MM excerpt: phane

[phloog]

Or it's permanent if you die.

The abilities it has are fairly scary, especially when you consider there'll be another couple of monsters also attacking you. A Phane with a sneak attacker? Eep.

SNIP
Those clerics and warlords are going to be busy allowing you to make extra saves...

Cheers!

I understand it was said a bit tongue and cheek, but still...

"And if ihe and his minions kill you, you'll not only be dead, but ACTUALLY OLD! You will die young, but leave an OLD corpse!" - - doesn't really fill one with dread - piling an effect on top of death, it's along the lines of "...and if this beast reduces you to unresurrectable ash, the ash will have a bad smell and will be refused entry into all the best clubs."

I understand it's a different philosophy, it just doesn't jibe with my idea of epic fantasy, and so I see it as a bad fix to the save-or-die problem.

To use the overused Tolkien analogy...the heroes in the hobbit were up against Smaug, who was deadly and nasty on his own...not Smaug, who stuns you with his breath weapon, his two ogre accomplices, and a goat named Edmund who nibbles you while you stand stunned and terrified. It all still just feels a bit contrived/artificial. I can definitely see SOME fights against crews, but for this particular creature it seems like fear of an aging effect led them to make it a group fight, and it just seems odd.

On top of which, it seems to be a bit of a mismatch with the explanation of the power - -this thing is a creature that manipulates time itself...it's putting you in a temporary aging bubble? The more sensible (admittedly it's fantasy) explanation would be that the creature sends your body through time at an accelerated rate, and you age...but because that would lead to a negative effect they don't want to deal with, now it's this almost illusory effect, or some biological thing.

 

[LordVyreth]

Am I the only one who misses the 3rd Edition fluff for these guys? Weapons of the gods are neat and all, but I prefer the actual bastard children of the gods angle. And I'm not sure if I want my abominations, Tarrasque, and old high-level monsters like the Nightshades in the same grouping. I am eager to see the Tarrasque stats, though. Those are always fun to compare between editions.

 

[Lensman]

What do you consider to long a combat?

I've noticed this as a valid fear but I'm wondering if people are equating 3e length of a round as the 4E length of a round. The loss of iterative attacks by itself will cut down the length of time a round takes in 4E so even from the getgo, at high levels, the 4E combat round should run faster in real world time.

Well I have only run through a couple of combats so far so I cannot speak from much experience in the matter. But depending on how combat damage scales the loss of iterative attacks would add to the number of rounds in a combat with the reduction of damage per round.

Lets place the creature against itself in a combat. It does on a average of 19 points of damage with it's at will ability. With it hitting 50% of the time it would take about 50 rounds of combat to defeat it's clone.

 

[Rel]

What a silly comparison.

Now hong, you know we play nicer than that around here. You get a 1-day ban.

 

[OchreJelly]

Epic or no, it's role is still controller. I think this creature fits that bill nicely. It stuns, dazes, & weakens the party while his fangy abomination pals dice out the real damage.

And it certainly feels epic to me. If said creature attacks our hypothetical town, our hypothetical militiamen will pee themselves when they see their captain scream in agony as he ages before eventually turning into a pile of dusty bones before their eyes (i.e. dead). Will they stand before this thing more smoke than creature that is there and yet not there, or will they falter?

I even see a plot hook where the heroes come to the now ghost town trying to discern what sort of creature turned the inhabitants into dusty piles of bones.

 

[AllisterH]

Hmm. Well, I have to admit I like the 4e tactics, and what you can do in a battle far more than I liked it in 1st, 2nd or 3rd, even just based on the small sample of available info. But... I do think that solos and elites would be just as interesting without the HP inflation. They can do neat things, which is great. But the extra hit points don't add to the interesting dimension the combat- they just artficially extend it, and whats worse, is it largely *feels* artificial (with what I've tried out). It particularly stands out when compared with the damage dealing capability of things with equal levels, including themselves- this thing is going to pound on itself for, what, 24+ rounds to kill itself? That just feels wrong, and dreadfully boring.

I'm seriously considering pushing elites down to normal hit point and defense levels and solos down to 'elite' levels. The interesting abilities will stay just as interesting, but there will be less of the 'miss/miss/miss/hit, ok, it hits bob again' 'miss/miss/hit/miss, Ok it hits bob again, someone use a healing power on him', & etc that solo battles feel like. (Or as PC levels go up, just the daily, encounter and action point nova followed by beating on it until it dies, 7 rounds later).

Which is why I'm still withholding judgement on the Epic tier until I know what a high level PC can do.

For example, if PCs add half-damage to their attack (and this might be true) then an encounter power that says W + cha is going to be chewing a fair bit of the HP off a monster at high level.

If at Heroic, battles take 5-6 rounds to resolve and at Epic, they take 8-9 and yet those 8-9 rounds take place under an hour, I'll consider it a success.

I have a hunch that when a PHANE takes on two level 26 PCs, it should force the PCs to use all of their encounter powers plus a couple of rounds of their at-will abilities and maybe a daily as well. We saw how many "encounter" powers a level 26 PC would have a couple of days ago, so I think that is the basis on how long combat is going to be.

I suspect this is true for the length of combat in 4E. You can judge how many rounds of combat a PC will have to be in to defeat a foe by the number of encounter powers they have.

It makes no sense that combat only lasts say 2 rounds at high levels when you have upwards of 17 "powers", I'm guessing length of combat will be roughly half that number in rounds.

EPIC
I think there's a tendency that EVERYTHING at epic has to be Solo monsters (someone at WOTC's board mentioned that just at low level it will be hard to think of Solo Monsters, covnersely everyone tends to think of EPIC monsters as non-Solo monsters).

I think the math behind the 4E monsters will actually allow for single monsters to be used as BBEG even if they aren't Solo per se. For example, I have tried using the 3E phane as a single boss monster for a level 20 group that didn't know about it. Pretty much the first round and it was all over for the party (the disparity in HP between a barbarian and a sorceror is just WAY too much especially at 20th level).

However, even if they were prepared, I doubt there's much they could've done as the PHANE is basically, "unless you have X, don't even bother". However, once they had "X" the fight become a curbstomp in the PC's favour. Its a binary scale which quite frankly sucks.

The 4E phane looks like it won't autokill a level 20 party and at the same time, I doubt a level 26 PC in 4E could one shot the phane in one round (which is what happened the first time I ran a phane and told my player about it).

 

[AllisterH]

Well I have only run through a couple of combats so far so I cannot speak from much experience in the matter. But depending on how combat damage scales the loss of iterative attacks would add to the number of rounds in a combat with the reduction of damage per round.

Lets place the creature against itself in a combat. It does on a average of 19 points of damage with it's at will ability. With it hitting 50% of the time it would take about 50 rounds of combat to defeat it's clone.

This is a VERY bad basis given that 4E has explicitly said, "PC != NPC". The math behind the phane isn't based on it fighting itself, but figting (and losing) against two level 26 PCs.

 

[Khur]

It's the return of one of the Abominations from the Epic Level Handbook.

I really hope they have Atropals in MM1, because those were cool.

Atropal is in MM1.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Make no mistake about it, it is DAMN COOL to read. However, to RUN in an actual GAME?

NEVER AGAIN. A total letdown. IT was either "PCs are prepared : Round 1, monster is dead" OR "PCs aren't prepared: Prepare for TPK"

Right, that is exactly what a new edition could fix about it. Nothing about stealing time or alternate cowboy dimension duplicates or killing you with old age needs to bring back the insanity of 3e high-level combat at all. You can keep the cool abilities without making the thing obnoxious to run.

I'm not really saying the 3e version was better, just that its abilities were much more evocative than this knock-off, and that I'm a little surprised the coolness wasn't kept, given that the beast seems pretty bland.

"Oh... you have three 9th level spells prepared, one of which is Time Stop? Okay, he dumps the other two because of the negative levels and casts Time Stop. What are your best remaining high levels spells that can be cast during Time Stop? What do they do?"

I've never been a big fan of exact PC duplicate monsters in general, but at epic level play I expect it would be really complex. Add to that the whole factor of, "all that work you did to make your character competent? Suffer for it!" and it seems like a monster ability that's no fun for the DM or the PCs affected.

The first point is that I'm talking about retaining but redesigning the cool evocative abilities. I'm not shouting from the rooftops that this critter was better in 3e, but I am saying that the abilities were more evocative, and that 4e had a chance to retain interesting abilities, but, to all appearances, decided not to.

So the issue with Time Stop is negated because Time Stop itself is negated, so your quote is a false comparison. There's no chance that any encounter with a time duplicate in 4e could ever cause that issue (leaving aside the fact that you no longer have a concern with "highest level spells" or anything like that).

Secondly, it's pretty easy to say "He has the exact same abilities and just makes all rolls at -2." This is especially true in 4e, since the sheer quantity of abilities will be less. The complexity of high-level play is something that 4e is expressly addressing, so any evil cowboy mirror universe twin would NOT be very complicated.

Thirdly, the idea of "evil doubles" is a very archetypal conflict, and one that the 3e phane expressly used to its advantage, and that it has lost in the jump to 4e. Causing a player to
"suffer for competence" has never really been the point -- the point has always been that classic conflict with a you that is slightly...off. To compete against your own shadow. The fact that the time double is obviously less competent than you are (-2 to everything) makes it obviously a horrible choice for DMs who want to make their players suffer for their skill. It's disappointing that the 4e phane doesn't leverage the "fight yourself" conflict idea, just like it's disappointing it doesn't leverage the idea of "stolen time" or "death by rapid aging" at all. These were all things that made the original phane evocative, and these are things that it, to appearances, has surrendered in the move to 4e. And I'm not much of a fan of that, because I don't really think it was necessary to loose any of those abilities, given that they could be retained and redesigned to give the same feel with new rules.

Things like this are the reason I'm really looking forward to the new Tome of Horrors. From what Clark has mentioned, it seems like it'll be a better monster manual than the monster manual, because it seems to make some deliberate design choices that are quite different from the path that 4e monsters are taking.

Atropal is in MM1.

If it ain't a stillborn giant fetus floating in Astral afterbirth, it ain't an Atropal.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Right, that is exactly what a new edition could fix about it. Nothing about stealing time or alternate cowboy dimension duplicates or killing you with old age needs to bring back the insanity of 3e high-level combat at all. You can keep the cool abilities without making the thing obnoxious to run.

I'm not really saying the 3e version was better, just that its abilities were much more evocative than this knock-off, and that I'm a little surprised the coolness wasn't kept, given that the beast seems pretty bland.

But there's no way to keep those abilities and still keep to the 4e philosophy on monster design and balance.

I mean alternate cowboy dimension duplicates require you to have stated out versions of the PCs or alternate versions of them at least. That means you need access to their character sheets in order to apply a template or modifications to them. They might take those home with them. Either that or it requires you ask the players what their AC or attacks or damage is each round of combat. Plus...that PC has 20 different powers you could use, each of which has a paragraph of text describing it. How do they all work? Which is the best one to use this round? How many of them are Immediate actions? It's easy for the player to keep track of all that, he isn't running 3 or 4 other creatures at the same time. Plus, you run into a problem with action economy. By summoning an external creature, the monster now gets 2 standard actions a round and can essentially attack twice. Does it take the standard action of the time creature in order to keep the duplicate going in order to balance that? It just isn't a feasible power. Also, if it is summoning creatures what is the purpose of the time creature? What role does it serve? Is it a striker since it is creating creatures to do damage?

Killing with old age. Fair enough. What makes killing with old age different than killing with a sword? Keep in mind, you can't use save or dies. You can't bypass hitpoints to kill someone more quickly than if you had used a sword. You also can't have any long term effects that last beyond the end of the combat. You also can't have an effect that completely prevents a character from acting without a save every round. So, given this...I know if I was designing it, I'd say that I'd make it a ray which, say, does hitpoint damage and weakens someone as they get older, but the effects of the aging would go away quickly. Probably after a save or something.