What's so wrong with Hulking Hurler?

[shilsen]

Found a nice feat for the Hulking Hurler in Complete Adventurer: Brutal Throw, which lets you use your Str modifier instead of Dex to attack with thrown weapons

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

That is why some PrC's are really for DM use only....

As a frequent DM, I have to say I disagree with this statement. It's not OK for a DM to be munchkin... unless his players are. And if the DM is going to throw this kind of cheese at his players, his players should have access to this kind of cheese, too.

 

[Saeviomagy]

A Hulking Hurler can easily TPK... but only if you give said Hurler some kind of obscene advantage.

Wow. I guess in your games, anything that's not totally insane will just be a total walkthrough then, huh?

I'm incubus. My original build is the one that causes multiple thousands of d6 damage. To do so, it requires:

One feat
None of it's skill points
Almost none of it's equipment allowance

So making one with an obscene hide and move silent score would not be difficult. Or one with an item to let it teleport. Etc etc.

In short - anywhere in any adventure where the party are challenged by a fighter, you could slot in the basic hulking hurler build, and replace that puny weapon damage with something truly obscene.

For reference, I think you can make an equivalent character at CR 7 that does 13d6 (plus 20 or so) a shot. I don't think that's reasonable for a CR 7 encounter. This is not something that a 20d6 damage cap will fix

Finally - it's not the classes, or the race that are the problem. It's CW's insane rules for damage from large objects. Take away hulking hurler, and the character just has to stick to melee to do his insane damage. Take away war hulk, and the character just has to find other ways to boost his carry capacity, and there are plenty of them.

Change CW's rules to say "an object of size X does damage Y, regardless of weight" and the problem just goes away. Stats for improvised weapons already exist. Just read the entry for "club". 1d6 damage, 10ft range, zero price. Now we just need approximate sizes for large, huge, gargantuan and colossal clubs. At a guess, a wagon probably counts as a colossal club. I think that 3d6+1d8+sizeable strength bonus is appropriate for hitting someone with a wagon, don't you?

 

[Devilkiller]

I currently have a character who uses improvised weapons. He uses some feat from Dragonlance to only take a -2 to attacks with improvised weapons instead of a -4. He'll pick up this and that from time to time, but mostly he uses an anchor on a chain. It does 2d6 damage and is otherwise like a spiked chain. It is actually mechanically inferior to a regular spiked chain with Power Attack in most situations, but it is a freaking anchor, and that's just too fun.

Anyhow, my point is really about the size of the anchor. My anchor is 50 lbs. That is theoretically large enough to anchor a ship up to 50 feet long, and it fits within the range that the chart in CW lists as a two-handed weapon for medium sized creatures. Here's my point; CW says that object weighing between 2 and 10 pounds are one-handed weapons for medium characters. It also says that objects weighing between 11 and 50 pounds are two-handed weapons for medium size characters. It then adds that you should halve these numbers for every size below medium and double it for every size above. My conclusion is that an object of 22-100 pounds would be a two-handed weapon for a large creature. Since you can't use any weapon larger than a two-handed weapon this would mean that a large creature can only use a weapon weighing up to 100 pounds. A huge creature could only use a weapon weighing up to 200 pounds. Nobody could use something that does a zillion d6, and the world would be safe from hulking hurler builds.

IMO, the Hullking Hurler's "Really Throw Anything" ability allows him to throw improvised weapons and throw them at a -2 instead of a -4 to hit. This should be a fun but not world beating ability. It shouldn't trump the existing rules for weapons which say you have to use weapons sized for you or somebody close to your size.

 

[Saeviomagy]

IMO, the Hullking Hurler's "Really Throw Anything" ability allows him to throw improvised weapons and throw them at a -2 instead of a -4 to hit. This should be a fun but not world beating ability. It shouldn't trump the existing rules for weapons which say you have to use weapons sized for you or somebody close to your size.

Yeah, but then theres a really, really throw anything ability which lets you use a weapon up to two size categories above your own, and up to your heavy (I think... maybe medium) load limit.

So you're wrong.

 

[Bill Muench]

Here's why:

http://rpol.net/display.cgi?gi=668&gn=The+Exodus:+Epic+DnD+3.5&threadnum=208&date=1069788918

Ah, good old Urldred... He was fun to write up. I still use him as an example when people ask "why do you say Hulking Hurler is broken?" "Well, let me send you a link..."

Bill
erstwhile Kakita Goichi and Urldred Mountainthrower.

 

[Fieari]

The 20d6 cap is for falling DISTANCE. Weight damage is not capped. IIRC*, it's 1d6 per 200lbs dropped at least 10 feet. Dropped 200 feet, that's 20d6. Dropped 400 feet, that's STILL 20d6. For an object that weighs 4000 lbs, that's 20d6 if dropped 10 feet. Dropped 200 feet, that's 40d6. Dropped 400 feet, still 40d6. For an object that weighs 8000 lbs, that's 40d6 dropped 10 feet, 60d6 dropped 200 feet, and still 60d6 if dropped 400 feet.

See how it works? Terminal velocity caps falling damage, but mass still adds energy to the equation.

The hulking hurler damage problem REALLY demonstrates the irrationality of the CARRYING CAPACITY formula, which can be increased to truely absurd levels rather easily. Optimizing a HH is optimizing carrying capacity, which isn't hard to do -at all-.

Oh, and no HH build so far can actually destroy the earth in a single throw yet, since the earth was calculated to have somewhere upwards of the range of a quadrillion hit points, and the max average damage for a legal build so far was only in the trillions of points of damage range.

Ah, I just checked. Highest current build deals 480,735,689,434 damage on average. That's 137,353,054,124d6, by throwing 27,470,610,825,216 pounds, which is a medium load for this character. Yes, the damage is absurd, but what you REALLY need to look at is the fact that a character can be designed that can carry 27,470,610,825,216 pounds as a MEDIUM LOAD.

The hulking hurler really just demonstrates this rule problem.

*And if I don't recall correctly, it definitely IS xd6 per y pounds, so the math still applies, just plug in different numbers.

 

[Impeesa]

Of course, you're talking pre-epic. At some point during the infamous Hulking Hurler thread on the WotC Character Optimization forums, I did some quick calculations and found that you'd only have to be level 20-something (I think) to do a googol of damage (10^100). Of course, that involved abusing the epic spellcasting system to get a high enough strength.. but whatever.

--Impeesa--

 

[Devilkiller]

Yeah, but then theres a really, really throw anything ability which lets you use a weapon up to two size categories above your own, and up to your heavy (I think... maybe medium) load limit.

So you're wrong

Ok, a closer reading of the Hulking Hurler shows that I am indeed wrong. The definite evidence is an example of a Large hulking hurler tossing a 533 lb boulder. That's above the 400lbs allowed for Gargantuan creature's two-handed improvised weapon, so the rules for maximum weapon size must not apply...or the example could just be wrong...it wouldn't be the first time.

Honestly I don't think that whoever wrote the hulking hurler intended the weapon weight to be limited by anything other than the character's ability to lift, but it would have been nice if more sensible rules from the rest of the book could have prevailed. Anyhow, I think that house ruling things "my way" would be a decent fix to bring the class back into balance. I sort of wonder why WotC rarely seems to address broken rules like this in FAQs or errata. I guess they figure we're all smart enough to come up with a house rule, but I like running my game "by the book" when possible to help foster a sense of fairness. Luckily, since none of my players frequent any D&D message boards I doubt I'll ever see the Hulking Hurler exploit attempted.

Really, I wonder why not more PCs take Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Chest) since it deals 3d6 damage and weights only 100 lbs. And at medium levels a lot of fighter with good strenght are able to carry the wagon: 5d6 damage. There should be a lot of hight level fighters mastering the art of wagon-fencing.

Stuff like this is why I think this is a good reason to enforce the enforce the standard rules on maximum weapon size. The improvised weapon rules don't say that you can't use an improvised weapon which is larger than a two-handed weapon, but they don't say you can either, so the normal rules should apply as long as you're not a hulking hurler.

I suppose you could take Monkey Grip to use a chest for 3d6 as a medium creature, but at that point there would be no advantage since a Monkey Gripped greatsword could do just as much with a better threat range. IMO it is definitely the hulking hurler and not the improvised weapon rules which are broken. I'll grant though that it would have been prudent to impose a maximum damage limit just in case somebody later wrote a feat or ability that eliminates maximum weapon size.

 

[coyote6]

David Pulver figured this out, didn't he?

Ah, I just checked. Highest current build deals 480,735,689,434 damage on average. That's 137,353,054,124d6, by throwing 27,470,610,825,216 pounds, which is a medium load for this character. Yes, the damage is absurd, but what you REALLY need to look at is the fact that a character can be designed that can carry 27,470,610,825,216 pounds as a MEDIUM LOAD.

If you want to build pre-crisis Kryptonians or Daxamites -- e.g., characters that can push around planets -- you need to have higher Str scores than that. Earth masses in the 10^24 kg range, and you're barely at 10^13. Wimps!

What is that, a Str 183 Colossal creature? Or Str 203 Medium creature? (Or some bizarre Str 180 quadreped that somehow can throw things, maybe?)

I think the chart in Complete Warrior (and also the falling object rules in the core rules) are wrong.

Carrying capacity quadruples every 10 Str, while damage increases by a linear +5; thus, quadrupling the force one can bring to bear increases damage by +5. Therefore, the relationship between force/energy and "points of damage" isn't linear, it's geometric. Ergo, damage based on mass shouldn't increase linearly, but instead geometrically; instead of +1d6/200 lbs, it should be +1d6 per x2 increase in mass.

Then the Hulking Hurler From Heck would do about 37d6 of damage with his mountain.

(Of course, the relationship implied by the carrying capacity charts also implies that hit points that are based purely on material strength -- e.g., that of objects -- should also increase with the square of the mass of the object, rather than linearly. )