Converting Epic Level Beings

[BOZ]

Thank you Shade - that list will be very helpful in determining CR's for these epic critters. I still feel, comparing to the other beings on this list, that CR 25 works well for him.

From Oriental Adventures:

The only game effect of the spirit type modifier is that spirit creatures are all affected by spells such as commune with greater spirit, invisibility to spirits, and protection from spirits.

Should we give this guy feats (and possibly other abilities) from OA?

sure then, Spirit subtype it is. When we convert something that works well with OA, we usually give it a section like this:

USING SHIMNUS WITH ORIENTAL ADVENTURES
If you are using Oriental Adventures rules in your campaign, consider adding the Spirit subtype.

USING KRAKENTUA WITH ORIENTAL ADVENTURES
If you are using Oriental Adventures rules in your campaign, consider adding the Spirit subtype. Also, consider changing the krakentua?s damage reduction to 15/jade. A krakentua is likely to be wielding more than one weapon, preferring katana and wakizashi when available.

Power gamer? me? oh boy. I am no power gamer i just think that a monster that kills gods should be freaken powerful eanough to kill a freaken god. So far It would be lucky if this guy could handle imhotep. Just kidding Imhotep is a wimp. But seriously he need to be tougher IMHO. As is abomination sounds Freaken GREAT!

Cliff
[/qutoe]

I think I'm gonna agree with Clifford, It was always in my views that a creature able to take down gods should be much more powerful than it currently is. I feel that essentialy any deity with the annihilating strike salient ability can knock out even the hecta-thingy-ma-bob relatively easily, perhaps there can be a counter to this??
Also do you guys have an idea as to what status of deity (i.e. lesser, over...) this creature can handle(or just stick with demigods, though he would be the demigod slayer then...)

maybe a line saying Ma Yuan is immune to the salent divine abilitys of gods DvR 5 or less (call it Dvr resistance of something.) sense it says he only geeked some wimpier gods anyway. This way he can be all pimp-tacular with the ass kicking on relitivly even terms with the creatures he has been known to kill.

Cliff

>=)

ok, here's the deal. Don't get hung up on his title, "killer of the gods". Like I said before, in 1E, it was a heck of a lot easier to kill gods. In the book he came from, he was a lot less powerful than legendary monsters like the Titans or Fenris who are not gods. As far as the Chinese gods, he had less hit points than all of them except for the numerous demigods. His power is certainly not exceptional, even for 1E days; though he has plenty of hp and attacks, his defenses were mediocre at best. Sure, "The creature is known to have killed at least 10 minor deities" but I'd say those gods were sleeping or caught on the toilet or something. and oh yeah, definitely demigods or even quasi-deities, I have no doubt about that. The foreward of the book states that it is impossible for a nondeity to kill a deity on its home plane, so this guy must have tricked them out of hiding first too.

In 3E, things are a whole lot different. You need to be a hell of a lot more powerful now to kill a god, and it was hard enough to do it before. Basically, you just about have to BE a god to kill one. I'm not into statting out gods just for the fun of it (not yet at least), and that is certainly not the purpose of this thread. if you must have a creature in your campaign that really and truly can kill gods, then I will give you the same suggestion found in the BoED and BoVD regarding archbeings and assign a DvR of 1 to this guy in your home campaign. I may even add that suggestion in our writeup of Ma Yuan. In the meantime, I wish to proceed as I have been so far with this fellow.

 

[Shade]

OK, going with CR 25, he's gonna need his HD toned down drastically. As an outsider, he shouldn't have more than about 35 HD at this CR. Otherwise, he'll never miss (due to BAB = HD) and his saves will be far out of balance for his CR.

Here are the HD and ability scores of comparable unique outsiders:

Erathaol (Large): 28 HD, Str 28, Dex 20, Con 30, Int 36, Wis 30, Cha 28
Mammon (Huge): 34 HD, Str 36, Dex 17, Con 35, Int 30, Wis 31, Cha 27
Levistus (Medium): 33 HD, Str 26, Dex 26, Con 31, Int 27, Wis 34, Cha 29

Now, at 70 feet tall, this fella should be Colossal. That means his Str should be about 16 higher and his Con about 8 higher than a comparable Huge critter. Using Mammon as a baseline, that would give Ma Yuan Str 52, Dex 17, and Con 43. Obviously, we can play with the numbers a bit. Assuming 35 HD, he'd have the following modifiers:

Attack: +57
Damage: +21
Hit points: 35d8+560 (717)

That would leave him at 7 higher attack bonus than Mammon (without accounting for feats and magic items) and about 156 more hit points. Considering that Ma Yuan lacks powerful spell-like abilities, that should about even out for the CR.

 

[Clifford]

Boz i understand your viewpoint. But Ma Yuan was able to wach gods before and now he just isnt tough eanough. Sometimes when we convert thing we are to literal and the origonal spirit of the creature is gone. with 35 hd may as well make another tarrasque. Lemme se giant reptilian killing machine. Sounds like the tarrasque to me heck with the 35 HD its even gonna be wimpier tha the tarrasque. So far its sounds like a big dinosaur with 4 arms and a nifty stone triangle..

anyway i said my two cents.

 

[BOZ]

OK, going with CR 25, he's gonna need his HD toned down drastically. As an outsider, he shouldn't have more than about 35 HD at this CR. Otherwise, he'll never miss (due to BAB = HD) and his saves will be far out of balance for his CR.

do we want to decrease his HD from 45, or increase his CR from 25? Higher than CR 25 and you're heading directly into the range of the more powerful archfiends and celestial paragons. How do his original stats compare with the 1E archfiend stats in general? I'll have to look that up when I get the chance.

Here are the HD and ability scores of comparable unique outsiders:

Erathaol (Large): 28 HD, Str 28, Dex 20, Con 30, Int 36, Wis 30, Cha 28
Mammon (Huge): 34 HD, Str 36, Dex 17, Con 35, Int 30, Wis 31, Cha 27
Levistus (Medium): 33 HD, Str 26, Dex 26, Con 31, Int 27, Wis 34, Cha 29

Now, at 70 feet tall, this fella should be Colossal. That means his Str should be about 16 higher and his Con about 8 higher than a comparable Huge critter. Using Mammon as a baseline, that would give Ma Yuan Str 52, Dex 17, and Con 43. Obviously, we can play with the numbers a bit. Assuming 35 HD, he'd have the following modifiers:

Attack: +57
Damage: +21
Hit points: 35d8+560 (717)

That would leave him at 7 higher attack bonus than Mammon (without accounting for feats and magic items) and about 156 more hit points. Considering that Ma Yuan lacks powerful spell-like abilities, that should about even out for the CR.

we can always play with his ability scores. We were working with this:

Abilities: Str 45, Dex 18, Con 34, Int 20, Wis 20, Cha 25

Let's stop and reconsider the CR for the moment (fine where it is, or should it go up or down) before reworking the HD. As I said above, he should be compared to the archfiends as a baseline. If he was less powerful than most of the the archfiends in 1E, he should be less powerful than them now. if he could have killed most of them in 1E, his CR should be 30 or more.

Boz i understand your viewpoint. But Ma Yuan was able to wach gods before and now he just isnt tough eanough. Sometimes when we convert thing we are to literal and the origonal spirit of the creature is gone. with 35 hd may as well make another tarrasque. Lemme se giant reptilian killing machine. Sounds like the tarrasque to me heck with the 35 HD its even gonna be wimpier tha the tarrasque. So far its sounds like a big dinosaur with 4 arms and a nifty stone triangle..

anyway i said my two cents.

honestly, I'm not trying to keep you from getting what you want, or argue with you, or hurt your feelings, or ruin your game, or even put you in a bad mood - i'm not the sort of fellow to want to do that, and I don't think that you think I am either.

which gods do we think he was able to kill? Thor? Odin? Look at those stats; I somehow doubt it. Remember, back then even the demon lords were considered gods. Could he have killed 1E Juiblex; he probably could have. He probably could have killed titans like Atlas or Crius after a tough fight. Certainly he was no match for greater gods, or lesser gods, and probably nothing more than the most meager of demigods. If anything, his title may be more of a boast than a reality.

If it will make you happy, as I said before with this guy and with Cerberus, you can always toughen up the conversion that we make here - add HD, attacks, whatever, to make him as tough as you want. The CC conversion does not determine in any way shape or form what version of this guy will be used in yours or anyone else's campaign. If you're just completely unsatisfied with it and can't think of enough to fix it to your liking, then scrap it and do a conversion of your own and post it in the Homebrews forum. I'm sure there are a lot of other fellows out there who like the power climb as much as I'm sure you do.

Here, bear with me. As I said above to Shade, let's compare him to what the archfiends could do in 1E. if he was mediocre compared to them, why should we now make him their far superior? Like I said before, if you give the archfiends and celestial paragons DvR 1 (or more) in your home campaign, then this guy should have it too. But the designers created those beings without a divine rank, and I'm going to do the same here.

Your analogy of the tarrasque is lacking something, by the way... the tarrasque lacks any sort of critical thinking power, where as this guy has it in spades. The tarrasque will never be able to kill a god (unless it gets really lucky somehow) because even the weakest, stupidest god can outthink it and at least escape if it can't beat the monster.

 

[Clifford]

well boz sense you put it that way.

Ma yuan has 300 hp as of the old stats.
I beleive (but could be wrong) that the top end arch fiend has somethiong like 180. sense monsters dident have ability scores for the most part back in 1e and anything in therange of these cuekers attack as 16+ hit dice monsters. Hit points are the best bench mark to sort of guage reletive power. a upper end demon lord from 1e has roughly 60% the hp of Ma Yuan. thus i fugure Ma Yuam should be roughly 1/3rd more powerful than a high end demon lord.

To anser your questions i think he sould be an even mach for a Dvr 3 or less god. With 20 outsider HD and 60 CLass Levels.

Cliff

 

[Clifford]

err that should be 20 outsider hd and 40 class levels. for a grand total of 60.

Cliff
>;D

 

[BOZ]

I beleive (but could be wrong) that the top end arch fiend has somethiong like 180.

most of them had less than 200.

i don't know that HP is the "best" way to determine relative power, but it certainly gives one a good idea of what to expect. he does have a lot of hp, multiple attacks per round, IIRC a decent SR and AC, so he would be a challenge for the toughest of folks.

however, aside from the SR and AC, he has no particular defenses. no immunity to mind affecting, no resistance to fire, electricity, cold, etc. poison and disease can hurt him, i believe. if you can exploit those areas, his ability to challenge you can drop significantly very quickly.

let's look at 1E demon lords then. they all have high SR and AC as well, even if their hit points don't come close to ma yuan's impressive total. they also have spells and other special abilities, many of which are not affected by his spell resistance. and SR is not the same as invulnerability because you will succeed in surpassing it sometimes (or often). if you can do enough fire and poison damage and then hit him with a mind-affecting spell or two, he'll by crying like a baby to his mama in no time.

so, i did a bit of comparison to the demon lords in the old MM and MM2 and made some educated guesses. i think, after a tough fight, he could take out about half of them, and maybe the toughest one he could beat would be Dispater. what about Orcus? Asmodeus? Demogorgon, Mephistopheles, Fraz-urb'luu? i don't think so - they should be able to take him down unless he gets lucky.

Dispater is CR 26 now. Orcus is 28, and the others i mentioned are at least that high. so, based on that comparison, i could see him easily higher than CR 25. i'd make him 26, possibly CR 27.

if you think he could beat those more powerful lords, please explain why.

 

[Clifford]

I imagine they they intended him to get a ton of milage out of his Thinga-Ma-Jiggy and sense there were no guidelines as to what this thing could turn into he could conceivable turn it into a + 500 Machine-gun of arch fiend slaying. But thats just Quibbling on my part. I think Ma-Yuan should have some energy resistances and high SR. atleast. And a damn lot more than 35 HD. I looked at my old Deities and Demigods and ma yuan had IMHO bettrer stats than Cerby. So if we must make him a combat monster we should atleast make up for lack of special attacks with some wicked obscene Physicals. posibly some epic feats (Devistating Critical anyone?) anyway their is my two cents.

I realize my bitching is holding up this conversion so i will keep it to a minimum till next monster hehehe! anyway catch yas laters folks i have a monster book to finsh authoring.

CLiff
(=<

 

[BOZ]

we don't love you any less Clifford! you've actually helped me see a lot of things i might not have noticed, and at least meeting you halfway i think it's going to be better than it would have.

and you're not holding me back any more than my own personal lack of time at the moment.

 

[Shade]

Taking him to CR 27, about 40 HD would be reasonable. Dendar the Night Serpent, from Champions of Ruin, is CR 26. She has 54 HD and is Colossal. Her spell-likes are far fewer than comparable archfiends, but she has nasty combat abilities. Personally, I feel that she's a bit under-CR'ed, but it does open the door to Ma Yuan going a bit higher in the HD department. Maybe we can try him at 50 HD and see where that goes?

At 40+ HD, he'd be entitled to 7 epic feats, so Devastating Critical is definitely possible. We can give him Epic Toughness several times to really up his hp.