Templates tend to suck?

[Pax]

Okay, close enough.

Now here's teh trick: every time this guy hits, he'll EASILY trigger the "Knockdown" feat. With a 40 Strength, +4 for being Large, and +4 for the "Sweeping" enhancement, his Trip check will be +23. Odds are, the opponent goes down.

Combine that with Hold the Line, which means if the ogre is charged on the first turn, the AoO will happen when his threatened area is entered .... twenty feet away from him (heh). That AoO will trigger an immediate, free Trip attempt. Mid-charge, the opponent goes on his backside... twenty feet form teh target. Rather interrupts the charge, n'est-ce pas ... ?

Now, Sunder / Improved Sunder. Double damage to weapons when Sundering; how many weapons do YOU know of, that can handle some 60-odd damage per blow? Not many I can think of.

Vile damage is ... well, it's vile. Almost impossible to heal ... and I sincerely doubt ANY, let alone most, Fighters owuld bring along soe sort of "portable sacred ground", which means healing magicks mid-battle are right out of the picture, at least for the Vile damage. I suppose now I should say, "just be glad it's not Vile Attribute Damage" ... heh.

The poison I don't know if I'd bother using, but it'd be a fun ploy. Plays right into the Trip attack tactic, too.

The pipe's cloud would be hard to utilise, as it's only a 5-foot-radius cloud. Still, puff it out and step back, I guess. I was running out of cheaper items to spend the last few thousand on, anyway.

Glove of storing, duh. Boots of speed, likewise. "Bracers" of health, just an alternate form (and in my first printing DMG, the LIST of items -- not the item-by-item descriptions but hte random LIST -- shows bracers not an amulet). Doesn't make any difference, he's not wearing an amulet it'd conflict with anyway.

The material for the armor (and bothering with full plate armor) is mainly for visual "coolness" ... a chain and armor looking like still-mostly-MELTED steel, hehehehe ... I suppose I could have given him an Animated Shield instead. But the armor just LOOKS cooler.

So, Grog ... bring it on. I tell you what, to keep us both honest, after you make your charater:

For the materials ... roll 1d6; even the weapon and armor are Fever Iron. Odd, and they're Dlarun.

For the enhancements ... roll 1d6 again:
1, use Acidic Burst as above
2, Thundering (modified per MoF, also counts as "screaming"
3, Flaming Burst
4, Shocking Burst
5, Icy Burst
6, roll twice, using the lesser forms of the two elements determined and ignoring further rolls of 6

That way, neither you nor I will know ahead of time what elemental damage type(s) to worry about. Cover all the bases, or risk the Ogre finding the "hole" ... heh!

 

[Brekki]

Uh oh. If you make a calculator based on the opinion that an ogre is ECL +5, of course the calculator will give the answer that ogre is ECL +5. It doesn't give any additional information on wether the ogre really is ECL +5 or not. It would just give the ECL of the ogre to be wathever the original assumption was. (in this case +5)

You don't base an ECL calculator on one creature. You try to make a calculator that calculates all creature ECL's. Since about a third of the ECL's are actually known, once you've build a calculator that "predicts" those ones accurately you assume you can calculate all ECL's.

 

[Wippit Guud]

Pax, you got an error in your character (how do I notice these small things?)

You can't taked Weapon Specilization without a Weapon Focus in that weapon first.

 

[Wippit Guud]

The Ogre gets (Ftr 1, Ftr 2, Ftr 4, Ch 6, Ch 9) five feats as well. He picks Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialisation, Power Attack, Sunder, and Improved Critical (he hasa +8 BAB). Since the Ogre now has 9HD, I figure attributes and feats are based on a 9th level character ...

Something to consider... Ogres start with a Weapon Focus in Great Club, which is ignored here. instead of Long Sword, why not take his natural focus (not sense giving up a free feat), and with the freed-up feat take Improved Trip (note: you said ignoring stat reqs). This larger strength gives him a huge advantage in a trip situation, and the can follow up on a successful trip with an attack vs a prone target. Coupled with doing that 10' out, and the human never gets into combat.

 

[Grog]

Sorry Pax, I don't have access to anywhere near the number of books you do...

But that is a hella tough character, even just going by the stuff I recognize.

Like I said, I rethought the ECL stuff, and I think whether or not it's worth it depends on the class you're interested in playing.

 

[Pax]

Pax, you got an error in your character (how do I notice these small things?)

You can't taked Weapon Specilization without a Weapon Focus in that weapon first.

Well.

Color me stunned, you're right. Okay, revised Feat list:

HD1 Exotic Weapon: Spiked Chain (up-sized)
Ft 1 Power Attack
Ft 2 Sunder
Ch 6 Weapon Focus: Spiked Chain
Ft 4 Weapon Specialise: Spiked Chain
Ch 9 Improved Critical: Spiked Chain
Ft 6 Expertise
Ft 8 Improved Trip
Ch 12 Knock-Down
Ft 10 Combat Reflexes
Ch 15 Hold the Line
Ft 14 Improved Sunder

Essentially, move the Improved Sunder to the last choice, and insert the Weapon Focus in the resulting "open spot" ... losing Expert Tactician entirely.

Whippit Gud writes:
Something to consider... Ogres start with a Weapon Focus in Great Club, which is ignored here. instead of Long Sword, why not take his natural focus (not sense giving up a free feat), and with the freed-up feat take Improved Trip (note: you said ignoring stat reqs). This larger strength gives him a huge advantage in a trip situation, and the can follow up on a successful trip with an attack vs a prone target. Coupled with doing that 10' out, and the human never gets into combat.

The feat listed in the MM is for a -typical- example of an Ogre. Player Characetrs -- indeed, DM-run opposition -- is not beholden to folloow that suggested choice. It's also not a FREE feat. Giant-type monsters get 1 feat to start with, and 1 feat for every 4 additional HD above 1 (1 feat at 1HD, 2 feats at 5HD, etc). That HD-based feat is in my table (corrected above) at the "HD 1" entry. Ch # is character level, Ft # is Fighter level, and HD # is monster-HD-based.

...

In fact, look up the entry for "Dwarf" ... it lists "Feat: Exotic Weapon Proficiency (dwarven waraxe)" ... do you requie all dwarven characters, of any sort, to always have that feat selected as their first feat ever?

I certainly hope not.

Grog writes:
Sorry Pax, I don't have access to anywhere near the number of books you do...

But that is a hella tough character, even just going by the stuff I recognize.

Like I said, I rethought the ECL stuff, and I think whether or not it's worth it depends on the class you're interested in playing.

It's not really an issue of book access. Look how little I used outside of the PHB/DMG/MM, really. A few flavor bits from the BoVD, material for flavor from MoF, some weapon enhancements/powers from MoF, one item from S&F that, really, would have been better served as three SEPERATE items, using up only the Glove slot and making him lose the Gloves of Storing (of which he only really needed one anyway). I didn't take Large and In Charge, mainly because I don't HAVE that feat available to me; that'd make the blighter even worse (I'd take that instead of Hold the Line, in fact). Heh.

I admit I did forget the standard markup on base costs for larger arms and armor, so from the Pipe onward, just delete that crap (none of its going to be terribly useful anyway, I'm just obsessive about spending starting money to the last cp ... a habit I picked up playing Shadowrun, where leftovers were cut by 90% after character generation ...). That frees up almost $5K in gold, which should cover up to QUADRUPLED base costs for armor and weapon.

[EDIT: Typographical errors]

 

[Spatula]

You don't base an ECL calculator on one creature. You try to make a calculator that calculates all creature ECL's. Since about a third of the ECL's are actually known, once you've build a calculator that "predicts" those ones accurately you assume you can calculate all ECL's.

Yes, but the ogre ECL is one of those known values that the calculator was probably designed around. So it's a useful tool for calculating *unknown* ECLs that are extrapolated from the ECLs in the DMG. But using it to "prove" one of the already known DMG ECLs is pointless.

 

[Wippit Guud]

The feat listed in the MM is for a -typical- example of an Ogre. Player Characetrs -- indeed, DM-run opposition -- is not beholden to folloow that suggested choice. It's also not a FREE feat. Giant-type monsters get 1 feat to start with, and 1 feat for every 4 additional HD above 1 (1 feat at 1HD, 2 feats at 5HD, etc). That HD-based feat is in my table (corrected above) at the "HD 1" entry. Ch # is character level, Ft # is Fighter level, and HD # is monster-HD-based.

Actually, that was my bad, I was thinking they get a feat at 3rd HD, like characters get a feat at 3rd level, which would account for why ogres got that feat for free...

 

[Elric]

An Ogre/Barbarian 1/Fighter 2 crushes any 8th level melee fighter type made with only PH classes. By the time you reach +6 BaB (for the second attack) and 2 levels of fighter (giving you enough feats to be versatile) and Barb 1 (+4 Str), the PH fighter has no chance. ECL +5 might actually be balanced for an Ogre if the players build smackdown characters with access to lots of books. However, it is clearly too low for the Core rules.

 

[Azure Trance]

Opinions on the Paragenasi from Dragon 297:

-note: all of these have elemental resistance to 2 element @ 5, and a spell like ability which usually goes up in level. Most also have darkvision @ 60 feet. Also, all these races are +1 ECL

Axani: (law)
+2 INT, +2 WIS

Cansin: (chaos)
+2 INT, +2 CHA

Dust Paragenasi (PG)
+4 Dex, +2 INT, -2 Con, -2 Cha

Ice PG
+4 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Dex, -2 Cha

Magma PG
+2 Con / Str, -2 Int/Wis

Ooze PG
+4 Con, -2 Cha

Smoke PG
+2 Dex/Int, -2 Cha

Steam PG
+2 Dex, -2 Cha

I pause for the first four. Anyway, I'm not sure why the paragenasi, as well as the genasi from FR all have cha penalties. Is there something which makes sense to apply them?