Hypevosa

Unless food is, for some reason, extremely plentiful to the point people overeat like we have now, fat would only be found in the extremely affluent and wasteful/gluttonous. Not necessarily EVIL but wasteful and gluttonous - two features that sometimes feature in evil people like gang bosses, or tyrants, etc.

Actually I just came up with a very easy way to "defeat" a tarrasque at any level, and it only requires money. Here's your clues: 1. The highest level item it uses is CL 12. 2. It costs 22,500 gp total. It's something I've mentioned previously on these forums.

So wait, you are DM and also have a PC?? Just curious, how does that work exactly? Seems like it would be pretty difficult not to be a bit bias. You know, knowing all the secrets of what the adventure holds. It's simply like playing an NPC but you just have a little more personal investment in it - as long as you keep role playing there's no real problem. Discipline. You only really need to worry about a DM with a PC if they're the kind of DM who's there for a power trip ;D We all traded off DMing some adventures, Arcan rarely kept his player in it because DMing was too much for him to coincide with role playing, Vortavian had very simple role playing (do good, kill evil) so he had little problem with it like I did. In the interest of ensuring I was genuinely being fair though, I had Arcan write up my foil's exact characteristics that hadn't already been set in stone and run the battle he and I eventually had. It was narrow victory, I ended up needing to sunder his shield with a sonic mace I'd acquired to make the difference in the fight. It was something I'd always carried on my character but never actually used, my ace in the hole if you will should we meet a golem or I needed to sunder something. My paladin being a decent tactician and preparing for the odd situation ended up saving his butt. Problem here is metagaming... unless there's some explicit reason player should know what this thing is and what it does, they should not see any of what's to come. Spell casters who don't have true sight or arcane sight (or something similar) shouldn't be able to tell the carapace is magical and may reflect shots. Anyone who has encountered the tarrasque shouldn't really be alive to write about it... there really should be very hard found evidence if any at all of what to expect. Also, it does what I explained earlier, and completely forgets the tarrasque's abilities... let me negate that entire document for you First Tactics listed: Illusions! Invisibility!!! Scent negates the first tactics listed. While it may not be the smartest cookie, at this point it knows that food smells (it specializes in eating all meat and vegitation after all), and it won't be trying to attack/eat anything that clearly doesn't exist since it's odorless (or will learn quickly that it doesn't exist since it has no odor). Invisibility doesn't matter when getting within 5 feet of it means it's scent ability points out your exact location. You can create illusions that have odor, but then its greater cleave ability means ALL the illusions get dispelled in the same round by a massive attack as it cleaves through every one. Second tactics listed: Simulacrum You can’t create a simulacrum of a creature whose Hit Dice or levels exceed twice your caster level.... so your level 13 player is not level 24, so it can't simulacrum a 48 hd monster. This was never an issue. If you've level 24 wizards lying around you may as well just kill it straight out. Third tactics: Drown it by having it fall in a giant pit of water! Aside from scent giving away a water trap, let's assume that the Tarrasque is being too quick for his own good and rushes into it. Even if your DM was cheesy enough to let you do such a thing, the beast clearly has the arms, claws, and legs, and claws and the strength score, to pierce anything you use to wall the hole and simply climb out... or at least enough that it can breathe.... I'm not going to touch the cheese that saying a tarrasque would eat an iron block is - it states the thing eats meat and vegitation, if it ate iron and dirt teleporting it to the plane of earth would more than satisfy it. Fourth tactics: Flying army of archery focused guys with uber +5 bows! DR 15/epic anyone? So you need minimum +6 enchantment, which means each bow costs you 720,000 gp.... if you have enough money for that, there's tons of better things that would help you more with that kinda cash. Fifth tactic: Same flaw as the last, still needs a 720,000gp+ item. Sixth tactic: already admitted as a flaw since bonuses don't stack from bards >_> seventh tactic: Still needs a 720,000 gp+ item.... eighth tactic: I would interpret immunity to energy drain and ability damage to also mean immunity to ability drain, but assuming we are allowing that little oversight, let's look at one of the allip's little special features: Anyone targeting an allip with a thought detection, mind control, or telepathic ability makes direct contact with its tortured mind and takes 1d4 points of Wisdom damage. pathfinder's knowledge check: It is dangerous to try to connect mentally with an allip, be that through thought detection, mind control or telepathy as an allip's mind is so tortured as to damage any other mind that touches it. So commanding undead: A commanded undead creature is under the mental control of the evil cleric. The cleric must take a standard action to give mental orders to a commanded undead. So your cleric takes wisdom drain every round it sends the things a command, for every one it sends. Not to mention attempting to mentally control something that's completely lost its mind sounds... not so credible. in my book. I assume this is actually there on purpose since controlling something that drains wisdom would be entirely broken for the duration of any campaign until everything was immune to such hijinks. The devil's in the details my friend - there's no easy way to kill a tarrasque... none.

I think it's also important for the game to learn. If there are intelligent enemies, I hope there are, and your party has reputations for doing X,Y,Z during fights, they should modify tactics accordingly. My party was known for hunting dragons, Vortavian's tactics well known enough that the dragon could prepare for it in advance. My tactics as a paladin were well known enough by my nemesis for him to be prepared as well. Only Arcan was really spared since his tactics actually do deviate from fight to fight on a regular basis. If the player casts magic missile almost every fight and the party becomes well known, enemy mages who know we are going to show up should have shield prepared as a means to protect against it. If the player's mage is always buffed to hell, they should have Breach and Dispel magic prepared to fire off at the beginning. If the front line warrior relies a weapon that specializes in slashing attacks, have them wear armor that gives better protection against it. If the rogue normally leads off the fight by backstabbing the guy in charge, have his armor get the fortification enchantment to prevent it, or give him some enhanced means of spotting the rogue. Etc. Intelligent enemies that plan on fighting us eventually shouldn't just use the same tactics over and over and over, they should learn what we are going to do, specialize themselves, and take every advantage they can. I know this is a little difficult to program, but, to me, it's part of the I in AI.

Wow...ok that is just crazy. I find that when players are having "easy" fights with what are supposed to be monsters challenging for their current level, the DM is to blame for forgetting that these monsters aren't simply HP and AC sacks that swing wildly at the player now and again. Dragons should never be easy fights, ever. For example: During my dungeon I made for my 2 friends and I as an epic level reward, and as a final dungeon, we had a flying ship that was being attacked by a black wyrm dragon, and, if we didn't stop it from doing so, we'd all be pretty boned. One of my party members, Vortavian, was a half dragon fighter that had wings - being an experienced dragon hunter (even had a philosopher's steel sword with enchantments specifically for wrecking dragons' **** up), he knew to try and take advantage of the massive dragon's poor flight maneuverability so that he wouldn't get attacked like crazy. He approached it from the rear to only get tail swipped, and, after successfully landing one hit on it, the dragon uttered a few words and suddenly turned around and began flying on its back, something you can't do with poor flight maneuverability... My player needed to change into his brown pants when he realized the thing just cast fly on itself. Vortavian also wore a potions bandoleer that allowed him to drink up to 5 potions as a free action by simply, well, eating them, being hearty enough to easily eat glass as I'd expect a half dragon to be. Black dragons have a corrupt water ability that allows them to even corrupt magical potions and make them useless - it used this so that when he reached for some potions not all of them worked. All the while our sorcerer, Arcan, had also been wailing on this beast with delayed blast fireballs, doing enough damage that he was clearly too much of a threat to leave alone any longer. The dragon swooped by and plucked the sorcerer out of the sky (who had been flying himself to get away from the massive orc raiding party on board our ship). It began chewing on him and fighting my other player at the same time since it had the Snatch feat. Pissed that Vortavian was still getting the better of him, he opened his mouth in an attempt to catch both of them in a line of acid. Luckily, the sorcerer understanding what was about to happen due to a knowledge arcana check, escaped the moment its mouth began to open, right before the line of acid struck Vortavian. Extremely very intensely luckily, Vortavian had a ring of universal energy immunity and survived the ordeal. The dragon, entirely enraged now, plucked Vortavian from the sky - however, instead of chewing on him, the dragon made its grapple check to use Vortavian's own weapon against him (it's a light weapon for a huge creature)... a weapon designed to kill dragons, and Vortavian a half dragon... So it used its tongue to manipulate the philosopher's steel blade right into Vortavian's flank. By this time, my character, Hypevosa, having dealt with my (essentially) evil twin who fled from on deck with an artifact we were supposed to protect, flew over and landed on the creature's head. Seeing Vortavian was clearly about to die, I used smite evil to augment my attack, and Vortavian began using his claws as a last resort. We barely reduced the thing to below 0 hp, and it fell unconscious from the sky to die on the ground thousands of feet below. Did the dragon act perfectly? no, you shouldn't expect them too either, but they can have plenty of tricks and underhanded tactics to use, especially if you treat them as an NPC instead of just a monster, and give them the careful crafting they deserve.

What makes the tarrasque scary is when the DM actually remembers the thing's feats and unusual abilities... it has so many. Basically its attacks ALWAYS hit, and his has power attack and greater cleave. So, assuming you have a player whose AC would only feasibly get to 30 without some cheese, it gets to add 17 damage and still guarantee a hit. It has such insane reach, you also provoke attacks of opporunity approaching or moving around it and it gets 4 attacks of opportunity due to combat reflexes. So any melee character that doesn't somehow get right next to it from the get go is likely dead, and any that does is also likely dead and so is any character within 5 feet of him due to greater cleave. The carapace makes it immune to rays, lines, cones, and magic missile, (it says they're negated) with a 30% chance of those spells reflecting back upon the caster. So this relegates your mage to almost exclusively touch attacks... HA! If we go by the technical definition of a carapace, it is not immune to these attacks from its underside though, just its top and back. When dealing with invisible foes, it has blind fight, so you don't get as many advantages, though it's better than it being able to just rip you apart at will. OH, and since it has scent, if you get within 5 feet of it (and it is a colossal creature) it automatically knows your exact location. A 36 will save to not become shaken. Automatically gets to eat you essentially at close range with a bite attack, and you have to deal 50 damage to its AC 25 digestive tract before you can exit.... all the while taking acid and crushing damage. Immunity to fire+poison+disease+energy drain+ability damage, spell resistance 32, regenerates 40 hp per round, DR 15/epic, Basically, unless you're cheesing the hell out of this fight some how, you should always die... always.

how about we facilitate both crowds by simply rewarding those who can delve the dungeon in one (or perhaps 2) go with some awesome loot, and those who return to the surface too often won't get the best prize.

Miniature giant space hamster. All I really want as a pet.

Health = bodily ability to sustain damage, so this would be your constitution. Stamina = Ability to shirk off damage, comes with experience and training, this would be your "HP" gained per level I have a D&D zombie campaign where we use a "vitality" point system which is basically that. You get your hp per level modified by your constitution as a normal hit point system, once you run out of that you start taking damage from your vitality score instead which is equal to your constitution score. If a critical hit is scored, instead of multiplying damage, it's just taken from your vitality points directly. It makes things more interesting.

Hopefully it won't be something that broken. That would sort of defeat the purpose. I could see a small random range that is used to calculate what your character might get based on what has happened. I don't want randomness to gimp me though. yeah, my main issue in BG was randomly being gimped on hp, especially at early levels where it's so damn crucial.

I'm a challenge whore, so me more than likely. The only thing I don't like in difficulty settings is having random effects at higher difficulties, like spell memorization and hp gain per level. Randomly deciding your character only gets 1 hp this level since your difficulty is higher is sad for me :\

What if you got experience for going to said dungeon level and reaching the point right past the hobgoblins. What difference should it make how you got to that point as long as you got it. Fighters will kill to get there, wizards might shove enemies out of the way to get there, diplomats will talk their way there, etc. They all had to struggle to get there. But then aren't we then limiting you to having to CLEAR dungeons? What about just offing that party of hob goblins and moving on? Again, it makes doing little extra things less rewarding. Why bother clearing the crypt of undead if I just need to kill 5 to get to where I want to go? How would getting much less battle experience equate equal leveling experience? It makes sense in quests because you now allow for non-combat skills to save the day. God forbid someone actually makes a diplomacy check and gets the bandits to hand the goods back over without killing all of them, I agree, this is where not getting exp for kills is a good thing. However, if I'm exploring our deeper dungeon, what incentive do I have to clear the thing out if a rogue can sneak past everyone to get all the loot? Or are we going to have awesome loot on every body? I just feel that for quests, having exp be given at the end of the quest makes sense for role playing purposes. However, for exploration and general "adventuring" purposes, I feel exp for killing enemies makes more sense.

Unless this game becomes the game of the new century, I have doubts about all of the (unwanted) swag aside from the map bringing more than $40 back. Just saying I can't be the only one who would donate more for just a cloth map, if we need/want extra cash to reach 3.5m, selling cloth maps at $40 or so each would likely result in alot of donations. I may roll a d20 the hour before the kickstarter ends and up to collector's edition if I critical, but aside from that, I'll stick with my $20 tier :\

I think it subverts the impetus to explore maps and clear dungeons if you don't gain experience for killing the enemies you find there. If a group of guys is part of a quest? No experience for killing them. But if I go to the furthest corner of the map and end up fighting off a random troop of hob goblins attacks me, I want experience for killing them, ya know?

I'd rather have it but just make it a difficult and arduous process, essentially requiring quest-like effort to accomplish. In D&D even a simple raise dead spell takes 5,000gp worth of diamonds to accomplish - do you have any idea using random loot tables how long it would take to come across that?

So all I really want is a cloth map in addition to my digital download - I find I always do nothing with all the other junk that comes with and takes up space, and I'd up my donation by up to 40 bucks to get one by itself. I don't want to pay $120 to get the map and tons of stuff I won't use. anyone else in my boat?

Thanks, I know I've always appreciated such depth in my games. While I understand it's simpler and easier to just have everyone react the same way, I think the depth that having multiple personalities in the game would lend would make it that much more awesome.

i wouldn't want it to be required. just something you have the choice of doing if you really aren't sure. Same here, just have it be a small practice area that people can use for recommendations, not a "you must do this before you play every time".... blah, I hate forced tutorials.

Have a mock battle then - give the player a full party of full utility characters - have them be fully taught what each character does and what the abilities are, then have the battle take place on the highest difficulty. If they can survive, recommend the highest difficulty. If they cannot, lower the difficulty and let them try again.

Patrolling guards would be nice - having guards intelligent enough to recognize and profile targets whose equipment is clearly roguish in nature might be cool as well... because, you know the guy in all black leather with a hood obscuring his face is totally not likely to rob someone xD

I would trust that the developers would resist even a deluge of commentary if it was directly opposed to the game they wanted to create - like if all the multiplayer people you fear insisted this become an MMO somehow. Especially with no publisher to force their hands, they do whatever they god damned please - they already have their salaries paid for the game's duration, it's not like they need to do anything more than just make a good game if they want to make more money.

Imagine if your character simply could choose specializations - it sounds like characters will be allowed to diversify alot if they wish. For example, the rogue could have these options and maybe get to choose 2: Sneakery - generally just become more sneaky. Thievery - deft hands for picking locks and pockets. Charm - learn to talk your way out of anything. Deadly combat - specialize in dealing precise and incapacitating blows in combat (assassin) Distracting combat - learn to distract and harass your enemies and to increase effectiveness of allies. A pure "bard" would essentially choose charm and distracting combat. They already can sneak, pick pockets and locks by virtue of their class, bards just specialize in dealing with people in a less direct fashion. A bard and a rogue are not so terribly different.

no footprints for dragons or the sound of wings flapping as they descend would be sad.

that's the point. don't take a quest that's a cake walk when the harder quest will yield the extra experience to cover what was lost not killing the easy monsters. Give players the option to ignore easy quests - unlike BG where you feel the need to take every quest that comes along to ensure you get all the exp to level that you can. The experience it takes to level there scales, but teters off once you reach level 20 so you don't level so irregularly that there's no more sense of progression. If you just have exponentially increasing markers for experience, you end up making player progression come to a halt or start giving out insane numbers for experience for level equivalent challenges.

COD reinforced Die, learn, repeat in me since enemies sometimes take unseen positions and just 1 hit ya on veteran difficulty. I'd like to avoid that here if possible. I've always been a fan of being able to tinker with difficulty during a game outside of fights for convenience's sake, but at the same time I feel like sometimes the player should just have to return at a later date when they're level for it, ya know?