Immortals Handbook - Epic Bestiary (Epic Monster Discussion)

[paradox42]

Yeah... this is kinda silly, this is FAAAR more powerful than a planet-sized golem should be, given that a normal planet is supposed to only have 90k hp.

This is precisely why I threw that 90K-hit-point planet idea out the window. IMHO, no Earth-sized planet should have less than several million, if not several billion, hit points. I've seen other calculations done for planetary hit points that came up with numbers as high as 1 quadrillion (10^15).

Given the stats for A'Tuin the Star Turtle, your planet-golem (hey, look, it's Unicron! ) does look potentially weak. Seriously, DR is only 3 million?

My problem with this is that given that the gods that govern the universe are going to be FAR less than even a 1 Million CR, this poses a conundrum. Why should a planet-sized golem be vastly more powerful than the guardians of the universe that contains the golem? Since I'm fairly sure that most Cosmic beings SHOULD be able to easily defeat enemies on this sort of scale. Because this isn't a terribly hard encounter, it's just big and strong. This means that the cosmic beings should be stronger, or this should have a lower CR. Becuase I'm not sure how many cosmic beings can do single attacks in excess of 3M damage, discounting the gravity % based damage.

And this is one of my prime reasons for wanting to increase the gaps between beings at various power levels, as I've articulated elsewhere. If a being represents a whole universe, shouldn't it be able to take on entities like this planet-golem, or a Draeden (I'll link that to the d20 NPC Wiki page for one I'm going to be making very soon, when it's done), without breaking a metaphorical sweat? I think so, but that's just my opinion.

Also, since you have the size rules for arbitray size, can we creatures of roughly speaking every size, or atleast one-four in each of the large catagories, like macro,mega,giga,... So we can see examples of what the "LARGE" creatures would be, in case we want to try and build our own.

Get yourself a copy of the Epic Bestiary Volume I, and you get not only the fully-expandable size rules up to Xona-sizes (universe-sized, basically), but also the valuable Macrobe template (which increases a creature by 10 size categories). That's how the Star Turtle was built, Fieari took a fairly ordinary turtle and double-Macrobed it, then added a few other abilities he thought a real Star Turtle should have. And voila- stats for A'Tuin.

 

[zarquin]

This is precisely why I threw that 90K-hit-point planet idea out the window. IMHO, no Earth-sized planet should have less than several million, if not several billion, hit points. I've seen other calculations done for planetary hit points that came up with numbers as high as 1 quadrillion (10^15).

Yeah, if we modeled earth as a great big ball of stone/iron(which is mostly what the earth is made of) we get a sphere about 42 million feet in diameter or about 500 million inches, giving it between 7.5 billion hp and 15 billion hp depending on if you model it as stone or iron.

Given the stats for A'Tuin the Star Turtle, your planet-golem (hey, look, it's Unicron! ) does look potentially weak. Seriously, DR is only 3 million?

I based the feat structure off of 1 feat to DR, 1 feat to fast healing, 1 feat to improved toughness, 2 feats to strengh, repeat, and only had 5M feats. Had I had 16x as many feats those numbers would have increased 16 fold to DR: 48m, FM: 32m, HP: 200md8+3.2q, STR: 32m and scaled the base damage to be strong enough to pierece it's own DR and do more than fast healing damage beyond that a round with 2 slams, which is something that I firmly believe, no creature should be incapable of potentially doing enough damage to kill itself. Most creatures will never do it, but 2 creatures of a given species should be able to fight to the death without old age being the cause of death.

Get yourself a copy of the Epic Bestiary Volume I, and you get not only the fully-expandable size rules up to Xona-sizes (universe-sized, basically), but also the valuable Macrobe template (which increases a creature by 10 size categories). That's how the Star Turtle was built, Fieari took a fairly ordinary turtle and double-Macrobed it, then added a few other abilities he thought a real Star Turtle should have. And voila- stats for A'Tuin.

I've looked at A'Tuin and was confused why it took epic toughness at all, since any creature with more than 60 HD will get more out of either improved toughness, or just boosting con twice. Also, I've thought about the importance of armor after a point. Because I think that once you're as large as a planet, it shouldn't be that hard to hit the creature, but it probably should be sufficently hard to hurt the creature, so it might have better spend the 41million feats boosting natural armor into either boosting fast healing or damage reduction, and if it had spent the 20m feats on epic toughness on epic consitution instead it whould have had about 4,000,000,000,000,000 hp or 4 quadrillion hp. Also, given that the books warn that A'Tuin might eventually get in a territory fight with another star turtle, how are they going to fight? They can't hit each other except on a nat 20, even then, they can't do enough damage to pierce DR or fast healing.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey guys!

As far as I can tell, base hit points should double with every size increase. Things like Constitution and Object hit point bonuses give added results.

The DMG rules for working out object hit points are illogical within the framework of the rules. Thats why they end up with ridiculous things like a 1 ton block falling on you dealing 20d6 damage and a 200 ton dragon falling on you dealing 4d8.

Or 5 ft. of hewn stone has 900 hp, while a Stone Golem has 107 hp.

The second problem is that the game will start to become unmanageable at a certain point, a point well below 15 millionth level.

As you yourself have seen zarquin, you have had to break numerous rules just so that the Iron Planet is able to hurt itself.

Once you start making arbitrary decisions you may as well throw the rules out.

 

[zarquin]

As far as I can tell, base hit points should double with every size increase. Things like Constitution and Object hit point bonuses give added results.

The DMG rules for working out object hit points are illogical within the framework of the rules. Thats why they end up with ridiculous things like a 1 ton block falling on you dealing 20d6 damage and a 200 ton dragon falling on you dealing 4d8.

Or 5 ft. of hewn stone has 900 hp, while a Stone Golem has 107 hp.

The second problem is that the game will start to become unmanageable at a certain point, a point well below 15 millionth level.

So then there really isn't any point to have size catagories for things above macro-titanic because the CR involved gets to be unwieldly and effectively impossible to put in normal game as anything other than background only which doesn't really need stats in the first place. Because Mega-Fine is going to have atleast 32,768 HD, which puts it in the 10,000+ CR range. which is what, EL 54? So is going to need a party of 2,000-3,000 HD characters to be able to be able for it to be anything other than a background only encounter, which means the Mega-rank is for Time Lord+ characters, and even then...

As you yourself have seen zarquin, you have had to break numerous rules just so that the Iron Planet is able to hurt itself.

Once you start making arbitrary decisions you may as well throw the rules out.

I didn't have to break any rules, I just made it's natural attacks do HD/8 d6 base damage, and that increase allowed it break it's own DR.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey zarquin mate!

So then there really isn't any point to have size catagories for things above macro-titanic because the CR involved gets to be unwieldly and effectively impossible to put in normal game as anything other than background only which doesn't really need stats in the first place. Because Mega-Fine is going to have atleast 32,768 HD, which puts it in the 10,000+ CR range. which is what, EL 54? So is going to need a party of 2,000-3,000 HD characters to be able to be able for it to be anything other than a background only encounter, which means the Mega-rank is for Time Lord+ characters, and even then...

As you note, its really only for High Lords, and even then it would have to be some ridiculously powerful High Lord.

I worked out the scaling prior to setting Hit Dice parameters for time lords. But its clear that simply continuing the scale so that time lords representing a universe would have ridiculous hit dice is self defeating and far to ponderous to be of any mechanical value whatsoever.

I didn't have to break any rules, I just made it's natural attacks do HD/8 d6 base damage, and that increase allowed it break it's own DR.

Exactly, thats a totally arbitrary method of determining damage dice...see the start of the Epic Bestiary Volume One, for details on this.

The damage scaling in the monster manual shows us that base damage doubles for every two size category increases.

 

[zarquin]

Hey zarquin mate!
Exactly, thats a totally arbitrary method of determining damage dice...see the start of the Epic Bestiary Volume One, for details on this.

The damage scaling in the monster manual shows us that base damage doubles for every two size category increases.

But that clearly doesn't work either, since the number of feats you get is going to double each size catagory. This means that your fast healing, DR, and HP will atleast double with each size catagory, meaning that you're going to run into the space turtle problem with creatures being unable to hurt themselves, or taking years of constant combat to do so. I mean even the golem I made takes VAST time to do sufficent damge to kill itself. If the golem always hit and always did max damage, it would still take about nine hundred thousand rounds to kill itself, which is about 2 months of constant pummelling.

 

[Strife]

I think battles between gigantic world Turtles should take that long
you could have your campaign take place during one of said events. A battle spanning hundreds of years...

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey zarquin!

But that clearly doesn't work either, since the number of feats you get is going to double each size catagory. This means that your fast healing, DR, and HP will atleast double with each size catagory,

Well if one character expends all their resources into increasing their damage reduction and another character spends all their resources increasing their strength then the two things will probably even out.

So I fail to see the problem.

meaning that you're going to run into the space turtle problem with creatures being unable to hurt themselves,

This problem only arises when you use RIDICULOUS hit dice. So my advice is don't.

or taking years of constant combat to do so.

Which would be suitably epic in itself but is totally pointless as a mechanic for a roleplaying game.

I mean even the golem I made takes VAST time to do sufficent damge to kill itself. If the golem always hit and always did max damage, it would still take about nine hundred thousand rounds to kill itself, which is about 2 months of constant pummelling.

If you want to make planet or larger entities then I suggest you use the Marvel Super Heroes RPG rather than d20 because d20 won't withstand the pressure.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Strife dude!

I think battles between gigantic world Turtles should take that long
you could have your campaign take place during one of said events. A battle spanning hundreds of years...

Indeed, however flavour aside, only a lunatic would consider incorporating such mechanics within a roleplaying game.

 

[Strife]

Being as the Damage reduction comes directly from feats in the case of a HD heavy creature, one should just note that it only takes 30 feats great strength to double the damage output of the creature, while this same number of feats in Damage Reduction only gains the creature 90/- more DR. I really do not see where one can get the "its too hard to kill problem"

I was thinking about what would happen if a mage tried to awaken a planet as an iron "golem". Using the rules that HD doubles for every size increase and that an iron golem is 11-22 HD as large creature and that a planet is a Mega-Large entity gives it between 11M-22M HD. For ease of though I gave it a nice and simple 15M HD.

Iron Planet:
Mega-Large Construct
Hit Dice: 15,000,000d10 +15,000,000,000,000 (15,000,082,500,000 hp)
Initive: -5 (Dex)
Speed: 240 ft (can't run)
AC: 153 (-42 size, -5 dex, 200 natural armor)
Attacks: 2 slams +11,250,000 + 1,000,000
Damage: 1,875,000d6 + 1,000,000
Face/Reach: Big/Far
Special Attacks: Breath Weapon
Special Qualities: Construct Traits, magic immunity, rust proof, DR: 3,000,000/-, Fast Healing: 2,000,000
Saves: ~7.5M for all
Abilities: Str ~2M, Dex 1, Con --, Int 9, Wis 12, Cha 7

with 2 million strength... would not that give it, about 133333 VSC, and since every 2 size categories its damage doubles thats 2^66666 x base damage, since im lazy use base damage 1d6, even though i know that is not true... its damage would be massive looks like it would kill itself in one hit... by those stats.

2^66666 D6 > 15,000,082,500,000 hp

a character or turtle with 88 VsC would kill it one blow,
since damage dice doubles every 2 sizes
2^44= 1.76x10^13 multiplier to damage dice
15000082500000= 1.5x10^13 HP


so a creature with more than 1330 strength could kill it.