Upper Krust, where are you? [Immortal's Handbook]

[Upper_Krust]

Damage Reduction

Hi all!

I wanted to ask you all about Damage Reduction. What do you think about reducing it to component parts (and not just for deities!):

ie.
Blocks of 5/+1

So that you would have 30/+6, or 45/+9.

Deities could start with 24/+4 then gain +1 per Divine Rank (or just make the quasi-deity 20/+4).

eg.
DR1 = 25/+5
DR6 = 30/+6
DR11 = 35/+7
DR16 = 40/+8
etc.

The Improved Damage Reduction SDA could increase things by 5/+1.

I am not totally convinced yet this is a good idea (which is why I brought it up here, to get some feedback). Any thoughts?

Incidently, I think I have come up with a fantastic way of linking my own magic ideas to the Epic Spell System - a little bit of testing to do, but its looking great so far!

 

[Anubis]

Interesting ideas . . .

I would start the Quasi-deity at 20/+4 just to keep it with the other numbers you have (increments of 5/+1), but other than that, your ideas sounds perfect, considering greater deities should naturally have more damage reduction than deities below them.

So that said, it works perfectly . . . For deities.

Other beings, however, would not be served by this incremental change. I would leave others as they are, otherwise you empower some creatures while weakening others.

Anyway, for deities, it works. I like it.

 

[poilbrun]

Hi all! I'm back from holidays (if you wonder, they were great, the type where you slept during two weeks rather than the type where you need to sleep two weeks AFTER the holidays!), and have spent some time reading all that was written during those two weeks... But the question I have for you, U_K, has nothing to do with what I've read!

To put it short, does the death of an avatar affect a god, and if so, how? Does the god lose anything, or is he just pissed because he has to spend WP to create a new one?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Anubis mate!

Interesting ideas . . .

I would start the Quasi-deity at 20/+4 just to keep it with the other numbers you have (increments of 5/+1), but other than that, your ideas sounds perfect, considering greater deities should naturally have more damage reduction than deities below them.

Remember:

DR1 = 25/+5
DR2 = 26/+5
DR3 = 27/+5
DR4 = 28/+5
DR5 = 29/+5
DR6 = 30/+6
etc.

Just in case I didn't make that initially clear.

So that said, it works perfectly . . . For deities.

Other beings, however, would not be served by this incremental change. I would leave others as they are, otherwise you empower some creatures while weakening others.

Anyway, for deities, it works. I like it.

I admit I am reticent about advocating such a change in other creatures but in many cases I think it would be for the better.

eg. A Pit Fiend or Balor has 30/+3. That effectively means melee is out of the question for someone with a weaker weapon - its a pretty black and white situation; if you are a DM then using a Balor when the party have few (if any) +3 weapons then the party is going to take a pummeling. However 15/+3 makes the Balor tough; but the issue of combat is not so black and white.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi all!

Poil Brun mate! Good to have you back!

I'm back from holidays (if you wonder, they were great, the type where you slept during two weeks rather than the type where you need to sleep two weeks AFTER the holidays!), and have spent some time reading all that was written during those two weeks...

Glad to hear you and the girlfriend had a great time in Italy mate!

But the question I have for you, U_K, has nothing to do with what I've read!

Sure fire away!

To put it short, does the death of an avatar affect a god, and if so, how? Does the god lose anything, or is he just pissed because he has to spend WP to create a new one?

Creating an Avatar is a permanent expenditure of a deities power, however the deity won't personally suffer any after effects of an Avatars destruction. Though if the deities Avatar was destroyed in front of worshippers it could have repercussions on that particular area of worship leading to a serious loss of faith (and face for the deity and its clergy).

I show in the IH, how such Events can increase (or decrease) the measure of the deities faith/worship.

 

[Knight Otu]

The increase of the required enhancement bonus to bypass DR for higher statures of divinity looks a bit familiar.
I think it's a good idea.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Knight Otu mate!

The increase of the required enhancement bonus to bypass DR for higher statures of divinity looks a bit familiar.

Well it should help any ECL/CR system shenanigans.

I think it's a good idea.

The more I look at it the happier I am.

However, one related point that has been annoying me is that of Damage Reduction with no enhancement bonus needed to trump.

eg. 3/-

Personally I think it confuses a few issues.

On the one hand I like the idea that creatures could have a Hardness ability - golems are the obvious recipients.

I advocate Constructs gain their material hardness as standard.

In effect Hardness is like extraordinary (Ex) Damage Reduction.

But the type of 'damage reduction' (that can't be beaten by magic items) they use is still supernatural (Su). To me thats just a bit silly.

I may nix their interpretation in the IH. So that I have Damage Reduction (Su) and Hardness (Ex) as clearly distinct.

The task will then be to determine things like Barbarian Damage Reduction and the Damage Reduction Feat, as well as monsters like the Demi-lich and Lava/Winter Wight.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bjorn Doneerson]

Bizjorn in the Hizouse!!!!

Sup, Krust-Dawg?

Anyway, allow me to ask you more annoying questions.

If I recall goodly ( ), In olden times some gods could "lift nearly anything (at DM's Discretion) and bend or crush anything they laid their hands on." Could this or anything similar work at all now? I can't find a way. But I'm not very good with game mechanics anyway.

Also, couldja tell me where you might place the following beings in your ranking system?

Buri
Audhulma
Ymir
Surtur
Erebus
Eros
Gaia
Uranus

Thanx a bunch.

 

[Anubis]

Remember:

DR1 = 25/+5
DR2 = 26/+5
DR3 = 27/+5
DR4 = 28/+5
DR5 = 29/+5
DR6 = 30/+6
etc.

Just in case I didn't make that initially clear.

Ah, I see. Nope, you did not make that clear initially. In that case, Quasi-deities would indeed be 24/+4. I understand now. Still works perfectly for deities.

eg. A Pit Fiend or Balor has 30/+3. That effectively means melee is out of the question for someone with a weaker weapon - its a pretty black and white situation; if you are a DM then using a Balor when the party have few (if any) +3 weapons then the party is going to take a pummeling. However 15/+3 makes the Balor tough; but the issue of combat is not so black and white.

The way I see it, if a DM is throwing such creatures at a party with so few levels that they don't have proper weaponry, then there is something wrong. As far as I've seen, damage reduction rarely, if ever, effects the entire party, but rather usually effects only non-fighter types unless they all invest in Sure Striking, which is always a wise idea. Damage reduction isn't as much a limiter as it seems. It's there mainly because some creatures with higher damage reduction have very few hit points, and low level parties could take such creatures out easily at a far lower level. The Balor with just over 100 hit points is a perfect example of this.

If, however, the lack of sufficient magical items is the result of player stupidity, such as if they upgrade everything else first and still don't invest in Sure Striking, then those PCs deserve to die for their ignorance.

All of this, of course, only applies to normal campaigns. In low-magic campaigns, things with damage reduction will be 2-3 CR higher than in the core rules, because the game is not meant to be played low-magic. In those cases, all such circumstances are the DM's fault for not going by the normal rules of the game.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to make a system that works in ALL situations. We must only consider a normal game for it to work.

 

[Anubis]

Well it should help any ECL/CR system shenanigans.

Honestly, anything up to damage reduction of X/+5 should only be considered ECL +1/2. This is one of the things I was talking about before. You see, non-Epic things are usually within that range, and applying specific ECL modifiers based on damage reduction up to that level throws pretty much everything off in the non-Epic range.

What I would do is make it ECL +1/2 for anything up to X/+5, but then make a modifier for anything over that. Perhaps, starting with damage reduction of X/+6, any five points of damage reduction over 30 give ECL +1/2, and each rank of damage reduction of +6 or more gives an ECL of +1/2 as well. In other words:

 X/+5 = ECL +0.5
30/+6 = ECL +1
35/+6 = ECL +1.5
30/+7 = ECL +1.5
35/+7 = ECL +2
40/+7 = ECL +2.5
35/+8 = ECL +2.5
40/+8 = ECL +3

In this way, non-Epic damage reduction gets one value while Epic damage reduction gets a different value. How does that sound?