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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4171110" data-attributes="member: 2067">The Abominations from the Epic Level Handbook are all sorts of cool, so lets see some comparison.Fluff/Description: The new one is very practical; it matches the illustration from the ELH pretty nicely, though I admit to being more partial to the earlier, more evocative writing style, with the multiple forms and the "two or more emerald eyes." I think the eyes gave it an especially creepy kick, glowing out from the form. "Misty Cat Centaur" is a little "??" Still, I like that 4e is being a bit more grounded with the description, at least it adds some standardization to the critters.Level: Original is CR 25 (about Level 25 Solo), this baby is a level 26 Elite, roughly on par.Numbers: As we might've guessed, they're mostly lower -- lower AC, lower HP. Higher Defenses/Saves, that's kind of neat. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Abilities: Here's where things get most interesting. The old Phane had a rather confusing cocktail of "Stop!"-based abilities, and 4e is very much about removing the "Save Or Don't Have Any Fun" effects. The most interesting of these include the ability to "steal the future" from enemies that it keeps in stasis, and the ability to summon an "alternate parallel time duplicate"I see the new phane has none of these interesting abilities, but gets some abilities to stun, slow, and weaken...kind of evocative, I guess, but....meh....Verdict: Eh...seems kind of dull in comparison to the original. What this bad boy needs is (a) an ability to "steal time" from the PC's, and (b) an ability to summon an evil mirror cowboy universe version of a PC. It also needs to make that cosmetic effect something slightly more evocative than "I look old for a few rounds." Proposals include:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Give it an ability, perhaps at a recharge to steal actions from the PC's. On a successful attack, it grabs, say, a standard action: the PC can't use it on their turn, but on the next turn, the Phane gains an extra action. Or perhaps it steals action points. Or perhaps it takes minor actions and combines them into bigger actions. This might mean making it a Solo monster?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Give it an ability to "stop time," from a fluff standpoint, not a combat standpoint. When given five minutes, it can put a captured victim into stasis. These are how they feed -- victims in this stasis age unnaturally fast, years in days, and when they die of old age, they fall back "into time," though the whole thing seems instant from their POV. Because not participating is not fun, don't let it be a combat ability.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The "Parallel Past Time Duplicate" is basically a quick template -- any creature -2 levels, weirds you out when you kill it if you *are* it? Sounds like the perfect thing to throw into the mix alongside the Phane itself. </li> </ul>Overall, the mechanics look much better than 3e, but it looks shallower. All of its abilities are variations on "damage + status." That can work, but if that's all you have, it's a little dull. Compared to the ELH version, it's missing some of its most interesting abilities. Though these abilities weren't implemented very well, I'm sure they could've been reworked, and it would've left the phane significantly more inspiring to me as an adversary because it could do something different. With that much stuff it could do, though, it might be better off being a solo challenge. Given its reputation in the ELH, I'm pretty comfortable with that.</blockquote>

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