| Post/Author/DateTime | Post |
|---|---|
| PunkRockBard04-23-07, 10:51 AM | As i am sure many of You know....Dragon and Dungeon magazine are folding. To say that the majority of posters are brutalizing WOTC is an understatement....i just wanted to write a bit about how Dragon influenced all Planar with the Demonicon.....with the write-ups on the various demon lords. Their writeups did wonders for all planar..especially the fiends. It will be missed. i don't think we would have even seen the Elemental Princes/Princessess of Good Creatures without Dragon. I am going to sorely miss their influence on the planes. Ah well....i spose i can still hope for a FC III! :P |
| zook1shoe66604-23-07, 02:04 PM | yeah Dragon was really the only magazine out there i liked. i wish the Demonicons would somehow continue without the magazine, which obviously won't happen. |
| Singer_of_the_Song04-23-07, 03:06 PM | I want a book of anarchic deeds. |
| Witch04-23-07, 03:12 PM | yeah Dragon was really the only magazine out there i liked. i wish the Demonicons would somehow continue without the magazine, which obviously won't happen. Dicefreaks is working on Horrors of the Abyss, which will treat the Abyss, the Demon Lords, and far more. It won't be official material like Dragon, but you might like it nonetheless. Even if you don't like the high stats given to Demon Lords, the large amount of flavor might still be useful to you. |
| PunkRockBard04-23-07, 10:05 PM | i would love to have novels dealing with the planes. |
| zook1shoe66604-27-07, 01:46 PM | Dicefreaks is working on Horrors of the Abyss, which will treat the Abyss, the Demon Lords, and far more. It won't be official material like Dragon, but you might like it nonetheless. Even if you don't like the high stats given to Demon Lords, the large amount of flavor might still be useful to you. yeah i'm on DF. its got some good stuff on there. i made Lupercio, for my first and only Archfiend. |
| Shemeska the Marauder04-27-07, 02:55 PM | i wish the Demonicons would somehow continue without the magazine, which obviously won't happen. That's an open question. James has expressed a desire to continue the article series, and the ball is really now in WotC's court. They may or may not pick it up for the DI. I for one really hope that they have him continue it. |
| sciborg204-27-07, 03:03 PM | I hope the DI lets us purchase individual issues, rather than forcing an all or nothing monthly subscription on us. If the submission process is more welcoming for Planescape and other lost settings given space in a print magazine is no longer a concern, that'd be great too. |
| zook1shoe66604-28-07, 12:53 AM | I hope the DI lets us purchase individual issues, rather than forcing an all or nothing monthly subscription on us. If the submission process is more welcoming for Planescape and other lost settings given space in a print magazine is no longer a concern, that'd be great too. i agree :) |
| Kain Darkwind05-04-07, 06:15 PM | Were there ever any older issues of Dragon magazine (previous to the Demonomicon issues) that strongly featured demon lords or The Abyss, like Dragon 75 +76 did for devils and Dukes of Hell? |
| ripvanwormer05-04-07, 08:23 PM | Were there ever any older issues of Dragon magazine (previous to the Demonomicon issues) that strongly featured demon lords or The Abyss, like Dragon 75 +76 did for devils and Dukes of Hell? Not really. Dragon #151 detailed Sch'theraqpasstt, and Dragon #312 had Turaglas. Dragon #42 had Hacamuli, a servitor of Orcus. Dragon #20 had a forgettable article on conjuring demons. That's pretty much it. Nothing of the magnitude of Ed Greenwood's hell articles, or the later Demonomicon articles. |
| WhiteRaven81005-05-07, 01:46 AM | Truely the only article I'll miss from Dragon is the Demonomicon. There's at least one left though, I'm guessing it'll be Juliblex whose featured, but Obox-Ob and Pale Night are viable contender's also. P.S. - I'm praying and wishing and keeping my finger's crossed for Obox, second coolest demon in the Abyss. |
| James Jacobs05-05-07, 01:37 PM | First of all... thanks for the kind words, everyone! There's two more Demonomicons scheduled to appear in Dragon before the last issue: Issue #357 has one about Demogorgon, while the last issue (#359) will have a special installment that doesn't quite follow the format of the others, but that'll be filled with all sorts of stuff Demonomicon-related. I have a blast writing these articles, and I'd love to keep writing them, but so far I haven't heard what plans WotC might or might not have for the series in the future. |
| zook1shoe66605-06-07, 07:17 PM | James, thanks for reponding :). i'm glad you had a blast making them, i had a blast reading them. they are what really got me into looking, more and more, at the Abyss and the Demon Lords. let us know if you might end up doing it at WotC or elsewhere, whatever comes up. thanks again for making them :). -Zook1shoe |
| The Serge705-06-07, 07:28 PM | It would be great if WotC would publish a stand-alone Demonomicon. I suspect this is very unlikely given that they just put out Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss... Too bad... The Demonomicon articles were among the best material in DRAGON (among quite a few other things). |
| sciborg205-07-07, 12:47 AM | Issue #357 has one about Demogorgon :eek: ......:embarrass ........:D I just died in your arms tonight.... |
| zook1shoe66605-07-07, 08:55 AM | lol... i don't know if i died in your arms tonight, James.... but i am really happy ;) |
| Thorsbjorn05-08-07, 09:21 PM | First of all... thanks for the kind words, everyone! There's two more Demonomicons scheduled to appear in Dragon before the last issue: Issue #357 has one about Demogorgon, while the last issue (#359) will have a special installment that doesn't quite follow the format of the others, but that'll be filled with all sorts of stuff Demonomicon-related. I have a blast writing these articles, and I'd love to keep writing them, but so far I haven't heard what plans WotC might or might not have for the series in the future. With the impending demise of Dragon, anything in the remaining issues will feel bittersweet to me at best, but I want you to know that I appreciate the Demonomicon articles, and in particular I'm glad that you've covering Demogorgon before the end. Along with Orcus, Demogorgon was one of the two original demon princes, appearing for the first time in Dungeons and Dragons Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. To me Orcus and Demogorgon have thus always been the real demon princes, with all the others just pretenders. Did you ever get to do Orcus? I don't recall seeing him in Dragon. If you don't mind my asking, will Pathfinder contain only adventures connected to one overarching story arc, or will it contain discrete articles on various topics like Dragon did? If it's just connected adventures, is there some reason, like a non-compete clause in Paizo's license with Wizards, that Paizo couldn't put out its own monthly magazine. You were selling Dragon for $3.25/issue at the subscription price, but you're selling Pathfinder at $14 at is subscription price. I'm afraid I can't really afford to buy a $14 book every month. :( I've been playing D&D since 1978, and Strategic Review/The Dragon/Dragon has always been there for me. It would be nice to have something to take its place. Thanks. |
| TheOinodaemon05-09-07, 01:49 AM | Hi James thanks for the Demonomicon, I love the articles, Paizo did a great job with Dragon, I'll miss it. If WOTC doesn't pick up the new articles, will you put them in a hardcover. If you do, I would like an advance copy. You know to check for typos. |
| Garnfellow05-09-07, 01:50 PM | Dragon #42 had Hacamuli, a servitor of Orcus. For what it's worth, I've posted a 3.5e conversion of Hacamuli in honor of his creator, the late Tom Moldvay: http://home.gwi.net/~rdorman/frilond/rul/dm/hacamuli.htm |
| zook1shoe66605-21-07, 04:46 PM | i saw that the next Dragon is going to have Demogorgon in it, i am guessing since its going to be one of the final ones, they had to bring in the "big guns" :-p. James Jacobs, i'll let you know what i think :). the rest have been amazing, and i assume this one will be as good. |
| devilmanotis05-26-07, 05:15 PM | if nothing else keep publishing these articles yourself using a pdf or something like that i would purchase them! even a compilation of all the old ones into one quick pdf one with pics for coolness and one with just words for easy printing thats my 2cents for what its worth |
| sciborg205-26-07, 08:20 PM | I agree. Publish 3-4 of them with high quality stuff like in FC I and you've got me sold. Demogorgon had to be done before the end...but any chance on Obox-ob? Miska + Queen o' Xaos? In fact, if you guys start doing a who's - who of the planes with articles for Primus, Slaad Lords and the lesser knowns like the Storm Kings of Arcadia...well I'm willing to forgo eating to get this. ;) |
| Thorsbjorn05-27-07, 11:35 AM | I sure would like to see an advanced version of Orcus too. Gary Gygax introduced demons in the original D&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, and included only two demon prices, Demogorgon and Orcus. For whatever reason, I and the other early players I knew back around 1978-1982 preferred Orcus. To me Orcus and Demogoron will always be the demon princes. :) |
| zook1shoe66605-28-07, 06:30 PM | I agree. Publish 3-4 of them with high quality stuff like in FC I and you've got me sold. Demogorgon had to be done before the end...but any chance on Obox-ob? Miska + Queen o' Xaos? In fact, if you guys start doing a who's - who of the planes with articles for Primus, Slaad Lords and the lesser knowns like the Storm Kings of Arcadia...well I'm willing to forgo eating to get this. ;) i agree completely, keep in touch about any kind of post-Dragon Demonicon +. |
| Orodruin05-29-07, 04:43 AM | I sure would like to see an advanced version of Orcus too. Gary Gygax introduced demons in the original D&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, and included only two demon prices, Demogorgon and Orcus. For whatever reason, I and the other early players I knew back around 1978-1982 preferred Orcus. To me Orcus and Demogoron will always be the demon princes. :) Not just the demon princes. They were the original Archfiends. Period. ;) |
| James Jacobs05-30-07, 09:51 PM | Although there won't be a Demonomicon of Orcus before the print edition of Dragon goes away... he DOES play a major role in the last few installments of Dungeon magazine. And a CR 32 version of him (Last Word included, for those who know what I'm talking about there) will appear in Dungeon #149. Apart from the Demonomicon of Demogorgon scheduled to appear in Dragon #357, there'll be a special Demonomicon in issue #359, one that isn't going to just cover one demon lord but that'll be doing something else... Stats for a CR 32 Obox-ob may just be involved... but said Demonomicon won't be just about Obox-ob. I probably shouldn't spoil much more about this one, lest them Dragon Editors catch wind and come after me... |
| Shemeska the Marauder05-30-07, 10:35 PM | Although there won't be a Demonomicon of Orcus before the print edition of Dragon goes away... he DOES play a major role in the last few installments of Dungeon magazine. And a CR 32 version of him (Last Word included, for those who know what I'm talking about there) will appear in Dungeon #149. Iiiinteresting. A sort of 'look back and see' or a 'might-have-been' version of him from when he still possessed the Last Word? Or a current day Orcus still somehow holding the Last Word from his tenebrous days, with the Word either having lost power or gone dormant? Now that's an interesting thing to still have lurking around, because who knows if he's even aware of it, or if it might randomly become active again. Even if it's currently powerless, it's an interesting card to have in your metaphorical hand to keep the rest of the Abyss at bay. Apart from the Demonomicon of Demogorgon scheduled to appear in Dragon #357, there'll be a special Demonomicon in issue #359, one that isn't going to just cover one demon lord but that'll be doing something else... An all-Obyriths installment perhaps? :D |
| sciborg205-31-07, 02:17 AM | going out with bang eh? :) .......:( gentlepersons of paizo, we salute you. |
| The Serge705-31-07, 08:29 AM | Crap. More money to spend. Mr. Jacobs, will you folks be releasing the Savage Tide in a combined print format? I'd definitely buy it. The only thing I hope doesn't happen (well, it's not the only thing, but it's the most prominent concern in my mind) is that Demogorgon's deposed in "official" canon as the Prince of Demons. Defeating him doesn't worry me as long as that doesn't happen. |
| Kain Darkwind05-31-07, 10:29 AM | Can't wait to see how Savage Tide ends. Is Orcus going to be a player in it? Or is this Orcus going to be the last Critical Threat? (Which would be super sweet....I still can't believe you guys did Demodragon) Only time will tell... Serge, the word I got on a compiled Age of Worms and Savage Tide is that it is WotC's call. Paizo would like to do it, but they need permission that hasn't been granted yet. Even though I have every single issue of Dragon with a Demonomicon in it, I can't express enough that I would definitely purchase a compilation of them or one of Core Beliefs. |
| James Jacobs05-31-07, 12:39 PM | We've no plans to do a hardcover compilation of Savage Tide yet, although I would love to do so. It's WotC's choice, though, since they own the rights to it. As for what happens at the end of the campaign and its implications for the future of the Prince of Demons... it's gonna be pretty drastic. In most cases. But Demogorgon's been a part of D&D since the start, so removing him from the scene is a bad idea. Even if he ends up getting killed by the PCs... there will be options for fans of Demogorgon who still want him around. If that sounds vague, that's because I haven't worked on the last adventure yet and haven't exactly figured out all the details myself! :) As for Shemeska's musings... details to be unveiled in Dungeon #149, but suffice to say that while the Last Word may have lost much of its power, it doesn't go away without leaving behind marks and echoes on the one who once knew how to use it... and no, it's not completely powerless... Mwa ha ha hahahahaha... |
| Bob the Efreet05-31-07, 04:47 PM | with the Word either having lost power or gone dormant? That's boring. I wonder how much of a CR increase it is for "kills any being in existence"? |
| Thorsbjorn06-03-07, 03:55 AM | Although there won't be a Demonomicon of Orcus before the print edition of Dragon goes away... he DOES play a major role in the last few installments of Dungeon magazine. And a CR 32 version of him (Last Word included, for those who know what I'm talking about there) will appear in Dungeon #149. Apart from the Demonomicon of Demogorgon scheduled to appear in Dragon #357, there'll be a special Demonomicon in issue #359, one that isn't going to just cover one demon lord but that'll be doing something else... Stats for a CR 32 Obox-ob may just be involved... but said Demonomicon won't be just about Obox-ob. I probably shouldn't spoil much more about this one, lest them Dragon Editors catch wind and come after me... If there's a CR 32 version of Orcus in Dungeon 149, if you wouldn't mind posting when it comes out, I'll see if I can get a copy. I subscribe to Dragon, but not Dungeon. Thanks. :) |
| zook1shoe66606-14-07, 10:40 PM | James Jacobs, I really loved the entire article about Demogorgon in the new dragon. Great job, thanks again. |
| Thorsbjorn06-14-07, 11:37 PM | James Jacobs, I really loved the entire article about Demogorgon in the new dragon. Great job, thanks again. I got the issue but haven't opened it yet. I haven't even opened the previous issue. I'm so sad about the cancellation of Dragon that I haven't been able to open it since I heard the news. It doesn't help any that my father died shortly before the cancellation and that my brother's mother-in-law died last night. :( I still want to thank you, James Jacobs, for the article on Demogorgon. I'm sure that I will eventually read it, after I get some of this class preparation done. The summer semester is short and it will be soon time to give the midterm. |
| Kain Darkwind06-15-07, 12:03 AM | Thorbjorn, I'd like to extend my condolences to you and your family. I'll keep you in my prayers. To you and Zook and everyone else who seems to have the new issue...where did you get it? My Barnes and Noble only has the last issue, so I'm hoping you are subscribers and entitled to an early book, and it has nothing to do with my bookstore being stupid and reordering the wrong issue or something. |
| Thorsbjorn06-15-07, 12:20 AM | Thorbjorn, I'd like to extend my condolences to you and your family. I'll keep you in my prayers. Thank you very much. I was in no way close to my brother's mother-in-law, in fact she didn't like many people and I'm not particularly likeable so she didn't like me much at all, but ever time I thought of picking up the phone to talk to my brother I started to cry, so I ended up sending him an e-card with condolences and then we traded a few emails. I think this must be roughest for my niece (his daughter) as she's just lost two grandparents in three months. Thank you again for your condolences and prayers. To you and Zook and everyone else who seems to have the new issue...where did you get it? My Barnes and Noble only has the last issue, so I'm hoping you are subscribers and entitled to an early book, and it has nothing to do with my bookstore being stupid and reordering the wrong issue or something. Well I have a subscription to Dragon. In the 1980s I used to go to a hobby shop in Denver and buy Dragon, so eventually I just got a subscription. I let it lapse suring my first Ph.D. program when I played relatively little, but when 3rd Ed came out I got seriously back into the game. At first I tried to buy from the local hobby shop in Iowa, but although I asked the owner to set me aside a copy he never did, claiming that Wizards (or the regional distributor) wouldn't send him enough copies to set them aside for everyone who asked. So I gave up on supporting the shop and just bought a subscription. According to the Paizo website, they're shipping Dragon to 357 on June 5th but it won't appear on newsstands until June 27th. (Heh, I wonder how many actual newsstands ever had an issue of Dragon on them.:P) Anyway it looks like you could order one online directly from Paizo at http://paizo.com/dragon/products/issues/2007/357. I hope that helps. :) Alas I see that the Dungeon 149 with the CR 32 version of Orcus hasn't skipped yet. James Jacobs, I hope you'll post to this thread to remind us when it does so that I can buy it before supplies run out. With everything that's been going on, I'm almost sure to miss it otherwise. :( |
| zook1shoe66606-15-07, 11:10 PM | Thorbjorn, I'd also like to extend my condolences to you and your family. To you and Zook and everyone else who seems to have the new issue...where did you get it? My Barnes and Noble only has the last issue, so I'm hoping you are subscribers and entitled to an early book, and it has nothing to do with my bookstore being stupid and reordering the wrong issue or something. yeah a subscription here too.... its soo much cheaper, since i buy many of the WotC books avail and keep my eyes open for some of the older stuff, like i picked up a cheap "Rod of Seven Parts" off ebay, in PERFECT condition. the pictures of Misha the Wolf-Spider and The Queen of Chaos are interesting :-p, i don't really care for Misha's, and i wish they would make a 3.5 version of the Queen or at least some more information on her. FC1 had a decent chunk. Obviously, James, you must get a million people saying "do this demon lord, or that one", but i am guessing many would love you to do a seperate article for The Queen of Chaos, Graz'zt, Orcus, and a couple more i can't think of. Please, let us all know if you plan of trying to do something with the Demonicon series, as a seperate book or another magazine, or even something online. But, thanks again for the great articles. Probably my favorite articles since i was reading them back when 3.0 first came out (Dragon#274?) |
| sciborg206-16-07, 01:01 AM | i don't really care for Misha's I have him as a storm of changing forms between spider, wolf, and demon, cutting away at everything around him. I also made the Queen of Chaos completely inhuman. |
| zook1shoe66606-16-07, 09:33 PM | I have him as a storm of changing forms between spider, wolf, and demon, cutting away at everything around him. I also made the Queen of Chaos completely inhuman. yeah that sounds much better... any pictures? :-p well if you look at Misha's pics in the Rod of Seven Parts... its a humanoid head and torso that just looks like the wolf heads were added after the humanoid head and torso were drawn. whereas, better pics would have the heads incorporated at the same time as the humanoid head would be. |
| Thorsbjorn06-18-07, 03:03 AM | Thorbjorn, I'd also like to extend my condolences to you and your family. Thank you very much. I haven't opened Dragon 357 yet and looked at Demogorgon, but I finally broke down and opened up Dragon 356 Saturday or Sunday. I've been so busy doing class preparation that I had to cancel my Saturday D&D game but late Saturday night I finally finished the notes on the last chapter for the practice midterm I'm giving this week. I hadn't been out for a week and when I went out to go to the grocery store I found that my car was missing. When I called the police I found out that my condo complex had it towed before I forgot to renew some obscure state sticker. My upstairs neighbor told me that the condo complex has twice had her car towed, and once her daughters! Now I know on whom to wreak the wrath of the dragons in issue 356. :D Did anyone notice that on page 23 the article on ferrous dragons mentions Gruaghlothor and a sidebar but has no sidebar about Gruaghlothor? I went back to the Paizo website and saw that Dungeon 148 just appeared on newsstands June 13, I guess Dungeon 149 with the CR 32 Orcus won't appear for nearly another month. P.S. I found something about Gruaghlothor here http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards...&page=1#217674 |
| Thorsbjorn06-18-07, 03:31 AM | This was a weird semi-duplicate post. I couldn't figure out how to delete it entirely. :confused: |
| Nentisys06-18-07, 10:24 AM | I just want to say that I loved all the Demonomicon articles, they are propably the thing I will miss most :weep: Also, I would definately pay for a PDF compilation of them with a few extras thrown in. |
| zook1shoe66606-18-07, 10:33 PM | oh i forgot to say.... i noticed one major typo related to Demogorgon, this was not James' fault.... the cover says something about "Demogorgon, Prince of Beasts" instead of Prince of Demons |
| Thorsbjorn06-19-07, 03:10 AM | oh i forgot to say.... i noticed one major typo related to Demogorgon, this was not James' fault.... the cover says something about "Demogorgon, Prince of Beasts" instead of Prince of Demons I saw that too, but figured it was deliberate. Wizards seems to have wandered a bit away from the original concept of Demogorgon and Orucs as demon princes, so I figured this was just another little meander down another wrong path, but maybe you're right. |
| James Jacobs06-19-07, 01:01 PM | I saw that too, but figured it was deliberate. Wizards seems to have wandered a bit away from the original concept of Demogorgon and Orucs as demon princes, so I figured this was just another little meander down another wrong path, but maybe you're right. Would be an error. Demogorgon's the Prince of Demons. Baphomet is the Prince of Beasts. EDIT: Where is this one popping up? 'Cause the cover image we have over at paizo.com seems to be right to me... |
| Shemeska the Marauder06-19-07, 01:14 PM | EDIT: Where is this one popping up? 'Cause the cover image we have over at paizo.com seems to be right to me... My copy has "Demon prince of Beasts" on the cover under Demogorgon's name. |
| James Jacobs06-19-07, 02:06 PM | Hmm. Just got in to work and checked the cover myself, and yup; there it is. The weird thing is that the right cover's up online... Oh well. Yeah, it's an error; he's still the Prince of Demons. |
| sebastienurbanek06-19-07, 03:00 PM | Hi to all folks the problem with 3 ed archfiends is that they are mere monsters with the lack of divinity like in AD&D 1 or 2 with the wounderful Planescape. The pit fiends or balors are too powerful in the 3.5 ed. The divinity (divine rank 0 I think but with unique powers for each fiend for ruling their thralls) of archfiends must be in the stat block. |
| Thorsbjorn06-20-07, 02:05 AM | Hmm. Just got in to work and checked the cover myself, and yup; there it is. The weird thing is that the right cover's up online... Oh well. Yeah, it's an error; he's still the Prince of Demons. That's weird, because my copy of Dragon says "Demogorgon, Breakfast of Champions." :P Hi to all folks the problem with 3 ed archfiends is that they are mere monsters with the lack of divinity like in AD&D 1 or 2 with the wounderful Planescape. The pit fiends or balors are too powerful in the 3.5 ed. The divinity (divine rank 0 I think but with unique powers for each fiend for ruling their thralls) of archfiends must be in the stat block. Sorry, but the 1st Ed demon princes and arch-devils appear in the Monster Manual with no divine ranks, just like Bahamut and Tiamat. :) Edit: I'm looking at Demogorgon on page 16 of the 1st Ed Monster Manual, Jubilex and Orcus on page 17, and Asmodeus on page 20. There are no divine ranks. Indeed I'm looking at the 1st Ed Deities and Demigods and the book doesn't contain the concept of divine rank, although it does list gods as greater and lesser (and demigods). Demogorgon, Asmodeus and the rest are not, however, listed as gods of any sort in 1st Ed. Edit 2: I'm looking at page 18 of The Book of Chaos from Dungeonscape Campaign Expansion: Planes of Chaos. It says that most of the abysal lords are just great tanar'ri. Three, however, have been promoted to lesser power: Baphomet, Jubilex and Demogorgon. Note that 2nd Ed, however, while introducing the concept of an intermediate power, still did not use the concept of divine ranks, and the powers in 2nd Ed were all rather pathetically weak, just monsters or NPCs with more hit points and a lower AC. There were little in the way of the multitude of 3rd Ed divine benefits and abilities. Orcus, by the was, was considered killed the 1st Ed module where you actually got to go to his layer on the Abyss and fight him (where his wand was being used to create a force field and thus incredibly wasn't available to help Orcus fight the PCs!), and so did not appear directly in 2nd Ed. Wizards wisely restored Orcus in 3rd Ed. There's no divinity for archfiends in 3rd Ed. The balors and pit fiends are just fine as they are--maybe even just a tad too weak, as I found out when my players had little trouble with a pit fiend at 20th level--but I agree that the demon princes and arch-devils are too weak as presented in the Book of Vile Deeds or even the Fiendish Codex, although Fiendish Codex II does make the archdevils only aspects and boosts their CRs over the weak CRs of the demon princes in Fiendish Codex I, where they're not even aspects but the actual demon prince. That's part of why I value so highly the Dragon article on Demogorgon with a CR 33 and the Dungeon article on Orcus with a CR 32. Now those are worthy opponents! I think it would be fully appropriate to give Asmodeus, Demogorgon and Orcus a divine rank of 0, and possibly even higher, but remember that a divine rank of 0 should raise the CR, and the higher the divine rank the more it should raise the CR. James, Jacobs, do you have any thoughts on how to to raise the CR for a divine rank of 0? 1? Thanks! :) Edit 3: A divine rank of 0 has lot of passive benefits (immunities and maximum hit points, although you could argue that a greater speed is an active ability) so maybe a +3 to CR? A divine rank of 1 though starts to grant active benefits like 2 Salient Divine Abilities plus additional immunities and so forth--really quite a bit of additional benefit even for 1 divine rank, so I'm thinking maybe +8 or +10? |
| zook1shoe66606-20-07, 12:28 PM | That's weird, because my copy of Dragon says "Demogorgon, Breakfast of Champions." :P nice I think it would be fully appropriate to give Asmodeus, Demogorgon and Orcus a divine rank of 0, and possibly even higher, but remember that a divine rank of 0 should raise the CR, and the higher the divine rank the more it should raise the CR. In the forgotten realms, several of the demon lords have god status, which i fell is appropriate in several ways. Since many (some unlisted) are the "gods" of specific races, such as Baphomet for the minotaurs and a couple other lesser races, Yeenoghu for the gnolls, Kostchtchie for the frost giants, etc. i like how Dicefreaks does it, many have virtual divine ranks. |
| sebastienurbanek06-20-07, 01:46 PM | [QUOTE=Thorsbjorn;12790307]That's weird, because my copy of Dragon says "Demogorgon, Breakfast of Champions." :P Sorry, but the 1st Ed demon princes and arch-devils appear in the Monster Manual with no divine ranks, just like Bahamut and Tiamat. :) Edit: I'm looking at Demogorgon on page 16 of the 1st Ed Monster Manual, Jubilex and Orcus on page 17, and Asmodeus on page 20. There are no divine ranks. Indeed I'm looking at the 1st Ed Deities and Demigods and the book doesn't contain the concept of divine rank, although it does list gods as greater and lesser (and demigods). Demogorgon, Asmodeus and the rest are not, however, listed as gods of any sort in 1st Ed. Look p 90 of the famous "Legends and lore" in the nonhuman's deities section : demon lords/archdevils and archetypal dragons are lesser gods of theyr own might.;) |
| ripvanwormer06-20-07, 01:55 PM | Sorry, but the 1st Ed demon princes and arch-devils appear in the Monster Manual with no divine ranks, just like Bahamut and Tiamat. That's because the powers of gods hadn't been defined yet. When they were defined in Deities & Demigods, the demon princes and archdevils were given those powers. Indeed I'm looking at the 1st Ed Deities and Demigods and the book doesn't contain the concept of divine rank, although it does list gods as greater and lesser (and demigods). Demogorgon, Asmodeus and the rest are not, however, listed as gods of any sort in 1st Ed. You're so very wrong, your wrongness hurts me. Check out the first page of the Nonhuman Deities chapter. NOTE: The following beings from the MONSTER MANUAL and FIEND FOLIO should be treated as lesser gods, though they very rarely have human worshipers: Demogorgon, Juiblex, Orcus, Yeenoghu, Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Geryon, Bahamut, Tiamat, Lolth, Elemental Princes of Evil, Ssendam, Ygorl "Lesser god" counts as a divine rank. |
| Thorsbjorn06-20-07, 04:05 PM | That's because the powers of gods hadn't been defined yet. When they were defined in Deities & Demigods, the demon princes and archdevils were given those powers. You're so very wrong, your wrongness hurts me. Check out the first page of the Nonhuman Deities chapter. NOTE: The following beings from the MONSTER MANUAL and FIEND FOLIO should be treated as lesser gods, though they very rarely have human worshipers: Demogorgon, Juiblex, Orcus, Yeenoghu, Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Geryon, Bahamut, Tiamat, Lolth, Elemental Princes of Evil, Ssendam, Ygorl "Lesser god" counts as a divine rank. I see the reference on page 105 of the 1st Ed Deites and Demigods. There is, however, no concept of divine rank until the 3rd Ed Deites and Demigods. Also, the powers derived just from being a deity (detailed on page 8 of the 1st Ed Deites and Demigods) were relatively weak compared to the standard divine powers granted under 3rd Ed, so gaining the status of lesser deity didn't do all that much to make these being more powerful. The powerful gods in the 1st Ed Deites and Demigods derived their power mostly from having, powerful magic items, lots of class levels and a large, assigned hit point total, rather than from being divine. And even at that, most of them aren't that powerful. Thor has a whole 399 hit points and a whopping 4 AC! In those days PCs in their teens routinely ran around with ACs of -10 and multiple vorpal swords, making it likely that if they encountered Thor they would just cut off his head.:P |
| The Serge706-20-07, 10:13 PM | All of what you just said doesn't change the fact that the arch-fiends and at least two of the unique dragons were considered as/paralleled gods in terms of status in 1ed. |
| Thorsbjorn06-20-07, 10:47 PM | All of what you just said doesn't change the fact that the arch-fiends and at least two of the unique dragons were considered as/paralleled gods in terms of status in 1ed. On a minor note, 1st Ed premiered in 1977 but the original Deities and Demigods didn't appear until 1980, so for three years the rules didn't label these beings deities. For that matter Demogoron and Orcus first appeared in original Dungeons and Dragons Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, published in 1976, so there was a 4-year-old tradition of them as "mere monsters with the lack of divinity," as sebastienurbanek put it. Many of us who started playing prior to 1980 simply didn't notice or didn't bother with one isolated page in a book that most players didn't even own, and continued to use the Monster Manual entries as the standard reference. But yes, Deities and Demigods did officially elevate their status to lesser deity. More importantly, however, is that as I understand sebastienurbanek's original comments, he was arguing that the demon prices and arch-devils are relatively weaker under 3rd Ed than they were under 1st Ed because under 1st Ed they were considered deities. Since under 1st Ed deity status gave little additional power, that's simply not true. Arguably the 1st Ed Demogorgon, with all of 200 hit points, -8 AC, and immunity to weapons of less than +2 enchantment, was substantially weaker than the current Dragon Demogorgon with 869 hit points, 59 AC, and DR 20/cold iron, epic and good. The addition of the few relatively weak 1st Ed standard divine abilities in no way made the 1st Ed Demogorgon more powerful than the Dragon Demogorgon. The 1st Ed standard divine abilities just weren't that powerful. So Demogorgon is more powerful now, even without divine abilities, than he was under 1st Ed even with divine abilities. |
| sebastienurbanek06-21-07, 12:53 AM | Hi but in AD&D 1 the characters were less powerful that in D&D 3: HP limited to lvl 9 or 10 for certain class.... 200 HP for Demogorgon was a big score!/ HP of characters supposed to meet him (save if a DM played a monty haul game:P , obviously). But to me it's not truly the physical stats of archfiends that is a problem; even the lack of divine status in fact, but the lack of unique powers (thematic / their flavor: necromantic powers for Orcus, or creation for Demo) that elevate them highly above their thralls. How imagine Demogorgon ruling an infinite plane with billions of powerful demons (balors, Myrmixicus..)who want to rebel every secons. Even if Demo is a CR 32 or so, if he don't possess a unique divine -like power to rule...I think that he'll be kill very fast... I tried /a friend to think of this fact and edit 2 files in: www.dndadventure.com in the creatures crypt section "Epic demon lords/archdevils" .I don't pretend that they are better that Dicefreak or Dragon, but see it and tell me what You think of them. Tanks:) |
| Thorsbjorn06-21-07, 01:49 AM | Hi but in AD&D 1 the characters were less powerful that in D&D 3: HP limited to lvl 9 or 10 for certain class.... 200 HP for Demogorgon was a big score!/ HP of characters supposed to meet him (save if a DM played a monty haul game:P , obviously). You make a good point, but back in those days there were basically two types of DMs: killer DMs and Monty Haul DMs. Killer DMs almost never let characters get anywhere near high enough to fight demon princes. I went through literally a dozen characters with my first DM before I got one that lasted to second level. So characters who did survive to fight demon princes typically existed in Monty Haul campaigns. (Since I started with a killer DM I become a Monty Haul DM back in my college days. :P) Characters who got into their teen levels routinely had access to many wishes to raise ability scores, and in those days there were no rules on limits or stacking of bonuses, as well as girdles of giant strength, +5 vorpal swords, and so forth. So those 200 hp and -8 AC really didn't look very strong, especially since monsters didn't gain bonuses from things like the Strength or Constitution scores. In my own copy of the 1st Ed Monster Manual I had penciled in 250 hit points for Demogorgon to make him a bit more challenging to my overpowered PCs. In the 1st Ed Deities and Demigods I likewise have Thor with an AC of -23 penciled in, as well as a bunch of other improvements to him. I do recall now, by the way, that I did actually have Bahamut as a god under 1st Ed in my campaign, because there was a tall, thin, mysterious NPC with the party named Adam, and one time I had him praying in a language the PCs didn't understand. The PCs asked him what language he was speaking. In those days D&D hadn't introduced the language called Draconic, so far as I know, and I had Adam respond that he had been praying in a language called Bahamutic. The PCs had no idea what that was at the time. So I'd either seen the text on page 105 of Deities and Demigod, heard of others treating Bahamut as a god, or just decided to elevate him myself. The original entry on Bahamut does suggest the possibility that Bahamut's palace exists somewhere betwixt the elemental plane of air and either the Seven Heavens or the Tri-Paradises, where gods dwell, so it wasn't really a big step to envision him as a god too. From the perspective of game mechanics it didn't really make any difference as nobody was actually going to fight Bahamut, but as you suggest for story purposes it was certainly cooler to make him a god. :) But to me it's not truly the physical stats of archfiends that is a problem; even the lack of divine status in fact, but the lack of unique powers (thematic / their flavor: necromantic powers for Orcus, or creation for Demo) that elevate them highly above their thralls. How imagine Demogorgon ruling an infinite plane with billions of powerful demons (balors, Myrmixicus..)who want to rebel every secons. Even if Demo is a CR 32 or so, if he don't possess a unique divine -like power to rule...I think that he'll be kill very fast... I tried /a friend to think of this fact and edit 2 files in: www.dndadventure.com in the creatures crypt section "Epic demon lords/archdevils" .I don't pretend that they are better that Dicefreak or Dragon, but see it and tell me what You think of them. Tanks:) Thanks yourself! :) These are pretty cool in general. In fact in general I tend to support anything that makes them more powerful yet still in theory realistic challenges. Asmodeus is possibly over the top at CR 63, but actually that would fit nicely with the cosmology of my world, where Asmodeus is actually the child of the original ruler and creator of the hells, an evil deity with a divine rank in excess of 20, and her consort, Naamah. I will say that the AC for the CR 63 version of Asmodeus is too low at 51.That's lower than the AC (59) of the CR 33 version of Demogorgon. At a minumum Asmodeus should have epic bracers and ring. If we raised them both to +12, for example, that would raise his AC to 61. We might look at other ways of raising Asmodeus' AC as well, since 61 is still barely better than the AC of the CR 33 Demogorgon. But in general I agree that these are pretty cool epic arch-devils. :cool: |
| sebastienurbanek06-21-07, 04:36 AM | Tank iou (;) ). You're free to alter the stats, obviously. When I did Asmo, I thought that He was a solar with max HD (in FC2 the autors said that He's : an angel, and one of the most powerful being in the multiverse= max HD for a solar, thus 66). Maybe the Ac is low, but think of the spells he can cast. But now, for me I rewrote my own files because I don't like the idea of a too high SR; thus I put quasi deity traits for epic archfiends (with a SR of 32 like in the rules) and altered their powers from the files you've seen (sorry for the bad language, but it's hard to communicate in good terms...I'm a Frenchie from suburban of Paris) . But I didn't edit the new stats (I'm so lazy;) ). But if you want them, post me your personal adress e-mail by MP and I'll send them to you. |
| Thorsbjorn06-21-07, 07:03 AM | Tank iou (;) ). You're free to alter the stats, obviously. When I did Asmo, I thought that He was a solar with max HD (in FC2 the autors said that He's : an angel, and one of the most powerful being in the multiverse= max HD for a solar, thus 66). Maybe the Ac is low, but think of the spells he can cast. But now, for me I rewrote my own files because I don't like the idea of a too high SR; thus I put quasi deity traits for epic archfiends (with a SR of 32 like in the rules) and altered their powers from the files you've seen (sorry for the bad language, but it's hard to communicate in good terms...I'm a Frenchie from suburban of Paris) . But I didn't edit the new stats (I'm so lazy;) ). But if you want them, post me your personal adress e-mail by MP and I'll send them to you. You know what? I didn't even realize that you'd done these. I thought you just found them done by someone else. Good job! As for your English, it's several orders of magnitude better than my French. C'est vrai! :P |
| The Serge706-21-07, 10:59 AM | More importantly, however, is that as I understand sebastienurbanek's original comments, he was arguing that the demon prices and arch-devils are relatively weaker under 3rd Ed than they were under 1st Ed because under 1st Ed they were considered deities. Since under 1st Ed deity status gave little additional power, that's simply not true. Arguably the 1st Ed Demogorgon, with all of 200 hit points, -8 AC, and immunity to weapons of less than +2 enchantment, was substantially weaker than the current Dragon Demogorgon with 869 hit points, 59 AC, and DR 20/cold iron, epic and good. The addition of the few relatively weak 1st Ed standard divine abilities in no way made the 1st Ed Demogorgon more powerful than the Dragon Demogorgon. The 1st Ed standard divine abilities just weren't that powerful. So Demogorgon is more powerful now, even without divine abilities, than he was under 1st Ed even with divine abilities. Noted; however, this is also the case (more so, even) with 3ed gods versus 1ed gods. |
| sciborg206-21-07, 07:25 PM | Going through Dragon right now. If I might tread the border of the CoC, simply @%$!#%!% amazing! :D I love the history of Demo, great work that once again makes me feel like I'm an ancient scholar pouring over forbidden or elite/priviledged texts...as the best D&D articles have always done for me. I love the vestiges and it will tie in nicely with some stuff I've been doing with the Wells of Darkness and the "elemental" of Abyssal dark named Ztefano they produced. And I've yet to check out ecology of the titan... |
| Orodruin06-21-07, 10:38 PM | You make a good point, but back in those days there were basically two types of DMs: killer DMs and Monty Haul DMs. Killer DMs almost never let characters get anywhere near high enough to fight demon princes. I went through literally a dozen characters with my first DM before I got one that lasted to second level. So characters who did survive to fight demon princes typically existed in Monty Haul campaigns. (Since I started with a killer DM I become a Monty Haul DM back in my college days. :P) Characters who got into their teen levels routinely had access to many wishes to raise ability scores, and in those days there were no rules on limits or stacking of bonuses, as well as girdles of giant strength, +5 vorpal swords, and so forth. So those 200 hp and -8 AC really didn't look very strong, especially since monsters didn't gain bonuses from things like the Strength or Constitution scores. In my own copy of the 1st Ed Monster Manual I had penciled in 250 hit points for Demogorgon to make him a bit more challenging to my overpowered PCs. In the 1st Ed Deities and Demigods I likewise have Thor with an AC of -23 penciled in, as well as a bunch of other improvements to him. True. And actually, there's also a greater degree of guidelines over managing the players' magic items in 3rd ed, which gives DM's more control over the PC's relative power (via the gp limit). There were no such guidelines in 1st and 2nd ed, so like you mentioned, high level games tended to devolve into "monty haul" campaigns with players running amok with rings of multiple wishes, holy avengers, and vorpal blades. 1st ed also gave us the cavalier character class, who increased his str, dex and con EVERY TIME he raised a level (and as a cavalier sub-class, a paladin gained all those abilities, in addition to the standard paladin abilities). The barbarian class was similarly considered to be overpowered. Furthermore, as a monster, Demogorgon (and the rest of the archfiends) used the monster attack matrix, so his THAC0 peaked at 16+ hd, and was inferior to that of an unenhanced fighter, paladin, ranger, cavalier or barbarian of similar level. Heck, clerics and druids could match that at those levels since they inevitably had weapons of +3 or greater anyway! On a minor note, 1st Ed premiered in 1977 but the original Deities and Demigods didn't appear until 1980, so for three years the rules didn't label these beings deities. For that matter Demogoron and Orcus first appeared in original Dungeons and Dragons Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, published in 1976, so there was a 4-year-old tradition of them as "mere monsters with the lack of divinity," as sebastienurbanek put it. Many of us who started playing prior to 1980 simply didn't notice or didn't bother with one isolated page in a book that most players didn't even own, and continued to use the Monster Manual entries as the standard reference. But yes, Deities and Demigods did officially elevate their status to lesser deity. It was later clarified (or retconned/changed) in the Manual of the Planes where Demon Lords and Arch-devils were considered lesser powers on their home planes. Encountered elsewhere, they stuck to their regular monster manual stats. The updated deity abilities in the MoP are somewhat more potent than those given in Deities and Demigods (particularly for greater powers) though. Despite this, an adventure like Throne of Bloodstone (where virtually all the abyss-based gods and demon lords were potential encounters) was still considered to be playable by an 18th level party. Go figure. |
| Kain Darkwind06-25-07, 10:25 AM | Ok, I've read the article on Demogorgon and I've got a few remarks and questions. First, it was heartrending to see Demogorgon with resistance to electricity 10. ZOMGWTF is the matter with you! ;) The origin was suitably cool and the flavor pretty much followed my expectations for a Demonomicon article, namely awesome. But....the article mentions...lemorian golems, orlath demons and a son of Demogorgon named Arendagrost. In mere passing, making me think that they are mentioned in more detail elsewhere. Anyone want to clue me in as to where? I don't even know what these things look like. |
| Orodruin06-25-07, 06:12 PM | But....the article mentions...lemorian golems, orlath demons and a son of Demogorgon named Arendagrost. In mere passing, making me think that they are mentioned in more detail elsewhere. Anyone want to clue me in as to where? I don't even know what these things look like. If I remember correctly, Arendagrost was the big-a**ed demon thingie that Kargoth unleashed at Demogorgon's behest the moment he got turned into a Death Knight. It was mentioned in the Living Greyhawk journal in Dragon Magazine a few years ago (high 200's I think) which re-introduced Death Knights to 3rd ed. Given Demogorgon's involvement in that particular story, I guess it makes sense to write Arendagrost in as his son. I'm drawing a blank on Lomorians and Orlaths though. |
| Franco Un-American06-26-07, 03:53 AM | Both Lemorian Golems and orlath demons are detailed in the Savage Tide AP. IIRC, the Golem is from 'Here There Be Monsters', and the Orlath is from "City of Broken Idols'. I can't recall much about the golem, but the orlath sticks out as particularly nasty. Has 12 arms, each using a scimitar, as well as two bite attacks, for a total of 16-17 attacks base, most with a 15-20 crit. Also has a gaze attack dealing vile charisma damage. CR 15. Meaning that for 2 fighter levels, you get 39 attacks/round at a CR 17. Add enough dervish levels and you wind up having nearly 80 attack rolls to make per round, at the mid-low epic range. |
| Thorsbjorn06-26-07, 03:59 AM | Both Lemorian Golems and orlath demons are detailed in the Savage Tide AP. IIRC, the Golem is from 'Here There Be Monsters', and the Orlath is from "City of Broken Idols'. I can't recall much about the golem, but the orlath sticks out as particularly nasty. Has 12 arms, each using a scimitar, as well as two bite attacks, for a total of 16-17 attacks base, most with a 15-20 crit. Also has a gaze attack dealing vile charisma damage. CR 15. Meaning that for 2 fighter levels, you get 39 attacks/round at a CR 17. Add enough dervish levels and you wind up having nearly 80 attack rolls to make per round, at the mid-low epic range. Cool! :cool: Thanks Mr. Spaghetti-Nos! :P Do you know by any chance if they appeared in Dragon or Dungeon, and if in Dragon, what issues? Thanks! :) Edit: 39 attack per round?! How do you figure that? :confused: |
| Kain Darkwind06-26-07, 08:57 AM | Both Lemorian Golems and orlath demons are detailed in the Savage Tide AP. IIRC, the Golem is from 'Here There Be Monsters', and the Orlath is from "City of Broken Idols'. I can't recall much about the golem, but the orlath sticks out as particularly nasty. Has 12 arms, each using a scimitar, as well as two bite attacks, for a total of 16-17 attacks base, most with a 15-20 crit. Also has a gaze attack dealing vile charisma damage. CR 15. Meaning that for 2 fighter levels, you get 39 attacks/round at a CR 17. Add enough dervish levels and you wind up having nearly 80 attack rolls to make per round, at the mid-low epic range. Thanks...could you help me out with issue numbers? And does anyone have even a physical description of Arendagrost? Looks like I've got some more back issue hunting to do...I started picking up Savage Tide a little late. |
| Thorsbjorn06-26-07, 09:11 AM | Thanks...could you help me out with issue numbers? Gee, I wish I'd thought of that. :P |
| Kain Darkwind06-26-07, 09:27 AM | Gee, I wish I'd thought of that. :P :) Well, to answer the question you asked, they are in Dungeon, since he said they were in the Savage Tide Adventure Path. But they must be somewhat early in it, since I haven't seen them. EDIT: City of Broken Idols is issue 145, Here there be Monsters is 142. Should have thought to check Paizo's website (http://paizo.com/store/magazines/dungeon/issues/savageTide) in the first place. |
| Thorsbjorn06-26-07, 12:15 PM | :) Well, to answer the question you asked, they are in Dungeon, since he said they were in the Savage Tide Adventure Path. But they must be somewhat early in it, since I haven't seen them. EDIT: City of Broken Idols is issue 145, Here there be Monsters is 142. Should have thought to check Paizo's website (http://paizo.com/store/magazines/dungeon/issues/savageTide) in the first place. I didn't just ask if they were in Dragon, but also in which issues. Dragon has a "Savage Tidings" column that links to the Savage Tide Adventure Path, so these creatures could have appeared in Dragon too. |
| Kain Darkwind06-26-07, 12:23 PM | I didn't just ask if they were in Dragon, but also in which issues. Dragon has a "Savage Tidings" column that links to the Savage Tide Adventure Path, so these creatures could have appeared in Dragon too. Yes, I know. My question would have been best worded, "To answer the question you asked and that I didn't, but to which I have the answer....unlike the question to which we both have which is...." Shame on you for not reading my mind. In anycase, we both have the issues numbers of Dungeon in which the creatures are provided and you are now informed that I can adequetely process written information, even if I have trouble conveying that through written information of my own. :D Something I am wondering....is there ANY thoughts or plans on doing a compendium of monsters found in Dungeon and Dragon? Not just the demons, although I'd kill to have a complete book with the entire list of them, rather than keep flipping through my magazines. It seems like such a thing would be better welcomed than the MM4 was at least. |
| Thorsbjorn06-26-07, 12:41 PM | Yes, I know. My question would have been best worded, "To answer the question you asked and that I didn't, but to which I have the answer....unlike the question to which we both have which is...." Shame on you for not reading my mind. In anycase, we both have the issues numbers of Dungeon in which the creatures are provided and you are now informed that I can adequetely process written information, even if I have trouble conveying that through written information of my own. :D Something I am wondering....is there ANY thoughts or plans on doing a compendium of monsters found in Dungeon and Dragon? Not just the demons, although I'd kill to have a complete book with the entire list of them, rather than keep flipping through my magazines. It seems like such a thing would be better welcomed than the MM4 was at least. My guess is that without the license to the magazines Paizo couldn't publish a compendium. I suppose that Wizards could do one, but I suspect that it would compete with their much-vaunted "Digital Initiative" and their next "Races" book (Races of the Couch, I believe, including the dreaded couch potato) and other such planned publications of wide interest. :P |
| Shroomy06-26-07, 02:50 PM | The Orlath demon appears in "Serpents of Scuttlecove" in Issue 146. |
| James Jacobs06-27-07, 01:28 AM | Savage Tide, which has been running in Dungeon since issue #139, has done a LOT with Demogorgon over the course of its 12 issue run. Lemorian golems and orlath demons are detailed there (as mentioned above); the golems in issue #142 and the orlath in #146. Arendagrost gets a picture and a stat block in Dungeon #150, by the way. I only had 8,000 words to write about Demogorogn... he could have kept going at 80,000 words... but in order to cover all the new and the important old, I kept mention to things like Lemorian golems, Lemorian half-fiends, orlaths, and other Savage Tide related stuff to a minimum. |
| Thorsbjorn06-27-07, 04:08 AM | Savage Tide, which has been running in Dungeon since issue #139, has done a LOT with Demogorgon over the course of its 12 issue run. Lemorian golems and orlath demons are detailed there (as mentioned above); the golems in issue #142 and the orlath in #146. Arendagrost gets a picture and a stat block in Dungeon #150, by the way. I only had 8,000 words to write about Demogorogn... he could have kept going at 80,000 words... but in order to cover all the new and the important old, I kept mention to things like Lemorian golems, Lemorian half-fiends, orlaths, and other Savage Tide related stuff to a minimum. Thanks for the reply, James! Who or what is Arendagrost? |
| Orodruin06-27-07, 02:26 PM | Thanks...could you help me out with issue numbers? And does anyone have even a physical description of Arendagrost? Found it in Dragon#290. "...Lord Kargoth writhed on the floor in agony, but he had succeeded in his task. He had delivered up the traitors to his master, and he had unleashed a horror upon the world, a great demon beast called Arendagrost, Maw of the Abyss. According to accounts at the time, the beast vaguely resembled an immense wingless dragon of gargantuan size. Instead of legs, it moved upon a sea of tentacles. In place of scales, it was covered in coarse black fur and had three heads that resembled monstrous horned fiends that breathed bloody acid, fire, and frost. Its six-fold eyes offered instant death to anyone catching their hideous gaze..." Hope that's what you were looking for. |
| Thorsbjorn06-27-07, 02:40 PM | Found it in Dragon#290. "...Lord Kargoth writhed on the floor in agony, but he had succeeded in his task. He had delivered up the traitors to his master, and he had unleashed a horror upon the world, a great demon beast called Arendagrost, Maw of the Abyss. According to accounts at the time, the beast vaguely resembled an immense wingless dragon of gargantuan size. Instead of legs, it moved upon a sea of tentacles. In place of scales, it was covered in coarse black fur and had three heads that resembled monstrous horned fiends that breathed bloody acid, fire, and frost. Its six-fold eyes offerend instant death to anyone catching their hideous gaze..." Hope that's what you were looking for. That's excellent! Thank you so much for posting it! |
| Kain Darkwind06-28-07, 08:52 AM | Found it in Dragon#290. "...Lord Kargoth writhed on the floor in agony, but he had succeeded in his task. He had delivered up the traitors to his master, and he had unleashed a horror upon the world, a great demon beast called Arendagrost, Maw of the Abyss. According to accounts at the time, the beast vaguely resembled an immense wingless dragon of gargantuan size. Instead of legs, it moved upon a sea of tentacles. In place of scales, it was covered in coarse black fur and had three heads that resembled monstrous horned fiends that breathed bloody acid, fire, and frost. Its six-fold eyes offered instant death to anyone catching their hideous gaze..." Hope that's what you were looking for. :embarrass I have Dragon 290. Thanks, Orodruin. James Jacobs just raised another question for me. Which issue of Dungeon is the Lemorian half-fiend in? You know, I'm probably just going to have to do a massive back issue sweep of the entire Adventure Path. Since it is unknown and dubious given the lack of an Age of Worms collection, that any Savage Tide compilation will come to pass. |
| Thorsbjorn06-28-07, 10:58 AM | :embarrass I have Dragon 290. Thanks, Orodruin. James Jacobs just raised another question for me. Which issue of Dungeon is the Lemorian half-fiend in? You know, I'm probably just going to have to do a massive back issue sweep of the entire Adventure Path. Since it is unknown and dubious given the lack of an Age of Worms collection, that any Savage Tide compilation will come to pass. I have Dragon 290 too! I don't recall though ever reading this death knight article. So Dragon has even more cool stuff than I realized! :cool: |
| Shroomy06-28-07, 12:27 PM | James Jacobs just raised another question for me. Which issue of Dungeon is the Lemorian half-fiend in? Kain, the Lemorian half-fiend variant is first detailed in Issue 143 in the "Tides of Dread" adventure, but I think it may be reprinted in 146 too (I don't have the adventures in front of me). |
| Orodruin06-28-07, 09:29 PM | :embarrass I have Dragon 290. Thanks, Orodruin. No prob. I thought we might get more of him in the latest Dungeon Magazine, but he didn't make an appearance (God knows there was more than enough major NPCs to chew on anyway!) At any rate, it looks like he'll have some role in the last issue, making him the most high-profile spawn of Demogorgon out there. (OK, I'll always have a soft spot for Drumorg the cambion, but let's face it, Drumorg's mom was just human, while Arendagrost gets to call Malcanthet "mommy" ;) ) I have Dragon 290 too! I don't recall though ever reading this death knight article. So Dragon has even more cool stuff than I realized! :cool: Heh, heh... I bought that issue of Dragon specifically for that Death Knight article! I guess that made it easier for me to remember some of the specifics in the story. |
| Thorsbjorn06-29-07, 12:35 AM | Heh, heh... I bought that issue of Dragon specifically for that Death Knight article! I guess that made it easier for me to remember some of the specifics in the story. I have a subscription to Dragon so I get them all. |
| The Serge706-30-07, 08:06 PM | DRAGON 357 is awesome (and the issue is consecutive odd numbers... Who knew?). I really love how Demogorgon was handled. Well done (as per usual) Mr. Jacobs. |
| sciborg207-03-07, 05:38 PM | They're also the first 3 odd primes. |
| zook1shoe66607-13-07, 12:54 PM | i saw the preview for the last Dragon in my copy of #358, that there was one last Demonicon on Apoclyta(sp?). i haven't seen a bad one yet so this one should really be good :) |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-13-07, 02:22 PM | i saw the preview for the last Dragon in my copy of #358, that there was one last Demonicon on Apoclyta(sp?). Not a specific demon lord: apocrypha not Aprocrypha. :) |
| ripvanwormer07-13-07, 02:41 PM | Apocrypha: 2. various religious writings of uncertain origin regarded by some as inspired, but rejected by most authorities. 3. writings, statements, etc., of doubtful authorship or authenticity. Compare "canon" (defs. 6, 7, 9). The last Demonicon will be about several different demon lords, with none formally statted (though there will be a new breed of demon that has stats there, so it won't be all fluff). It's James Jacobs' stab at adding fluff to a bunch of different demons he's longed to write about while he's sure he has the chance. (Plans for the "digital initiative" are still vague) |
| zook1shoe66607-14-07, 12:06 AM | oooooh ok... sounds really interesting, thanx Shemeska and Rip |
| The Serge707-15-07, 09:11 AM | Pretty cool that they managed to create stats for Iggwilv and Demonomicon stats for Orcus in the latest DUNGEON. |
| Thorsbjorn07-15-07, 02:47 PM | Pretty cool that they managed to create stats for Iggwilv and Demonomicon stats for Orcus in the latest DUNGEON. Yes. I'm a Dragon subscriber (sniff, last issue just arrived :weep: ) but not a Dungeon subscriber, so I rushed out to get the latest Dungeon specifically for the CR 32 version of Orcus. I haven't looked at the Orcus article yet--too much grading and preparation for the looming end of the summer semester--but I have been gradually looking over the Demogorgon article in the penultimate issue of Dragon. I must say that I'm really enjoying it! Well done, James Jacobs! I have a few questions, if you don't mind. Aren't caster levels of 25 and 20 rather low for a CR 33 creature that has 37 hit dice? PC primary casters at 33rd level would automatically be able to dispel all of Demogorgon's spells and spell-like abilities. The infernal, by contrast, has a caster level equal to its CR (26). Wouldn't a caster level of 33 or even 37 give the PCs a more appropriate challenge? (Maybe 37 for the spell-like abilities and 33 for the summon demon ability?) I know that the Demogorgon's AC seems high at 59, but that's mostly natural armor, meaning it has a poor touch AC of only 23. The half-celestial barbarian in my campaign, at only 20th level (16 hit dice), already has a touch AC of 23 before any buffing: 10 +5 (ring of protection) +8 (Dex) = 23. I think that maybe Demogorgon should have a better touch AC. Demogorgon at CR 33 alas has no epic feats or spell-like abilities. Even an infernal, at a CR of only 26, gets the epic spell hellball as a spell-like ability. I would think that at CR 33 at a minimum Demogorgon should get an epic version of the unholy aura, perhaps granting a +8 deflection bonus to AC (and a +8 resistance bonus to saving throws). That would raise his touch AC to 27. I would also suggest at least a greater mage armor (+6 armor bonus)--although that won't raise his touch AC but would make him a little tougher generally--or maybe even some sort of epic mage armor granting a higher bonus. (Maybe I'd just give him an epic unholy aura that grants a +10 bonus to AC and not improve the mage armor special ability.) For his offensive abilities, how about replacing the greater magic fang (+5) with an epic magic fang of at least +6 and maybe as high a +8? A couple of epic feats, like Devastating Critical and Overwhelming Critical, would make him quite awesome in melee combat. As for other special abilities, I might be inclined to tweak the summon demon ability, making it 10th level and allowing it to summon either 100 hit dice (5 balors) or 120 hit dice (5 goristro). Heal is pretty weak for CR 33, as it can heal only a maximum of 150 hit points. Maybe he should get mass heal instead, which heals a maximum of 250 hit points and would allow him to heal allies at the same time. He might not care about the safety of his allies, but keeping them strong keeps him safer. Maybe he could even get an epic heal or an epic mass heal, allowing him to heal more than 250 points at a time. For a creature with a CR of 33 and 37 hit dice, I think healing 300-350 at a time might be appropriate. Parties of 33rd level would most likely have access to this sort of magic, so giving it to Demogorgon seems like an appropriate challenge. How about magic items? Demogorgon has this nice ability to use any magic item, but you haven't outfitted him with any magic items. What sort of magic items are appropriate both for a CR 33 challenge and for Demogorgon in particular? If he's stuck with only heal three times a day, a staff of life would be nice. It would actually take 6 applications of heal to heal him from, say, 0 hit points to full. Does anyone have any other ideas for appropriate magic items? Any magic item he needs to hold in order to wield is going to take away one of his dangerous tentacle (rot) attacks, so the magic item should be good enough to warrant it. |
| ripvanwormer07-15-07, 03:53 PM | You have to assume that, in the multiverse of the Demonomicons, the creatures in the Epic Level Handbook don't exist. Those creatures are created for super-high-level campaigns, while the Abyssal lords in the Demonomicon articles are meant for campaigns where the PCs top out earlier (it assumes the PCs are around 20th level when they fight Demogorgon, so they need help from numerous powerful allies in the final battle). The Abyssal lords weren't created with the idea that they'd have to fight infernals for their thrones. |
| WhiteRaven81007-15-07, 04:18 PM | Thanks for the reply, James! Who or what is Arendagrost? The son of Demogorgon and Malcanthet. DRAGON 357 is awesome (and the issue is consecutive odd numbers... Who knew?). I really love how Demogorgon was handled. Well done (as per usual) Mr. Jacobs. I whole heartedly agree. The opening poem about how Demogorgon trumps all his enemies put a little tear in my eye. |
| The Serge707-15-07, 05:49 PM | You have to assume that, in the multiverse of the Demonomicons, the creatures in the Epic Level Handbook don't exist. Those creatures are created for super-high-level campaigns, while the Abyssal lords in the Demonomicon articles are meant for campaigns where the PCs top out earlier (it assumes the PCs are around 20th level when they fight Demogorgon, so they need help from numerous powerful allies in the final battle). The Abyssal lords weren't created with the idea that they'd have to fight infernals for their thrones. :nonono: But, for the sake of not derailing a praise thread, I won't get into this issue. |
| Thorsbjorn07-15-07, 07:01 PM | You have to assume that, in the multiverse of the Demonomicons, the creatures in the Epic Level Handbook don't exist. Those creatures are created for super-high-level campaigns, while the Abyssal lords in the Demonomicon articles are meant for campaigns where the PCs top out earlier (it assumes the PCs are around 20th level when they fight Demogorgon, so they need help from numerous powerful allies in the final battle). The Abyssal lords weren't created with the idea that they'd have to fight infernals for their thrones. One day you will pause from cleaning toilets in your pig-filled netherworld and actually respond to one of my posts in a useful and relevant way. I just know it! :D Thanks for the reply, James! Who or what is Arendagrost? The son of Demogorgon and Malcanthet. Wow, I asked that question 18 days ago, and completely forgot about it. I don't even recall the original context. Thanks for the reply though! :) Edit: Oh, I see the original context. What is the CR of Arendagrost? If it's reasonably-high I might pick up Dungeon 150 too. Now I'm sorry that Dungeon is ending too! |
| ripvanwormer07-15-07, 07:38 PM | One day you will pause from cleaning toilets in your pig-filled netherworld and actually respond to one of my posts in a useful and relevant way. I love you too, person whose name I don't recognize. Have we interacted before? :nonono: But, for the sake of not derailing a praise thread, I won't get into this issue. I didn't even mean it as criticism, necessarily. It's just something that has to be kept in mind when critiquing the stats, there - that the Epic Level Handbook is something extremely marginal in the Demonomicon-verse. Expecting those stats to use all the tools there, or expecting them to be done in a comparable way, isn't going to be very fruitful. |
| Thorsbjorn07-15-07, 08:43 PM | I love you too, person whose name I don't recognize. Have we interacted before? I didn't even mean it as criticism, necessarily. It's just something that has to be kept in mind when critiquing the stats, there - that the Epic Level Handbook is something extremely marginal in the Demonomicon-verse. Expecting those stats to use all the tools there, or expecting them to be done in a comparable way, isn't going to be very fruitful. It's not a matter of expectation, O ye of self-avowed ignorance, but of improvement. The epic material exists, and those of use who run high-level campaigns use it, so when writers advance creatures to epic levels they would benefit us greatly by using epic material. |
| The Serge707-15-07, 09:13 PM | I didn't even mean it as criticism, necessarily. It's just something that has to be kept in mind when critiquing the stats, there - that the Epic Level Handbook is something extremely marginal in the Demonomicon-verse. Expecting those stats to use all the tools there, or expecting them to be done in a comparable way, isn't going to be very fruitful. I know it wasn't a criticism. From you, anyway. For me, it remains one of the most significant criticisms. I'm also not certain that there aren't ELH monsters in the FC/Demonomicon cosmology (I could have sworn that I've seen references to at least one or two somewhere)... but I've been wrong before. |
| ripvanwormer07-16-07, 09:01 AM | It's not a matter of expectation, O ye of self-avowed ignorance, but of improvement. You're in a feisty mood, aren't you, O ye of long-held mysterious grudges? But I wasn't contesting anything you said, only offering perspective. |
| ryuspearhead07-16-07, 03:56 PM | **** ( yes im self censoring myself ) , im gonna miss you dragon . ryu bulids a cross of elven flowers . ps. if so mant people are complaining why isn't Wotc bringing back dragon , come on if this many people are willing to spend 8-16 bucks a month think they'd want to make a profit :) |
| Bob the Efreet07-16-07, 04:30 PM | I know it wasn't a criticism. From you, anyway. For me, it remains one of the most significant criticisms. I'm also not certain that there aren't ELH monsters in the FC/Demonomicon cosmology (I could have sworn that I've seen references to at least one or two somewhere)... but I've been wrong before. There is that 96 HD goristro in FC1. Maybe I should advance a goristro that far and run a battle between it and Demonomicon Demogorgon? That could be entertaining. |
| Thorsbjorn07-16-07, 06:08 PM | I know it wasn't a criticism. From you, anyway. For me, it remains one of the most significant criticisms. I'm also not certain that there aren't ELH monsters in the FC/Demonomicon cosmology (I could have sworn that I've seen references to at least one or two somewhere)... but I've been wrong before. I agree that the FC/Demonomicon material should include epic material. I can see skipping for the most part with the CRs in the low 20s, like the (feeble) FC 1 versions of Demogorgon and Orcus, but by the time the CRs hit 25 the creatures should start using epic material. The author of the "Ecology of the Titan" article in Dragon 357 has some epic material (I haven't finished with the Demogorgon material yet but I see that the titan article contains 7 epic feats) and he's not even intimately associated with Wizard material the way the FC people are, so it's not unreasonable for them to include some of it too. You're in a feisty mood, aren't you, O ye of long-held mysterious grudges? But I wasn't contesting anything you said, only offering perspective. Fair enough. Maybe it's all this grading and class prep I'm going for the summer semester. I'll be glad when it's over in a little more than two weeks. **** ( yes im self censoring myself ) , im gonna miss you dragon . ryu bulids a cross of elven flowers . ps. if so mant people are complaining why isn't Wotc bringing back dragon , come on if this many people are willing to spend 8-16 bucks a month think they'd want to make a profit :) If you go to the Digital Initiative thread under future releases you can read pages of customers criticizing the cancellation of the magazines and some generally hostile replies by Wizards employees. There is that 96 HD goristro in FC1. Maybe I should advance a goristro that far and run a battle between it and Demonomicon Demogorgon? That could be entertaining. Can you please give me the page number? Thanks! :) |
| The Serge707-17-07, 08:11 AM | Well, Iggwilv also has epic feats and spells, so the material from ELH is not entirely excised. And, I'm still certain there are some epic monsters in some of the recent books/articles out there... |
| Mirtek07-17-07, 12:41 PM | There is that 96 HD goristro in FC1. Maybe I should advance a goristro that far and run a battle between it and Demonomicon Demogorgon? That could be entertaining. Actually the Demogorgon article mentions that there are things in the Abyss more terrible than him. it just fails to explain why none of them just took his throne long ago |
| Bob the Efreet07-17-07, 05:27 PM | Can you please give me the page number? Thanks! :) 41, under the section on advanced goristros. I was misremembering, though: it's only 95 HD. |
| Thorsbjorn07-17-07, 06:06 PM | Well, Iggwilv also has epic feats and spells, so the material from ELH is not entirely excised. And, I'm still certain there are some epic monsters in some of the recent books/articles out there... Where can I find the entry for Iggwilv? Thanks. :) Actually the Demogorgon article mentions that there are things in the Abyss more terrible than him. it just fails to explain why none of them just took his throne long ago Can you locate that within the article? Thanks. :) 41, under the section on advanced goristros. I was misremembering, though: it's only 95 HD. Ah, thanks, I see it now. I thought you meant a full entry for an advanced goristro with 95 hit dice. That would have been cool. Under the general rules for advancing monsters, an outsider's CR increase by 1 for every 2 additional hit dice it gets. So the CR for a 95-hit-die goristro would be 16 + (95-24)/2 = 52. So I'd guess from the great disparity in CRs that the goristro would win in one-on-one combat. I'm not sure what progression James Jacob used for saving throws past 20 hit dice for Demogorgon to get a base save of +24 for 37 hit dice, but clearly with 95 hit dice the goristro is going to have much, much higher saving throws, so it's going to be able to save pretty much automatically against all of Demogorgon's special abilities. Demogorgon's one saving grace would probably come from his energy drain attack, which doesn't allow a saving throw against the initial effects, only against permanent energy drain 24 hours later. So if Demogorgon could get in a great many successful attacks with his tail before the goristro pounds him to a pulp, maybe Demogorgon could prevail after all. Demogorgon would definitely need to summon fodder to help absorb the advanced goristro's damage, and goristros are pretty stupid so it might not focus its attack on Demogorgon while he has other targets around for the goristro to attack. This would most likely be an all-out fight for Demogorgon, requiring him to use his maximum demon summoning ability as well as gating in other allies. It would be an interesting fight! |
| Mirtek07-18-07, 12:12 PM | Can you locate that within the article? Thanks. :) Page 23, first sentence after the end of the game stats: "Although there are certainly more dangerous things dwelling in some corners of the Abyss ...." |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 04:40 PM | Page 23, first sentence after the end of the game stats: "Although there are certainly more dangerous things dwelling in some corners of the Abyss ...." Great! Thanks! I'm not sure about in 3rd Ed, but in previous editions some chaotic evil deities made their home in the Abyss, so it could even refer to them rather than to some other demons. |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-18-07, 06:46 PM | Great! Thanks! I'm not sure about in 3rd Ed, but in previous editions some chaotic evil deities made their home in the Abyss, so it could even refer to them rather than to some other demons. There are quite a few gods in the Abyss, including but not limited to: Lolth, Kali, the Great Mother, Mershaulk, Hiddukel, Beshaba, etc. However they're second class powers in the Abyss compared to the fiendish lords, so I seriously doubt that it was referring to evil gods. |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 07:00 PM | There are quite a few gods in the Abyss, including but not limited to: Lolth, Kali, the Great Mother, Mershaulk, Hiddukel, Beshaba, etc. However they're second class powers in the Abyss compared to the fiendish lords, so I seriously doubt that it was referring to evil gods. Has Kali made an appearance in 3rd Ed? The gods of Deities and Demigods are much more powerful than even the CR 33 version of Demogorgon. |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-18-07, 07:04 PM | Has Kali made an appearance in 3rd Ed? She shows up in a few places in FC:I. The gods of Deities and Demigods are much more powerful than even the CR 33 version of Demogorgon. The archfiends don't have an upper bound for their stats, just avatars/aspects. Judge for yourself how much time you want to spend pumping up a statblock for using in a game, but the flavor text, and their history in the lower planes, is pretty blunt that gods avoid getting involved in the politics of the fiendish planes. The two tend to avoid one anothers' spheres of interest, the fiends on the lower planes, and the gods on the prime material and their own discrete divine domains. |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 07:14 PM | She shows up in a few places in FC:I. The archfiends don't have an upper bound for their stats, just avatars/aspects. Judge for yourself how much time you want to spend pumping up a statblock for using in a game, but the flavor text, and their history in the lower planes, is pretty blunt that gods avoid getting involved in the politics of the fiendish planes. The two tend to avoid one anothers' spheres of interest, the fiends on the lower planes, and the gods on the prime material and their own discrete divine domains. The gods don't have an upper bound either. Just as you can advance Demogorgon from CR 23 to CR 33, you can advance Thor from Barbarian 20/Ranger 20 to Barbarian 30/Ranger 20 (or 30!). Yes, the fiends do tend to stay out of the way of the gods who co-exist in their planes. :D |
| Witch07-18-07, 07:19 PM | Yes, the fiends do tend to stay out of the way of the gods who co-exist in their planes. :D To the contrary. Levistus keeps stealing away their at Seth's domain, for one, and Seth doesn't seem to be able to do anything at all about it. |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-18-07, 07:23 PM | The gods don't have an upper bound either. Just as you can advance Demogorgon from CR 23 to CR 33, you can advance Thor from Barbarian 20/Ranger 20 to Barbarian 30/Ranger 20 (or 30!). Yes, the fiends do tend to stay out of the way of the gods who co-exist in their planes. :D No, they have discrete stats. The various archfiends are overtly described as being stats for avatars/aspects. Gods have control over a finite deific domain, measured in miles extending outwards from them. Abyssal lords have effectively the same level of control over an infinite layer of the Abyss, the Lords of the 9 likewise have control over an infinite layer of Baator (while gods like Tiamat or Set rule only a small, enclosed domain). Admittedly, the situation of power tends to be reversed on worlds where a deity is worshipped. |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 07:41 PM | To the contrary. Levistus keeps stealing away their at Seth's domain, for one, and Seth doesn't seem to be able to do anything at all about it. Set could suck the life out of pitiful Levistas without battling an eyelash. |
| Witch07-18-07, 07:43 PM | Set could suck the life out of pitiful Levistas without battling an eyelash. Then why's he losing? Does he have a fetish for being humiliated? |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 07:44 PM | No, they have discrete stats. The various archfiends are overtly described as being stats for avatars/aspects. Gods have control over a finite deific domain, measured in miles extending outwards from them. Abyssal lords have effectively the same level of control over an infinite layer of the Abyss, the Lords of the 9 likewise have control over an infinite layer of Baator (while gods like Tiamat or Set rule only a small, enclosed domain). Admittedly, the situation of power tends to be reversed on worlds where a deity is worshipped. FC 2 shows the archdevils as aspects. I see nothing about the demon princes being just aspects. And contrary to what you say, Deities and Demigods specifically contemplates advancing deities to epic levels. So if you're going to use a CR 33 Demogorgon, you have to advance Thor to barbarian 30 (giving him 70 hit twice, or nearly twice Demogorgon's 37). |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 07:46 PM | Then why's he losing? Does he have a fetish for being humiliated? Losing?! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-18-07, 07:51 PM | FC 2 shows the archdevils as aspects. I see nothing about the demon princes being just aspects. Placing the stats as those of aspects was the explicit intention of the authors who wrote FC:I. It was more obviously stated in FC:II yes, but it's patently silly to suggest that the stance intended in FC:I and then overtly stated in FC:II wouldn't also apply to FC:I. And contrary to what you say, Deities and Demigods specifically contemplates advancing deities to epic levels. So if you're going to use a CR 33 Demogorgon, you have to advance Thor to barbarian 30 (giving him 70 hit twice, or nearly twice Demogorgon's 37). D&DG was written in a vacuum. It doesn't take any time to address parity, or lack thereof between gods and planar rulers, nor does it suggest that if you advance X being in the game you have to proportionally advance Y deity. And regardless of what D&DG might or might not say, it doesn't alter any of the past history on the lower planes as it concerns the balance of power between gods who live on those planes, and archfiends who embody those planes. |
| Witch07-18-07, 07:54 PM | Losing?! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Yes, losing ":rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:". |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 08:13 PM | Yes, losing ":rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:". Claiming that Levistas is "winning" over Set is like claiming, when Dennis Kucinich goes from 1% to 2% in the polls and Hillary Clinton goes from 36% to 35%, that Kucinich is "winning" over Hillary. |
| Thorsbjorn07-18-07, 08:18 PM | Placing the stats as those of aspects was the explicit intention of the authors who wrote FC:I. It was more obviously stated in FC:II yes, but it's patently silly to suggest that the stance intended in FC:I and then overtly stated in FC:II wouldn't also apply to FC:I. D&DG was written in a vacuum. It doesn't take any time to address parity, or lack thereof between gods and planar rulers, nor does it suggest that if you advance X being in the game you have to proportionally advance Y deity. And regardless of what D&DG might or might not say, it doesn't alter any of the past history on the lower planes as it concerns the balance of power between gods who live on those planes, and archfiends who embody those planes. Your "patently silly to suggest" translates into "I have no evidence for my wishful thinking so I'll resort to ad hominem attack instead of admitting the truth." And speaking of the truth, it's true that the authors of the FCs ignored Deities and Demigods the way they ignored the Epic Level Handbook, but even more so because the presence of gods that are much more powerful than mere archfiends knocks all of their carefully-crafted stories into a cocked hat. Alas for you and the FC authors, the gods exist as your Inconvenient Truth. |
| Witch07-18-07, 08:24 PM | Claiming that Levistas is "winning" over Set is like claiming, when Dennis Kucinich goes from 1% to 2% in the polls and Hillary Clinton goes from 36% to 35%, that Kucinich is "winning" over Hillary. Levistus controls an infinite layer. Set controls a small part of a finite realm. And Levistus is taking those small parts from him. I'd say whatever Set loses is painful. |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-18-07, 08:26 PM | Claiming that Levistas is "winning" over Set is like claiming, when Dennis Kucinich goes from 1% to 2% in the polls and Hillary Clinton goes from 36% to 35%, that Kucinich is "winning" over Hillary. No, it's not claiming anything. It's stating a fact, that Set and Lesvistus are embroiled in a long-running dispute, and over time Levistus has brought a portion of his power over Stygia to bear on Set, causing Set's deific domain to actually shrink in size, despite any efforts by Set to stop it. There isn't any question here about who in Stygia is calling the shots when push comes to shove. |
| The Serge707-18-07, 08:29 PM | Although it's my preference to agree with Shemeska (Dicefreaks agrees with the general principal she's espousing), the WotC proof implies that the demon princes, and the archdevils by correlation, are weaker than gods. The stats in the Demonomicon are considered the actual stats for official WotC purposes and, in that case, Demogorgon stops at a CR 33. In Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, it's pretty clear that Lolth is far more powerful physically and politically than the demon princes, Demogorgon included (even though Demogorgon is willing to go to war with her later on depending on what occurs in the game). |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-18-07, 09:23 PM | Although it's my preference to agree with Shemeska (Dicefreaks agrees with the general principal she's espousing), the WotC proof implies that the demon princes, and the archdevils by correlation, are weaker than gods. The stats in the Demonomicon are considered the actual stats for official WotC purposes and, in that case, Demogorgon stops at a CR 33. In Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, it's pretty clear that Lolth is far more powerful physically and politically than the demon princes, Demogorgon included (even though Demogorgon is willing to go to war with her later on depending on what occurs in the game). I didn't gather that perspective at all. The "aspects" of the archfiends are wary of Lolth in the module, but they're alone, inside her deific domain. That's a position that gods hold as well if they're inside another, potentially rival god's sanctum. Besides, the whole module is really about Graz'zt making a fool of Lolth for having spurned a proposal of his. One of the potential ends of the module has Lolth pushed to defend her borders with all her power to avoid being swamped by the forces of Demogorgon and Zuggtmoy. No deific handwaving and making the fiends vanish. But I think the point in the module where Pale Night teleports within Lolth's deific domain, despite Lolth's prohibition of such magic (something that shouldn't be possible even for a more powerful god within her domain) is telling. Pale Night simply ignores Lolth's supposed authority over the 66th layer of the Abyss. We'll see what happens I suppose. |
| sciborg207-19-07, 12:27 AM | I think the relationship will continue to be ill-defined. |
| zook1shoe66607-19-07, 11:25 AM | Has Kali made an appearance in 3rd Ed? they mention Kali and Melif in the Manuel of the Planes also... just name |
| Mirtek07-19-07, 12:42 PM | Gods have control over a finite deific domain, measured in miles extending outwards from them. Abyssal lords have effectively the same level of control over an infinite layer of the Abyss, Atually the demonlords no longer have this in 3e. Either their layers are now suddenly of limited size or they controll only a limited terrain in thei infinite layer. And some gods controlled infinite abyssal layers in 2e. Yes, losing ":rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:". Actually 2e had an more even portrayal of their conflict, with Set's armies marching out in retaliation for Levistus' approaches to his divine realm. Levistus controls an infinite layer. Set controls a small part of a finite realm. And Levistus is taking those small parts from him. I'd say whatever Set loses is painful. Until Set marches out, didds through miles of ice with his bare divine hands and throttling Levistus before he can enjoy his new freedom. :P Some 2e sources suggest that Set plans to seize controll of the whole layer. |
| Shemeska the Marauder07-19-07, 12:51 PM | Atually the demonlords no longer have this in 3e. Either their layers are now suddenly of limited size or they controll only a limited terrain in thei infinite layer. A few of them had their layers inexplicably made finite, I presume to make it easier to draw a map of the layer, but it's not in any way the default case. Others have infinite realms, and their power over those realms isn't limited in size upon their layer. For instance FC:I is entirely unambiguous about Kostchtchie having such control over the Iron Wastes that he can halt aging and natural death in any mortal across the entirety of the layer. |
| Mirtek07-19-07, 02:18 PM | For instance FC:I is entirely unambiguous about Kostchtchie having such control over the Iron Wastes that he can halt aging and natural death in any mortal across the entirety of the layer. While the Demonicom speaks of how the layer becomes even more hostile and unaccessable once one leaves the area under Kostchtchie's controll and enters the infinite wilderness around. Anyway, the divine realm rules for deities and archfiends are actually pathetic if compared to what earlier flavor text suggested they should be able to do. They can hardly affect anything of real consequence (Hey look out, one step closer to me and I make this layer loud and bad smelling) or it takes thousands of rounds to do it (Stop, if you only move one step closer I will make all your spells fail .... and it will take effect ähm ....... after only one year from now has passed! Beware of my terrible power (if you're visiting again next year)!) |
| BOZ07-27-07, 05:30 PM | You have to assume that, in the multiverse of the Demonomicons, the creatures in the Epic Level Handbook don't exist. Those creatures are created for super-high-level campaigns, while the Abyssal lords in the Demonomicon articles are meant for campaigns where the PCs top out earlier (it assumes the PCs are around 20th level when they fight Demogorgon, so they need help from numerous powerful allies in the final battle). The Abyssal lords weren't created with the idea that they'd have to fight infernals for their thrones. i think that's the best way i've heard to look at this phenomenon. the two sets don't seem like they would co-exist well... |
| Thorsbjorn07-31-07, 03:31 AM | i think that's the best way i've heard to look at this phenomenon. the two sets don't seem like they would co-exist well... Yet Iggwilv herself has epic feats, epic spells, and epic magic items. |
| James Jacobs07-31-07, 06:52 AM | The demon lords certainly could take epic feats and spells if they wanted. The Demonomicon versions don't really need them, though. Much cooler, I think, to have unique abilities that aren't just carbon copied from epic feats and epic spells. |
| Thorsbjorn07-31-07, 07:07 AM | The demon lords certainly could take epic feats and spells if they wanted. The Demonomicon versions don't really need them, though. Much cooler, I think, to have unique abilities that aren't just carbon copied from epic feats and epic spells. Well they have "carbon copied" non-epic feats and spells, so replacing a few of those with epic feats and spells wouldn't have made them any more "carbon copied"--but it would have made them more capable of dealing with actual 33rd-level PCs. :) |
| BOZ07-31-07, 08:12 AM | Yet Iggwilv herself has epic feats, epic spells, and epic magic items. sorry - i was referring only to the set of epic monsters in the book. they don't mix well with the demonomicon fellows, IMO. too many CR/power issues. |
| Kain Darkwind07-31-07, 12:46 PM | Well they have "carbon copied" non-epic feats and spells, so replacing a few of those with epic feats and spells wouldn't have made them any more "carbon copied"--but it would have made them more capable of dealing with actual 33rd-level PCs. :) With the exception of a few epic feats like epic spellcasting, multispell, etc, most epic feats are sorely lacking in power compared to those of more recently released regular feats. Epic hasn't been seriously touched since 3.0's days, and PCs weren't expected to be as powerful as they are today. Not that this in anyway contradicts your point that the creatures have carbon copied regular feats. Just saying that sometimes epic feats aren't all they were cracked up to be. |
| Thorsbjorn08-01-07, 01:03 AM | With the exception of a few epic feats like epic spellcasting, multispell, etc, most epic feats are sorely lacking in power compared to those of more recently released regular feats. Epic hasn't been seriously touched since 3.0's days, and PCs weren't expected to be as powerful as they are today. Not that this in anyway contradicts your point that the creatures have carbon copied regular feats. Just saying that sometimes epic feats aren't all they were cracked up to be. I'm afraid I can't agree. Blinding Speed under the 3.0 haste was absolutely awesome. Infinite Deflection under 3.5 new Deflect Arrows makes you immune to fired and thrown missiles. Add Exceptional Deflection and you're immune to ranged touch spells too. Dire Charge is excellent, especially if you update it to keep it parallel with the pounce special ability that it mimics. Devastating Critical is awesome. Improved Spell Capacity, especially combined with metamagic feats, is excellent, and so too are an array of epic metamagic feats. |
| Franco Un-American08-01-07, 03:09 AM | And those are pretty much the 'few' he mentioned. It's things like Epic Reputation, Epic Weapon Focus, Improved Heighten Spell, Epic Weapon Specialization, and such that comprise the vast majority of epic feats that are crap. |
| Thorsbjorn08-01-07, 03:45 AM | And those are pretty much the 'few' he mentioned. It's things like Epic Reputation, Epic Weapon Focus, Improved Heighten Spell, Epic Weapon Specialization, and such that comprise the vast majority of epic feats that are crap. There are far more excellent epic feats than a character can take in his or her first 10 epic levels, Mr. Spaghetti-Nos. :D Sure there are some that aren't as good as others, but that's true of the non-epic feats too. |
| Kain Darkwind08-01-07, 01:44 PM | I'm afraid I can't agree. Blinding Speed under the 3.0 haste was absolutely awesome. Infinite Deflection under 3.5 new Deflect Arrows makes you immune to fired and thrown missiles. Add Exceptional Deflection and you're immune to ranged touch spells too. Dire Charge is excellent, especially if you update it to keep it parallel with the pounce special ability that it mimics. Devastating Critical is awesome. Improved Spell Capacity, especially combined with metamagic feats, is excellent, and so too are an array of epic metamagic feats. 3.0 haste is gone, so too is the usefulness of that feat. Not to mention, if a designer really wanted Demogorgon to be capable of operating under the effects of haste, he could give it to him as an always active spell-like ability. Infinite Deflection and Exceptional Deflection require Improved Unarmed Strike, a useless feat for most natural attacking demon lords. In addition, that is a feat that one must consider the flavor for as well...do you want your demon lords ninja-blocking all ranged attacks like Jet-Li? Some may decide that no, no they don't. And like so many other epic feats, if you are designing the creature....and you want them immune to ranged attacks....you could just..give them immunity to ranged attacks? Give them extreme damage reduction against ranged attacks? There are design options available that don't require epic feats. Dire Charge is less useful than pounce AND....if you are designing a demon lord that you want to be capable of pouncing....just give them pounce. Improved Spellcasting Capacity (and Improved Metamagic) would require a demon lord to be capable of casting spells. None of the official ones currently are. Devestating Critical I will give you, is sweet, but unfortunately easily pimped by Heavy Fortification, available at a magic armor shop near you pre-epic. It also has 6 prereq feats, making it viable only for the most (natural) weapon intensive demon lords. And of course, neither of us mentioned things like Fast Healing, Damage Reduction, Armor Skin etc, because like the other things, they can just be given to the demon lord. Epic feats are more about PCs getting things they couldn't get normally than monsters. Take a look at my Demogorgon (http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?p=4802#4802). Notice the lack of Epic Feats. He's 70HD, so he's got a few, but not really that many. One of them (Epic Toughness) is modified from its official useless incarnation. And one of them is made up. That leaves 4 official epic feats, which provide him with a total of +4 Init, +4 Fort, +4 Will and unlimited attacks of opportunity per round. Really, I could get that much from a few magic items. And he was already capable of making 10 AoOs per round...probably more than he'd ever need. I'm just saying, epic feats are good for PCs, who can't legally get lots of that stuff any other way without a hefty LA race that might not be allowed in the campaign. But monsters, designed from scratch? They hardly need epic feats. Not the tame 3.0 versions we have to deal with at the moment anyways. |
| zook1shoe66608-01-07, 02:41 PM | i agree with kain.... if you want the demon lord to have something.... just give it to them. do you want your demon lords ninja-blocking all ranged attacks like Jet-Li? ROFL!!! thanx for the great mental image.... since i just watched 2 of his movies last night :) |
| Thorsbjorn08-02-07, 04:21 AM | 3.0 haste is gone, so too is the usefulness of that feat. Not to mention, if a designer really wanted Demogorgon to be capable of operating under the effects of haste, he could give it to him as an always active spell-like ability. Infinite Deflection and Exceptional Deflection require Improved Unarmed Strike, a useless feat for most natural attacking demon lords. In addition, that is a feat that one must consider the flavor for as well...do you want your demon lords ninja-blocking all ranged attacks like Jet-Li? Some may decide that no, no they don't. And like so many other epic feats, if you are designing the creature....and you want them immune to ranged attacks....you could just..give them immunity to ranged attacks? Give them extreme damage reduction against ranged attacks? There are design options available that don't require epic feats. Dire Charge is less useful than pounce AND....if you are designing a demon lord that you want to be capable of pouncing....just give them pounce. Improved Spellcasting Capacity (and Improved Metamagic) would require a demon lord to be capable of casting spells. None of the official ones currently are. Devestating Critical I will give you, is sweet, but unfortunately easily pimped by Heavy Fortification, available at a magic armor shop near you pre-epic. It also has 6 prereq feats, making it viable only for the most (natural) weapon intensive demon lords. And of course, neither of us mentioned things like Fast Healing, Damage Reduction, Armor Skin etc, because like the other things, they can just be given to the demon lord. Epic feats are more about PCs getting things they couldn't get normally than monsters. Take a look at my Demogorgon (http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?p=4802#4802). Notice the lack of Epic Feats. He's 70HD, so he's got a few, but not really that many. One of them (Epic Toughness) is modified from its official useless incarnation. And one of them is made up. That leaves 4 official epic feats, which provide him with a total of +4 Init, +4 Fort, +4 Will and unlimited attacks of opportunity per round. Really, I could get that much from a few magic items. And he was already capable of making 10 AoOs per round...probably more than he'd ever need. I'm just saying, epic feats are good for PCs, who can't legally get lots of that stuff any other way without a hefty LA race that might not be allowed in the campaign. But monsters, designed from scratch? They hardly need epic feats. Not the tame 3.0 versions we have to deal with at the moment anyways. It sounds like we actually agree on a number of things: there are a number of weak epic feats that need to be powered up; there are a number of epic feats excellent as they are; some of the epic feats help standard PCs more than they would help a demon price; an epic-level version of a demon prince should have some epic feats. If you go back and read my original comment I specifically suggested giving Demogorgon a couple of epic feats, mentioning Overwhelming Critical and Devastating Critical. As for fortification, it's sufficiently pricey that none of the PCs (20th-21st level) in the campaign I'm running has bothered to purchase it. Down on the epic boards here, indeed, epic players have complained (or bragged, depending on the player's perspective) that at serious epic levels nobody bothers wearing armor anyway. :) |
| Bob the Efreet08-02-07, 04:38 PM | Infinite Deflection and Exceptional Deflection require Improved Unarmed Strike, a useless feat for most natural attacking demon lords. In addition, that is a feat that one must consider the flavor for as well...do you want your demon lords ninja-blocking all ranged attacks like Jet-Li? Generally no, but there is always Azz'kallju, demon prince of kung fu and parkour. |
| Thorsbjorn08-02-07, 09:47 PM | Generally no, but there is always Azz'kallju, demon prince of kung fu and parkour. Actually Oriental martial arts don't have a monopoly on deflecting things. I don't have a problem with a powerful demon prince casually knocking aside ranged attacks a la Dark Vader with Han Solo's blaster blasts in Empire Strikes Back. I do though have a problem with the pairing of 3.0 Infinite Deflection with the 3.5 Deflect Arrows, which allows automatic deflection. So beyond the first missile, which the creature can still deflect automatically, I'm keeping the 3.0 mechanic of requiring an opposed roll, just as I'm keeping the 3.0 effect of Blinding Speed. |
| Kain Darkwind08-04-07, 02:39 PM | Actually Oriental martial arts don't have a monopoly on deflecting things. I don't have a problem with a powerful demon prince casually knocking aside ranged attacks a la Dark Vader with Han Solo's blaster blasts in Empire Strikes Back. I do though have a problem with the pairing of 3.0 Infinite Deflection with the 3.5 Deflect Arrows, which allows automatic deflection. So beyond the first missile, which the creature can still deflect automatically, I'm keeping the 3.0 mechanic of requiring an opposed roll, just as I'm keeping the 3.0 effect of Blinding Speed. We agree (http://dicefreaks.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7937&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=153) on the problem, although I have a different method of dealing with it. |
| Thorsbjorn08-05-07, 02:40 AM | We agree (http://dicefreaks.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7937&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=153) on the problem, although I have a different method of dealing with it. I like the idea of making exact successive arrow harder to deflect, but I prefer the 3.0 mechanic and adding +2 to the DC for each successive arrow. |
| James Jacobs08-05-07, 01:56 PM | As shown on the cover of Dungeon #150, Demogorgon doesn't need any arrow deflecting feats anyway. He just takes those arrows in the gums and uses them as reminders as to who he needs to attack next. |
| Thorsbjorn08-05-07, 07:20 PM | As shown on the cover of Dungeon #150, Demogorgon doesn't need any arrow deflecting feats anyway. He just takes those arrows in the gums and uses them as reminders as to who he needs to attack next. :D Actually, with those long tentacles, Demogorgon was the one whom I mentally envisioned as casually batting away those pesky little arrows. :D |
| Orodruin08-06-07, 03:36 AM | As shown on the cover of Dungeon #150, Demogorgon doesn't need any arrow deflecting feats anyway. He just takes those arrows in the gums and uses them as reminders as to who he needs to attack next. That almost sounds like an entry in a Demogorgon version of "Chuck Norris Facts"...:P |
| Bob the Efreet08-06-07, 04:23 AM | Demogorgon never learned how to bat away arrows, due to being invulnerable. There are a lot of keen defensive skills he never bothered to pick up due to that little ability. |
| zook1shoe66608-16-07, 04:41 PM | just got my copy of the dragon#359. James, you did an EXCELLENT job on the last Demonicon, i loved it!!! Thanks. |
| Thorsbjorn08-16-07, 10:57 PM | just got my copy of the dragon#359. James, you did an EXCELLENT job on the last Demonicon, i loved it!!! Thanks. Just in time for Wizards to come along and make it irrelevant by announcing 4E. :( |
| zook1shoe66608-16-07, 11:58 PM | that was obviously going to happen. |
| Thorsbjorn08-17-07, 12:04 AM | that was obviously going to happen. That you predicted it doesn't make it any less devastating. |
| zook1shoe66608-17-07, 12:12 AM | yeah thats very true... *crying* i will miss 3.x a lot |
| Argust08-17-07, 03:37 PM | But it is not the last demonomicom! Check the main wizards site for the preview of Dragon 360 with the Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Graz’zt thats is comming up in october! |
| zook1shoe66608-17-07, 04:26 PM | uhhh... digital? why would i want.... digital Dragons Graz'zt should be a great one though |
| Thorsbjorn08-17-07, 09:52 PM | uhhh... digital? why would i want.... digital Dragons Graz'zt should be a great one though Yeah, now that they're canceling 3.5, I'm not sure that I'm even going to check out the DI. I guess they've decided to still use the Dragon name to try to increase interest in the DI after the disastrous decision to like the DI to canceling Dragon led to such customer hostility. |
| zook1shoe66608-17-07, 11:25 PM | yeah, same here |
| Xaxor08-18-07, 07:35 PM | Uh, the entire point of letting the Paizo license expire was so that Wizards could use the "Dragon" and "Dungeon" names themselves. I am excited about seeing more Demonomicon articles, even if they are completely digital. It's not like they aren't letting Mr. Jacobs write them, you know? |
| zook1shoe66608-18-07, 08:08 PM | i understand that.... just i prefer the paper copies, so i can read them at work or whenever ;) |
| ripvanwormer08-19-07, 12:28 AM | It's not like they aren't letting Mr. Jacobs write them, you know? Do we know this for sure? |
| Franco Un-American08-19-07, 01:22 AM | Well, the Graz'zt Demonomicon is accredited to James, IIRC, so that's saying something. |
| Thorsbjorn08-19-07, 02:44 PM | i understand that.... just i prefer the paper copies, so i can read them at work or whenever ;) I concur. I also understand that the DI will cost more than Dragon, so I'm not sure I want to spend the money to subscribe to it. On the one hand, if I were going to switch to 4E, I certainly wouldn't want to keep paying for 3.5 content any longer. On the other hand, if I stick with 3.5, I'm not interested in buying a new subscription only to have to cancel it in less than a year. Also I spend so much time online--I even teach a college economics course online, and my traditional "face" class has an online element now too--that Dragon represented something I could do to relax away from the computer. Sometimes I took Dragon with me to read in a doctor's waiting room or while waiting for my barber to finish with the previous customer. That's all gone now, and with all that I do already online, I just don't have a great deal of interest in something else that will keep me fixed in this darned seat--especially if I have to for it, and pay more than I did for Dragon. :( |
| ripvanwormer08-19-07, 04:00 PM | Not being able to browse it first, in the bookstore or the library, will probably be the deal-breaker for me. |
| BOZ08-19-07, 07:54 PM | Do we know this for sure? yes, for the first one at the very least: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dragon |
| zook1shoe66608-20-07, 12:23 AM | Dragon represented something I could do to relax away from the computer. i agree Not being able to browse it first, in the bookstore or the library, will probably be the deal-breaker for me. yeah definitely true... but then i also had a subscription for Dragon, since i liked 90% of the content of them ;) and it was cheaper than buying them individually |
| Kain Darkwind08-26-07, 02:49 AM | Well, I read my final issue of Dragon. Bittersweet. You guys really went out with a bang. The Demonomicon was excellent, even if you did rewrite history with Lascer. (C'mon, CR 52 FTW!) I liked that you broke down your design philosophy with demon lords into a template. I would have added a few things, like max hp, but that's just me. (And I realize you haven't done any demon lords with max hp...I just think they should be) And without doing the full statblock, you guys had a lot more room to work in the ever important flavor. Hats off to you guys, Demonomicon was the best running series in Dragon. The advanced tarrasque I was less impressed with. Because CR 30s can't possibly lack any means to deal with flying targets. And you even worked that into the flavor, forever crushing the idea of a jumping tarrasque grabbing foolhardy adventurers in its jaws...or hurling rocks at its tormentors. (C'mon, chimps have Int 2 and they fashion spears to hunt with!) But....the non-mechanic parts were great. All the other articles were great, although I am assuming the villain list begins at the bottom and works its way up. You really managed to bring all the best parts of Dragon (except Core Beliefs!) into a single incredible issue. I read every single part, even the mail, twice. (Usually I read my favorite parts and peruse the rest at a leisurely, weekly pace) Rich Burlew really nailed it with his final OotS strip. "Everything." There are not enough words for spectacular in the thesaurus to describe Paizo's run on the mag. Thank you guys so much for your hard work and dedication to the magazine. I'm really sorry to see it go out of print. |
| Thorsbjorn08-27-07, 01:46 AM | Well, I read my final issue of Dragon. Bittersweet. You guys really went out with a bang. The Demonomicon was excellent, even if you did rewrite history with Lascer. (C'mon, CR 52 FTW!) I liked that you broke down your design philosophy with demon lords into a template. I would have added a few things, like max hp, but that's just me. (And I realize you haven't done any demon lords with max hp...I just think they should be) And without doing the full statblock, you guys had a lot more room to work in the ever important flavor. Hats off to you guys, Demonomicon was the best running series in Dragon. The advanced tarrasque I was less impressed with. Because CR 30s can't possibly lack any means to deal with flying targets. And you even worked that into the flavor, forever crushing the idea of a jumping tarrasque grabbing foolhardy adventurers in its jaws...or hurling rocks at its tormentors. (C'mon, chimps have Int 2 and they fashion spears to hunt with!) But....the non-mechanic parts were great. All the other articles were great, although I am assuming the villain list begins at the bottom and works its way up. You really managed to bring all the best parts of Dragon (except Core Beliefs!) into a single incredible issue. I read every single part, even the mail, twice. (Usually I read my favorite parts and peruse the rest at a leisurely, weekly pace) Rich Burlew really nailed it with his final OotS strip. "Everything." There are not enough words for spectacular in the thesaurus to describe Paizo's run on the mag. Thank you guys so much for your hard work and dedication to the magazine. I'm really sorry to see it go out of print. I've been reading it slowly, savoring it between prep work for my first two weeks of teaching college economics again. (I taught this summer too and so I had no summer vacation this year again.) I haven't read everything but I did like the advanced tarrasque. It reminded me that even if my PCs get too high for the tarrasque encounter that awaits them as part of one of the subplots, I can just bump it up in CR and use it whenever they do intersect that subplot again. Thanks! I loved the time dragon. I loved the fact that its CR went right up to 99! I have to ask though, is the wyrmling's CR 26 as the table shows on page 38 or 24 as the sample stat block shows on page 41? I like the way you've condensed the idea of a demon lord to a standardized template, and the fact that your sample lesser demon lords all have CRs from 25 to 30. My group has just started epic play--two PCs have reached 21st level--so these are ripe for the picking. Of course I might not use any one of these, but it's nice to have them if I want them. I have to read through them individually to see which of them might fit in with one of my campaign subplots (or merit the introduction of a whole new subplot! :D). I agree with Kain that it's bittersweet. I probably won't subscribe to DDI (Dragon and Dungeon Interred) because it costs three times as much my Dragon subscription and they don't pay adjunct instructors dirt where I live but we have the highest rents in the country. I've been playing D&D for 29 years now and this is my last Dragon. I loved Rich Burlew's last OotS in Dragon, and only wish it could have been more than symbolic. :weep: |
| Kain Darkwind08-27-07, 01:05 PM | but I did like the advanced tarrasque. It reminded me that even if my PCs get too high for the tarrasque encounter that awaits them as part of one of the subplots, I can just bump it up in CR and use it whenever they do intersect that subplot again. Thanks! No, the more I read the tarrasque statblock, the more it illustrates the inability of a formula to determine CR. First, even if you don't expect 20th level characters to have flight capabilities, you can practically guarantee that 30th level characters will. Thus, a ranged attack is required for anything not capable of engaging 30th level characters in melee. Second, the ability scores didn't go up. Nothing did. No increase in DR or in difficulty penetrating it. No increase in regeneration. No major increase in damage (beyond what the imp nat wep feat offered) Third, none of the common tarrasque weaknsses were addressed. An allip can still drain it to nearly nothing. It can still be drowned. Fourth, the feats...could have been better. Giving the tarrasque Power Throw, for example, immediately puts a ranged attack in its attack capability. The Rapid Strike chain (claw or horn) would allow it to make multiple attacks with those natural weapons, greatly increasing its damage output. So....I don't think the advanced tarrasque is ideal. It isn't CR 30, because it doesn't pose any significant change in its challenge to PCs. The only real change is that those who engage the tarrasque in melee are more likely to get hit, and the number of rounds it will take to bring it down has increased. |
| Thorsbjorn08-29-07, 02:28 AM | No, the more I read the tarrasque statblock, the more it illustrates the inability of a formula to determine CR. First, even if you don't expect 20th level characters to have flight capabilities, you can practically guarantee that 30th level characters will. Thus, a ranged attack is required for anything not capable of engaging 30th level characters in melee. Second, the ability scores didn't go up. Nothing did. No increase in DR or in difficulty penetrating it. No increase in regeneration. No major increase in damage (beyond what the imp nat wep feat offered) Third, none of the common tarrasque weaknsses were addressed. An allip can still drain it to nearly nothing. It can still be drowned. Fourth, the feats...could have been better. Giving the tarrasque Power Throw, for example, immediately puts a ranged attack in its attack capability. The Rapid Strike chain (claw or horn) would allow it to make multiple attacks with those natural weapons, greatly increasing its damage output. So....I don't think the advanced tarrasque is ideal. It isn't CR 30, because it doesn't pose any significant change in its challenge to PCs. The only real change is that those who engage the tarrasque in melee are more likely to get hit, and the number of rounds it will take to bring it down has increased. No? No what?! :confused: I didn't say that their version of the tarrasque was ideal. I didn't even say it was good. I just thanked them for reminding me that even if I don't use the tarrasque when the party still has the appropriate average level for a CR 20 challenge, I can advance it to make it more challenging. Now as for my particular party, I seriously doubt that they could defeat it without at least two members, the monk and the barbarian/lightning warrior, moving into melee with it. The monk has no ranged combat ability and the barbarian/lightning warrior probably couldn't even penetrate its DR with his composite longbow. Even with one party member heavily specialized in missile combat (ranger/elite scout, a prestige class of mine that predates the scout base class) they're not going to be able to do enough damage to take it down to where a wish or miracle will eliminate it (or where, since the characters don't know about the wish/miracle thing, they can maybe move it somewhere far, far away :D). The elite scout can do more than 15 points of damage with an arrow, but not that much more, so he's really just going to be plinking at it. The monk is new so I don't remember his offensive capability that well, but he probably can't do too much better than a point or two per attack at best. (Actually, if he has Power Attack, he might be able to do more.) They really need the barbarian/lightning warrior to get in there and hit it for 30-40 points per strike. The party's wizard is going to have a difficult time affecting it, as most of his standard offensive spells--magic missile, fireball, disintegrate, delayed blast fireball, polar ray, and meteor swarm--won't have an effect on it. His best bt probably lies with dominate monster, although I'm not sure if he always has one on him or not. I know that he knows sphere of ultimate destruction, but the one time he tried to use it he got such bad results that he's never memorized it again alas, so he most likely won't have it memorized when they encounter it. The party's sorceress probably will have better luck with offensive magic, since she can turn energy spells into acid spells, and so use acidball and delayed blast acidball. (Acid ray would just bounce off and 30% of the time hit her). She could also hit it with empowered, maximized Melf's acid arrows, although she'd do better to hit it with a couple acid swarms. Of course it's going to take a few rounds for them to figure out what will bounce off of it harmlessly and what won't bounce but won't affect it anyway. There's also the situation to consider. They won't be meeting the tarrasque in the middle of no where or in some empty cavern with nobody to consider but themselves. The tarrasque will be about to eat a city, and if they stand off and attack it from out of its range, it will just get mad and eat the city that much faster. :D They will need to put something in its path for it to fight or it will just eat the city. They might be able to stall it a few rounds by throwing some summoned creatures at it. I think that both the wizard and the party's cleric/thunder priest memorize a summon monster VIII normally, and the priest also memorizes a summon monster IV, but those 3 won't hold the tarrasque long. Their best bet is probably to summon those creatures and then have the two melee specialists engage in melee combat during the same rounds that the summoned creatures engage in melee to overcome the fast healing. Now if I were making that CR 30 tarrasque, I'd give it some decent feats. I'd probably give it Devastating Critical and Overwhelming Critical, and maybe Power Critical just to complement those two. It already has an Augmented Critical, so these three feats seem like a good match both in terms of fluff and crunch. I might also think about giving it feats to improve its fast healing and give it some resistance to energy. Giving it resistance to acid would pretty much protect it from Melf's acid arrows (even empowered, maximized ones) and really cut down on the damage from an acid swarm. Am I missing any other obvious good choices from the epic feats? As for Power Throw, what weapon do you envision it throwing, rocks like a giant? It's not smart enough to carry around a bag of rocks for throwing, so unless you happen to encounter it in a rock field, that doesn't seem like a viable option. I suppose it could tear out trees--if any are around--and throw them, but it seems like pulling out a tree would take a attack all by itself. If it's in the middle of a city, it might pick up debris from buildings it has demolished, but that doesn't help it in other situations, so still doesn't give it a reliable ranged attack. With a Dex of only 16, furthermore, it's not going to have a very accurate missile attack anyway. I like the Rapidstrike feats from Draconomicon, even if it doesn't have a ranged attack. I was thinking after you last post about how I might give it flight. Three easy ways come to mind: the winged template from Savage Species, or the half-dragon or half-fiend templates from Monster Manual. (Technically you can't add the winged template to a magical beast, but I don't really see any reason for that restriction.) Then you could give it feats like Flyby Attack, Adroit Flyby Attack, Power Climb and Power Dive. I might give it Snatch although I might allow it to swallow without the Swallow feat since it already has Swallow Whole. I might also give it the Rend feat. (With the half-dragon template you'd be giving it a breath weapon too, although at 6d8 it would be rather weak. You could give it Maximize Breath Weapon, but would produce only 48 points. I have an epic feat called Intensify Breath Weapon, that would increase that to 96. That might make a decent ranged weapon.) I was thinking about what the wings would look like. They might emanate from the sides, or lie under a thin section of the carapace and unfurl only when it wants to fly, like a lady bug's wings. That would sure catch them by surprise! :D Or we could just allow it to breath fire, since it's already immune to fire. That would give it a breath weapon, and then when it wanted to it could pull its head, tail and legs into its carapace, shoot fire out of all six holes in the carapace and spin around until it lifted off the ground and flew around. In flight it would have a very powerful combination slam and burn attack. This is a totally original idea of mine, by the way, and not something that I've stolen from any maker of cheesy Japanese films, especially not from one named Gamera. :D [Singing] Gamera! Gamera! Gamera is really neat! Gamera is full of meat! We believe in Gam-er-a! Edit: Apparently in one of the Gamera movies Gamera, while spinning and flying, used the edge if his shell to cut an enemy, so the flying, spinning tarrasque could have a slam/slash plus burning attack too. ;) |
| zook1shoe66608-29-07, 09:09 AM | They might emanate from the sides, or lie under a thin section of the carapace and unfurl only when it wants to fly, like a lady bug's wings. interesting mental image :-p |
| Thorsbjorn08-29-07, 09:19 PM | interesting mental image :-p Heh. Yeah, it's sort of stuck in my mind too now. :P |
| Kain Darkwind08-29-07, 11:07 PM | Thor, in the text I quoted from you, you said you liked the CR 30 tarrasque. Or something to that effect. As I was disagreeing with you, I began my sentence with 'no'. That's it. I wasn't saying you were wrong. As for Power Throw, it allows one to add Str modifier to thrown ranged attacks. Hence the feat. As for what one would throw, rocks, carts, wagons, humans...anything that happened to be laying around. As you said, the tarrasque isn't fighting them in a plain devoid of features. It's gonna be in the center of the city. There will be various stuffs which can be flung at annoying flying enemies. Also, if you are using the CR 30 out of the mag, remember to increase the DC on the fearful presence. They either didn't or did the formula wrong. Should be 40-something. (Don't have my book to check how many HD the advanced guy has) |
| Thorsbjorn08-29-07, 11:20 PM | Thor, in the text I quoted from you, you said you liked the CR 30 tarrasque. Or something to that effect. As I was disagreeing with you, I began my sentence with 'no'. That's it. I wasn't saying you were wrong. As for Power Throw, it allows one to add Str modifier to thrown ranged attacks. Hence the feat. As for what one would throw, rocks, carts, wagons, humans...anything that happened to be laying around. As you said, the tarrasque isn't fighting them in a plain devoid of features. It's gonna be in the center of the city. There will be various stuffs which can be flung at annoying flying enemies. Also, if you are using the CR 30 out of the mag, remember to increase the DC on the fearful presence. They either didn't or did the formula wrong. Should be 40-something. (Don't have my book to check how many HD the advanced guy has) Ok, well I liked it only because it reminded me that if the party has advanced too far for a CR 20 challenge, I can advance the tarrasque too. As I hope I've made clear now, I don't particularly like the tarrasque they provided in Dragon. I didn't look at it too carefully, but from what you've said it sounds like they did a sloppy job of it. The whole issue seems rushed, which I suppose comes from them trying to do two issues worth of material in the final issue. On the whole though I still like the issue. It's actually I just checked in Complete Adventurer and Brutal Throw that allows you to add your Strength bonus instead of your Dexterity bonus to attack rolls with a throw weapon. In the case of my campaign's PCs, they'll probably arrive (an former PC is going to use sending to try to get them to come to the city's aid) before the tarrasque gets to the city walls, so they probably will be fighting it out in the open without much for the tarrasque to throw. So what sort of damage would a tarrasque get with an object anyway? :D |
| Bob the Efreet08-30-07, 04:43 AM | In the case of my campaign's PCs, they'll probably arrive (an former PC is going to use sending to try to get them to come to the city's aid) before the tarrasque gets to the city walls, so they probably will be fighting it out in the open without much for the tarrasque to throw. I'd just have it tear up chunks of earth and toss them around. Wouldn't that be cool? |
| Kain Darkwind08-30-07, 08:46 AM | Ok, well I liked it only because it reminded me that if the party has advanced too far for a CR 20 challenge, I can advance the tarrasque too. As I hope I've made clear now, I don't particularly like the tarrasque they provided in Dragon. I didn't look at it too carefully, but from what you've said it sounds like they did a sloppy job of it. The whole issue seems rushed, which I suppose comes from them trying to do two issues worth of material in the final issue. On the whole though I still like the issue. It's actually I just checked in Complete Adventurer and Brutal Throw that allows you to add your Strength bonus instead of your Dexterity bonus to attack rolls with a throw weapon. In the case of my campaign's PCs, they'll probably arrive (an former PC is going to use sending to try to get them to come to the city's aid) before the tarrasque gets to the city walls, so they probably will be fighting it out in the open without much for the tarrasque to throw. So what sort of damage would a tarrasque get with an object anyway? :D Brutal Throw. Power Throw probably lets you trade BaB for damage, huh? I'd personally use the Hulking Hurler rules to determine how much damage the tarrasque can deal with flung objects. And I also like Bob's idea about just clawing up some earth and chucking it. |
| Thorsbjorn08-30-07, 02:30 PM | Brutal Throw. Power Throw probably lets you trade BaB for damage, huh? I'd personally use the Hulking Hurler rules to determine how much damage the tarrasque can deal with flung objects. And I also like Bob's idea about just clawing up some earth and chucking it. Without pulling out Complete Adventurer again, that's my recollection on Power Throw. :) I'd thought about the idea of the tarrasque just ripping out huge chunks of earth and throwing it. From a dramatic perspective it has appeal. From the perspective of game mechanics it seems problematic, as ripping out huge chunks of earth (or trees) seems to me like an attack, so one round it would have to make an attack with a claw to do the ripping, and the next round it could then throw the earth or tree, limiting it to one throw per claw per two rounds. I looked up the hulking hurler, and it confirmed something I'd thought earlier about throwing trees and so forth, that the tarrasque would suffer a -4 penalty on its attack rolls for using an improvised weapon. Does that stack with the nonproficiency penalty? Would the tarrasque, which has no weapon proficiencies, thus suffer a -8 penalty throwing trees, chunks of earth, etc.? I don't know how much a huge chunk of earth might weigh, but 200-400 doesn't seem too unreasonable. As a soft object it would then do half of 5d6 points of damage, all nonlethal. I'm not sure about a tree. It seems like a moderate-sized tree might easily weigh 400-600 pounds, which would have it do 6d6 points of damage. |
| Kain Darkwind08-30-07, 03:50 PM | Without pulling out Complete Adventurer again, that's my recollection on Power Throw. :) I'd thought about the idea of the tarrasque just ripping out huge chunks of earth and throwing it. From a dramatic perspective it has appeal. From the perspective of game mechanics it seems problematic, as ripping out huge chunks of earth (or trees) seems to me like an attack, so one round it would have to make an attack with a claw to do the ripping, and the next round it could then throw the earth or tree, limiting it to one throw per claw per two rounds. I looked up the hulking hurler, and it confirmed something I'd thought earlier about throwing trees and so forth, that the tarrasque would suffer a -4 penalty on its attack rolls for using an improvised weapon. Does that stack with the nonproficiency penalty? Would the tarrasque, which has no weapon proficiencies, thus suffer a -8 penalty throwing trees, chunks of earth, etc.? I don't know how much a huge chunk of earth might weigh, but 200-400 doesn't seem too unreasonable. As a soft object it would then do half of 5d6 points of damage, all nonlethal. I'm not sure about a tree. It seems like a moderate-sized tree might easily weigh 400-600 pounds, which would have it do 6d6 points of damage. The guys on the CharOp boards probably have a much better idea of how the HH works, but I don't think that an improvised penalty stacks with a nonprof proficiency penalty. I think they are the same thing, to be honest. As for how much a tree weighs, one cubic foot of a tree theoretically contains 12 board feet, but ranges between 3-12 board feet. According to this (http://forestry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=forestry&cdn=education&tm=50&gps=50_1002_1276_841&f=00&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.timberbuyer.net/weight.htm) calculator, such a volume of maple weighs between 13 and 55 lbs. So if you take a maple tree that is roughly 30 feet high, and has a 1 foot radius trunk, you've got 94 cubic feet in the tree. Using 6 Board Feet per Cubic Foot gives me an answer of 2600 lbs. I'd say a small 30 foot tree weighs about that much. |
| RedGreatWyrm08-30-07, 04:02 PM | Since this thread is all Tarrasque oriented... How much should you incerase the CR for giving the Tarrasque a permanent Anti-Magic Field and The Power Throw Feat? The Anti-Magic Field (for general edification) would be a supernatural ability similiar to the spell of the same name. |
| Kain Darkwind08-30-07, 04:12 PM | Since this thread is all Tarrasque oriented... How much should you incerase the CR for giving the Tarrasque a permanent Anti-Magic Field and The Power Throw Feat? The Anti-Magic Field (for general edification) would be a supernatural ability similiar to the spell of the same name. Brutal Throw. I was wrong about Power Throw. We are talking about Brutal Throw. And there is no CR adjustment, you just swap a feat like say....Toughness. Or Alertness. An antimagic field has the following effects. -DR 15/epic becomes DR 15/- -Regen except for wish/miracle when unconscious becomes absolute regen all the time. -You cannot fight the tarrasque with magic items or buffs. -Spellcasters become useless in the fight. Not only can they not defeat the tarrasque themselves, but they can't even help the team due to buffs being supressed by the field. I would give it a CR 25 unless you can bring the field down somehow. And I would also award XP for both defeating the tarrasque and then removing the tarrasque from endangering everyone around it...since you can't kill it anymore. |
| Thorsbjorn08-30-07, 04:14 PM | The guys on the CharOp boards probably have a much better idea of how the HH works, but I don't think that an improvised penalty stacks with a nonprof proficiency penalty. I think they are the same thing, to be honest. As for how much a tree weighs, one cubic foot of a tree theoretically contains 12 board feet, but ranges between 3-12 board feet. According to this (http://forestry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=forestry&cdn=education&tm=50&gps=50_1002_1276_841&f=00&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.timberbuyer.net/weight.htm) calculator, such a volume of maple weighs between 13 and 55 lbs. So if you take a maple tree that is roughly 30 feet high, and has a 1 foot radius trunk, you've got 94 cubic feet in the tree. Using 6 Board Feet per Cubic Foot gives me an answer of 2600 lbs. I'd say a small 30 foot tree weighs about that much. I love it when people talk actual physics to me! Ok, so 2600 - 400 = 2200/200 = 11d6 +5d6 = 16d6. So a tarrasque-thrown moderate-sized tree (I was thinking 30' tall too) would do 16d6. In that case maybe it's ok that a tarrasque can throw an object with each claw only once every two rounds. :) Thanks for the physics! I went through the base tarrasque this morning and tried to see if I could replicate it on the Singin Sheet character sheet. I got very close, but found out that the Monster Manual entry neglects to add the tarrasque's +8 racial bonus to Listen and Spot. Then I went and tweaked the base tarrasque a bit. I added the racial bonuses, dropped all 6 Toughness feats, and added Improved Toughness (which adds a net of 30 hit points after dropping the 6 Toughness feats), Weapon Focus (bite), Improved Critical (bite), Overwhelming Critical (bite), and Devastating Critical (bite). On the Devastating Critical (save or die) the DC is a whopping 51! I don't think that any 20th-level character could make that saving throw. It gets one more feat and I'm torn among Energy Resistance (grants 10 points, I'd probably choose acid), Epic Will (+4 to the tarrasque's weakest save), Great Constitution (adds +1 to the Fort save and 48 hit points), Great Strength (adds +1 to attack and damage rolls, and probably effectively +2 to damage using Power Attack, and raises the Devastating Critical DC to 52), Improved SR (+2 for an SR of 34), or Power Critical. Any thoughts? :) Brutal Throw. I was wrong about Power Throw. We are talking about Brutal Throw. And there is no CR adjustment, you just swap a feat like say....Toughness. Or Alertness. An antimagic field has the following effects. -DR 15/epic becomes DR 15/- -Regen except for wish/miracle when unconscious becomes absolute regen all the time. -You cannot fight the tarrasque with magic items or buffs. -Spellcasters become useless in the fight. Not only can they not defeat the tarrasque themselves, but they can't even help the team due to buffs being supressed by the field. I would give it a CR 25 unless you can bring the field down somehow. And I would also award XP for both defeating the tarrasque and then removing the tarrasque from endangering everyone around it...since you can't kill it anymore. Since DR/magic is supernatural, DR/epic, which is really DR/+6 magic, should be supernatural too, meaning it should go away in an antimagic field. |
| RedGreatWyrm08-30-07, 04:34 PM | I would probably make the antimagic field something that fell when the Tarrasque lost consciousness. Unsure about the damage reduction though. |
| Kain Darkwind08-30-07, 07:58 PM | I love it when people talk actual physics to me! Ok, so 2600 - 400 = 2200/200 = 11d6 +5d6 = 16d6. So a tarrasque-thrown moderate-sized tree (I was thinking 30' tall too) would do 16d6. In that case maybe it's ok that a tarrasque can throw an object with each claw only once every two rounds. :) Thanks for the physics! I went through the base tarrasque this morning and tried to see if I could replicate it on the Singin Sheet character sheet. I got very close, but found out that the Monster Manual entry neglects to add the tarrasque's +8 racial bonus to Listen and Spot. Then I went and tweaked the base tarrasque a bit. I added the racial bonuses, dropped all 6 Toughness feats, and added Improved Toughness (which adds a net of 30 hit points after dropping the 6 Toughness feats), Weapon Focus (bite), Improved Critical (bite), Overwhelming Critical (bite), and Devastating Critical (bite). On the Devastating Critical (save or die) the DC is a whopping 51! I don't think that any 20th-level character could make that saving throw. It gets one more feat and I'm torn among Energy Resistance (grants 10 points, I'd probably choose acid), Epic Will (+4 to the tarrasque's weakest save), Great Constitution (adds +1 to the Fort save and 48 hit points), Great Strength (adds +1 to attack and damage rolls, and probably effectively +2 to damage using Power Attack, and raises the Devastating Critical DC to 52), Improved SR (+2 for an SR of 34), or Power Critical. Any thoughts? :) My thoughts are that Great {Ability Score} should never be added to a base creature, because you can just improve their actual scores. For instance, if you have a crocodile with 20 str, and you are making crocodiles across the board stronger, you don't give it Great Strength, you just increase the Str score. Same with Improved Natural Weapon, Imp Spell Resistance, Imp Dark Vision, Energy Resistance, Damage Reduction, Fast Healing and many of those epic feats. (Yes, I know some base creatures have Imp Nat Wep, I think it is wrong) Of those feats you've mentioned, I'd go with Power Critical or Epic Will. But if you were asking for my personal choice, I'd go with Improved Critical (claw) Since DR/magic is supernatural, DR/epic, which is really DR/+6 magic, should be supernatural too, meaning it should go away in an antimagic field. I figured it would work like a colossus' DR....not affecting the creature's own stats. |
| Thorsbjorn08-30-07, 08:47 PM | My thoughts are that Great {Ability Score} should never be added to a base creature, because you can just improve their actual scores. For instance, if you have a crocodile with 20 str, and you are making crocodiles across the board stronger, you don't give it Great Strength, you just increase the Str score. Same with Improved Natural Weapon, Imp Spell Resistance, Imp Dark Vision, Energy Resistance, Damage Reduction, Fast Healing and many of those epic feats. (Yes, I know some base creatures have Imp Nat Wep, I think it is wrong) Of those feats you've mentioned, I'd go with Power Critical or Epic Will. But if you were asking for my personal choice, I'd go with Improved Critical (claw) Thanks for the feedback. Why Improved Critical (claw)? It's only expanding the threat range by 1 and the critical has only a x2 multiplier, so that's the minimum benefit possible from Improved Critical. Do you have any other thoughts on my feat choices? I figured it would work like a colossus' DR....not affecting the creature's own stats. Hmm. I hadn't considered that. That's very powerful, but I see that a stone colossus with a CR of only 24 has it, so it doesn't seem out of line by comparison. I agree though with your point about an antimagic field eliminating the usefulness of the party spellcasters. I think that that sort of an antimagic field would substantially raise the tarrasque's CR. The tarrasque, after all, has about 60% more hit points than even an iron colossus (CR 33), which has no regeneration or fast healing. It seems like a tarrasque with that sort of antimagic field would probably merit something like a CR 35 then. Putting an antimagic field around the tarrasque also renders the carapace essentially superfluous, doesn't it? Is there any way to suppress an an antimagic field? I skimmed through the spell description and I didn't see any. In my campaign I have spells magic field (Clr 9 Sor/Wiz 7) and mass magic field (Sor/Wiz 9) that allow the targets to keep their magic effects within an antimagic field, although nobody has used either spell (or encountered an an antimagic field for that matter). |
| Kain Darkwind08-30-07, 10:28 PM | Thanks for the feedback. Why Improved Critical (claw)? It's only expanding the threat range by 1 and the critical has only a x2 multiplier, so that's the minimum benefit possible from Improved Critical. Do you have any other thoughts on my feat choices? Because he has 2 claw attacks, the feat works better than say, for a tail slap. Also, the feat increases the chance of a critical threat from 5% to 10%. Twice. So before you had under a 10% chance of threatening a claw critical with claws on a full attack routine. Now you have a 19% chance. Power Critical is sort of useless unless your PCs have ACs at least 10 points higher than the tarrasque's attack bonus. Unlikely. So I'd go with Epic Will if you don't like Improved Critical. Other possibilities include the Rapid Strike feat chain. Hmm. I hadn't considered that. That's very powerful, but I see that a stone colossus with a CR of only 24 has it, so it doesn't seem out of line by comparison. I agree though with your point about an antimagic field eliminating the usefulness of the party spellcasters. I think that that sort of an antimagic field would substantially raise the tarrasque's CR. The tarrasque, after all, has about 60% more hit points than even an iron colossus (CR 33), which has no regeneration or fast healing. It seems like a tarrasque with that sort of antimagic field would probably merit something like a CR 35 then. Putting an antimagic field around the tarrasque also renders the carapace essentially superfluous, doesn't it? Is there any way to suppress an an antimagic field? I skimmed through the spell description and I didn't see any. In my campaign I have spells magic field (Clr 9 Sor/Wiz 7) and mass magic field (Sor/Wiz 9) that allow the targets to keep their magic effects within an antimagic field, although nobody has used either spell (or encountered an an antimagic field for that matter). Er...epic CRs are first of all, messed up in the first place, and second of all, should be reduced drastically with the 3.5 change to DR. |
| Thorsbjorn08-30-07, 10:45 PM | Because he has 2 claw attacks, the feat works better than say, for a tail slap. Also, the feat increases the chance of a critical threat from 5% to 10%. Twice. So before you had under a 10% chance of threatening a claw critical with claws on a full attack routine. Now you have a 19% chance. Power Critical is sort of useless unless your PCs have ACs at least 10 points higher than the tarrasque's attack bonus. Unlikely. So I'd go with Epic Will if you don't like Improved Critical. Other possibilities include the Rapid Strike feat chain. Er...epic CRs are first of all, messed up in the first place, and second of all, should be reduced drastically with the 3.5 change to DR. I hadn't thought about the fact that it has two claws, so Improved Critical does increase each critical chance by 5 percentage-points, which would seem to mean 20% total; where did you get the 19%? It does seem like Rapidstrike (claw) would provide more benefit to the tarrasque that Improved Critical would. Epic Will does shore up what seems like the tarrasque's biggest weakness--vulnerability to things like dominate monster. :) It's amazing though how much more powerful the tarrasque becomes just by dumping the six weak Toughness feats and taking decent feats--both epic and non-epic--in their place. |
| Kain Darkwind08-31-07, 12:03 PM | I hadn't thought about the fact that it has two claws, so Improved Critical does increase each critical chance by 5 percentage-points, which would seem to mean 20% total; where did you get the 19%? Statistics. You have a 5% chance to get a critical. With two attacks, you have a .25% to get two criticals, a 90.25% chance to get no criticals, and a 9% chance to get a single critical. If you bump it up to 10%, you have a 2% chance to get two criticals, an 81% chance to get no criticals and a 17% chance to get a single critical. For a 19% chance to get a critical of some sort. It does seem like Rapidstrike (claw) would provide more benefit to the tarrasque that Improved Critical would. Epic Will does shore up what seems like the tarrasque's biggest weakness--vulnerability to things like dominate monster. :) Rapid Strike Claw gives you one more claw attack per full round. Especially if your PCs have fortification, it is much more useful than any Critical involved feat. The Will save is weak, I admit, but the DC of Dominate Monster cast with a 30 Int behind it is DC 29. The tarrasque still has a better than 50% chance against it. The worst case scenario (base 18 Int spellcaster, Greater Spell Focus Enchantment, +5 inherent Int, +6 enhancement Int and 5 class based increases) puts out a DC 33 Dominate Monster. Base tarrasque (with Iron Will) has a 40% of success. (Not taking spell resistance into account) Epic Will bumps that up to a 60% chance of success against the worst case dominate scenario. So I think it is a pretty solid choice. It's amazing though how much more powerful the tarrasque becomes just by dumping the six weak Toughness feats and taking decent feats--both epic and non-epic--in their place. No kidding. Alertness is another one that I scrap. So is Dodge. |
| Thorsbjorn08-31-07, 10:34 PM | Statistics. You have a 5% chance to get a critical. With two attacks, you have a .25% to get two criticals, a 90.25% chance to get no criticals, and a 9% chance to get a single critical. If you bump it up to 10%, you have a 2% chance to get two criticals, an 81% chance to get no criticals and a 17% chance to get a single critical. For a 19% chance to get a critical of some sort. I know it's statistics, silly. What else would it be? With a threat range of just 20 and one claw you have the 1 chance in 20, or the 5% chance you mentioned above for one critical hit. For two claws though you have 2 chances in 20, or a 10% chance. How do you get 9%? Am I missing something? I concur with your 0.25% chance of getting two criticals on since when rolling two d20 you have 400 possible outcomes but only one (20,20) will get you two criticals, and 1/400 = 0.25%. There are two sets of combinations that get at least one critical with two claws: (20,x) and (x, 20). So each set has 20 possible combinations, so that's 40 combinations, minus one for the union of the two sets (20,20), for a total of 39. 39/400 = 9.75%. So I concur that the chance of not getting any critical on two claws is 100 - 9.75 = 90.25%. Improved Critical increases the chance of a critical with only one claw (or on each claw) to 10%. That results in 4 combinations (20,20), (19,20), (20,19), and (19,20) that will give two criticals, or 4/400 = 1%, so again I concur. There are four sets of combinations that give at least one critical, (20,x), (19,x), (x,19) and (x,20). I think that's 80 combinations, minus 4 I think for the union of the four sets, or a total of 76 combination. 76/400 = 19%. Again I concur that this leaves a chance of no critical of 100 - 19 = 81%. To get one critical on two claws you have four chances in 20, or 20%. Again, where are we losing 1 point to get from 20% to 19%? Rapid Strike Claw gives you one more claw attack per full round. Especially if your PCs have fortification, it is much more useful than any Critical involved feat. They don't have any fortification. This leads me to a concern I have over giving the tarrasque Devastating Critical. Against a DC of 51, the party's half-celestial barbarian/lightning warrior needs a 19 or 20 to save, only a 10% chance. Raging he would need a 16-20, or a 25% chance. The tarrasque gets a critical on the bite with Improved Critical on a 15-20, or 30% of the time. That means that in 10 rounds it will get a critical on the bite twice on average. That lowers the character's chances of surviving while raging from 5/20 or 25% to 10/400 or 2.5%. If not ranging his chance of survival would fall from 2/20 or 10% to 4/400 or 1%. Those seem like extremely poor odds. I think that the other melee specialist has an even lower Fort save; I think he would thus have only a 5% chance of surviving 1 critical hit from a bite or only 0.25% of surviving 10 rounds. Do you think then that the Devastating Critical is too powerful for the CR 20 tarrasque? The Will save is weak, I admit, but the DC of Dominate Monster cast with a 30 Int behind it is DC 29. The tarrasque still has a better than 50% chance against it. The worst case scenario (base 18 Int spellcaster, Greater Spell Focus Enchantment, +5 inherent Int, +6 enhancement Int and 5 class based increases) puts out a DC 33 Dominate Monster. Base tarrasque (with Iron Will) has a 40% of success. (Not taking spell resistance into account) Epic Will bumps that up to a 60% chance of success against the worst case dominate scenario. So I think it is a pretty solid choice. As I recall the party's wizard started with an Intelligence of 17. So I think now that it's 17 + 5 (21 levels) +6 enhancement = 28. I think he does not have even Spell Focus (enchantment) so his DC would just be 28. That gives the tarrasque a 65% chance of saving, and less actually, considering the spell resistance. The wizard is level 21 and has Greater Spell penetration so he needs a 7 or better to penetrate, giving him a 70% chance of success. So the chance of dominating the tarrasque, if I'm doing this correctly, would be (1 - .65) * .7 = 24.5%, assuming that the wizard has only one dominate monster to use. If I give it Epic Will its chance of saving rises to 85%. Then the chance of the wizard dominating it falls to (1 - .85) * .7 = 10.5%. No kidding. Alertness is another one that I scrap. So is Dodge. I've never scrapped either one from a base creature, but I've also never had a PC of mine take Alertness and I did advise the newest player to scrap Dodge for his half-celestial monk (the other melee specialist). The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of giving it Brutal Throw, even if I 1) require to make an attack to rip out a tree or a huge piece of earth, especially given our calculation of 16d6(+17) points of damage per throw. It could grab two trees/pieces with its two claw attacks in one round, and then throw them both the next round. It still averages out to one ranged attack per round for damage that would put even a stone giant to shame. What's an appropriate range increment for the tarrasque? If you're going off the hulking hurler, it's only 25' which is pretty weak. I was thinking of giving it more like the range of a giant, which is 120' for fire, frost and hill, 140' for cloud, and 180' for stone. I might give it Brutal Throw for the remaining feat, and then perhaps substitute Power Throw for Devastating Critical. I forgot to ask earlier about your comment that the epic CRs don't work. Do you think they're systematically biased one way or the other (tend to be too low or tend to be too high) or just randomly inaccurate? Thanks. :) |
| Kain Darkwind08-31-07, 11:47 PM | I know it's statistics, silly. What else would it be? With a threat range of just 20 and one claw you have the 1 chance in 20, or the 5% chance you mentioned above for one critical hit. For two claws though you have 2 chances in 20, or a 10% chance. How do you get 9%? Am I missing something? {snip} To get one critical on two claws you have four chances in 20, or 20%. Again, where are we losing 1 point to get from 20% to 19%? Perhaps I am doing it wrong. Here's my reasoning. For 2 claws with a 10% critical chance, there is a 90% per attack that a critical doesn't happen. Thus, the chances of a critical not happening on either attack is .9 x .9 = 81% Thus the chances of getting either a single critical or a double critical are totaled at 19%. They don't have any fortification. This leads me to a concern I have over giving the tarrasque Devastating Critical. Against a DC of 51, the party's half-celestial barbarian/lightning warrior needs a 19 or 20 to save, only a 10% chance. Raging he would need a 16-20, or a 25% chance. The tarrasque gets a critical on the bite with Improved Critical on a 15-20, or 30% of the time. That means that in 10 rounds it will get a critical on the bite twice on average. That lowers the character's chances of surviving while raging from 5/20 or 25% to 10/400 or 2.5%. If not ranging his chance of survival would fall from 2/20 or 10% to 4/400 or 1%. Those seem like extremely poor odds. I think that the other melee specialist has an even lower Fort save; I think he would thus have only a 5% chance of surviving 1 critical hit from a bite or only 0.25% of surviving 10 rounds. Do you think then that the Devastating Critical is too powerful for the CR 20 tarrasque? I don't...but then I also don't advise melee specialists standing toe to toe with colossal creatures. Some wisdom is required. However, I understand your concern. If you do take away devastating critical, make sure you remove the entirely worthless Overwhelming Critical as well. I've never scrapped either one from a base creature, but I've also never had a PC of mine take Alertness and I did advise the newest player to scrap Dodge for his half-celestial monk (the other melee specialist). The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of giving it Brutal Throw, even if I 1) require to make an attack to rip out a tree or a huge piece of earth, especially given our calculation of 16d6(+17) points of damage per throw. It could grab two trees/pieces with its two claw attacks in one round, and then throw them both the next round. It still averages out to one ranged attack per round for damage that would put even a stone giant to shame. What's an appropriate range increment for the tarrasque? If you're going off the hulking hurler, it's only 25' which is pretty weak. I was thinking of giving it more like the range of a giant, which is 120' for fire, frost and hill, 140' for cloud, and 180' for stone. I might give it Brutal Throw for the remaining feat, and then perhaps substitute Power Throw for Devastating Critical. I would go with a 200 ft. increment for the tarrasque, because it is colossal sized, thus larger than the giants. I agree with removing the problematic DevCrit, if you remember to take away the useless Overwhelming Crit. I forgot to ask earlier about your comment that the epic CRs don't work. Do you think they're systematically biased one way or the other (tend to be too low or tend to be too high) or just randomly inaccurate? Thanks. :) Well, if you take yourself entirely back to the 3.0 game, you had generally weaker character classes. (See ranger and paladin for examples) Most of them had no way outside of intense min-maxing to deal with the CRs. Compare a 3.5 pit fiend to the infernal. Taking the WotC's CR formula at face value, a 3.5 pit fiend with 30HD is CR 26. Compare it to an infernal and you see immediately that there is no contest. So to answer your exact question, I think they are randomly inaccurate. However, they all got drastically weaker when their DR dropped from 30-50/+x to 20/epic and maybe something. And when Blinding Speed turned useless. So...I think they need reevaluating. All of them. |
| Thorsbjorn09-01-07, 12:36 AM | Perhaps I am doing it wrong. Here's my reasoning. For 2 claws with a 10% critical chance, there is a 90% per attack that a critical doesn't happen. Thus, the chances of a critical not happening on either attack is .9 x .9 = 81% Thus the chances of getting either a single critical or a double critical are totaled at 19%. I see what you're saying, and for the life of me I can't tell if you're right or I'm right. Both ways seems correct, but they yield different answers. :confused: I don't...but then I also don't advise melee specialists standing toe to toe with colossal creatures. Some wisdom is required. However, I understand your concern. If you do take away devastating critical, make sure you remove the entirely worthless Overwhelming Critical as well. As I was describing above, I think that they're going to need the melee specialists to go into melee in order to beat it, at least before it starts to eat the town. Maybe if they all stand away from it and they figure out that about the only thing that will hurt it are the sorceress' acid substitution in her fire-based sphere spells (the carapace doesn't deflect spheres or balls) they could let her blast away at the thing while it starts to eat the town. Of course if I do the Brutal Throw then I guess it would stop and attack her back unless she stays out of its throwing range, in which case it might just return to eating the city. :D Realistically I think that the melee combatants will close with it because they have no idea how powerful it really is. I'm not even sure if the particular players in my group know about a tarraque, but even if they do, the PCs don't. So the melee specialists will likely close to melee range as a matter or course. I don't think of Overwhelming Critical as useless so much as weak. In the tarrasque's case it would do an extra 2d6, or about an extra 2 points on an average strike (considering that it crits 30% of the time with Improved Critical). What do you think would be a better version of Overwhelming Critical? How about having it increase the multiplier by 1? I would go with a 200 ft. increment for the tarrasque, because it is colossal sized, thus larger than the giants. I agree with removing the problematic DevCrit, if you remember to take away the useless Overwhelming Crit. The stone giant has a particularly long range with the rock because it's a specialist in throwing stones. That's why it has a longer range not only than the three other large giants, but also the huge giant (cloud). So if the standard range for a large giant is 120 feet, and the standard range for a huge giant is 140 feet, maybe the range for the tarrasque should be 180 feet? I guess 180 or 200 doesn't make that big a difference. At 200 feet a throw weapon has a maximum range of 1000 feet, which puts it into the 10th range increment for a composite longbow. That require either of the two characters with bows (barb/lw half-celestial and ranger/elite scout) to stay at the longest range to avoid the throws. The wizard and sorceress would have to use only long-range spells, although I think that most of the ones that they have that might hurt it do have a long range. Not the dominate monster, though! Well, if you take yourself entirely back to the 3.0 game, you had generally weaker character classes. (See ranger and paladin for examples) Most of them had no way outside of intense min-maxing to deal with the CRs. Compare a 3.5 pit fiend to the infernal. Taking the WotC's CR formula at face value, a 3.5 pit fiend with 30HD is CR 26. Compare it to an infernal and you see immediately that there is no contest. So to answer your exact question, I think they are randomly inaccurate. However, they all got drastically weaker when their DR dropped from 30-50/+x to 20/epic and maybe something. And when Blinding Speed turned useless. So...I think they need reevaluating. All of them. The barbarian was weaker too--lower DR and weaker rage. So it sounds like you see two systematic biases coming out of the 3.5 revison: the weakening of DR and Blinding Speed (which I've grandfathered in under its 3.0 form) weaken the CRs relative to PCs, and the strengthening of the PCs weaken the DRs versus the PCs. At the same time, however, some epic creatures are much more powerful than a comparable advanced non-epic creature of the same CR (after advancement). |
| Kain Darkwind09-01-07, 12:56 AM | I see what you're saying, and for the life of me I can't tell if you're right or I'm right. Both ways seems correct, but they yield different answers. :confused: Looking at your math, there is a portion where you say 'I think'. I'm going to guess that somewhere in this portion, lies the 'oops'. I don't think of Overwhelming Critical as useless so much as weak. In the tarrasque's case it would do an extra 2d6, or about an extra 2 points on an average strike (considering that it crits 30% of the time with Improved Critical). What do you think would be a better version of Overwhelming Critical? How about having it increase the multiplier by 1? My revised version of overwhelming critical increases x2 to x3, x3 to x5 and x4 to x7. {Stone throw talk} 180 ft. seems logical based on those observations. {Epic issues snip} Yeah, that just about sums it up. One of the reasons I wanted a 3.5 Epic Level Handbook to come out. CR calculation got way better in the later half of 3.5. MM3 and 5 have some of the tightest CRs ever. Compared to the three 3.0 MMs (1, 2 and FF), light years ahead. |
| Thorsbjorn09-01-07, 01:12 AM | Looking at your math, there is a portion where you say 'I think'. I'm going to guess that somewhere in this portion, lies the 'oops'. I don't think so. :D Remember that I did the basic calculation for the probability of one critical hit with two rolls of the dice. It should simple be twice as likely. My revised version of overwhelming critical increases x2 to x3, x3 to x5 and x4 to x7. Eep! :eek: x4 to x7?! I was thinking +1, or +2 at most, and suspecting that people might object to increasing it even +1. I've posted it to a thread on the epic boards. I'll mention your suggestion there too. 180 ft. seems logical based on those observations. Thanks. Oddly though I sort of like your suggestion, 200 feet. :D It seems cooler, just, I suppose, because it gives a nice, even maximum range of 1000 feet. I'll probably go with the 180 feet. Yeah, that just about sums it up. One of the reasons I wanted a 3.5 Epic Level Handbook to come out. CR calculation got way better in the later half of 3.5. MM3 and 5 have some of the tightest CRs ever. Compared to the three 3.0 MMs (1, 2 and FF), light years ahead. Very interesting. I haven't bought any MMs past 2 (or the 3.5 MM if you want to go chronologically). It seems like the later ones have too many weird monsters that feel forced. Granted I haven't taken a good look at them, but I've gotten the impression on the boards that the subsequent books aren't worth the price. I'm guessing you disagree? The thing is that there are so many monsters in the first two that I've never even gotten around to using--that mushrooms when you add in the 3rd Ed Fiend Folio, the evil books--Book of Vile Darkness and the two volumes of the Fiendish Codex--and Draconomicon. Do you have any particular favorites in the MMs 3-5? Or is it mostly the method of creating CR that you like? I was thinking of getting one of them (5, I think) for a greathorn minotaur, but several people on the boards told me that the book wasn't worth the cost. I really wanted a 3.5 ELH too. Alas there seems no hope for that now, unless perhaps a 3rd-party company does it. :weep: |
| Kain Darkwind09-01-07, 11:27 AM | I don't think so. :D Remember that I did the basic calculation for the probability of one critical hit with two rolls of the dice. It should simple be twice as likely. It should be. However, I'm not inclined (nor I suspect are you) to delve deeply into the math to see where which one of us is wrong. Since in the DnD scheme of things, it doesn't matter....ImpCrit brings up the chance of a crit significantly when applied to a 2 attack weapon. Eep! :eek: x4 to x7?! I was thinking +1, or +2 at most, and suspecting that people might object to increasing it even +1. I've posted it to a thread on the epic boards. I'll mention your suggestion there too. Just using the rule for doubling a double. x2 can also be written 'as plus one more set of damage.' x3 can be written as 'plus two more sets of damage'. And x4 can be written as 'plus three more sets of damage'. So if I double those, I get the previously stated numbers of x3, x5 and x7. It keeps them gaining the same benefit from the weapon. Given twenty rolls, a longsword rolls two criticals, or giving two additional sets of damage. Given twenty rolls a battleaxe rolls one critical, or giving two additional sets of damage. With my variant Overwhelming Crit, given twenty rolls, a longsword rolls two criticals, giving four additional sets of damage. Given twenty rolls a battleaxe rolls one critical, giving four additional sets of damage. Very interesting. I haven't bought any MMs past 2 (or the 3.5 MM if you want to go chronologically). It seems like the later ones have too many weird monsters that feel forced. Granted I haven't taken a good look at them, but I've gotten the impression on the boards that the subsequent books aren't worth the price. I'm guessing you disagree? The thing is that there are so many monsters in the first two that I've never even gotten around to using--that mushrooms when you add in the 3rd Ed Fiend Folio, the evil books--Book of Vile Darkness and the two volumes of the Fiendish Codex--and Draconomicon. Do you have any particular favorites in the MMs 3-5? Or is it mostly the method of creating CR that you like? I was thinking of getting one of them (5, I think) for a greathorn minotaur, but several people on the boards told me that the book wasn't worth the cost. Greathorn was in MMIV, and unless you like running dragonspawn or prebuilt normal monsters with class levels, that book isn't worth the money. It has a lot of orc, ogre, drow and gnoll builds, which I think are pretty cool, but better suited for the MM (the actual book which introduced the gnoll) or a book of NPCs. MM3 offers a lot of new ideas as far as monsters go. It gives a few more giants and trolls, some lizardfolk variants, the Eberron creatures, undead, some interesting plant based creatures and living spells. All in all, if you are getting it to use new monsters in your games, it is a great buy. It does lose points for 'classic' but makes up for them with 'original' MM5 is also a winner. It does have original creatures, and it does have some 'expanded' creatures like Hobgoblins, Mind-flayers and Kua-Toa. All in all, it is a solid buy, but again....if you are having trouble using all of the monsters you have now....maybe worth a pass until 4e cuts its price down. |
| Thorsbjorn09-02-07, 03:28 AM | It should be. However, I'm not inclined (nor I suspect are you) to delve deeply into the math to see where which one of us is wrong. Since in the DnD scheme of things, it doesn't matter....ImpCrit brings up the chance of a crit significantly when applied to a 2 attack weapon. Just using the rule for doubling a double. x2 can also be written 'as plus one more set of damage.' x3 can be written as 'plus two more sets of damage'. And x4 can be written as 'plus three more sets of damage'. So if I double those, I get the previously stated numbers of x3, x5 and x7. It keeps them gaining the same benefit from the weapon. Given twenty rolls, a longsword rolls two criticals, or giving two additional sets of damage. Given twenty rolls a battleaxe rolls one critical, or giving two additional sets of damage. With my variant Overwhelming Crit, given twenty rolls, a longsword rolls two criticals, giving four additional sets of damage. Given twenty rolls a battleaxe rolls one critical, giving four additional sets of damage. Greathorn was in MMIV, and unless you like running dragonspawn or prebuilt normal monsters with class levels, that book isn't worth the money. It has a lot of orc, ogre, drow and gnoll builds, which I think are pretty cool, but better suited for the MM (the actual book which introduced the gnoll) or a book of NPCs. MM3 offers a lot of new ideas as far as monsters go. It gives a few more giants and trolls, some lizardfolk variants, the Eberron creatures, undead, some interesting plant based creatures and living spells. All in all, if you are getting it to use new monsters in your games, it is a great buy. It does lose points for 'classic' but makes up for them with 'original' MM5 is also a winner. It does have original creatures, and it does have some 'expanded' creatures like Hobgoblins, Mind-flayers and Kua-Toa. All in all, it is a solid buy, but again....if you are having trouble using all of the monsters you have now....maybe worth a pass until 4e cuts its price down. Thanks for the all the information! I actually had already put MMs 3 & 4 on my Amazon.com Wish List, and I just added MM5 (and Rules Compendium). I don't know if I'll buy them as I have many items with higher priorities and little income, but we'll see. I do like the kuo-toa, although they've never appeared in my campaign. I do actually like prebuilt creatures, as I use a fair number of creatures with class levels. As for Overwhelming Critical, after discussing it on the epic boards I ended up adding the following to my house rules: p. 63, Overwhelming Critical: Change the benefit to “When using the weapon you have selected, you increase the critical multiplier by +1. If the weapon has a magical special ability, like shocking burst, that relies on the multiplier to determine the amount of damage the ability does, the increased modifier doesn’t apply to the special ability’s damage.” Oh, by the way, I just joined the DiceFreaks board and realized that you're a big player over there. That's nice, as you're a nice, reasonable fellow. I know that you haven't decided yet over there, but I'm hoping that you might stick with 3.5. My group and I don't plan to switch, and I have a feeling that to try to kill competition from 3.5 Wizards will eject all 3.5 threads from the boards come next May. I'd sure like a place I can continue to go and discuss 3.5. :) |
| Kain Darkwind09-02-07, 11:35 AM | As for Overwhelming Critical, after discussing it on the epic boards I ended up adding the following to my house rules: That seems fine, even if it clearly favors weapons with large critical ranges, rather than large critical multipliers. My version was of course based on Dragondoom, a non-epic feat in the Draconomicon. The Draco version only worked on dragons, so I figured making the epic version work on everyone was fine. But better to start small and work your way up if needed than to start big and find out it is too much. Oh, by the way, I just joined the DiceFreaks board and realized that you're a big player over there. That's nice, as you're a nice, reasonable fellow. I know that you haven't decided yet over there, but I'm hoping that you might stick with 3.5. My group and I don't plan to switch, and I have a feeling that to try to kill competition from 3.5 Wizards will eject all 3.5 threads from the boards come next May. I'd sure like a place I can continue to go and discuss 3.5. :) Nice? Reasonable? Ah...you might want to ask around Dicefreaks for a second opinion on that one. As for 3.5 though, even if DF makes the switch to 4.0, there will always be a place for 3e discussion over there. We don't prohibit one of our members from discussion about 2e (she never wanted to make the switch) and we won't be doing it to 3rd. The only thing that would limit it is if the entire community gets entirely behind 4.0 to the exclusion of 3rd edition. But I doubt that will happen. Yours truly has sunk at least $4000, probably more into various d20/3rd ed products, and is more than glad to keep getting use out of them. |
| Thorsbjorn09-02-07, 07:46 PM | That seems fine, even if it clearly favors weapons with large critical ranges, rather than large critical multipliers. My version was of course based on Dragondoom, a non-epic feat in the Draconomicon. The Draco version only worked on dragons, so I figured making the epic version work on everyone was fine. But better to start small and work your way up if needed than to start big and find out it is too much. I agree completely that ti's better to start smaller and work your way up than to start big and have to cut back. No player likes having his wings clipped. I love Draconomicon but I confess I've focused almost exclusively on the material either for dragons or for player who want dragons in their parties, like Dragon Cohort and Dragon Familiar or the dragon ECLs. I hadn't noticed the feat. It still seems like a bit much, although I do understand what you're saying about my way benefiting weapons with a larger threat range more instead of benefiting weapons with a larger critical multiplier more (the way the original feat does). I don't know if there's any way to be neutral between the two, which would seem desirable. Nice? Reasonable? Ah...you might want to ask around Dicefreaks for a second opinion on that one. Well I know one person from over there who doesn't seem able to respond to anything with which he disagrees without insulting the other poster, and who half the time babbles incoherently (despite managing to get the insults coherent). I know another one from other there who seems to be unable to respond even to people who agree with him without insulting them. They have given me a bad impression of Dicefreaks. So far as I can recall, you seem to be able to disagree without being disagreeable, and you sound interested in having a pleasant, fruitful conversation rather than scoring cheap points to make yourself look good and anyone else look bad. Anyway, I was going to post about 4E there, but it won't let me. :( As for 3.5 though, even if DF makes the switch to 4.0, there will always be a place for 3e discussion over there. We don't prohibit one of our members from discussion about 2e (she never wanted to make the switch) and we won't be doing it to 3rd. The only thing that would limit it is if the entire community gets entirely behind 4.0 to the exclusion of 3rd edition. But I doubt that will happen. Yours truly has sunk at least $4000, probably more into various d20/3rd ed products, and is more than glad to keep getting use out of them. That would be nice, if I can ever figure out how to post there. Apparently registering doesn't suffice; I need to get permission somehow. |
| Bob the Efreet09-02-07, 11:39 PM | That would be nice, if I can every figure out how to post there. Apparently registering doesn't suffice; I need to get permission somehow. http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?t=8204 |
| Thorsbjorn09-02-07, 11:45 PM | http://community.dicefreaks.com/viewtopic.php?t=8204 Thanks. Between my last post and now I went there and joined, and I guess I'm waiting to be acknowledge as a spambot, whatever that might be, and given permission to post. |
| Witch09-03-07, 06:21 AM | I'll look into it for you, Thorsbjorn. Maybe you've been accidentally listed as a spambot. |
| Thorsbjorn09-03-07, 07:06 AM | I'll look into it for you, Thorsbjorn. Maybe you've been accidentally listed as a spambot. While I was preparing to respond to your post, I got an email saying I've been approved to post there, but thank you for your kind offer. :) |
| Thanael09-03-07, 10:26 AM | double post. |
| Thanael09-03-07, 10:31 AM | About the math, Kain had it right (and very elegantly proven). I know it's statistics, silly. What else would it be? With a threat range of just 20 and one claw you have the 1 chance in 20, or the 5% chance you mentioned above for one critical hit. Right. For two claws though you have 2 chances in 20, or a 10% chance. How do you get 9%? Am I missing something? You don't have 2 chances in 20. You have a 1 in 20 chance twice. There's a difference. Rolling at least one 20 with 2 rolls is not the same chance as rolling a 19 or 20 with one roll. But you got the following math right: I concur with your 0.25% chance of getting two criticals on since when rolling two d20 you have 400 possible outcomes but only one (20,20) will get you two criticals, and 1/400 = 0.25%. There are two sets of combinations that get at least one critical with two claws: (20,x) and (x, 20). So each set has 20 possible combinations, so that's 40 combinations, minus one for the union of the two sets (20,20), for a total of 39. 39/400 = 9.75%. Also right: Improved Critical increases the chance of a critical with only one claw (or on each claw) to 10%. That results in 4 combinations (20,20), (19,20), (20,19), and (19,20) that will give two criticals, or 4/400 = 1%, so again I concur. There are four sets of combinations that give at least one critical, (20,x), (19,x), (x,19) and (x,20). I think that's 80 combinations, minus 4 I think for the union of the four sets, or a total of 76 combination. 76/400 = 19%. Again I concur that this leaves a chance of no critical of 100 - 19 = 81%. So. There you have it. If the chance to get no crits at all is 81% it follows that you have 19% to get one or more crits. q.e.d. This is where you go wrong: To get one critical on two claws you have four chances in 20, or 20%. Again, where are we losing 1 point to get from 20% to 19%? You do not get 4 chances in 20 but you get 2 chances in 20 twice. It's not the same. You have a 10% chance on the first roll and a 10% chance on the second roll. But you can't simply add these as you would count the even (crit, crit) twice. The chances for the double crit are 10% x 10% = 1% . So there's you're one point that you have to deduct. |
| Thorsbjorn09-03-07, 10:05 PM | About the math, Kain had it right (and very elegantly proven). Right. You don't have 2 chances in 20. You have a 1 in 20 chance twice. There's a difference. Rolling at least one 20 with 2 rolls is not the same chance as rolling a 19 or 20 with one roll. But you got the following math right: Also right: So. There you have it. If the chance to get no crits at all is 81% it follows that you have 19% to get one or more crits. q.e.d. This is where you go wrong: You do not get 4 chances in 20 but you get 2 chances in 20 twice. It's not the same. You have a 10% chance on the first roll and a 10% chance on the second roll. But you can't simply add these as you would count the even (crit, crit) twice. The chances for the double crit are 10% x 10% = 1% . So there's you're one point that you have to deduct. It looks like you double posted. :eek: I think I see what you're doing. You're saying that the chance of getting only one critical is 19%, while I'm saying that the chance of getting any critical is doubled to 20%. Do you concur? :) P.S. Thanks for the welcome to DiceFreaks. I just verified that I could post there--I have actually posted there yet. :D |
| Thanael09-04-07, 03:46 AM | It looks like you double posted. :eek: I think I see what you're doing. You're saying that the chance of getting only one critical is 19%, while I'm saying that the chance of getting any critical is doubled to 20%. Do you concur? :) Nope. The chance for exactly one crit on two rolls is 18%. Chance of two crits: 0.10 x 0.10 = 0.01 Chance of no crits: 0.90 x 0.90 = 0.81 Chance of exactly one crit with two rolls: 1 - 0.81 - 0.01 = 0.18 Again: You do not get 4 chances in 20, but you get 2 chances in 20 twice. It's not the same. You have a 10% chance on the first roll and a 10% chance on the second roll. But you can't simply add these as you would count the even (crit, crit) twice. The chances for the double crit are 10% x 10% = 1%. So there's you're one point that you have to deduct. You have 10% for the event (crit, *) and 10% for (* , crit), if you add the two you're counting the event (crit, crit) twice so you have to deduct the chance for it once. |
| Thorsbjorn09-04-07, 04:30 AM | Nope. The chance for exactly one crit on two rolls is 18%. Chance of two crits: 0.10 x 0.10 = 0.01 Chance of no crits: 0.90 x 0.90 = 0.81 Chance of exactly one crit with two rolls: 1 - 0.81 - 0.01 = 0.18 Again: You have 10% for the event (crit, *) and 10% for (* , crit), if you add the two you're counting the event (crit, crit) twice so you have to deduct the chance for it once. Heh. Thanks. It's funny that I got the easiest one wrong and all the more complicated ones right. Welcome to my upside-down life! :P |