Upper_Krust said:
Well if you have 4 PCs one of them will fail (on average) once every five attempts. Which I actually think is a pretty good return on save or die effects.
That assumes the PCs aren't immune to the "die" part in the first place, never a safe assumption at Epic level- and further assumes the monster lives long enough to get off that many attempts. In my experience, battles against opponents of less than, say, CR one-and-a-half times the average party level end in one or two rounds, one way or the other. Parties at these levels can dish out such enormous damage, including ability damage and energy drains to help other effects along, that monsters of a CR less than that just don't last longer than a round or two (unless they manage to retreat somehow).
It isn't the basic class abilities and spells that deal this damage, mind you; it's the combinations of super-powerful effects which build on each other synergistically to produce combos of incredible might. The
Time Stop cascades I mentioned in my previous post, available only when two PC spellcasters have both the spell and the Spell Stowaway feat for it, is but one example. One spellcaster with both can't produce a cascade- only two PCs working together can.
Upper_Krust said:
If you have multiple abilities which force saving throws then if a PC has to make 3 saves per round thats 3/20 chance of failure rather than 1/20.
To be quite precise, the chance is closer to 14% rather than 15%, since simple addition of the chances gives an incorrect result- but you are correct in the basic conclusion. However, you in turn need to remember that a monster with multiple such abilities will typically have many if not most of those abilities negated by PC items or buffs granting immunities. This, then, reduces it to the monster having only a few tricks it can use to do real harm- and if that harm can be negated 95% of the time by the player rolling a die, then it is essentially a wasted ability. Not quite negated, but close enough not to matter in a halfway-decent battle plan.
Upper_Krust said:
But your argument is only really a problem if that is the monsters only source of attack - which (at epic levels) almost certainly is not the case.
No, it is not! You completely ignored the core of my argument, which was that
if the monster spent an action to use the ability, then the action is wasted. Whether that is the monster's sole means of attack is completely irrelevant- the only relevant fact is that the monster, by using the attack that the PC saved against and thus negated, spent an action which had no effect. And to restate/paraphrase the principle I articulated in that last post, "he who wastes the least actions, wins." It's like making a bad move in a chess match- it may or may not immediately cost you the game, but you'll sure as Hells wish you'd made a different move when the canny opponent takes advantage of your mistake and doesn't make one of his own.
Upper_Krust said:
So what you are saying is that low DCs is a problem for a tiny minority of monsters. But I am trying to look at the bigger picture.
Perhaps, but in whatever thought process you are using to do so, you are
ignoring the most important part of the big picture.
You're the one who appreciates simplicity, so consider it this way: ultimately,
nothing matters except that the monster not waste its actions. If it spends an action to use an ability and that ability has no significant effect, then the action was wasted. Therefore, using an ability which has an extremely high chance (like, say, 90% or higher) of not working, is an advance-waste of an action, and not worth doing unless the monster literally has no other option available to it.
Upper_Krust said:
Overlooking the fact that most epic monsters have multiple simultaneous abilities.
Irrelevant. The only case where your fact becomes relevant to the "do not waste actions" rule, is when one or more of those multiple abilities you're talking about are constant abilities rather than activated. Constant abilities do not require actions to use, and therefore do not trip the "do not waste actions" rule. Any other ability, simply because it requires activation, by definition within the game system itself requires an action to use. The type of action doesn't matter as much as the fact that it requires one in the first place. Free actions sort of get around this problem by being an inexhaustible resource, even within a single round, but abilities which are activated as free actions (as opposed to, say, swift or immediate, which are one-per-round only) are few and far between.
Upper_Krust said:
The flipside of your argument is a situation whereby your PCs simply not be able to make their saves. Which encourages the dreaded absolutes of immunities...and of course if everyone is immune to the power it doesn't matter whther the DC is 1 million or not. So it becomes redundant nonetheless.
The immunities come into play anyway in Epic, particularly if you have players with any inclination whatsoever to min/maxing or powergaming. But you are correct; making a situation where the PCs are almost certainly doomed to failure has its own down sides. The question then becomes: if we
must choose between nearly-automatic-success and nearly-automatic-failure, which to choose? Or is there somehow a way allowing us to avoid that unpleasant choice?
Upper_Krust said:
My type of gamers!
But you shouldn't have to be a power gamer just to survive.
Agreed, but the down side of having a seriously powergamed PC in a party where not every character is so powergamed is that the powergamed PC becomes capable of overshadowing everybody else. A balance must be maintained. Fortunately, my Epic party has gotten around this by evolving in such a manner that the non-powergamed characters have their own niches in the party that none of the real powergame characters can touch- for example, the party Bard (yes, the party has a single-classed Bard at 32nd level) is the negotiator, and the one who always, always, always makes the skill checks for Diplomacy, or Information Gathering, or the like. The power-party members don't dare go shopping without her; even the Sorceress with her +16 to CHA for everybody within 30 feet Epic buff (or whatever the bonus is- I can't remember off the top of my head since everybody's just assumed it's active for most rolls for the last several months of real time) can't come close to touching a +60-odd modifier on Diplomacy checks.
Upper_Krust said:
I have a few ideas on making spells relevant which will surface in the Grimoire.
Nice to know, and kudos for thinking about it- but it doesn't help the rest of us in the near term.
Upper_Krust said:
The original Surtur's DCs were so high they were virtually impossible to save against even for extreme min/maxed PCs of the appropriate level.
Ah yes, I remember now. And now I have to say: "ah, my kind of monster!"
Upper_Krust said:
Knowing your players are powergamers though - shouldn't you be upping the ante if they are comfortably dealing with creatures of the normal CR range...?
Now that I mentioned the fact that the party's single-classed Bard is 32nd level, you perhaps have a better idea of exactly what I have been doing- since I really did throw an Orichalcum Guardian at them. It was given a serious disadvantage in being stuck on terrain that largely prevented it from moving, at the time, but even considering that- and even when I tell you the party has 7 PCs in it- compare the CRs here.
The party used up almost everything they had to bring it down (The party Sorceress, for example,
and her Eidolon with her, was left with
no spell slots above 0th level at the end of the fight- literally tapped out completely), and almost didn't survive its death throes when they finally did.
I have to say, my highlight during the battle- other than nearly killing all but two PCs with the final Nuke (until the damn psionicist remembered his amulet- curses!), was when the Guardian fired a Plasma Beam at the party tank. He was protected by a Peripety-like effect that just bounced the beam back onto the Guardian, but boy oh boy did the players' faces go white when they saw how many dice I had the die-roller program make! Plus the final damage tally (some 3500-odd- it rolled slightly high), that was classic.
Upper_Krust said:
I must admit I like a challenge, I'll have to design some new monsters to give your group a test (while not obliterating them through sheer power).
I'll happily consider any such monster you design, but do keep in mind the numbers and situations I've given up above. Party Sorceress goes around constantly with her "Aura of Glory" which grants a high CHA bonus (I'm pretty sure it's higher than +16) to every ally within 30 feet, she also goes around with an Eidolon that's nearly as powerful as she is, and she's even invented an Epic spell using the Ward seed that stops specific nasty effects like
Blasphemy (the only one she's actually set it to so far) and then uses the energy to slap the effect's caster with damage. The party tank (the player with the double-major degree) is the one with a Greatsword that's been imbued with, among other things, the ability to use
Giant Size on the character 3 times per day- and has piled so many carefully-chosen magic items of various types on himself that his
touch AC is in the high 40s. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, the Sorceress is actually a Mystic Theurge with Druid, too. She has access to 5th-level Divine spells in addition to her extreme Arcane nastiness, if my memory serves.
And there are five other characters in this party, all of them partially min-maxed thanks to the efforts of the above two players- to say nothing of the efforts of the other five players, two of whom are also powergamers to a significant degree (just, not
as significant as the primary two). The party ranges in level from 30th (the psionic item-crafter whose amulet saved the party's collective hide from the Nuke) to 33rd (the tank and the Sorceress, after the most recent adventure). And actually I have to grant an XP award for finishing up a major plot arc in the next session, so the lower-level members of the group are likely to be catching up slightly.
Upper_Krust said:
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.
Happy to do it, particularly since you don't have your copy yet! Seriously, that's just wrong, that we got our copies before the
author of the freakin' book did!
Upper_Krust said:
I didn't mention them because the Void Dragon doesn't have one and I had no space to fit it in...trust the void not to have any space.
Interdimensional is the Nexus cosmic, while Time Folding was the Cometary's Divine.
Fair enough. Thanks for the notes here at least.
That's probably worth putting into an errata file if you make one, and in any case you should try to make room for it in future Bestiary supplements when you show more such dragons. The up side there is, when you get around to those, Ascension should be complete and even in stores, in print form. So you can then refer to the appropriate powers directly by name, with confidence that people using the Bestiary will know what you're talking about (or at least have an idea where to go to learn).
Now, I need to start thinking about what sorts of Adamic and Nehasch- ah, damn, I hate spelling that word, you know what I mean
- Dragons to make for myself.
