DM depressed about Shapechange

[ruleslawyer]

As a dragon, Ashardalon's caster level is a lot lower than his HD. Great red wyrm: 40HD, 19th caster level.

But, as others have noted, not for his 1/2-fiend abilities. Those have a CL = HD = 40. It's only his sorcerer spells and dragon SLAs that have CL 19.

My opinion: Either the mechanics for blasphemy, etc. are broken, or the decision that CL = HD for templates like the half-fiend is broken. I'm not sure which is worse, to be honest.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

This is why Dungeon Crawls suck at high levels.

Casters can, and will, dominate everything at that kind of level. As you seem to have worked out, Shapechange rules, and quite apart from that the kind of damage they can deal out in a very short space of time is astronomical. This only gets worse as levels advance and you run into the fun that is epic spellcasting.

The game is not balanced at these levels for the same kind of adventure that you would use at lower levels. It simply doesn't work the same way. You have to tailor specific challenges to specific group members, and you have to control things carefully so that it can work without others piling in and simply winning easily. You also need to get used to the fact that at these kind of levels D&D cannot be a combat-based game any more, if it ever was in you campaigns. Apart from anything else, it just gets ridiculous. How many dungeons full of advanced Half-Fiend Insectile Multi-headed Umbral Great Red Wyrms can there be in the world?

I think your mindset is wrong for such a game. If you want an idea of how it can be made to work, some Story Hours might help you. Specifically I think Sep's story hour (nicely compiled under 'Tales of Wyre' by Cheiromancer) is an exemplary model of how a near-epic and epic game should be run. It starts with the characters at about the kind of levle you are dealing with.

Of course, you might just decide it's not worth the effort. A lot of people don't think it is, and I can see why. Personally though I think it can be very rewarding.

Good luck!

*raises hand*

Could someone link to the tales of wyre? They sound interesting.

Thanks

*puts hand down*

 

[WizarDru]

....and WizarDru finds another chance to let the world know how much he hates BoBS

Asmo

Well, I couldn't save it all for just "Heart of Nightfang Spire", now could I?

Could someone link to the tales of wyre? They sound interesting.

*cough*Check my.sig*cough*

(And while I'm feeling shameless, you can read my story hour, written by Zad, if you so choose. We're currently at 23rd-24th level, and still rolling strong. Up tonight? Meeting with a god to try and change the rules of interdimensional travel. And that's not even the focus of the story. ).

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Hello Iku,

"[polymorphed creatures] retain their original ...hit points...",

Of course this doesn’t prevent adjustments to HP due to Con score change from the Polymorph spell.

(The rules of the game out of the way, it needs to be said - again - that Skip Williams has "revised" the polymorph spells, and he says hit points change.)

This wasn’t a revision regarding HP and polymorph spells, it was a clarification of what was already written into the 3.5 PHB.

Repeating a ‘net myth over and over again doesn’t make it true.

J. Grenemyer

 

[Iku Rex]

"[polymorphed creatures] retain their original ...hit points...",

Of course this doesn’t prevent adjustments to HP due to Con score change from the Polymorph spell..

Actually, it does. Simply announcing "it doesn't mean what it says" over and over doesn't make it true.

This wasn’t a revision regarding HP and polymorph spells, it was a clarification of what was already written into the 3.5 PHB.

Of course. "Hit points remain the same" and "hit points change" are really just two ways of saying the same thing. :\

 

[jujutsunerd]

- You can become anything *you are FAMILIAR with*. So no Pit Fiends unless he has seen at least one pit fiend before (for some ammount of time to become "familiar")

My personal definition of "familiar" is that the character in question succeeds in a Knowledge (appropriate type) for the monster's hd when Taking 10.

To quote from the srd:
"In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information."

In this case (18 hd planar monster) that would mean that the character would need a skill of 18 in Knowledge (The Planes) (DC = 10 + 18 = 28, 'roll' when Taking 10 = 10 + 18 = 28.)

If you feel extraordinarly nice, you could allow Taking 20, making in this case the neccessary Knowledge (The Planes) skill level 8.

While if you feel not-so-nice you could say that the character needs a number of 'piece of useful information' equal to the monster's number of subtypes. In this case (Evil, Extraplanar, Lawful) that would mean a required skill of 43.

/Jonas

 

[Klaus]

I'd bump the DC by 5 or 10, since DC 28 only lets you say "Yup. That's a Pit Fiend." Being able to recall one or two pieces of information (DC 33 = "It can throw flames at will!"; DC 38 = "It is only harmed by holy silver!")

Of course, a DC 5 would say "RUUUUNNNN!!!!"

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Just keep telling yourself that, big guy. You'll see past it eventually....(?)