Upper_Krust said:
Is the book the same shape as the Players Handbook for instance?
Not considering thickness, yes.
Upper_Krust said:
You could be twinned with my local gaming store in Belfast which is the worst game store in the known universe! Try this on for irony...I ordered the Tome of Battle last Summer and I remind them every month...they haven't even given me a pdf with just the text or nothing.
That's not irony, that's just pathetic.
A whole
year and they haven't gotten you a copy of the book? I know it requires international shipment, but come on! How do they stay in business?
Upper_Krust said:
You are forgetting a few things.
Forget, nothing. I'll answer one at a time.
Upper_Krust said:
1. It could be an automatic ability: Stench, Gaze, Aura, Poison Bite etc.
Yes it could, and in that case PCs will just be making their saves left and right. If they haven't rendered themselves immune somehow, that is, in which case the save simply doesn't happen (frequent example from my game:
Mind Blank vs. the
Confusion aura of an Uvuudaum). The ability just makes them roll more dice, and has no rules-significant effect on play. 1 in 20 simply isn't that common.
Upper_Krust said:
2. It could be one of multiple abilities...and you can cast multiple spells.
I have
no idea what you mean by this. Having multiple useless abilities is essentially the same as having one useless ability. They're still actions you don't want to take, because they don't help your position. Quantity does not improve quality.
Upper_Krust said:
3. Sometimes save or die effects will be your best course of attack.
Only if the ability has better than a snowball's chance in Hells of working. Otherwise, you spent an action (assuming it isn't automatic of course) for no effect, and thus gave the PCs a free round of actions to take against you. And with
Time Stop and
Temporal Acceleration (its psionic cousin, a 6th-level power to boot), one free action can quickly turn into four (or more, with Spell Stowaway- which my PCs all have since they love
Time Stop cascades and are deathly afraid of what an enemy might do against them with it).
In an Epic game-
any Epic game- the most precious resource in any combat is actions. Not spells, not hit points, not even ability points although that comes close. Actions are the most precious and important thing one can have or use. So if the monster spends an action on using a special ability, that special ability had better work, or it just wasted its most precious thing. Because of this principle,
no special ability, no matter how powerful or cool if it does work, is worth using if it only has a 1 in 20 chance to succeed. Automatic abilities do get around this, but unless they force the PCs to waste actions protecting themselves (and buff time usually doesn't happen in combat, I remind you, so those actions are generally "free" in that sense) or reversing their effects, they may as well not even exist for the purpose of combat or any other significant interaction.
Upper_Krust said:
I don't think there are enough to stipulate the majority will have such abilities - because they definately won't.
Those abilities are few and far between.
Okay, I'll grant that this depends on the group and its players- I'll just throw in my note that power-gamers and actual munchkins will find ways to acquire such abilities at the first opportunity and hold onto them like they're more precious than diamonds. But you did note in the CR calculator that "power-gamed" PCs should be treated as higher-level than they actually are, so you are certainly thinking about that sort of play in a general way at least.
For the record, my player group includes two really serious power-gamers, and a third player who could be peripherally considered one although he usually looks for something "cool" more than necessarily powerful or helpful. These three players, between them, help other players with their characters and generally do what they can to shift the game in their favor. One of the two serious power-gamers, a former college roommate of mine, got his degree in a double major in Mathematics and Statistics, and eagerly exploits any rules loophole he finds to the hilt- he's out to "win," pure and simple. So that's the perspective I approach this sort of discussion from.
Upper_Krust said:
If that particular ability is the monsters only recourse then it could well be a walk-over, but how often does it come down to that for epic monsters? Not all that often, they usually have a variety of attack methods.
...Which don't matter if they don't work.
See above point-by-point arguments.
Upper_Krust said:
I just think you guys are in for a rude awakening over this. Did the Surtur example teach us nothing? Added to which you may as well change the number of artifacts allowed to three and have one in-built Cloak of Resistance - because thats what you are going to need.
Not to mention the disparity between Spell DCs and Ability DCs...but heh, I only work here.
The disparity between spell DCs and ability DCs just means it becomes less useful (if not useless) for the monster to use any spells that aren't buffs or dispels, and there are some arguments among Epic gamers as to whether spending an action on a dispel (even a mighty
Disjunction) is really worth the action you gave up to set it off. I'm on the fence there, but I will note that I've strongly preferred to have PC-enemies who have their own lairs or strongholds set up
Disjunction traps rather than bother casting it themselves.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "Surtur example," but I do see a need to remind you that the most precious resource in an Epic game is actions. Actions are wasted if they have no effect, and the side which wastes the least actions wins.
Recently, the only enemies I've thrown at my Epic party that had them seriously afraid for their virtual lives were golems with an explosive death-throes ability, like the Orichalcum Guardian I had guarding an artifact they went after. They only survived that battle because the party's psionic item-crafter remembered that his sentient amulet had the
Damp Power ability, and thanks to various augmentations he'd been throwing into it over the course of his career it had an effective manifester level
just high enough to allow it to protect the entire party. Even with that, there were two party members left in single-digit hit points when the Nuke was said and done. Later on I threw some Plutonium Golems at them, courtesy of Ltheb if I recall correctly, and they shunted the constructs through a
Gate to the Outlands rather than face them directly.
On the topic of Betiary improvements, I'll echo dante's call for an errata file. The index you suggested (of non-monster things) is also an excellent suggestion; I know I've flipped randomly through my printed-from-the-PDF copies several times searching for a specific thing. A good index is the best part of any reference work, and a monster manual of any stripe is fundamentally a reference work.
EDIT: I did think of something. I thought you said somewhere that you were going to make clear which Divine (or greater) abilities the Adamic and higher dragon types get with each age category, but my print Bestiary has no such notes that I've found. Did you put those in, and if so, where are they?
