hard as a creature of its supposed level but has way too few hit points. It's largely a breakdown in the system.

I think pure mortals just don't work at those levels, because of the lack of Cosmic+ abilities. The problem is, you have to assign *some* ECL/CR to the templates -- but by ECL 320 you can be a Sidereal and have Cosmics, and maybe even a Transcendental as an Esoteric if you pass up artifacts for divine ability slots. And no mortal abilities regardless of level can match that.

And I'd certainly houserule Amidah to allow Cosmics as esoterics. Its ECL is up there with the lower sidereal templates, isn't it? Still, that's 36 feats. On the other hand, an epic fighter gets a bonus feat every other level. A 110th-level single classed fighter, if he puts every feat after 30th level into divine abilities, gets 11 divine abilities and 4 leftover feats; so a single Cosmic is affordable.


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You get quintessence from killing outsiders; an 110th-level character has most certainly killed tons. Why doesn't he use it to get a divinity template?

UK suggested (IIRC) only one 33rd-level character per planet, one 66th per galaxy, and one 99th per universe assuming human lifespans. That character is 110th-level, minus templates. Is he an Elf or something of the sort? If not, how did he live long enough to reach 110th level?

So I guess that's my take - only gods, outsiders, undead, and other immortal creatures live long enough to get close to ECL 320 - and undead and nondivine, non-planar-lord type outsiders take so long to get there that few if any make it.

 

[Belzamus]

Bah, I shouldn't post when I'm tired.

Yeah, it should be almost impossible for a non-divine character to reach a level that high (barring dragons or the like which are basically gods-lite.)

I don't go by statistics in my setting, really. Well, I do for the current era, but the Firstborn Epoch where all the Sidereals warred with each other is overflowing with epic characters. And I should probably also mention that my setting isn't really a "material" world so much as a spiritual plane with material-like properties, the current era having last for the last 100,000 years or so and all the races and inhabitants are actually the products of generation upon generations of Immortal reproduction diluting their power so much that the common person is a 1HD commoner, but the fact remains that there ARE godspawn and epic level characters all over the place.

This guy was actually born the Amidah, a product of the annihilation of over two dozen Sidereals in a single instant of cosmic cataclysm. Afterwards trained by group of immortals to be the perfect weapon for their order, led a crusade against the Highest Heaven and ended up single-handedly driving the entire angelic race into extinction, along with about 90,000 years of as-of-yet unwritten deeds.

I'd also argue that most of his quintessence went either into his Blessed of the Hellspawned Night or into the two-dozen Divine Abilities he has as esoterics.

And I think another part of my problem is that I don't technically build things the right way.

I start with class levels, which I clock in at 2/3 ECL (no items), then add their templates in (likewise at 2/3) equip them with what I feel they deserve based on story (adding directly to ECL) and then give them any relevant abilities that they qualifiy for, regardless of how many they're "allowed" to have, adding anyting that goes over that "items - 1/3 ECL" mark staight onto their ECL.

So, I don't have a any specific target in mind, which usually ends up with a Sidereal being 1-200 points of ECL higher than normal due to the Transcendental abilities I feel they would have access to story-wise (since these builds are really meant to illustrate the setting for the stories in a way that actually reflects what happens, i.e. if you ran combat, the events that DO happen, could, statistically, conceivably happen.)

So, yeah, mine is a bit of a special case (and he's really the only non-Immortal anywhere near that level, anyone else ascended long ago) but I DO think this is something of a problem.

Just look at the Gargillian issue in the other thread, he's certainly not an Immortal, yet he's allegedly level 3,000. Though, U_K admitted he should get Cosmics as esoteric abilities.

Lastly, the HP issue really comes from Cosmic Firmament multiplying a Sidereal's HP. A First One can't have less than roughly 100,000 hp, and millions with Trans. Toughness and the double Stoicism portfolio (or just Legendary Constitution). There's no way for a non-Sidereal to ever keep up.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there guys!

Its pretty obvious to me that the mega flaw in your character build is that you have too few levels and too many templates. 110 (Levels) vs. 210 (template ECL). You should have at least as many 'real' levels as 'effective levels'.

In fact this is the whole reason behind the Golden Rule in the CR/EL document. Your above character would be 'Golden Ruled' to ECL 270 (and thus only CR 180) though I would still force a player to pay the ECL 320 'price'.

Without a sufficient number of base levels your character becomes a bit like an inverted pyramid. You need a solid foundation to build upon.

 

[Belzamus]

Hey, U_K!

Hmm...I could see how that might swing it a little. He'd be a little more durable with another 100 or so HD.

But still, no cosmics HURTS. (Though to be fair, he doesn't have room for them in his build right now. They'd be adding a flat +6 ECL each and throwing off the ratio even further.)

 

[Alzrius]

UK suggested (IIRC) only one 33rd-level character per planet, one 66th per galaxy, and one 99th per universe assuming human lifespans.

Things like this always struck me as really cool.

The more you venture into epic/divine realms, the more it's necessary to have a solid framework for how the game world (by which I mean the game multiverse) is structured, including and especially questions of what it means for characters and beings to be of a certain level/Hit Dice/ECL/CR. "Cosmic demographics charts" are one thing that's necessary at that level...though that tends to clash with ideals of DM's making their campaigns how they want to, rather than basing them on existing data.

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

If he wiped out *all angels* (even cosmic ones like Cherubim??) he should have ludicrously high Quintessence. Even if he stuck to immortal level angels and below, he ought to have enough Quintessence for a pretty high-up divine template, maybe even one of the lower sidereals - since you get 1/10 the quintessence of outsiders you kill, if he's killed 10 [whatever]deities he can become a [whatever]deity himself.

I don't think Divine Abilities as esoterics cost quintessence, they just cost 6 feats - unless this is a rule of your specific setting. And Blessed of the Hellspawned Night, from your description, doesn't sound worth *that much* quintessence. It's just Cosmic String +ability scores, some immunities and immunity-equivalents (true seeing is a lot like immunity to illusions), somewhat improved senses, and a nasty touch attack (since Destruction is a save-or-die, what does Intensifying it do?)

Cosmic String is great, but if he's killed *all angels* he should be a Sidereal himself (if he took down the seven seraphim, he should be close to the Elder One/Old One boundary), and Blessed of the Hellspawned Night isn't even close to that power level. Taking a Demi-deity or higher template and buying Cosmic String with the Divine Abilities you get from that template would be a better choice... plus you get the ability to take other Cosmics as esoterics.

What ECL do you have BotHsN at? It might be overvalued...

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

"Cosmic demographics charts" are one thing that's necessary at that level...though that tends to clash with ideals of DM's making their campaigns how they want to, rather than basing them on existing data.

Well, you can just adjust the chart to fit your campaign world's "power level", though that's more work.

In my mind, since you get quintessence for killing outsiders, hardly anybody gets past level 30-something without becoming a hero-deity. Mortals above 40 are going to be rare flukes, probably with some ideological reason to avoid divine ascension (hatred of the gods, belief in the strength of one's sword arm, ki, or arcane magic as the best or only true power source, belief that mortals are meant to die and so seeking immortality is wrong) or backstory reason (a curse or prohibition of the gods that prevents ascension, some terrible grief that they cannot imagine living with for eternity) - anyone who isn't canny enough to realize that divine ascension is the best option, or not ambitious enough to want it, won't have made it to that high of a level anyway.

That gives me an awesome character idea for a really high-level fighter... born into grinding poverty, he escaped it only by indenturing himself to a gladiator trainer and risking his life in the gladiatorial arena. After dozens of successful fights, he obtained enough wealth to pay off his indenture and buy good adventuring gear, weapons, and armor for himself. He adventured across the world, at first to protect the poor and weak, but later simply to prove himself. Now he's out to show that there is no force stronger in the universe than a honed will and a honed blade wielded by a trained arm, and he's ready to duel the gods themselves to prove it...

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

I'm currently working on a template "Chosen of the Demiurge" that I think you'd like. What you said about too-low DRs in another thread made sense, so it gives Sidereals or creatures of equivalent ECL pretty high DR (5 x HD for Elder Ones/Old Ones, 10 x HD for First Ones). But mainly it exists to give creatures extra Divine/Cosmic abilities.

I actually created the idea for the template when I realized that one of the major sidereals in my setting (the Sun) couldn't get enough divine abilities to be as powerful as the 'backstory' I came up with had him being, and that he was too vulnerable in general. So now he gets 3 extra Cosmics and DR 1100/-. (Your character that started this thread would get 3 bonus Cosmics, and DR 550/-.)

What should the ECL increase for high DR be?

 

[Belzamus]

Wow, that's a lot to respond to.

I should probably clafrify, most of the big, tough angels fell in the Sorrowfall (the battle where all the Sidereals obliterated each other), leaving...maybe a couple of greater-deity-ranked ones in charge, so it's not THAT big an accomplishment, we're talking, maybe, 10,000 of them left alive at the point he attacked them.

Also, my campaign is a strictly closed cosmology that doesn't obey demographics at all (with the whole divine detereoration thing and whatnot).

I priced Blessed of the Hellspawned night by it's individual abilities, I think.

-+36 for the ability scores
-+2 for vile/permanent immunity
-+2 for true seeing/freedom of movement
-+6 for slipstream
-+2 for mind affecting/death effect immunity
-+2 for healed by cold/unholy
-+1 for immortal
-+1 for divine sense
-+3 for his touch attack (good point on destruction, too, I think I meant the damage if the save is made (the no save was only for the disintegration))
-+6 for cosmic string
-+6 for what, for me, would be the ultimate evolution of tome of battle's martial maneuvers

So...+67. I can't remember how many extra divines he gets since he's only using 1 item (that may be more than level-appropriate) but I could see dropping him to about 270 like U_K suggested.

Although, I think that at CR 180, he'd be a TPK with his 4,400 ft. 24-hit whirlwind attack, +280 always-first initiative, and 2,000 damage a hit 10-20/x5 attack rating, plus all the goodies from Battle Ascendant and being considered a Greater God of the double War portfolio.

I might have artificially bumped his ECL up to account for the incredible synergy of his abilities.

As for your DR question, I really don't know. I think U_K overprices DR, personally. I give all my Sidereals now 5xHDxHP Multiplier, which gives them about 5-10,000 usually, which, really, ISN'T all that much damage at those levels. One of my sidereals is a straight Elder One template applied to a Great Wyrm Void Dragon with no cheesy modifications at all, and his bite does 1,800d10 +1,800d10 entropic cold damage per hit. (UWS, of course.) Even without it though be doing about 7,500 damage on a 17-20/x5.