Epic effects: pondering...

[Trainz]

One thing that I observed while DMing epic games is that a bunch of epic critters have fear or poison attacks.

Heroe's feast completely negates this. Unless a critter dispels the heroe's feast, the PC's aren't threatened by the fear or poison attacks. This seems like bad design of epic rules/monsters/whatever.

Maybe the designers should have created some sort of greater poisons or fear effects that can't be totally negated by regular non-epic magic. Maybe being immune to poison should grant you a +4 on saves versus a mega-poison or somesuch...

 

[the Jester]

There are a few poisons out there that punch through poison immunity, though they aren't always called poisons. I might be wrong, but I seem to recall that Sinmaker's Surprise is one of them (MotP), and aren't the, um, poisons by another name in BoED another example?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

One thing that I observed while DMing epic games is that a bunch of epic critters have fear or poison attacks.

Heroe's feast completely negates this. Unless a critter dispels the heroe's feast, the PC's aren't threatened by the fear or poison attacks. This seems like bad design of epic rules/monsters/whatever.

Actually, I'd be more tempted to believe that, like dragonfear, the fear and poison effects from Epic creatures are there to totally scare the bejeebus out of any mooks that happen to be around.

By the time the PCs are actually capable of fighting such creatures, they should be intelligent enough to take precautions.

 

[glass]

One thing that I observed while DMing epic games is that a bunch of epic critters have fear or poison attacks.

Heroe's feast completely negates this. Unless a critter dispels the heroe's feast, the PC's aren't threatened by the fear or poison attacks. This seems like bad design of epic rules/monsters/whatever.

Maybe the designers should have created some sort of greater poisons or fear effects that can't be totally negated by regular non-epic magic. Maybe being immune to poison should grant you a +4 on saves versus a mega-poison or somesuch...

The trouble is, if you start adding thing which penetrate immunities, you either end up with fire elementals taking fire damage, or you have to have different levels of immunity (with a potential arms race); either of which is a little silly.

That said, I don't think anything should have poison immunity. Rather, I think that the poisons themselves should specify what can poison. For instance, obviously cianide might not do much to a balor, but why couldn't there be a poison called demonbane that did?


glass.

 

[Victim]

One thing that I observed while DMing epic games is that a bunch of epic critters have fear or poison attacks.

Heroe's feast completely negates this. Unless a critter dispels the heroe's feast, the PC's aren't threatened by the fear or poison attacks. This seems like bad design of epic rules/monsters/whatever.

Maybe the designers should have created some sort of greater poisons or fear effects that can't be totally negated by regular non-epic magic. Maybe being immune to poison should grant you a +4 on saves versus a mega-poison or somesuch...

Same thing with Mind Blank, Deathward, Freedom of Movement, Energy Immunity (non core, but still), etc. DnD is loaded with immunity based effects.

 

[the Jester]

The trouble is, if you start adding thing which penetrate immunities, you either end up with fire elementals taking fire damage...

You can do this with a feat from Sandstorm.

 

[Trainz]

Same thing with Mind Blank, Deathward, Freedom of Movement, Energy Immunity (non core, but still), etc. DnD is loaded with immunity based effects.

Indeed.

An experienced epic band has mostly only melee damage and spell damage to worry about.