4th Edition and the Immortals Handbook

[Upper_Krust]

If that be the case then a slight tweaking of the immortal class, or a creation of an "Ascended" PrC(assuming PrCs are still in, havn't seen a confirmation or denial of that)

Simply creating a single Immortal Class should be straightforward enough.

either way it needs to scale indefinately, creating the eventuality of having all portfolio abilities(which would eliminate the need for the Omnific ability of having all portfolios)

I disagree. Personally I prefer to cap Immortality either at 30 or 60* levels.

After that you would have the Sidereal Class which could be another 30 or 120* levels.

*Depends on how much power we put into one immortal/sidereal class level. One immortal level could be twice as powerful as a mortal level (for example).

Having all portfolio abilities is no substitute for cosmic, transcendental or omnific powers.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya matey!

This is irrelevant really. If you're using talent trees, the most important thing is deciding when the character can acquire the talents; there's no need for an actual class progression list unless you have certain generic abilities every Immortal should get at specific levels.

...That said, I just stuck my foot in my mouth since this approach would allow you to grant the powers of each stage of godhood (demi-, lesser, intermediate, etc.) while not worrying at all about what Portfolios the deity in question represents.

Exactly.

I think this approach will win you more converts to the Portfolio idea than the present system of absolutely gaining certain abilities at certain ranks. Why shouldn't a demideity of Fire be able to use Uncanny Fire Mastery while being completely unable to do more than basic summoning of Fire Elementals, after all? On the other side, why shouldn't that deity be able to heal from Fire damage, if it can't use Fire to attack at all (i.e. no Fire [Effect] abilities)?

It does seem to have some potential.

Do keep in mind that we already know this approach isn't all that valid in 4th Edition. Classes themselves are now being structured as a sort of amalgam of two sub-archetypes: the "power source" and the "role." Fighters in this scheme are "Martial" (power source) "Defenders" (role), Clerics are "Divine Leaders," Wizards are "Arcane Controllers," and Rogues are "Martial Strikers." There's the new Warlord class which will be the "Martial Leader," a character type who is looking a lot like the Crusader from Book of Nine Swords in the info leaked so far, and Paladin has been suggested as a "Divine Defender." This gives us some idea of what the roles really represent- Leaders, for instance, are about buffing the entire party and healing, though they apparently can do both these things in 4th Edition without using separate actions to do them in at least some cases (for instance, the Warlord probably has some attacks that heal his allies by "bolstering morale"). Bards are the obvious choice for the "Arcane Leader," though they won't be appearing in the first Player's Handbook. We also already know there's going to be a new class (also not appearing in the first PHB) called the Swordmage, which is the "Arcane Defender." The Swordmage is a character who is actually a warrior, but who uses magic to fight better rather than depending on tools like armor (one of the talents mentioned for this class is a constant Mage Armor-like effect).

So tying all of this in to Portfolios, it makes more sense IMO to tie them to the roles and/or the power sources, rather than specific classes. Why shouldn't a Paladin (the Divine Defender) be able to take War just as easily as a Fighter (the Martial Defender)? For that matter, why should the Swordmage be left out of that- he's a warrior, isn't he? And why limit Magic to the Wizard, when the Bard and Swordmage clearly depend on it just as much?

One other avenue this approach potentially opens up is that of making four Immortal classes, one for each role. So if you're the party tank, you'll want to become a Warrior Deity, whereas if you're the mage you'll want to become a Divine Sage. Those are just off-the-top-of-my-head names, of course- no reason to use them if (or more likely when) better names are suggested.

Certainly the roles are something to look into, especially with regards the portfolio talent trees.

Fire Striker (Attack) name Champion? ie. Champion of Fire II
Fire Defender (Defense) name Guardian?
Fire Controller (Misc.) name Master?
Fire Leader (Summoning) name Lord?

Perhaps each tree could have six ranks, with a final fifth tree becoming available once you max out the other four.

Balance is, of course, the crux of the whole matter, but we do have to also ask- balance between what? Do you mean balance between different divine ranks (in the old sense), or balance between Immortals and mortals, or what?

Both. Balance between mortal levels and immortal levels/power, as well as between immortals of different power.

 

[jedrious]

Simply creating a single Immortal Class should be straightforward enough.



I disagree. Personally I prefer to cap Immortality either at 30 or 60* levels.

After that you would have the Sidereal Class which could be another 30 or 120* levels.

*Depends on how much power we put into one immortal/sidereal class level. One immortal level could be twice as powerful as a mortal level (for example).

Having all portfolio abilities is no substitute for cosmic, transcendental or omnific powers.

I think we're missing a piece of communication here


what I'm seeing is a multi-tier advancement

rather than imposing a cap on each "Class" allow for example

an Omneity Lord can have 570 Experience Levels, 65 Quintessence Levels, 48 Existentiance Levels, 15 Bosonance Levels and 4 Ontologence Levels, that way you also have a built in balancing point for bullies, instead of said Omneity Lord gaining a new Ontologence Level when beating up on hapless Immortals, he could instead gain another Quintessence Level, which while not anywhere near as powerful as an Ontologence Level would still provide a sense of advancement, this is important since it appears that 4e will have Level-Independant Exp awards

 

[paradox42]

Certainly the roles are something to look into, especially with regards the portfolio talent trees.

Fire Striker (Attack) name Champion? ie. Champion of Fire II
Fire Defender (Defense) name Guardian?
Fire Controller (Misc.) name Master?
Fire Leader (Summoning) name Lord?

Perhaps each tree could have six ranks, with a final fifth tree becoming available once you max out the other four.

While I do like that idea, I was specifically suggesting the notion of having four different Immortal classes, one for each role. There might be a genuine difference between a Greater God who took his "immortal levels" in the Controller (i.e. like Wizard) class as compared with another Greater God who took his in the Defender (i.e. Warrior, like Fighter or Paladin) class. This should be a difference beyond merely the Portfolios and Portfolio powers they took, in other words. Perhaps the Defender Immortal has a larger hit die, for example- and perhaps (since each class is going to have its own talent trees anyway even at mortal levels) the talent trees of divine talents/abilities are vastly different for each role. Say, only the Defender can get access to Uncanny Power Attack, while only the Controller gets Divine Spell Knowledge.

Still, this is all rambling until we see the actual class progressions for the new edition, I suppose. And perhaps even the most generic Divine abilities really can be rolled into actual Portfolios of their own- this early on we just don't know.

Both. Balance between mortal levels and immortal levels/power, as well as between immortals of different power.

The second is the obvious one; the first strikes me as trouble if we try to make mortals too close to Immortals. The same would go between the various tiers of Immortal existence if we end up going with the idea of having Sidereals and higher tiers be separate class progressions rather than just "more Quintessence," as jedrious suggests we should (an idea I still like, BTW).

 

[paradox42]

what I'm seeing is a multi-tier advancement

rather than imposing a cap on each "Class" allow for example

an Omneity Lord can have 570 Experience Levels, 65 Quintessence Levels, 48 Existentiance Levels, 15 Bosonance Levels and 4 Ontologence Levels, that way you also have a built in balancing point for bullies, instead of said Omneity Lord gaining a new Ontologence Level when beating up on hapless Immortals, he could instead gain another Quintessence Level, which while not anywhere near as powerful as an Ontologence Level would still provide a sense of advancement, this is important since it appears that 4e will have Level-Independant Exp awards

This has very interesting implications for the design of adventures and setting. I have to say I like the notion; the best you can get by defeating gods is more Quintessence, which can only increase your Deity level. To increase your Sidereal level, as Ao, for example, you'll need to do something specifically for Sidereals. It both explains why Immortals (and higher tiers) are reluctant to interfere in the existence of lower entities, and provides incentives to avoid bullying (at least outside one's own tier). That has a certain elegance the notion of vague "gang-ups" and "hit squads" (which honestly won't stop a munchkin anyway since they'll be certain they can take on the gang and win, thus increasing their power even more) doesn't.

The one gotcha I see in that is that it will be inelegant keeping track of all the different level and "XP" types, making the DM's job harder in coming up with NPCs for example- which 4E is expressly trying to avoid. But perhaps the solution will become apparent when we do finally see 4E's real XP-granting scheme; hells, maybe they're putting some similar mechanism in between the three regimes of play they've outlined already (Heroic, at 1-10, Paragon at 11-20, Epic at 21-30). That'd certainly end the problem of wondering why those uber-NPCs in the Realms (for example) don't solve the problems the PCs encounter.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I think we're missing a piece of communication here


what I'm seeing is a multi-tier advancement

rather than imposing a cap on each "Class" allow for example

an Omneity Lord can have 570 Experience Levels, 65 Quintessence Levels, 48 Existentiance Levels, 15 Bosonance Levels and 4 Ontologence Levels, that way you also have a built in balancing point for bullies, instead of said Omneity Lord gaining a new Ontologence Level when beating up on hapless Immortals, he could instead gain another Quintessence Level, which while not anywhere near as powerful as an Ontologence Level would still provide a sense of advancement, this is important since it appears that 4e will have Level-Independant Exp awards

Unfortunately what you suggest requires that someone detail a 570 Level Fighter, 570 Level Wizard etc. Or recreate something like the eternally bland epic character progression we see in the ELH.

Of course you pose an interesting question. If I can be a 30th-level Fighter, can I be a 31st-level Fighter? Or a 30th-level Fighter/1st-level Wizard?

At this juncture I am not convinced that infinite class progression is the way to go. It hasn't worked with 3rd Edition and it is always going to be more bland.

this is important since it appears that 4e will have Level-Independant Exp awards

Its less important if Immortals advance via Quintessence and not EXP.

 

[Upper_Krust]

hiya mate!

While I do like that idea, I was specifically suggesting the notion of having four different Immortal classes, one for each role. There might be a genuine difference between a Greater God who took his "immortal levels" in the Controller (i.e. like Wizard) class as compared with another Greater God who took his in the Defender (i.e. Warrior, like Fighter or Paladin) class. This should be a difference beyond merely the Portfolios and Portfolio powers they took, in other words. Perhaps the Defender Immortal has a larger hit die, for example- and perhaps (since each class is going to have its own talent trees anyway even at mortal levels) the talent trees of divine talents/abilities are vastly different for each role. Say, only the Defender can get access to Uncanny Power Attack, while only the Controller gets Divine Spell Knowledge.

I understand what you are saying but I am just not sure whether the implementation you suggest would be necessary considering we would have portfolios as talent trees.

Still, this is all rambling until we see the actual class progressions for the new edition, I suppose. And perhaps even the most generic Divine abilities really can be rolled into actual Portfolios of their own- this early on we just don't know.

Indeed.

The second is the obvious one; the first strikes me as trouble if we try to make mortals too close to Immortals. The same would go between the various tiers of Immortal existence if we end up going with the idea of having Sidereals and higher tiers be separate class progressions rather than just "more Quintessence," as jedrious suggests we should (an idea I still like, BTW).

The tiers should be close-ish and therefore relative.

But I think jedirious hit the nail on the head. The big question is whether or not we allow characters to gain more than 30 class levels.

If we do allow that it means:

1. We have to create 30+ class progressions for all classes.
2. It means we fall into the big numbers trap of 3/3.5 because we then need to balance each immortal level with each class level and then immortals will need 'more' levels to make immortality mean something significant.

 

[jedrious]

Unfortunately what you suggest requires that someone detail a 570 Level Fighter, 570 Level Wizard etc. Or recreate something like the eternally bland epic character progression we see in the ELH.

Of course you pose an interesting question. If I can be a 30th-level Fighter, can I be a 31st-level Fighter? Or a 30th-level Fighter/1st-level Wizard?

At this juncture I am not convinced that infinite class progression is the way to go. It hasn't worked with 3rd Edition and it is always going to be more bland.

Its less important if Immortals advance via Quintessence and not EXP.

but what it also would allow is for someone to continue advancing through the IH without being forced to be imprisoned and bound to a plane

besides imposing limits is one of the horrors of previous editions that we've finally broken free of

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey jedirious mate!

but what it also would allow is for someone to continue advancing through the IH without being forced to be imprisoned and bound to a plane

Theres no reason why that needs to be a feature of the game, and even if it is a feature its easily worked around.

1. Any being advancing to sidereal status unwittingly allows an imprisoned sidereal (of opposed alignment/idealogy) freedom.

besides imposing limits is one of the horrors of previous editions that we've finally broken free of

Yes and in so doing we saw why it wasn't necessarily as good an idea as we first envisioned.

Incidently, I did some extrapolation last night and it looks as though the best format for 4th Edition is to have each immortal level (assuming a maximum of 30) worth 3 mortal levels (this is a simplification of the exact math which suggests 2:1 (hero/quasi-deities), 3:1 (demi/lesser deities), 4:1 (inter/greater deities).

Now, lets say we were to allow unlimited mortal advancement, so you can have 100th-level Wizards and so forth. What this means (as well as having to fill in all those blank levels) is that we must use the same format for immortal levels. So a 100th-level Wizard will be equal to an ECL 100 Immortal.

The problem, as we have seen, with this approach is going to be the math escaping the d20 far too quickly and easily.

My proposed solution is to make much of this additional power go 'sideways' rather than merely 'up'.

e.g. Instead of 100 Hit Dice for Intermediate Deities, they instead have between 51-55 Hit Dice (30 of those from mortal classes or outsider Hit Dice).

Now you can say, well wait a moment, don't your IH rules use templates to keep Hit Dice down!? Yes, but firstly that doesn't solve the problem inherant in epic levels and secondly, those immortals still gain a divine bonus to compensate for much of that.

If we remove the ability for mortals to transcend 30th-level then we don't really need a divine bonus, because (the immortal) level itself will become the divine rank.

Likewise, we can keep the Hit Dice relatively low, which in turn keeps much of the math as low as possible. Expanding the window of interaction further. So even though a Greater Deity may be twice as powerful as an Intermediate Deity the base math* is lessened to the point where its not statistically obsolete.

*and with the base math sorted we only have to worry about controlling things like allowing too many magic items, multiple buffs and multiple modifiers to the same die roll. Reading between the lines, 4th edition looks like its trying to tackle each of these issues already.

 

[Axolotl]

Unfortunately what you suggest requires that someone detail a 570 Level Fighter, 570 Level Wizard etc. Or recreate something like the eternally bland epic character progression we see in the ELH.

Of course you pose an interesting question. If I can be a 30th-level Fighter, can I be a 31st-level Fighter? Or a 30th-level Fighter/1st-level Wizard?

At this juncture I am not convinced that infinite class progression is the way to go. It hasn't worked with 3rd Edition and it is always going to be more bland.

If you're doing it this way then you just need to do a progression up until say 60th level for each class and then go on to the blander 3rd edition style, by that point it won't matter that the mortal class is bland as they should be getting immortal levels as well. The way you're suggesting you're forced to become divine at 30th level which some people I'm sure some people will not want.

Now, lets say we were to allow unlimited mortal advancement, so you can have 100th-level Wizards and so forth. What this means (as well as having to fill in all those blank levels) is that we must use the same format for immortal levels. So a 100th-level Wizard will be equal to an ECL 100 Immortal.

Then if you make an immortal level worth three mortal levels. A 100th level wizard equals a 30th mortal level / 20th immortal level god. I don't see the problem here.