RangerWickett
Legend
It was a powergamer's wet dream.
Today, I had my first 20th-level playtest of the revised Elements of Magic rules, which will be released soon by E.N.Publishing. I've done a lot of playtests of 10th level or lower, and I've sorta eyeballed the higher level powers, but today's my last big bash with my friends before we go back to our respective colleges after Christmas break, so we decided to bust out old PCs, convert them to the new EOM rules, and send them against a Tarrasque. We just had two PCs, a fighter, and a wizard. It was dead in just over two rounds.
Note to self: never have Tarrasques swallow the fighter.
So, the Elements of Magic rules let you make spells up to do pretty much anything you want, with the only limits being how many Magic Points (MP) you have, and your caster level. I'd figured out costs for all sorts of things, to balance the extra flexibility of this system versus the core rules. But I hadn't considered a few really easy way of breaking the system.
Problem one, infuse time lets you replicate haste and time stop. They're expensive, but you can do it. The rules also let you have the spell affect targets other than yourself, so the PC wizard cast what he called 'bullet time' on the fighter, and though I thought it was balanced when the wizard is just casting spells, apparently being able to get in 12 attacks without the enemy moving is a bit much. I'll have to correct that.
Problem two, the Tarrasque swallowed the fighter, and it's AC is lower inside its mouth than outside on its body. The wizard took advantage of this and combined a small teleport spell with the most powerful Strength buff spell he could find, so he can cast through the Tarrasque into its gullet. I'll have to correct that too.
Problem three, the wizard player abused a few rules and found a way to split himself into two, each of which could cast spells, so he was sort of super-hastened. I wanted to have rules let you turn yourself into a swarm of creatures instead of just one creature, and so he turned himself into a swarm of humans. And then he bullet-timed himself (both of him) so that each of him was casting 3 spells a round.
Problem four, the fight was designed to be underground so I could make sure the PCs wouldn't just fly over it and pepper it with spells and arrows. So the wizard transformed part of the ceiling stone into water, in such a way to cut it out and let the rocks fall on the Tarrasque. A huge chunk of ceiling falling 50 feet was enough to deal, like, 300 points of damage.
So sure, the fighter ended at only 20 HP, and the wizard ended with only 10 of his about 350 MP, so I suppose it wasn't actually that overpowered. After all, the monster is CR 20, so two 20th level PCs taking it out that fast isn't too bad. But it just seems so bizarrely wrong.
I enjoyed it, but I'm going to have to look at a few of these new spell options. I didn't even mention the spell I actually refused to let him do, to just create a teleportation field around the fighter to make attacks against him shift elsewhere. It was fun, though.
Any of you got nice, high-level, super-fast kills? Any of you fought the Tarrasque?
Today, I had my first 20th-level playtest of the revised Elements of Magic rules, which will be released soon by E.N.Publishing. I've done a lot of playtests of 10th level or lower, and I've sorta eyeballed the higher level powers, but today's my last big bash with my friends before we go back to our respective colleges after Christmas break, so we decided to bust out old PCs, convert them to the new EOM rules, and send them against a Tarrasque. We just had two PCs, a fighter, and a wizard. It was dead in just over two rounds.
Note to self: never have Tarrasques swallow the fighter.
So, the Elements of Magic rules let you make spells up to do pretty much anything you want, with the only limits being how many Magic Points (MP) you have, and your caster level. I'd figured out costs for all sorts of things, to balance the extra flexibility of this system versus the core rules. But I hadn't considered a few really easy way of breaking the system.
Problem one, infuse time lets you replicate haste and time stop. They're expensive, but you can do it. The rules also let you have the spell affect targets other than yourself, so the PC wizard cast what he called 'bullet time' on the fighter, and though I thought it was balanced when the wizard is just casting spells, apparently being able to get in 12 attacks without the enemy moving is a bit much. I'll have to correct that.
Problem two, the Tarrasque swallowed the fighter, and it's AC is lower inside its mouth than outside on its body. The wizard took advantage of this and combined a small teleport spell with the most powerful Strength buff spell he could find, so he can cast through the Tarrasque into its gullet. I'll have to correct that too.
Problem three, the wizard player abused a few rules and found a way to split himself into two, each of which could cast spells, so he was sort of super-hastened. I wanted to have rules let you turn yourself into a swarm of creatures instead of just one creature, and so he turned himself into a swarm of humans. And then he bullet-timed himself (both of him) so that each of him was casting 3 spells a round.
Problem four, the fight was designed to be underground so I could make sure the PCs wouldn't just fly over it and pepper it with spells and arrows. So the wizard transformed part of the ceiling stone into water, in such a way to cut it out and let the rocks fall on the Tarrasque. A huge chunk of ceiling falling 50 feet was enough to deal, like, 300 points of damage.
So sure, the fighter ended at only 20 HP, and the wizard ended with only 10 of his about 350 MP, so I suppose it wasn't actually that overpowered. After all, the monster is CR 20, so two 20th level PCs taking it out that fast isn't too bad. But it just seems so bizarrely wrong.
I enjoyed it, but I'm going to have to look at a few of these new spell options. I didn't even mention the spell I actually refused to let him do, to just create a teleportation field around the fighter to make attacks against him shift elsewhere. It was fun, though.
Any of you got nice, high-level, super-fast kills? Any of you fought the Tarrasque?
