NEW Immortals Handbook - Ascension thread

[Upper_Krust]

Hey guys!

I have three days off on the trot, so expect me to get back up to speed (both here in the forums and with the Ascension errata/art) from tomorrow morning.

 

[mercucio]

I'm not the Krust, but I think the permanent damage quality would be between +25 and +36.

Actually I was playing around with the numbers as it's a highly variable issue. Using Annihilating Hand as a basis for damage comparison a 120HD entity does 60d6 (avg 210) as a standard action, while Annihilating Strike does 7d6 permanent damage per melee attack (avg 24 damage). A weak melee fighter might do less than Annihilating Hand damage in a full attack, but any kind of serious melee fighter (especially with UK's virtual size categories and extra-heavy materials) blows this damage out of the water (take a look at the PotA contestants at DR for examples). As such even +25 or +36 is too cheap. I am thinking I'm going to have to take a different approach.

 

[Strife]

What I would do is add, Permament Damage Anihilating strike to the weapon just as the cosmic ability, similar to on artifacts. use the caster level on the item as the HD of the user for purposes of the effect, so if you wanted to make a sword that did this it would be
a
+6 anihilating strike weapon (+36) total +42,
and have a caster level 84,

per strike it would deal, 5D6 permanent damage. which is pretty fair,
if you added telluric effect to the weapon you could after a few rds come close to dealing most of your damage as permanent which isnt too shabby.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey guys!

As regards permanent damage in a weapon (something I have planned for Grimoire naturally) I think I have it pencilled in for +36. Now you could say that could be broken by some of the PotA characters using orichalcum weaponry but is there anything that cannot be broken by such min/maxed characters? Added to which there is the likelihood that annihilation weapons are in effect non-matter and thus are unaffected by orichalcum or virtual size categories.

 

[mercucio]

Hey guys!

As regards permanent damage in a weapon (something I have planned for Grimoire naturally) I think I have it pencilled in for +36. Now you could say that could be broken by some of the PotA characters using orichalcum weaponry but is there anything that cannot be broken by such min/maxed characters? Added to which there is the likelihood that annihilation weapons are in effect non-matter and thus are unaffected by orichalcum or virtual size categories.

UK,

Even without min-maxing you can realistically expect to do 100-150+ points of damage per hit as a melee character. With a full attack (assuming 5 attacks from a speed weapon, Quickness, haste, ect): that's 500-750 damage per round. My concern isn't orichalcum weapons, as they are received for free in the tournament (a bad idea), but things like Divine Immensity, Uncanny Power Attack, Superior Power Attack, Uncanny Weapon Focus/Specialization ect. A greater god with a melee focus (say 90 HD), has a minimum Str of 50 (assume Str 18 base) and probally will have a 70+. That's 4 VSCs, +30 to melee damage before Weapon Specialization, enhancement bonuses, PA, ect.


On a related note: If you don't like the "min-maxing" seen on PotA, place a friggin' restriction on how many freaking Cosmic abilities can be granted by artifacts possessed by non-sidereals. That's the real problem in that PotA: instead of being exotic and remarkable to be in the possession of non-sidereal deities cosmic abilities are taken like candy.

 

[Pssthpok]

Sorry to ask, but what's "PotA"?

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

To me, Annihilation damage isn't that big of a deal, and +25-36 sounds about right. All it does is mean foes can't stall with healing spells and that damaged foes are more likely to have downtime. It doesn't mean you deal any MORE damage, so foes take the same amount of effort to kill, it just means your combat abilities can cause a meaningful, lasting effect on your foe much like a mage could curse or level drain them. It also prevents Turtle tactics (super-high stalling ability until you finally win through number-crunching) which is great in my book. Turtle tactics, while effective, are boring, and get to the point where either the player or the DM just assumes the Turtle wins eventually, or the turtle gets crushed outright.
At the level you could first get this (~78th) it can be nasty, but nothing a good bit of downtime and dozens of scrolls of Wish can't fix. At the levels it becomes realistic, (~150-216th) this is a laughable upgrade, and downtime, even with this effect, is almost non-existent.

 

[mercucio]

Sorry to ask, but what's "PotA"?

Power of the Amidah.

To me, Annihilation damage isn't that big of a deal, and +25-36 sounds about right. All it does is mean foes can't stall with healing spells and that damaged foes are more likely to have downtime. It doesn't mean you deal any MORE damage, so foes take the same amount of effort to kill, it just means your combat abilities can cause a meaningful, lasting effect on your foe much like a mage could curse or level drain them.

[SNIP]

At the level you could first get this (~78th) it can be nasty, but nothing a good bit of downtime and dozens of scrolls of Wish can't fix. At the levels it becomes realistic, (~150-216th) this is a laughable upgrade, and downtime, even with this effect, is almost non-existent.

All deities can either use limited wish or wish to heal permanent damage via their SLAs, but these SLAs still require an expenditure of XP. Miracle doesn't by default, but only a limited number of deities can cast miracle...and honestly healing permanent damage may be one of those things that miracle requires an XP expenditure for. Your only other option is to make friends with a deity possessing double Healing portfolios, but such deities should be pretty damn rare.

ECL 150-200 means you are a greater deity at most in power. Assuming that miracle does NOT require XP, it only becomes a commonly available means of healing permanent damage at ECL 240 when you gain Alter Reality via the Elder One template. Even then since you only heal your CL in permanent damage (144 minimum upon acheiving Elder One) it'll take you 4-6 rounds to heal the permanent damage dealt in 1 melee round....all the while you opponent can be laying more on you. I hardly call permanent damage a laughable upgrade, even at the sidereal level of power.

 

[Pssthpok]

Alter reality can grant you a nicely empowered time stop in which to handle major recovery efforts, such as repairing permanent damage on such a scale.

Not saying that makes it okay, but there are ways around the issue.

I only think something is broken if there's no way to get around it. Since there are a good handful of ways to counter permanent damage, I'm not sure that a +36 is too slight a cost for a weapon modifier.

However, one way to reconcile the issue would be to have Annihilating weapons deal extra dice of permanent damage, much in the same way that holy weapons deal extra dice in holy damage.

How does a +25/d6 sound to you, mercucio? It sounds a little steep to me, to be honest.

 

[Pssthpok]

Sorry to post twice in a row, but this is wholly unrelated to my previous post.

UK, I was wondering what the verdict on using AMC to augment SLAs would be. Say, if a deity of thunder had AMCx3, could they maximize their Chain Lightning SLA?