A Tournament of Cosmic Propotions! (Immortal's Handbook Rules)

[Buugipopuu]

@ Buugi - Did you factor into your combatants the fact that I don't allow VSCs to affect either dexterity or constitution scores? My guess is you did not based on the way I'm reading them.

I did.

This is the last time I'm going to mention this, so here it is.

Virtual size categories do not affect a creatures' dexterity scores. Nor do they affect a creatures constitution, nor natural armor or anything of the sort. VSCs affect raw damage ONLY. Final ruling. This is not subject to debate. Please adjust stat-blocks accordingly. Thank you.

This, however, is new (your previous ruling, post #79 didn't mention natural armour). I guess Belzamus is really going to love this, as you just dropped Perfection's natural armour by 142 points. And you didn't seem to mention HP, but given the "raw damage only" ruling, it probably cost him most of his HP as well. I'll resubmit, although this means I'll probably have to use the Danzig variant (sans manoeuvres) for Anaesthesia as dropping her AC, combined with the loss of 10 levels of free Metapsionics (which harms various things) means she's going to need revising. Perfection's basically out of this tournament though.

 

[Belzamus]

Yeah, high level golems are basically made out of virtual size categories...

 

[Evilmonkeygod]

Just like to point out that in an email to me awhile back, U_K said that the Cimeriel is the equivalent to the Akalich, not that it becomes one.

 

[Buugipopuu]

Neo: Since you've nixed Moonstruck, what would you suggest for the Prophet-level ability of the Moon portfolio.

Also: Would you support changing the Hero-deity-level ability of the Fear portfolio to a bonus vs frightened creatures? The current one will almost never proc, making it suck. (It only functions against creatures with lower Strength, but your Str score has to be your lowest ability score, and you get a penalty on top of that, making any creature with lower Str so weak as to be irrelevant). Eventually it gets Str withering, but that's little consolation, as if you've drained someone to less strength than you, due to your artificially low strength, this means they're probably one hit from being paralysed anyway. Why Strength-based abilities? Surely Wis, the ability which protects against fear, would be the thing it should drain. I know it's opposed to Strength, but that's just another case where the opposed portfolios are dumb and exist only because every portfolio needs to be opposed to something.

 

[Belzamus]

EMG, that doesn't make much sense, because Lord of Steel, which grants Cimeriel, is a Cosmic Ability, while the Lord of Shadows ability that grants Akalich is (an undercosted?) Transcendental ability, putting Cimeriel on the same tier as Demilich, which comes from the Cosmic Lord of the Skull.

 

[Evilmonkeygod]

Don't know what to tell you. Maybe that's how he always intended it, but for whatever made Lord of Steel a different tier than Lord of Shadows and is only correcting that at the time of my email??

Btw, I've been thinking about the whole "weapons stuck in a Cimeriel" thing, and wondering, how many could there without getting stupid. I was trying to think of a stat to base it off, but most that I can think of would be too high. The only thing I can think of is basing it off size, aka a Medium Cimeriel could have a maz of say 10 weapons, while a large could have 20 or something like that.

Also, I think it makes sense to me that the weapons would add their Enhancement bonus to the Cimeriel's AC, capped of course. However, if it calls upon the power of the weapon, it loses that bonus.

Regarding that, how does this seem: a limited number of times per day, the Cimeriel can call upon the power of one weapon per use and add its Enhancement bonus as a Profane bonus to it's attack and damage rolls. It may use this ability to call upon more than one weapon, but doing so requires more uses. While this is in effect, the Cimeriel does not benefit from the AC increase that weapon(s) provide.

What I'm thinking is the Cimeriel can do this a number of times per day equal to it's Cha mod, but doing so consumes a number of uses equal to the weapon's Enhancement bonus. Ex: A Cimeriel has a +12 Unholy, Fiery Battleaxe of Bitterness, a +6 Shocking Blast, Vorpal Longsword of Speed and a +10 Universal Blast Spear impaled in its armor and a Cha mod of 24. It could add the +12 and the +10 to its attack and damage rolls, but would loose 22 points of AC, and could not use this ability again for the rest of the day.

I also think it could do the same with the weapons' special properties, again costing uses equal to the enchantment bonus, so speed would be an extra three uses, for example.

 

[Belzamus]

Well, I don't really have much of an opinion either way on the matter, I just like that we're using the Cimeriel template in the first place. I suppose wait and see what Neo says.

And I like your idea in concept. I'm not sure or not whether I like the suggested implementation, as I have a pounding headache right now and my brain refuses to consider the mathematical implications. Will get back to you on that.

 

[Buugipopuu]

Just letting them stack at the only cost of extra daily uses seems like it'd be too good for nova builds. I'd look at the rules for the Ioun Golem, since that also uses a large collection of magic items.

The obvious limit to the number of weapons would be the Swallow Whole rules (since weapons have well-defined object sizes).

It seems pointless to have rules for getting boosts from captured weapons, making them stack linearly and then capping it, since it means in practice it's just +Whatever the cap is to AC, and that defeats the point of having special rules for this ability. Using square root scaling is a better balancing factor than a hard cap. Or some obvious disadvantage to being stuck full of holes (Dex and HP being penalised is sensible, penalties to Grapple due to being covered in EasyGrip handles.).

 

[Neoiceshroom]

Neo: Since you've nixed Moonstruck, what would you suggest for the Prophet-level ability of the Moon portfolio.

Also: Would you support changing the Hero-deity-level ability of the Fear portfolio to a bonus vs frightened creatures? The current one will almost never proc, making it suck. (It only functions against creatures with lower Strength, but your Str score has to be your lowest ability score, and you get a penalty on top of that, making any creature with lower Str so weak as to be irrelevant). Eventually it gets Str withering, but that's little consolation, as if you've drained someone to less strength than you, due to your artificially low strength, this means they're probably one hit from being paralysed anyway. Why Strength-based abilities? Surely Wis, the ability which protects against fear, would be the thing it should drain. I know it's opposed to Strength, but that's just another case where the opposed portfolios are dumb and exist only because every portfolio needs to be opposed to something.

I never said anything about banning Moonstruck. I have no reason to ban the ability because I do still use the basic D20SRD version of all of the lycanthropy templates. It's a suitable divine ability so it is not banned.

Regarding the fear portfolio, that bonus vs. frightened opponents makes a lot more sense Buugi. Consider it done.

@ Belz & EMG - The Lord of Shadow (Ability that grants Akalich) actually costs two transcendentals due to it's massive LA. But it is a valid ability and has not been banned. *Stamps with seal of approval*

 

[Buugipopuu]

I never said anything about banning Moonstruck. I have no reason to ban the ability because I do still use the basic D20SRD version of all of the lycanthropy templates. It's a suitable divine ability so it is not banned.

Moonstruck has also been banned.

Although un-banning it is fine too.

@ Belz & EMG - The Lord of Shadow (Ability that grants Akalich) actually costs two transcendentals due to it's massive LA. But it is a valid ability and has not been banned. *Stamps with seal of approval*

I assume this is a purely academic point, due to it being impossible to get Transcendentals on a character in this tournament? Even an item can only get you +119 (+135 with the Double Wealth portfolio) modifier equivalent, tops, and a Trans ability costs +216. Unless there's some trick I'm not aware of.