Converting Epic Level Creatures

Cleon

Hero
Adding divination and putting sending in the spell list works for me.

Shall I update the working draft with that change then?

Hmmm. Inspire Vision (Su) that perhaps grants a single use of true strike to each ally affected by the performance? Or augury? Or else just re-brand Inspire Competence with an insight bonus on some kind of check (maybe a save)?

Upon second thoughts, what if we connected the Inspire Vision ability with the original adventure?

If you recall that long ago, Andromidus was dreaming three, five-act plays that represented five tasks on three moral quests, and he was using the dream to consider how the questing hero would bring about the "correct" results (accomplished its tasks in a good-aligned manner).

Maybe those dreams are how he produces an Inspiring Vision? Andromidus develops a prophetic dream using his Mists ability, and if a creature he shows the resulting Vision too receive bonuses to their rolls to achieve said task.

I'm thinking something along the lines of moment of presience but with a smaller bonus that can be used multiple times until the task is a success or irretrievable failure.
 

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freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
That could work, actually. But I'd at least add divination to the spell list, too. Anyway, do you have a proposal for specific text for the ability?
 




Cleon

Hero
I've had a few ideas but lacked the time to write anything up.

Hopefully it'll ease up soon.

Well I just spent way to long writing up a rough draft when I had more important things to do.

Oh, and I think we might as well still give him 3/day divination as an SLA.

Here we go, in all its over-complicated glory:

Inspiring Vision (Su): Andromidus has the unique ability to create illusions of a creature's possible future that are able to inspire that creature to help achieve the prophesised future. He is able to create visions of the future of any intelligent creature, even beings of godlike power –he used this ability to predict the outcome of Zeus's war with the Titans. However, Inspiring Vision has limited reliability, becoming less reliable the more powerful the creature who's future is being predicted. Similarly, its ability to inspire the recipient to bring about the predicted future is weaker the more powerful the subject is. Thus, Andromidus's use of Inspiring Vision in the War of the Titans was more of a wild gamble than a sure bet.

Creating an Inspiring Vision requires the following three steps:

Step One: Petition for a Vision:
To begin with, an intelligent creature must petition Andromidus to foresee its future concerning a particular objective. This objective can be vague ("will I be rich?"), specific ("should I bet on Red 12?"), grand ("when shall I be Empress!?") or minor ("how much barley ought I plant this season?"). In any case, the petitioning creature must request a prophecy of their own free will and be personally present. If the petitioner is compelled by magic or other force, or is making the request via letter, sending or other means it cannot be granted an Inspiring Vision by Andromidus. Andromidus is under no obligation to accept a petitioner's request for a vision, and normally only grants visions whose objectives are benevolent.

Step Two: Prophetic Dream: To create visions of the future, Andromidus must enter a mystic sleep during which he uses his Mist of Dreams power to create phantasms of possible future events that are key to the creature achieving the objective they asked the Titan for a prediction on. Andromidus can dream of multiple future events for multiple petitioners in one prophetic dream, covering a maximum of 15 future events in one dream (i.e. three petitioners with five future events each, or any other combination that adds up to 15 events or fewer.).

The number of future events Andromidus's Mists create phantasms of depends on the complexity of the petitioner's future and the objective they seek, but is rarely more than five. The events are representations of key stages to the objective the petitioner seeks. For example, if a petitioner asked for help rescuing his wife who was kidnapped by a Cyclops, the Mist of Dreams might produce phantasms of (1) overcoming his despair and praying for aid from Aphrodite, (2) defeating a Medusa in a labyrinth to obtain a giant bane sword, (3) avoiding being polymorphed into a swine by Circe while sailing to the Cyclops's island, (4) escaping being caged by the Cyclops's ogre servants and recovering the magic sword, and (5) freeing his wife with Aphrodite's aid and then fighting the Cyclops.

These phantasms are presented in random order as Andromidus dreams of them. Andromidus must dream through an entire phantasmal event (in real time) before he can start dreaming another event. The phantasms start out as vague impressions of what beings and objects are involved in the event, to produce a "firm" prediction Andromidus must succeed at a Wisdom check with a Difficulty Class dependent on the power of the creature's involved and the difficulty of the task - the DC is typically X [?] plus the ECL of the event. Andromidus attempts this Wisdom check when he starts to dream of the event, and if successful the phantasm is an "accurate" representation of a possible future, although it may be presented in a symbolic or hidden manner (e.g. the event may show the petitioner being rescued by an ally, but the "ally" appears as an anonymous figure whose actions to rescue the petitioner are obscured; or the phantasm may show the petitioner having a poisoned wound healed by a snake, when the snake actually represents a priest of Asclepius, whose symbol is the snake).

If Andromidus fails any of the Wisdom checks to produce firm prophecies, he can dream through all the events in the Prophetic Dream again and retry and Wisdom checks he failed (he need not reroll Wisdom checks for events he'd already succeeded at). He can repeat this process as often as he likes, until he either succeeds or stops dreaming.

When Andromidus awakens from his Prophetic Dream he can produce an Inspiring Vision for any objective all of whose events he made successfully Wisdom checks for (see below). If he failed to make successful Wisdom checks for any event in an objective he is unable to create an Inspiring Vision for it upon awakening. He must enter another Prophetic Dream and redream the entire objective, succeeding at the Wisdom checks for all its events, if he wishes to produce an Inspiring Vision for it. Successful Wisdom checks for the prophetic events do not carry over from one Prophetic Dream to the next.

Step Three: Inspiring Illusions: Once Andromidus has successfully prophesied an Inspiring Vision he must show it to the petition who requested it for the petitioner to benefit from it. If the petitioner was in Andromidus's Mist of Dreams while the titan was going through the Prophetic Dream that prophesied the Vision, the petitioner will see the Inspiring Vision when Andromidus awakened from his Dream. If not, Andromidus can show the petitioner their Inspiring Vision either by using his Mist of Dreams power once more while the petitioner is inside the Mists, or by casting a dream spell and sending it as a message (the latter is a special use of the dream spell that allows the petitioner to see the full Inspiring Vision).

Once a petitioner has seen their Inspiring Vision, then if they arrive at an event prophesied by the Vision they receive the following benefits on any action they make to bring about the result shown in the Vision of the future: X [?].
 


freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Well I just spent way to long writing up a rough draft when I had more important things to do.

Oh, and I think we might as well still give him 3/day divination as an SLA.

Here we go, in all its over-complicated glory:

Whoa, you're right, that's complex! And it feels possibly a lot stronger than Prometheus's abilities. I feel like maybe we can simplify this somehow, but I do want to be careful not to step on Prometheus's toes.
 

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Well I just spent way to long writing up a rough draft when I had more important things to do.

Oh, and I think we might as well still give him 3/day divination as an SLA.

Here we go, in all its over-complicated glory:

Whoa, you're right, that's complex! And it feels possibly a lot stronger than Prometheus's abilities. I feel like maybe we can simplify this somehow, but I do want to be careful not to step on Prometheus's toes.
 

Cleon

Hero
Whoa, you're right, that's complex! And it feels possibly a lot stronger than Prometheus's abilities. I feel like maybe we can simplify this somehow, but I do want to be careful not to step on Prometheus's toes.

I'm so right you had to say it twice. ;)

I quite like the structure of the ability and how it ties in with the original adventure. It needn't necessarily be very powerful, it just depends on how much of a bonus it gives to rolls to achieve a prophecy.
 

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
I'm so right you had to say it twice. ;)
Silly double posts!

I quite like the structure of the ability and how it ties in with the original adventure. It needn't necessarily be very powerful, it just depends on how much of a bonus it gives to rolls to achieve a prophecy.

It's a nice overall structure, but I feel like we could streamline it in some way. Maybe even just by removing his ability to "redo" Wis checks. I'm still pondering this, but I'd like to hear any more thoughts you have.
 

Cleon

Hero
It's a nice overall structure, but I feel like we could streamline it in some way. Maybe even just by removing his ability to "redo" Wis checks. I'm still pondering this, but I'd like to hear any more thoughts you have.

I made the Wisdom checks re-doable to imitate how the original adventure had Andromidus go through his dreams multiple times until he got the dream "right".
 

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
OK, you know what, let's go for it basically as is. I think I'd like to make the petitioner go through the Mist of Dreams. It would add more drama. If that's ok with you, we can figure out the benefits.
 

Cleon

Hero
OK, you know what, let's go for it basically as is. I think I'd like to make the petitioner go through the Mist of Dreams. It would add more drama. If that's ok with you, we can figure out the benefits.

So something like this?

Step Three: Inspiring Illusions: Once Andromidus has successfully prophesied an Inspiring Vision he can show it to the petition who requested it through his Mist of Dreams power. If the petitioner was in Andromidus's Mist of Dreams while the titan was going through the Prophetic Dream that prophesied the Vision, Andromidus can show the petitioner their Vision when Andromidus awakens from his Dream. If not, Andromidus must use his Mist of Dreams power again if he wishes to show the petitioner their Inspiring Vision.

That just leaves deciding what benefit the Vision offers.
 

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Yes, that looks good.

What about the result of a divination spell without the failure chance (assuming Andromidus makes his Wis checks)? That seems like the right power level and also the right "kind" of benefit.
 

Cleon

Hero
Yes, that looks good.

What about the result of a divination spell without the failure chance (assuming Andromidus makes his Wis checks)? That seems like the right power level and also the right "kind" of benefit.

But a divination spell doesn't provide any sort of mechanical benefit.

I was thinking more of an insight bonus to any checks made during a prophesied scene that would lead to the prophesied result, similar to a moment of prescience except with a much lower bonus for multiple rolls instead of the latter spell's hefty bonus to a single roll.
 

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Well, we could go with something like that. But it seemed like the general advice provided by something like divination or augury is more in line with the story about deciding whether to join the gods or the other titans. If you wanted to use something like moment of prescience, I guess I'd do maybe +2 on up to 3 rolls. Or we could do a "re-roll up to 3 rolls, must take the re-roll" kind of thing.
 

Cleon

Hero
Well, we could go with something like that. But it seemed like the general advice provided by something like divination or augury is more in line with the story about deciding whether to join the gods or the other titans. If you wanted to use something like moment of prescience, I guess I'd do maybe +2 on up to 3 rolls. Or we could do a "re-roll up to 3 rolls, must take the re-roll" kind of thing.

I was thinking more along the lines of a +1 or +2 luck or insight bonus to ALL rolls during the event, possibly with a time limit - maybe 20 rounds per attempt? A simple prayer give a +1 bonus to all allies within 40 feet and -1 to all enemies. It ought to be at least as beneficial as a common 3rd level cleric spell!

That said, I like the idea of the "re-roll up to X times" idea, though I'll have to consider how many re-rolls I fancy.
 



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