Immortals Handbook Epic Bestiary (now available)

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again matey!

Fieari, my take on this is largely influenced by the Comic Books and U_K's sidereal classification. I believe she (he) is probably a First One. As such, I would think the only template you would need would be the First One template.

Thats Entropy, not necessarily death. Death is the end of life, but the concept assumes life in the first place, whereas Entropy is 'born' out of nothingness. So as such I think 'Death' would be a mortal concept and hence I have my Grim Reaper as a 'mere' Greater Deity.

If I were statting Death I would aim for ECL in the range of 480 to 560 with a corresponding CR of 320 to 375 (WoTC) but I could see how reasonable minds could differ.

If you go with Death as a First One you'd have to make some determination as to what Dimension she's linked with. I think Entropy and Fate would be the most likely with Spirit being another possibility. Personally, I would go with Fate.

The First Ones (for all intents and purposes) 'are' their dimensions.

I would probably classify Death as an Outsider as opposed to Undead simply because I don't think the Undead vulnerabilities dovetail with a being of Death's majesty. I also believe that it's implicit in the Epic Bestiary that Sin likely created Undead which would subordinate Death to Sin which is inappropriate. It'll be neat to see how U_K handles this stuff.

Well to be honest I have pretty much explained this in the Bestiary.

Thanatos/Grim Reaper (Greater Deity) is Death.

Sin/Satan (First One) is Matter (and by association Evil).

Tamas (First One) is Entropy

Aditi/Infinity (First One) is Fate/Chance/Probability.

You could do a subordinate Death-type, i.e. the Angel of Death or whatnot. I would guess such a being would be an Intermediate or Greater Deity with the Outsider Type.

You could always have Avatars and Aspects of Thanatos/Death. Aspects could be the things you fight when you draw the Death card in a Deck of Many Things etc.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Death in my campaign is similar to what U_K would call an Elder One. Powerwise, he/she/it is between Elder Ones and Old Ones; philosophically, she/he/it is a Greater God.

From U_K's Superhero Relativity:

NB. A few of the approximate masses attributed to celestial bodies are out by a few orders of magnitudes (The Sun is 1E30 Tons, Galaxy should be 1E41 Tons for instance, Super-cluster could be 1E52, Universe is probably 1E63+). Although obviously these things do vary by orders of magnitude, so, for the sake of maintaining balance I kept it all increasing at the same rate (from Class 100 onwards at least).

Oddly, I was just working on something similar (not for D&D), so I actually have a good table here. 1e41 tons is hefty for a galaxy; I have 3e39 for the Milky Way. 1e52 is just out of the question for a supercluster; the 1e47 you have is closer, although I have yet smaller (2e43) for Virgo. Likewise, the observable universe is probably around 1e50 tons.

Since I'm "not a fan" of superheros and modern physics in my D&D, I'm not annoyed by this being off by a few orders of magnitude. Still, I thought I'd point it out. Here's the high end of the mass table I constructed (in metric tons):
large stellar black hole 2E+28
supergiant (Betelgeuse) 4E+28
hypergiant (LBV 1806-20) 3E+29
supermassive black hole 2E+33
dwarf galaxy (Canis Major) 1E+37
galaxy (Milky Way) 3E+39
Virgo Supercluster 2E+43
observable universe 3E+49

(I was using this to put the Schwarzschild radius and Hawking radiation in perspective, if you're curious.)


I'll see if I can do some number crunching on the multiplier for Transcendental and beyond abilities.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

U_K, heres a question you might be able to answer - Are Divine, Cosmic, Transendental, and Omnific powers their own classification of Power, or do they still fall into the Extraordinary, Spell-Like, or Supernatural ability fields? Or do you have a class all their own for them, like in Deities and Demi Gods (3e) where they make the Salient abilities their own catagory, or do you group them by ranking (Ex - Transendental Powers might be listed as "Planet Erasing Beam (Tr):" or "Cosmic Weapon Focus (Cs):" or my favorite "Summon Great, Great, Great Wyrm Nexus Dragon (Om):" ), or are they all grouped into one catagory.

Because as written, though it may not have been WoTC's intention, each classification has rules-weaknesses, such as Ex abilities, while safe from Anti-Magic, are subject to some obscure class features and spells, such as a line of spells from serpent kingdoms (3.5 FR supplement).
If you have the book, you know what I am talking about, but If not, just imagine a wizard walking up to Algol (Somehow) and casting a spell, and stealing Algol's mind-warping powers (or whatever powers he might have) due to its ability classification. Oh no, poor wizard loses one whole level, but how much does his ECL go up by? Another class feature I saw (dont remember what class got it off hand) let the character duplicate any Ex ability he has ever seen. The Neutronium Golem's X-Ray Pulse is Ex, isnt it? With an epic Scrying spell...
Of course there are so many feats and classes and spells in 3E that errata and Rule - 0 need to be applied on a case by case basis. ("No mister wizard, Algol foresaw your casting of the spell, and redirected it. You stole his insanity, and are now a babbleing mess. Algol, now completely sane, goes an conquers the universe." )
I just wanted to point this out incase something obvious has been missed, and due to some issue like the ones listed above, your system inadvertently becomes a muchkin-fest (which while fun, defeats the point).

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

U_K
Heh, afterthought - Does the Nexus Dragon's Breath ignore Dimentional Anchor/Lock? Seems like the only way to survive.

 

[historian]

Hey U_K!

Is Challenge Rating a he or she, I thought it was an it.

My bad.

Thats Entropy, not necessarily death. Death is the end of life, but the concept assumes life in the first place, whereas Entropy is 'born' out of nothingness. So as such I think 'Death' would be a mortal concept and hence I have my Grim Reaper as a 'mere' Greater Deity.

I understand the difference between Entropy and Death.

However, as I qualified, I have also been heavily influenced by Comic mythology.

I love your Cosmos and that will be my official version;

nevertheless, Thanos must have loved someone.

The First Ones (for all intents and purposes) 'are' their dimensions.

I know . . . semantics.

Well to be honest I have pretty much explained this in the Bestiary.

Maybe, but Fieari's question nevertheless stimulated debate.

This is fandom and you're just going to have to get used to it.

Just as long as I don't have to do the stat block.

I hope it's worth it?

Bring on Ascension!

 

[Fieari]

Well, I've had my fun. How about an Akalich Fallen Malakim Wizard 8/Cleric 8/True Necromancer 15? 75 HD of devestating horror, almost impossible to kill except by the most powerful holy beings, and bundled with 4 artifacts using the suggested rules U_K posted earlier.

The Angel of Death

 

[Servitor of Wrath]

Incidentally I was working a bit of math trying to proxy one possible CR for HOU Thanos.

Who's Thanos, and what is HOU?

By rough estimate I would guess that the HOU would give one virtually all of the Transcendental and Omnific abilities. Using a x2 multiplier for Transcendental abilities and a x10 multiplier for Omnific, and assuming 50 Transcendental and 25 Omnific, I came up with a rough estimate of 225E40 CR (200 * multipliers).

Yikes!

 

[historian]

Hey Servitor:

Who's Thanos, and what is HOU?

Thanos is a Marvel Comics persona. You can find his profile here:

http://www.marveldirectory.com/individuals/t/thanos.htm

The HOU is an acronym for the Heart of the Universe, an artifact that would if it could be "controlled" would make the wielder something along the lines of the Supreme Being (arguably).

I pulled the following description from Marvel's official website:

"Following these events, there appeared the powerful Ankhenaten, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who sought out the mystical object known as the Heart of the Universe, from which all energy physical and metaphysical emanates, and thereby gained infinite power. Several heroes tried to stop Ankhenaten’s rampage, and the conflict gathered Thanos, Galactus, and other cosmic beings as well. Through a mixture of guile and power, Thanos stole the Heart of the Universe, merging with it to make himself like unto a god. First defeating Ankhenaten in ancient Egypt, Thanos remade the universe as if Ankhenaten never appeared. The Marvel Universe seemed once again safe."

"Nevertheless, a cabal of cosmic beings of power, such as Eternity and the Living Tribunal, ruled that the now-omnipotent Thanos must be stopped. They prompted an assembly of nearly every super-being, god, and cosmic entity (such as Galactus and the Celestials) help take Thanos down. Dismissing them all, Thanos proved to be too powerful. He could even kill a Celestial with but a glance! Thanos decided that the true sign of his ultimate power would be to destroy the universe and become the one true supreme being. However, after doing so, he realized that this role was ultimately hollow, unfulfilling and empty, not to mention unnatural. He subsequently undid the destruction of the universe and obliterated the Heart from existence. Thus, not only did he strip himself of power, but he made the entire series of events null and void."


at

http://www.marvel.com/universe/Marvel_Universe

U_K has incorporated the HOU into his website commentary:

http://www.immortalshandbook.com/sermon2.htm

Yikes!

Well, in fairness I was merely extrapolating from U_K's Transcendent (x2) and Omnific (x10?)
multipliers with an idea that there might be roughly 50 Transcendent abilities and 25 Omnific abilities.

I believe U_K has played around with even CRs orders of magnitude higher than what I came up with in designing the IH.

 

[Saerynishar]

Well, I've had my fun. How about an Akalich Fallen Malakim Wizard 8/Cleric 8/True Necromancer 15? 75 HD of devestating horror, almost impossible to kill except by the most powerful holy beings, and bundled with 4 artifacts using the suggested rules U_K posted earlier.

The Angel of Death

I can't help but wish that death had some unique epic spells or something.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

U_K!
Real quick question (Wait, you don't believe me? ). Will Ascension feature *some* of your rules governing immortal Artifact Creation and/or Spellcasting? As in, could you use it stand-alone without the Grimoir and build a complete immortal, or does the grimoir hold the bulk of the info on spellcasting and Artifact creation?