Immortals Handbook - ASCENSION

[Upper_Krust]

Hey WD dude!

Changing regeneration to fast healing is a smaller change than making regeneration supernatural or splitting it up. Occam's Razor, my friend.

Its smaller than splitting it up, but its not smaller than simply making it Su - which was my initial solution.

I disagree; in RL, things are made of 100+ odd elements; in D&D, they're made of only four, plus two fundamental energies. In RL cold, darkness, and death are the absence of heat, light, and life, respectively; in D&D, they are forces unto themselves, which oppose and mutually annihilate heat, light, and life.

Nevertheless the only difference seems to be that of gravity, which could actually be accounted for in creatures if they have sufficient strength. In fact I anticipate Giants (with listed strength scores) would probably be feasible.

Indeed I am not, sir. Holy and unholy energy are no more unnatural in the D&D setting than electromagnetic energy is in our universe.

If holy energy is natural then there is no such thing as magic in D&D.

If it doesn't occur naturally in the Prime Material Plane then its unnatural. No animal has a supernatural attack for that very reason.

Er... Regeneration doesn't fix ability damage, and if your Constitution is reduced to 0, you're dead. It doesn't get much more "lasting forever" than that, as long as the supernova deals enough Con damage to kill flat-out; even if it doesn't, a regenerater won't heal that damage any faster than a normal human. As for disintegration, I am of the opinion that it should always be counted as lethal damage, or in this case, a death effect.

So if the character was immune to Con damage you go along with the idea that damage should be irrelevant?

Which is why Regeneration specifies that you can't have it if you don't have a Con score. Undead and constructs can have fast healing, with special clauses that let them reattach limbs; again, Occam's Razor.

Its far to easy to get regeneration and get rid of the weaknesses.

Works for me. I can't really say why (because I don't know), but I just find most anime to be inherently annoying... same as psionics in a fantasy setting.

Variety is the spice of life.

 

[Upper_Krust]

U_K,

Hiya mate!

1. What HD would you assign something the size of a small moon (think Spelljammer liveworld)? I have this nasty idea for a giant sentient instellar plant-moon but I have a feeling that its sheer size will render it pretty much invulnerable to anything short of an Adamic Dragon or First One/Old One.

Well, first of all I would tell you that it won't work using D&D mechanics.

Then I would tell you how I would cheat to make it work.

...which would be along the lines of Algol in Ascension.

Give the creature a size and hit dice appropriate for the divine status/challenge rating you want to cover. Then give it some sort of power to manipulate matter within its (extended to moon sized proportions) divine aura. The core of the creature is its heart/brain, the outer shell/crust/earth merely a cover.

2. What size elemental's vortex/whirlwind/burn/ect be worth a divine ability?

Well the ability scales upward as the elemental gets bigger but its still only one universal entry for every size, so I would just copy what it says in the book and make that a divine ability.

 

[WarDragon]

Hey WD dude!

Its smaller than splitting it up, but its not smaller than simply making it Su - which was my initial solution.

And neither of those makes as much sense as just changing it when it's impassable.

Nevertheless the only difference seems to be that of gravity, which could actually be accounted for in creatures if they have sufficient strength. In fact I anticipate Giants (with listed strength scores) would probably be feasible.

Uh... I just listed several other things, and none of them have anything to do with gravity.

If holy energy is natural then there is no such thing as magic in D&D.

If it doesn't occur naturally in the Prime Material Plane then its unnatural. No animal has a supernatural attack for that very reason.

But they occur naturally on other planes.

So if the character was immune to Con damage you go along with the idea that damage should be irrelevant?

Of course not. But, if something is immune to every part of a supernova's damage, why shouldn't they survive it?

Its far to easy to get regeneration and get rid of the weaknesses.

Which is why I put forth the suggestion that if you have regeneration and get rid of the weakness, it stops being regeneration and becomes fast healing. Troll wearing rings of fire and acid immunity? Sorry, you take lethal damage from everything now.



And I just noticed something odd in the sample god stats.... none of them seem to have Virtual Size Categories, despite their Strength scores being well above normal for their size. What gives?

 

[Pssthpok]

Troll wearing rings of fire and acid immunity? Sorry, you take lethal damage from everything now.

That makes no sense. That's like saying that someone wearing heavy fortification suffers any critical threat as a confirmed crit.

 

[Phantom Llama]

And neither of those makes as much sense as just changing it when it's impassable.

I don't see how a creature's (supposedly nonmagical) physiology altering to become killable by anything when protective magic rings are put on makes much sense except in the rather useless "It's magic so it can do anything we want!" sense.

As compared to saying "There may be magic involved in this creature's ability to have all its limbs and organs removed and get beaten to a pulp and then come back with no lasting injury in a matter of minutes."

I'm not terribly enamoured of the idea of regeneration becoming supernatural, but to suggest it's somehow less reasonable than the blatantly contrived fast healing conversion scenario is absurd.

 

[Pssthpok]

It's ridiculous to think that such an arbitrary shift makes any sense. The fundamental difference between fast healing and regeneration is too great to simply wash one into the other when you don't like how one works. If regen becomes unbeatable through circumstance (a troll with rings) or through design (a Tarrasque), then learn to suck it up. Don't change it to fast healing because you think you'd rather not deal with the problem at hand.
Fast healing doesn't work when you're 'dead', regen does. If you give a creature like a troll fast healing as opposed to regen simply because it puts on two magical rings, you're sacrificing the legitimacy of the difference between the two systems on the altar of pretentious balance-mongering. This is called a 'duct-tape' move, and it leads only to more moves of its kind. There will be a circumstance down the road that conflicts with such a fix and a new rule will be needed, then another, ad nauseum.
Sure, something like an 'unkillable' troll looks 'broken', but you can't go changing the mechanics of the game on happenstance. If you don't want an unkillable troll, don't let it wear the rings. Cut and dry. That's the path of least resistance, not changing the nature of the rules to fit a ridiculous approach to a simple problem.

 

[WarDragon]

I'm not talking about whether it's reasonable in an in-game flavor sense, I'm saying that it's reasonable as in balanced.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya mate!

It's ridiculous to think that such an arbitrary shift makes any sense. The fundamental difference between fast healing and regeneration is too great to simply wash one into the other when you don't like how one works. If regen becomes unbeatable through circumstance (a troll with rings) or through design (a Tarrasque), then learn to suck it up. Don't change it to fast healing because you think you'd rather not deal with the problem at hand.

Fast healing doesn't work when you're 'dead', regen does. If you give a creature like a troll fast healing as opposed to regen simply because it puts on two magical rings, you're sacrificing the legitimacy of the difference between the two systems on the altar of pretentious balance-mongering. This is called a 'duct-tape' move, and it leads only to more moves of its kind. There will be a circumstance down the road that conflicts with such a fix and a new rule will be needed, then another, ad nauseum.

Sure, something like an 'unkillable' troll looks 'broken', but you can't go changing the mechanics of the game on happenstance. If you don't want an unkillable troll, don't let it wear the rings. Cut and dry. That's the path of least resistance, not changing the nature of the rules to fit a ridiculous approach to a simple problem.

Very interesting point raised. The answer could have been staring us in the face all along...

The only way to defeat a Tarrasque is to bring it to negative hit points and then use a wish - presumably to remove its regeneration?

This could simply be the formula for using regen with undead, you have to discombobulate the beggars and then use a wish to keep them dead.

You could say that for non-epic creatures you may only need a limited wish, while epic creatures require a full wish.

In both cases the spell must defeat the creatures spell resistance - if any.

For cosmic creatures, the wish must be cast by someone of equal or higher stature.

For eternals, the wish cast by someone of equla or higher stature is still only a temporary measure.

Any thoughts?

 

[dante58701]

No matter what the immunities, everything has a vulnerability of some sort. Half the fun is finding it.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Hiya mate!



Very interesting point raised. The answer could have been staring us in the face all along...

The only way to defeat a Tarrasque is to bring it to negative hit points and then use a wish - presumably to remove its regeneration?

This could simply be the formula for using regen with undead, you have to discombobulate the beggars and then use a wish to keep them dead.

You could say that for non-epic creatures you may only need a limited wish, while epic creatures require a full wish.

In both cases the spell must defeat the creatures spell resistance - if any.

For cosmic creatures, the wish must be cast by someone of equal or higher stature.

For eternals, the wish cast by someone of equla or higher stature is still only a temporary measure.

Any thoughts?

Well, unless I missed something, eternals can't be killed anyway. (Except by "uber-death" moves like Omega Effect and Astro Effect. Heck, those ignore regeneration anyway) But yes, that sounds like a good method. (Though if implemented, it does set a precedent; Using wish to remove Ex Abilities.)

And yes, the troll with immunities is pretty nasty, but it seems silly to change how the troll works based on a couple of defences it might have. (And any troll worth it's salt is gonna want immunity to Acid and Fire) The rings could always be sundered or removed.

While I personally like the Supernatural variations of Regeneration because they seem to make sense to me from a meta-physical standpoint, I doubt there will be one "catch-all" duct-tape fix to every rules inconsistancy. As long as your local gaming group agrees on a solution, I don't think it will ever raise any issues.

It kindof goes along with a person's views on how the game *should* work vs how the game *could* work. Some people seem to prefer wanting the game rules to be consistant. Others want the game rules to be varied and interesting.

Heck, in my group, my players and I agreed that some things just shouldn't be balanced. Villains have to have more wealth than PCs to fund their evil organizations, and have to exceed those leadership values to have their army of loyal ninja. Dragons are big, physically invincible, flying lizards who exhale death itself... And they cast magic, sometimes from multiple spell lists.

I see this regeneration issue as one of those issues that one person's solution could be an offence to anothers' playing style.