Immortals Handbook - Grimoire (Artifacts, Epic Magic discussion)

[dante58701]

I think wordings on damn near everything need a good looking over.

Too many abilities have the same name and different functionalities. That drives me nuts.

Epecially when were talking about divine, cosmic, and transcendental abilities in comparison to their divine template counterparts.

Not to mention prerequisite abilities arent noted anywhere.

Example...First One gets Transtemporal for free...but...doesnt get Slipstream.

Example...Elder Ones get Alter Reality but it works differently than the Alter Reality cosmic ability. This also drives me nuts.

As these abilities are a basis for magic items...it is very important that we get some sort of continuity on these abilities or they could end up confusing people.

I may always give them the prerequisites and tweak the abilities for continuity...but not everyone is able to figure this out without some official standards written down somewhere. Nor should they have to.

 

[zarquin]

character wealth progression

Kerrick, I have a slight issue with the idea of the scaled multiplier for the epic items, which is that what you're just effectively doing is changing the cost from bonus squared to bonus cubed. Even that doesn't scale well.

This are just done through the Epic progression rules, sadly I don't own the other books, yet


Let's run a minor thought experiment:
Bob the fighter is lazy, boring and exceedingly uninteresting. So he has no feats, skills, and has all base attributes at 10 and does not receive ability increases.

Bob has decided to make the Sword of Win, which will give the user an equal bonus to all attributes, attack bonus, and natural armor.

This sword has the follwing costs:
*10 - it's ALWAYS epic
*2 - it has multiple abilities that don't make sense to be placed on a sword
*2 - it's extremely silly
*2 - multiple non-similar abilites
*(1000[attribute bonus]*6[six attributes]+2000[natural armor bonus] + 2000[weapon enhancement bonus] )
* bonus squared.

so it's finale cost is 800,000 * bonus squared.

If we're still going by the 10% increase of wealth per CR +1 for epic wealth/

And because Bob is single-minded and lazy this is the only thing he will spend money on.
Note: if you really want me to use the 1/4th character wealth max for a single item, this will in fact make bob MORE effecient, since the item effectily costs 8* what it would cost to have each item use it's own slot.

Bob's sword will get a +1 bonus at 21st level assuming that this is the ONLY thing bob spends wealth on.
it will get a +2 at 36th level
+3 at 44th level
+10 at 69th level
+40 at 98th level
+1000 at 168th level
+1e6 at 311th level
+1e12 at 601th level

If we use the cubic progression of karrick's progression, slightly simplied that I'm just ALWAYS going to use the cube of the bonus, which should make this simpler to find the bonus for.
+1 at 21st again
+2 at 43rd level
+3 at 56th level
+10 at 94th level
+40 at 137th level
+1000 at 228th level
+1e6 at 456th level
+1e12 at 818th level

Since this game is meant to be designed for play up to ECL 1,000. I hope that this is made impossible. What we'd want is a cost to increase a bonus to be of the same rate of growth as the rate of wealth gain. Give or take some constant. Since "wealth" progression is almost always going to of an exponential model, we'd need an exponential model to govern cost. IE: if I double the bonus, I'd increase the cost by an order of magnitude, so that a +10 might cost 1M, but a +20 would cost 10M, +40 at 100M, etc...

The problem I have with using a logrithmic progression, IE: the increase in wealth between CR and CR+1 goes down to zero, is that again, it doesn't scale well, because eventually it might take hundreds or thousands of encouters to increase your bonus by +1, even if you just have a cost of bonus*1000. Although, yes I realize that the ECLs at that point, are silly beyond the point of extreme.

Using the bonus squared method, every 14 and a half levels I double my bonus
Using the bonus cubed method, every 21 and a half levels I double my bonus

Also, if we use the improved materials in the free section for up to Strong-Symmetric Matter, which requires a measly 800 strength to wield. it's 1e34 times as dense as neutronium, so requires an additional 565 strength above neutronium to wield. What does a STR based char do for increased damage past that?

 

[Pssthpok]

...if swinging a strong-symmetric matter warhammer ISN'T enough, I'd say they should retire into Supreme Goodhood, myself.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey there zarquin!

What did you think of my solution to wealth in Ascension? Assuming you own that?

Also, if we use the improved materials in the free section for up to Strong-Symmetric Matter, which requires a measly 800 strength to wield.

So common almost every High Lord will have it.

it's 1e34 times as dense as neutronium, so requires an additional 565 strength above neutronium to wield. What does a STR based char do for increased damage past that?

Take Infinite Strength, what else.

 

[zarquin]

What did you think of my solution to wealth in Ascension? Assuming you own that?

No, sadly I do not and am currenly incapable of getting it because I can't preorder anymore and it isn't sold yet

So common almost every High Lord will have it.

*Shudders at the thought of almost every high CR creature having a weapon with a 89,118,505 multiplier on base weapon damage*
Although, hurray for a Strong-Symmetric Matter Longsword doing an average of 400 million base damage.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey zarquin!

No, sadly I do not and am currenly incapable of getting it because I can't preorder anymore and it isn't sold yet

Oops. Well I should have it on sale soonish.

My artifact rules basically state that any epic character can have a maximum of four artifacts/epic items. That the total bonuses are:

Characters ECL divided by 2 = bonus squared x 10,000 gp

Characters ECL divided by 2.8 = bonus squared x 20,000 gp

e.g. a 50th-level character could own four artifacts/epic items worth approx. 6,250,000 gp each. Such as a +25 shield, +25 armour or a +17 weapon.

Usually I suggest that every item needs to use at least 50% of total bonuses for an enhancement bonus.

So a +25 Shield might be: A +13 Infinite Arrow Deflection (+6), Lighning Warding (+6) Shield.

*Shudders at the thought of almost every high CR creature having a weapon with a 89,118,505 multiplier on base weapon damage*

Although, hurray for a Strong-Symmetric Matter Longsword doing an average of 400 million base damage.

 

[zarquin]

Hey there zarquin!
What did you think of my solution to wealth in Ascension? Assuming you own that?
So common almost every High Lord will have it.

If the wealth from CR version 5 isn't that different that what the final version is, then I doubt anyone will be able to afford it. Since neutronium costs 6,635,500,000.
Strong-Symmetric-Matter costs about 1,429,580,000,000,000,000,000. This was found by the relationship that multipling the density by 64, increases the cost by 4 and increases the damage by 2, and strong symmetric matter is between 18 and 19 64-fold increases in density.

If you used the wealth^3*100 for PC wealth and can only spend 1/4th max wealth on a single item, the materials become available at levels:
643 for neutronium
1021 for Black Hole Matter
1629 for Dark Matter
and
3,852,615 for Strong-Symmetric-Matter

Because wealth increases cubically, you need to increase your level by 26% in order to double your wealth, and using materials to double the damage requires a quadruple increase in cost, which is a 60% increase in levels to quadruple wealth.

Also, I can't find the generalized relationship between EL and CR, although it looks like it's something similar to EL=2^(1+log3(CR)), atleast from version 5.

 

[WarDragon]

Issues like that are why U_K did away with wealth tables altogether. As he said above, pas a certain point, you get four artifacts that grow in power with your ECL.

Also, I can't find the generalized relationship between EL and CR, although it looks like it's something similar to EL=2^(1+log3(CR)), atleast from version 5.

Isn't it just CR = 2/3*ECL?

 

[zarquin]

Issues like that are why U_K did away with wealth tables altogether. As he said above, pas a certain point, you get four artifacts that grow in power with your ECL.

Hmm... so then what you'd need is an Item effect of something like
Increase density[DDQ]: Octoples the density of the object. Increases the base physical damage, AC provided by, hardness and item hp by an alternting factor of 4/3 then 3/2.
OR to keep it simplier,
Increase density[DDQ]: Increases the density of the object by 64 fold. Increases the base physical damage, AC provided by, hardness and item hp by an factor of 2.

Note: when using this, two increases represent a 64 fold or a 4096 fold increase in weight, depending on using the first or second ability.

Isn't it just CR = 2/3*ECL?

I was referring to EL, and I just realized that it's decided by the CR*2=EL+4-6.

 

[WarDragon]

As near as I can tell, he just gives deities orichalcum equipment for free, to keep pace with their Strength scores. And then, there's Unearthly Weapon Specialization...