Another Immortals Handbook thread

[Upper_Krust]

Hey poilbrun matey!

Such an interpretation could explain an upper limit for the effectiveness of an anti-magic spell. If you put a cap to the effectiveness of an anti-magic field (for example, any effect with a CL 5 higher than the the CL of the anti-magic field still works), you can easily explain it: the ability to cast higher level spells is simply the ability to use more magical energy, energy that lower-level casters can't even see. Gaining levels is just gaining the ability to tap more into that magical energy around you. When a spellcaster casts anti-magic field, he actually severs the access to the magical energy he can see around him. Faced with a anti-magic field cast by a 15th level wizard, a 25th level wizard would just say "well, kiddo, you forgot this and that bit" and cast his spell normally.

I hope this makes sense, I'm not sure either when I reread it, even though it's crystal clear in my mind.

I prefer the idea that either it blocks effects altogether or suppresses to some extent (and would be overcome through a metamagic feat). Otherwise it just becomes pointless.

 

[Zoatebix]

Thanks for the ideas, UK! I'd say that I'm especially looking forward to Chronicle, but since I was already planning on buying everything...

What is his nuke damage - out of curiousity? If indeed he tackles nukes? If not what damage does he ascribe to something like an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank?

He does indeed: one Russian nuclear cruise missile, the RK-55 Granat whose NATO reporting name is SS-N-21 Sampson, and one US ballistic missile (the Trident D-5). The former has an average damage of 2415, the later 2100. I believe that the Garant's warhead is 200 Kilotons, which puts Pulver's Nuke damage in the same order of magnitude as your Nuke damage, if I've extrapolated the shockwave damage from the kiloton epic spell correctly (5906.25 damage for 200 kilotons. I'd get a pretty number if I converted using dice of damage rather than just raw damage...). The area of effect for the Granat's blast is 40,960 feet, and 20,480 feet for the Trident missile.

As far as I'm concerned, that's so close that I'd call you guys pretty much on the same page.

As for the M1A1's damage, Military Vehicle stats an 120mm smoothbore tank gun firing an armor-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot round does 10d12 damage and either reduces a targets armor (hardness) by ten or halves its hardness, whichever results in a greater reduction. HEAT-MP ammo does only 10d8 damage but has a blast radius of 20 ft. For non-military buffs, the HEAT stands for high explosive anti tank and the MP stands for multi-purpose, meaning the ammo has an anti-personal fragmentation effect in addition to it's shaped-charge tank killing properties.

Pulver does provide design formula for his stats. Vehicle hit points are derived with the formula 23 times (the square root of the square root of the vehicle's usual operating weight in tons), with adjustments up or down based on known ruggedness or lack of survivability in the real world.

Real world vehicle armor is described in terms as being equivalent to some thickness (in milimeters) of rolled homogenous armor (RHA), AKA military steel plate. Amor (hardness) in the Military Vehicles book is equal to 5 times the cube root of the RHA equivalent of the armor.

Unarmored vehicles were assigned a hardness from 3 to 5. Other vehicles have real-world armor described as resistant "to small arms fire" or "up to 23mm cannon". Such vehicles were assigned a hardness equal to or greater than an average damage roll made by that particular attack.

Explosive damage has a formula, too: approximately (the square root of the square root of the warhead weight in pounds) times 1.66 for missiles and bombs, or times 2 for torpedos. Nuclear ordinance replaces the warhead weight with the value (2 million times the yield in kilotons). So he ends up at about 1/3 your damage at 1 kiloton and 1/2 your damage at 200, ignoring the heat damage and vaporisation. Not too bad.

Okay - I think if I paraphrased any more information I'd have to slap an OGL on this post .


Fieari, thanks for recommending Ken Hood's Grim 'n Gritty rules. I'm actually going to be using a rather similar variant damage system in my game: the damage save system from Steve Kenson's True 20. It's pretty much the Mutants and Masterminds/BlueRose damage system ('cause, you know, Kenson wrote those too). It's simpler and more elegant than Grim 'n Gritty, but not quite as simple as hit points. I like it a lot, especially for human-like targets, but I'm not sure how well it works on objects, vehicles, and really big and fantastic creatures. But since True20 and normal d20 convert pretty easily back and forth, I was hoping to get a good, accurate, d20 object and material damage system that I could jury-rig to give similar results with the damage-save mechanic.

-George

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya mate!

Thanks for the ideas, UK! I'd say that I'm especially looking forward to Chronicle, but since I was already planning on buying everything...

He does indeed: one Russian nuclear cruise missile, the RK-55 Granat whose NATO reporting name is SS-N-21 Sampson, and one US ballistic missile (the Trident D-5). The former has an average damage of 2415, the later 2100. I believe that the Garant's warhead is 200 Kilotons, which puts Pulver's Nuke damage in the same order of magnitude as your Nuke damage, if I've extrapolated the shockwave damage from the kiloton epic spell correctly (5906.25 damage for 200 kilotons. I'd get a pretty number if I converted using dice of damage rather than just raw damage...). The area of effect for the Granat's blast is 40,960 feet, and 20,480 feet for the Trident missile.

As far as I'm concerned, that's so close that I'd call you guys pretty much on the same page.

Yes, I must admit I am quite impressed.

As for the M1A1's damage, Military Vehicle stats an 120mm smoothbore tank gun firing an armor-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot round does 10d12 damage and either reduces a targets armor (hardness) by ten or halves its hardness, whichever results in a greater reduction. HEAT-MP ammo does only 10d8 damage but has a blast radius of 20 ft. For non-military buffs, the HEAT stands for high explosive anti tank and the MP stands for multi-purpose, meaning the ammo has an anti-personal fragmentation effect in addition to it's shaped-charge tank killing properties.

Again, thats pretty much on the money.

Pulver does provide design formula for his stats. Vehicle hit points are derived with the formula 23 times (the square root of the square root of the vehicle's usual operating weight in tons), with adjustments up or down based on known ruggedness or lack of survivability in the real world.

Wow, I was using square root of the square root to determine the golems Hit Dice. I like this guy.

Real world vehicle armor is described in terms as being equivalent to some thickness (in milimeters) of rolled homogenous armor (RHA), AKA military steel plate. Amor (hardness) in the Military Vehicles book is equal to 5 times the cube root of the RHA equivalent of the armor.

Unarmored vehicles were assigned a hardness from 3 to 5. Other vehicles have real-world armor described as resistant "to small arms fire" or "up to 23mm cannon". Such vehicles were assigned a hardness equal to or greater than an average damage roll made by that particular attack.

Explosive damage has a formula, too: approximately (the square root of the square root of the warhead weight in pounds) times 1.66 for missiles and bombs, or times 2 for torpedos. Nuclear ordinance replaces the warhead weight with the value (2 million times the yield in kilotons). So he ends up at about 1/3 your damage at 1 kiloton and 1/2 your damage at 200, ignoring the heat damage and vaporisation. Not too bad.

I can sort of see where we are deviating slightly, hes using the square of the square wholesale, whereas I use the staggered doubling approach. Both probably have minor pros and cons, extrapolating up to planetary level I think his 'Earth' would have about ten times the hit points.

Okay - I think if I paraphrased any more information I'd have to slap an OGL on this post .

Thanks, most interesting, this guy definately knows his stuff. They should have hired him to do d20 Modern.

 

[historian]

This is all very interesting guys. Is this to say that the square root of the square root of the weight of objects in tons (celestial or otherwise) is the proxy for hit points?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey historian mate!

This is all very interesting guys. Is this to say that the square root of the square root of the weight of objects in tons (celestial or otherwise) is the proxy for hit points?

I only use it as a guideline for constructs. I already outline how I give creatures with a natural physiognomy size in the Bestiary.

Speaking of bestiaries, I just noticed on the ENWorld news page that there is a new epic bestiary over at rpgnow.com called "Quirin Mythology #1: A Handful Epic Creatures"

I always like to support other peoples epic material so here is the link:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=5304&SRC=EnWorld

I can't attest to how good it is (does rpgnow allow you to purchase using paypal I wonder?), it only has 5 monsters in it but it is fairly inexpensive at $2.59.

Maybe someone will buy it and give us a quick review?

 

[Kerrick]

As far as the dispelling goes, I think I'm just going to uncap the dispeller's caster level. While this might require upgrading the spell in no way do I think that this new version is more powerful than disjunction.

No, it won't make it more powerful than disjunction, but it would obviate the need for greater dispelling.

Can anti-magic be a magic effect though? Its probably more a philosophical issue than a mechanical one to be fair.

No, you can easily justify it thus: an antimagic field creates an "anti-harmonic field" that interferes with the normal magic field, effectively negating it - it'd be the same as a silence spell, or a bard's countersong. That way, it also explains how it can be dispelled - you're merely disrupting the harmonics.

As I mentioned previously, I suggest that anti-magic effects deities and artifacts in the same way that it affects constructs. But if individual DMs don't like this suggestion they are free to make deities arbitrarily immune to anti-magic.

The way we do it is this: non-epic spells/effects cannot affect epic beings, artifacts, or epic spells/effects. An antimagic field has no effect on epic spells or beings with divine status. Of course, I had to make an epic version of antimagic field, but that wasn't hard*; I also moved disjunction to epic status, where it properly belongs (it's a 12th level spell; it automatically dispels non-epic spells, but you must make a caster level check for epic spells/effects, and it has the normal chances of affecting an epic antimagic field and artifacts). BTW, artifacts all have a CL of 21+.

*The non-epic version of antimagic field, obviously, affects only non-epic spells, while the epic version affects everything. The rationalization for this is that epic spells/beings tap into a deeper, more powerful source of magic (the True Source, if you will, to borrow from Jordan), which is something that non-epic casters cannot detect (and thus cannot affect).

Originally Posted by Fieari
By the way, I've been seeing a lot of "Extremely High Level" threads popping up recently, and some people have amused themselves by making up characters with hundreds of levels. Whenever I see one of these, I always go to compare it to a critter of yours in the IH of an appropriate CR, and I've noticed that at these levels, will saves and such either make characters 100% immune to magic from a creature, or 100% vulnerable, with no halfway point. Have you given any thought to how to make things more random (so there's a point to rolling that D20 from time to time) at these amazingly high levels?

I have a number of ideas regarding this, but I haven't, as yet, settled on just one solution.

I have one that they should have implemented - mid-level saves. It was in Modern, so why didn't they throw it into 3.5? Course, it likely would have required too much playtesting...

Another idea (and one that I really like) is the rule of 10s. I don't know if you've seen this one before, but it goes like this: drop all modifiers to +30. For each +10 above 30, roll an additional 1d20 for checks or saves; anything left over becomes a modifier to the roll. For example, a +57 becomes 3d20+37.

On a related topic: how do you handle the ridiculous monster BABs versus PC ACs? Even if you munchkinize, you can't get your AC much over 55-60, but some of the monsters in the ELH have BABs well over 60. After awhile, unless you're using absurd epic spells to jack up the AC, you'll be reduced to fighting monsters well below your level.

 

[historian]

Hey U_K!

I only use it as a guideline for constructs. I already outline how I give creatures with a natural physiognomy size in the Bestiary.

Thanks, I hadn't forgotten about that either. I'm ultimately more interested in the formula for extra-universal outsiders.

Hello Kerrick:

No, it won't make it more powerful than disjunction, but it would obviate the need for greater dispelling.

Actually my comment was that an uncapped dispel spell would not be more powerful than disjunction, hence, I didn't see the need to upgrade the spell's level dramatically.

 

[Sledge]

RPGNow does indeed accept paypal.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Kerrick mate!

No, it won't make it more powerful than disjunction, but it would obviate the need for greater dispelling.

But both dispel magic and greater dispelling have set totals, I think that was the point.

No, you can easily justify it thus: an antimagic field creates an "anti-harmonic field" that interferes with the normal magic field, effectively negating it - it'd be the same as a silence spell, or a bard's countersong. That way, it also explains how it can be dispelled - you're merely disrupting the harmonics.

Thats a neat way of putting it.

The way we do it is this: non-epic spells/effects cannot affect epic beings, artifacts, or epic spells/effects. An antimagic field has no effect on epic spells or beings with divine status. Of course, I had to make an epic version of antimagic field, but that wasn't hard*; I also moved disjunction to epic status, where it properly belongs (it's a 12th level spell; it automatically dispels non-epic spells, but you must make a caster level check for epic spells/effects, and it has the normal chances of affecting an epic antimagic field and artifacts). BTW, artifacts all have a CL of 21+.

*The non-epic version of antimagic field, obviously, affects only non-epic spells, while the epic version affects everything. The rationalization for this is that epic spells/beings tap into a deeper, more powerful source of magic (the True Source, if you will, to borrow from Jordan), which is something that non-epic casters cannot detect (and thus cannot affect).

That would be along the same lines as my dead magic idea.

I have one that they should have implemented - mid-level saves. It was in Modern, so why didn't they throw it into 3.5? Course, it likely would have required too much playtesting...

I think the problem lies in having low saves at all.

Another idea (and one that I really like) is the rule of 10s. I don't know if you've seen this one before, but it goes like this: drop all modifiers to +30. For each +10 above 30, roll an additional 1d20 for checks or saves; anything left over becomes a modifier to the roll. For example, a +57 becomes 3d20+37.

That seems okay, I am just not sure if its necessary.

On a related topic: how do you handle the ridiculous monster BABs versus PC ACs? Even if you munchkinize, you can't get your AC much over 55-60, but some of the monsters in the ELH have BABs well over 60. After awhile, unless you're using absurd epic spells to jack up the AC, you'll be reduced to fighting monsters well below your level.

At epic level, attacks are generally meant to hit, but at the same time damage totals will be proportionally less when compared to hit point totals....although when I introduce metamartial feats it will make all those misgivings obsolete anyway.

By the way, something of particular interest to yourself, I have been tinkering about with my magic system and I may be looking for a playtester for that in a few weeks. As far as I can tell, the core of the system and the application of dimensional magic is perfect, I'm just not sure if the implementation of my recent damage changes is balanced in the sense that spell damage starts to eclipse the paralleled accruement of hit points at about 45th-level and rise exponentially, so by the time you are capable of blowing up a planet (approx. 100th-level when min/maxed) you will almost certainly be able to kill any opponent whose spell resistance you penetrate with a single spell...which is a fairly narrow band.

My solution to this (work in progress) is to turn spell resistance into a sort of spell dampening/anti-magic type of spell-level DR.

eg. Divide SR by 5 to gauge how many levels of anti-magic you apply to a spell effect.

Or something like that. Anyway, the idea still needs some work.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey U_K!

Hiya matey!

Thanks, I hadn't forgotten about that either. I'm ultimately more interested in the formula for extra-universal outsiders.

Well for the most part thats simply linked to the beings internal power. See the conversion table on my website for examples (eg. Lesser Gods will 'generally' be Outsiders with 40-59 HD etc.)