Epic Destinies and Earth Giants

[Merlin the Tuna]

QFT. That hill giant should be more inspiring and new. "Snatch and throw at enemy" would have been sweet as.

Why would they throw the enemy? It'd make way more sense to just crush them in their big, meaty paws.

I'll probably end up making their encounter ability a recharge 6 ability, but that's about it.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Their not meant to fight each other though...

Oh yes, I know that

It is only marginally more sensible than having minions 'fight' each other... but until I get my hands on the PHB and monster manual I can't really work out 'realistic' scenarios.

I do think it illustrates Voss's concern however - that much increased hp and much reduced damage compared to 3e may result in surprisingly long combats, which might end up 'dragging' a little

 

[Baron Opal]

From the D&D Master Set - published in 1984 I think.

Seriously - this entire entry on Epic Destinies completely brought back memories of reading through the "Immortality Paths" section of the Master Set when I was a wee bairn.

Oh, good. I wasn't the first to notice this.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hmmh... what i curently don´t like is that it seems monsters tend to get more hp than the average PC and do less damage... wasn´t it possible that both, PCs and monsters tend to do a comparable amount of damage so that HPs are roughly equivalent?

 

[Gort]

Hmmh... what i curently don´t like is that it seems monsters tend to get more hp than the average PC and do less damage... wasn´t it possible that both, PCs and monsters tend to do a comparable amount of damage so that HPs are roughly equivalent?

Quite possible, I'd say. Monsters do less damage than players, but they have numbers on their side to make up for that, meaning they also have more HP. Players have lots of powers so that they can deal with the higher HP.

Seems to work.

 

[keterys]

Monsters deal less damage and fight things with less hit points.

PCs deal more damage and fight things with more hit points.

Okay, that seems all in ratio, and reasonable. There's probably good reason for it - if you look at the old DDM RPG stats, monsters used to have a lot less hit points for instance.

 

[Ecaiki]

Something that just occurred to me Re: the Archmage.

The crowning ability of the destiny is to make a daily power usable per encounter, doesn't sound like much alone.... however we haven't seen even a hint of epic feats yet. My thinking is there could very well be a feat that makes an encounter power usable more then once, so a daily becomes encounter, then becomes 2x encounter.

So if we take a spell such as Time Stop we can make it per encounter, an incredible power boost already... except another feat allows 2 uses of it and BAM your archmage is suddenly a lot more supreme wizard.

Now add on top of that the ability to swap that daily power by taking a quick refresher from Mr. spellbook and your level 30 wizard is a very scary creature, even more so since once per day he can die and STILL cast Time Stop twice!

My logic on all this is that 4th ed seems a lot more about synergy between powers and feats rather then front loading a feat to be godly, so it will require a lot more outside the box thinking to achieve 3e style strength.

 

[ForumFerret]

I'm very much looking forward to seeing 4e's version of Greater Anyspell... re-use any xth level spell you know, as a Daily, which you then demote to an Encounter via Shape Spell, and poof: there's your master of the mystic arts, able to utilize nearly any spell in the game every 5 minutes.

 

[MindWanderer]

Well, I guess that my interest ends at Paragon then. I would say Beowulf is Paragon in the D&D sense, not epic.... in the end, he was mortal. He did die.

"Immortality," in the Epic Destiny sense, doesn't necessarily mean you don't die. We're discussing the dude a thousand years after he lived. I call that immortal.

Monsters deal less damage and fight things with less hit points.

PCs deal more damage and fight things with more hit points.

Okay, that seems all in ratio, and reasonable. There's probably good reason for it - if you look at the old DDM RPG stats, monsters used to have a lot less hit points for instance.

Reminds me of Final Fantasy games. I hated Charm/Confusion in Final Fantasy IV: When applied to a monster, it would deal 1 point of damage to itself or one of its allies, out of the 100,000 HP it had. When applied to Rydia, she would cast Quake on the party, dealing 9999 damage to everyone, out of no more than 9000 or so. Yeah.

 

[NHBaggesen]

Just a question for all of those posters who are complaining about Earth Shock and that the Earth Giants throw rocks: What sort of abilities do you expect Earth Giants to have?

To start off with a quote from one of my favorite movies:

Sir Didymus: My brother! Canst thou summon up the very rocks?
Ludo: Sure. Rocks friends.

So that would be one ability - "Summon rock".

Then we have earthquakes. Sure Earth Shock does a bit of that, but how about forming crevasses and chasm as a form of battlefield control. (Maybe a controller type Earth Giant will be able to do this).

Unmovable. Their size as well as their ties to the earth would be obvious reasons to make them resistant to being pushed and pulled.

Juggernaut. Similarly their immense size could be used to make it hard/impossible to stop them when they shift etc.

Slapping people around. The Hill Giants have their swipe, but IMNSHO giants could have a lot more of that.

Earthbond. Being healed, or never counting as bloodied, or getting improved saving throws or a similar 'lifeforce' when they are in contact with the earth.

Grappling. Picking up the littl' uns' is a Giant standard. Maybe it will be covered by some basic grappling rules, but then mention it in the tactics section.

Intimidation. I know they can always use it untrained, but why not put it on their skill list. The roaring giant panicking the horses is cool.

Those where just e few off the top of my head. And I'm not saying they would have to have all these abilitites (though in general I think it would be nice if 4E monster where less 'one trick ponies' that do the same verytime you meet them), but a bit more spice would be nice. Or maybe I'd just like to see a solo giant, because to me giants have always been great solo opponents, not something I've thrown at the players in droves.