NEW Immortals Handbook - Ascension thread

[dante58701]

Why is the hypocrisy still growing here...

...???...

...powergaming isn't the issue.

The issue is powergaming without any sense of balance. Without using the rules as they are meant to be used.

I love powergaming...so your assumptions are not only idiotic. They are way off base. The problem is that the ELH deity has almost no abilities, while the Immortal's Handbook deity has all kinds of nifty abilities that the Hecaton would no doubt possess if people were not cheating.

What fun is it to beat a monster that has no way to fight back, simply because the people using it aren't giving it access to the same advantages they have access to.

Im sorry but my stance is SOLID...he cheated by not revising the Hecaton.

Essentially putting himself on GODMODE.

Besides which Krusty has already stated that he disagrees with the Challenge Ratings of many many creatures in the old rules.

And where were the prison warden gods guarding the Hecaton, or the Hecatons countless mindless loyal psycho cultists.

He didnt earn the right to say he fairly killed a Hecaton. He cheated. It's just a simple fact. Get over it.

 

[Axolotl]

Saying that a set of rules is balenced and then saying that the reason it's more powerful than is standerd is because the standerd set is weak is hipocrasy.

 

[WarDragon]

...powergaming isn't the issue.

Way to directly contradict what you said in your last post.

Min-maxing any character is bad roleplaying. Because by that point it becomes ROLLplaying, rather than ROLEplaying

.

If you're claiming that two creatures, one vastly more powerful than the other, have the same CR, that is blatantly false. The CR system means nothing if that is the case. Immortals' Handbook isn't an entirely new system Dante, it's still D&D, and a CR 50 from the Beastiary should be no more difficult to defeat than a CR 50 from the ELH, regardless of how many abilities they had.

I saw an ECL 50 character, without excessive min-maxing defeating a CR 50 monster, solo. That's all that's relevent here. Either the Krustian system is broken regardlessof how it's min-maxed, or the monster is under-CR'd.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Thaumaturgus!

I saw the subject of 4th edition come up as I've skimmed through this long thread. From what I've seen of the Immortals Handbook, WotC really should get Upper Krust on the team that designs the 4th edition SRD epic rules

Thanks for the kind words.

I am sure 4th Edition will end up with Immortals rules...official or not.

It would be nice to work with WotC on such a thing, I have far too many ideas and not the time or resources to exploit them all myself.

 

[WarDragon]

Oh, and Dante; don't expect a reply if you keep deepening that hole you dug yourself. I'm ignoring you from here on out, as well.

 

[dante58701]

Minmaxing isn't the same as powergaming. Minmaxing is using player knowledge of a set of rules.

Powergaming is just gaining so many experiance points your head bursts.

 

[dante58701]

Saying that a set of rules is balenced and then saying that the reason it's more powerful than is standerd is because the standerd set is weak is hipocrasy.

This is not hypocrisy at all actually. It is simply pointing out that if you are going to use a set of Epic Level rules that vary from the WOTC standard Epic Level rules, you need to apply the new rules (Immortal's Handbook) to the old monsters (Epic Level Handbook) or you are just exploiting those variances inherent in the two systems.

In other words...it's cheating.

Either the more powerful rules are to apply to both sides of the equation (PC and NPC) or you are going to have a GIGANTIC DISCREPANCY!!!

Am I really the only one who sees this glaring error?!?!

If you give all the coconuts to one team (PC) and not the other (NPC) the team with the most coconuts is obviously going to win. Because someone cheated and slipped the one team (PC) all the coconuts.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Pssthpok dude!

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but UK's epic stuff breaks rather easily... at least it does under practical game-play.

Well it breaks, but it does so less easily than WotCs core rules...*cough* Hulking Hurler *cough*.

I saw a 30th-level hero deity one-round a Hecatoncheires using nothing more than SRD and IHB. The man has good ideas, but under-cooked execution (thanks to insisting that he alone do the work rather than share the thunder with a design team;

What would I pay them with? Are there designers out there who who take a share of profits rather than a fixed wage? If so let them be known.

a flaw that will bring his entire effort down around him, as we're already seeing) and terrible consistency (thanks again to his inability to work with others; I mean... when's the last time you paid for a book not knowing that it wasn't even typed or fully thought-out?).

The only section that wasn't fully fleshed out (at time of beta release) were the Portfolios. Admittedly that was my fault for changing things mid-way through.

All of which leads to a neat-looking set of immortal rules (eventually), but ones that have had little to no playtesting (certainly no documented playtesting) and egregious mechanical loopholes.

The worship points system has been playtested. As for mechanical loopholes, its an impossibility to have that many options at that level of power using the d20 system and there not be loopholes.

Me, I'm looking forward to 4th; I hope it fixes the class-to-class imbalances we saw in 3.x and I plan on only using finished products for any deities for whom I absolutely need stats.

Thanks for the feedback mate.

 

[dante58701]

Personally I just slap the templates on the old monsters to keep them within the concept that fiends are planar races. Especially since in their ecologies...they are. I dont buy that all demons or devils were once mortals or that all of them are divinities of varying power. So in my capaigns those that are divine are a might bit more powerful. Which keeps my players in line. It also challenges my favorite powergamer.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello there dante!

While I appreciate the (misguided and unnecessary) defense, calm down, take a deep breath and listen...

This is not hypocrisy at all actually. It is simply pointing out that if you are going to use a set of Epic Level rules that vary from the WOTC standard Epic Level rules, you need to apply the new rules (Immortal's Handbook) to the old monsters (Epic Level Handbook) or you are just exploiting those variances inherent in the two systems.

In other words...it's cheating.

Either the more powerful rules are to apply to both sides of the equation (PC and NPC) or you are going to have a GIGANTIC DISCREPANCY!!!

Am I really the only one who sees this glaring error?!?!

If you give all the coconuts to one team (PC) and not the other (NPC) the team with the most coconuts is obviously going to win. Because someone cheated and slipped the one team (PC) all the coconuts.

What Pssthpok is saying is that with the IH he can build a Hero-deity which will wreck a Hecatonchiere. That means the character is punching way above its weight. Its an ECL 45 (or whatever) character beating a CR 57 (or whatever) monster on its own.

Now of course there are a few things Pssthpok may or may not have taken into account.

1. The Hecatonchiere Challenge Rating is almost certainly dodgy (that includes my v5 CR for it).

2. By min/maxing, power gaming and cherry picking magic items its easily possible to add +30% effectiveness to any character (ie. ECL 60).

3. Like the oft mentioned Tarrasque weakness against flying opponents the Hecatonchiere is likewise a creature of habit. It is well within the reach of epic characters (certainly those of sufficient level to fight a monster of its supposed CR) to have sufficient damage reduction to render the monster relatively impotent. Therefore we can conclude that the design of the monster is a tad lopsided.

4. Could you build a Hecatonchiere of equal CR that was a more serious threat - of course you could...but as Pssthpok mentioned, that would probably take me a month at my current rate...and I suspect neither of us are joking on that...that said, I like a challenge...

c) I challenge you to build such a being and not be able to one-round the ELH Hec, which was the example (not some massively-advanced Hec designed solely to support your fallacious claims that I am a 'cheat'); use only the SRD and the IHB: 30th-level Core fighter Hero-deity. Having a x7 crit modifier with Uncanny Power Attack makes for a heavy-hitter.

...What happens if I give the Hecatonchiere's armour the Heavy Fortification special ability? Does your hero-deity then still defeat it in one round?

I know you can undo half of the fortification with the appropriate epic feat/divine ability, but is that enough for you to statistically drop it in one round I wonder?