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2022-06-22, 09:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
I disagree. The ectoplasmic wyrmling has better stats than the Silver wyrmling (+4 in all physical stats, -2 Wis, -4 Cha), an obviously worse breath weapon and no Alternate Form, but way better movement options with a fast swimming speed and higher flying speed, and especially a planar travel ability. The astral Plane is great for scrying, buffing, for getting away, or for infiltrating enemy strongholds. If Silver got +1 with 7 RHD, I don't see why Ectoplasmic wouldn't get +0 with 8 RHD. Of course, -0 for all age categories above.
Resurrecting the Negative LA thread, comments and discussion are very welcome!
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2022-06-22, 12:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
You might have misread my post as advocating for LA-0? Because I'm for LA+0, as you seem to be too. I had forgotten the plane shifting power of these dragons in my assessment. It's a strong, useful ability. That is still an LA+0 in my opinion, but a pretty good one at that.
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2022-06-22, 04:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Imma sit this one out - I struggle with dragons and their age categories in terms of playability at the best of times; throw psionics into the mix, and I don't feel informed enough to vote.
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2022-06-22, 08:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Large amounts of HD are basically one of the special qualities of a dragon. They rely on those big piles of dice and base bonuses to make them a challenge for their intended CR. If I were writing a dragon class one of it's main features would be getting more HD than its level would normally indicate. Counting each HD as, say, 3/4 of a level.
In the context of this thread, that would be essentially a negative LA. Naturally the wyrmling is the most playable, but how are you going to play them? Sure, you've got some movement modes and some stats, a little armor and a mild breath weapon. At this level the value of flight starts to fall off - more and more opponents are going to have a response to someone trying to flap around just out of reach. You're fast, sure, but running away doesn't win a fight. Maybe you can build yourself for strafing. Just never go indoors.
Your fighter buddy may not have wings (unless he bought some) but his full plate is comparable to your armor. He may not have your stats (although he might for the important ones if he's a monster race or templated). He can use a bow. All you've got is a pile of numbers that, sure, they're nice. But they aren't class features.
Dragons of all sorts don't get anything particularly interesting until the HD is already approaching the epic boundary. The wyrmling can have a +0, cuz they still have room to try to build something. But beyond that I'm reasonably comfortable giving every dragon of every type (except steel or anything really weird I'm not aware of) a -0 for every age category past the first. Dragons are HD bloated - it's one of their defining features.
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2022-06-23, 12:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
The dragon can wear armor too! This is a recurring issue in these threads, people seem to constantly look at the monster statblock and assume that's the PC you're playing, but it's not. You get the full suite of chargen resources, you can select feats as desired, you can buy anything anyone else can even if quite a bit has markups, and there's the frequent ignoring of how much of quite a few perfectly playable builds are dedicated to aping monster math rather poorly.
One to three levels (mainly Martial Adepts), basic WBL uses, and a Sovereign Archetype gets the damage output to "Actionable Threat", basic WBL brings to "Basically Immortal Without Specifically Countering Them" disturbingly easily (you can even get a good Touch AC!), and a large Fly speed plus Astral travel give many, many options in actual gameplay where being able to get places you aren't supposed to be while having good combat numbers is plenty enough to start derailments. "Surprise Not-Quite-Clericzilla Dragon In Medium Mithral" can mess up all sorts of things.
Put me down for Wyrmling +1, Very Young and Young +0, rest -0. Not enough room to be flashy for the latter two, but it takes very few levels of Martial Adept classes to get damage on track, and LA +1 doesn't mess that up. Which is there because Plane Shift takes a 9th level Cleric (or, more relevantly, Favored Soul, as "small selection of campaign-warping powers and still fine otherwise" like I'm worried of this is the very definition of t2), so the 8th level Wyrmling is early in provoking that specific change and its rather lengthy downstream side-effects.
For reference, here's a thread of a guy vigorously crowbarring the giant official LAs into passable build stubs with varying levels of cheese, which usually results in worse "dead" ECL than people are complaining about here. Dragons have quite a bit of stuff available to push past their base statblock, Wyrm of War in particular clears a lot of ground in Martial terms, giving Simple and Martial weapon proficiencies and Armor proficiencies, no mention of lacking shields. So yeah, even without getting to the class level you can have a basic beatstick with the Astral shenanigans still online.Last edited by Morphic tide; 2022-06-23 at 12:05 AM.
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2022-06-23, 12:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
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2022-06-23, 12:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
I considered armor for the dragon, but armoring exotic creatures is difficult and expensive. You're paying way more for any armor you try to get than the fighter is. The humanoid fighter can drop 1,500 on a set of full plate and then consider getting it enchanted with the rest of his cash. The dragon is paying double that, or quadruple if they're large. They wanna dress up in mithril? They better be willing to pay through the nose for just a mundane set.
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2022-06-23, 01:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Doesn’t armor mess with flight though?
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2022-06-23, 01:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Armor is an extremely solvable problem.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
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2022-06-23, 01:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-06-23, 01:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Resurrecting the Negative LA thread, comments and discussion are very welcome!
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2022-06-23, 01:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Can anyone tell me how the dragon "aims" a trip from the Astral to the Material? Or vice versa, I guess, if the main campaign activity is happening on the Astral. I don't have the Manual of the Planes and I don't see anything applicable in the DMG, PHB or Planar Handbook. If it's like astral caravan, the dragon would pick a destination and arrive 10-1000 miles away, making the ability not useful for anything except Getting The Hell Outta Dodge.
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2022-06-23, 03:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
That's going to be 16,800 GP for a breastplate for a Young Ectoplasmic Dragon. +4 in Enhancement on armor or shields is 16,000 GP. Note that if the Humanoid has a +5 Necklace of Natural Armor, the Dragon can go completely without to save 50,000 GP, spend 16,000 of that to match enhancement, and proceed to still be taking less than half the damage because they still have +8 Natural Armor over the standard Humanoid and have +5 total from Dexterity because they have 34,000 GP left to spend and have a +4 racial bonus no matter how big they get, so assigning a 12 to Dexterity (which would have a non-Dex-bonus humanoid get their +1) means they can get to 20 Dex on 16,000 GP for +4 from their "native" +16, leaving 18,000 GP to spare.
End result of this potential difference in defense spending being -3 Armor, +8 Natural Armor, and +4 Dexterity bonuses to AC, leaving the Dragon at +12 AC ahead of the Humanoid with some leftovers to put towards damage. +12 AC breaks things. It's the difference between 90% accuracy and 30%, between being missed only on 1s and 2s of the first swing and first iteratives needing a natural 20 to hit. To reliably hurt this thing on its normal AC, you have to make the standard humanoid worthless. And the humanoid's got less Touch AC so going after that only screws them harder!
It gets much worse if we compare Swordsages. Because then both are obligatorily in Light armor, reducing the Mithral cost to just 4,000 GP, and the Dragon gets to really flex having wide bonuses by being able to one-up literally everything Discipline Focus is doing with its racial modifiers and Wyrm of War. Though it's very touchy for Insightful Strike, while +12 Strength is a lot, getting 22 Wis is pretty trivial at level 15 (for that critical first Swordsage level), but then Swordsages can also focus Str or Dex for accuracy.
It is, best I can tell, literally entirely on 5th vs. 8th level Maneuvers and damage-focused gear. With all the other advantages, and the infamy of Martial hyper-dipping with ToB and Barbarian levels? Seems a decent enough tradeoff, "the DM has to fundamentally invalidate multiple normal classes of Martial to deal with me" is pretty standard high-tier fare. The reason I'm taking the Astral travel ability as a big enough deal to compare to Scry Or Die is that they can, in contradiction to the normal way it works, "flip" between Astral and Material anywhere in either.
How locations relate with this is up to the DM, because there's Big Points made that they do not perfectly correspond. But for it to be particularly worth mentioning, they have to have some awareness of what's on the other side. Otherwise there'd be a Big Point made about it being a last resort because they're taking a big gamble on what the output location will be. And even with that strange risk, they're not incapable of stealth to scout out the Astral topography as needed to figure out how to get to their destination.
It's slow, but people love to talk about the Artificer shattering everything about the game with days-long preparations for single-purpose tools, just because it's any single-purpose tool (well, more the bundle of varyingly-broad multi-tools, but the point about being ludicrously pacing dependent to remotely pull off the ridiculousness stands). To say nothing of the fifteen minute adventuring day.Last edited by Morphic tide; 2022-06-23 at 03:07 AM.
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2022-06-23, 04:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
There is nothing about it anywhere. The ectoplasmic dragon is supposedly made of ectoplasm (comes from the demiplane of Ectoplasm, feels the need to precise that they are immune to Dismiss Ectoplasm...), which is basically the matter the Astral is made of. Other dragons from the astral (basically, the astral dragon from Dragon 344) travel using Planeshift, but they are really not innately made for planar travel, as they could grow sick and die if they travelled too often (astralomitis). On the other hand, Ectoplasmic dragons are said to travel often from their lair in the Astral Plane to the Prime, often to hunt or to find more treasure, which implies that they can both know exactly where they are going (else they wouldn't be able to go back to their lair) and bring items with them. This really seems like an ability based on Gate (although limited to the dragon and its gear) more than on Planeshift.
My headcanon is that, because the dragon is made of ectoplasm, it can modify the ectoplasm around itself to create a very temporary color pool to a location it knows. People can look through a color pool and even around it very quickly, then go through it to travel to the Prime and back again.Resurrecting the Negative LA thread, comments and discussion are very welcome!
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2022-06-23, 09:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Thanks for the reply. I was afraid someone would say something like that, though. Imma sit this one out; my rating might change based on whether the ability is pinpoint-precise, sorta precise or "10 x d100 miles away" precise.
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2022-06-24, 01:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
May I humbly ask that the Mercane from epic level handbook be reLA'd? It's the one creature from there that would have playable RHD.
Or if it was already done, I missed it in the index files, sorry!
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2022-06-24, 01:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
We haven't gone over the Epic Level Handbook yet, only MM1, MM3, ToB, FF, Libris Mortis, EPH, HoH and currently MM6 (compilation of online monsters). We will get to it when we get to it, but I believe, considering the overall quality of other monsters, that it will not be people's first choice.
If you want to play it, then ask your DM if around LA+2 (maybe +1 or even +0 but being conservative is always best) is good. There are two problematic things with the Mercane, it's that enormous SR (you're basically immune to spells of your level) and Telepathy (for mindsight). The rest is subpar, even with such great stats on an Outsider), and Plane Shift, as useful as it is, isn't that great as a 1/day, and it is also pretty hard to advance.
Edit: also, if the dragon does know where it is going when it planeswalk, then change my rating to Troacctid's W:+1, VY:+0, higher: -0Last edited by Beni-Kujaku; 2022-06-24 at 01:50 AM.
Resurrecting the Negative LA thread, comments and discussion are very welcome!
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2022-06-24, 02:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
The Mercane is also in the Manual of the Planes, so the chance that we'll get to it is higher (I believe that the Epic Level Handbook is likely to be one of the last books we'll look at).
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2022-06-24, 03:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Probably more one for Afro's thread but...
Specific locations are less useful as a concept on the Astral Plane, because, while it is coterminous with the Prime, and mostly empty, the distances between two astral locations are largely subjective. Since it's a transitive plane, I think there's an argument that the writer intended this ability to work a bit like a Ghost's Manifestation ability, but that becomes much messier with the Astral.
So, while the dragon might have a lair somewhere fixed and permanent, like on a Dead God, the further it travels away from this point on the Material, the more distant it would be on the Astral as well due to the coterminous nature of the Astral. However, the nature of the Astral makes covering such a distance in Material Plane terms fairly subjective as well. MotP makes it clear that the abstract nature of the Astral means that a location one is "very familiar with" always takes 2d6 hours to reach by mentally willing yourself through the Silver Sea.
So I think I would rule...
Dragon's lair corresponds to a fixed physical location on the Prime.
Travelling out of sight of this location means that you will then just zip back and forth between your current Prime location and a blank area of the Silver Sea which you then "know" as the spot corresponding to that area of the Prime.
It always takes a minimum of 2d6 hours (from your point of view) to travel through the Astral between such locations, no matter how far away they are from one another in physical space on the Material, usually this will take "longer" though, as areas that one has, for example, only "seen casually", take d4x10 hours to reach.
However, the Astral is also timeless, so from the objective point of view of your adventuring party, effectively, you teleport anywhere around the world infinitely, and instantaneously, taxed only against a 4% chance of encounters per astral "hour", most of which you can instantly escape by just zipping back to the Material. That said, zipping back to the Material (unless you have the Colour Pool ability Beni-Kujaku suggests above), may kill you instantly if you pop out inside solid rock. The Astral lacks the Material analogue terrain that the other Transitive Plains have to allow you to do this more safely.
I don't play very optimised games, but I think that needs an Asterisk.Last edited by Dalmosh; 2022-06-24 at 06:31 PM.
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2022-06-24, 03:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
The Astral is not completely timeless, just in regard to very specific processes (namely, all biology). Natural healing, aging, hunger, thirst, tiredness, disease and poison don't progress there, but if you travel on March the 3rd to the Astral and spend a month there, you'll return on April the 3rd. Otherwise the Githyanki would be constantly invading from our perspective, while building up an army every century from their perspective.
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2022-06-24, 04:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
In that case, it's a fairly flavourful ability that is powerful without being game-breaking.
I think the travel speeds in MotP are useful metrics to use to keep it sensible.
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2022-06-24, 06:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Plus we've rated a bunch of creatures with at-will self-only Greater Teleport, which that "truly timeless" interpretation would just be a more complicated version of if it worked like that.
And even if those abilities weren't self-only (or if sticking the party into a bag of holding works), it probably wouldn't be asterisk-worthy. Intra-planar travel is a non-issue, you'd trivialize any races against the clock, and you could escape any non-dimension-locked encounter that went badly as long as you can get everyone into one spot to join hands, and probably a few other things I don't care to think of at the moment; but high-level play usually means reaching the point of teleportation being more common anyway. That just removes the cap on how often you can do it. Game-altering perhaps, but it won't break everything.
While I'm here, the votes so far, up to 179:
+0 W, -0 all others - remetagross, Beni-Kujaku, Xanyo
+1 W, +0 VY, -0 all others - loky1109, Beni depending on precise targeting of Planar Travel
+1 W, +0 VY and Y, -0 all others - Morphic tide, Troacctid, Caelestion
Unfortunately, the targeting is not even vague. Just unmentioned. The entire text of the ability, for those who go purely by my descriptions:
Planar Travel (Su): Ectoplasmic dragons have the innate ability to pass instantly between the Material Plane and the Astral Plane as a standard action.Last edited by Debatra; 2022-06-29 at 12:20 AM.
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2022-06-24, 01:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
So AFB right now but what I can remember for every 3(?) levels you are forced to increase an age category for a true dragon correct? In that case I believe all dragons should be -0 and we should go back and change the others to be -0 too. It literally makes them unplayable in anything but a one shot game where you aren't going to make those three levels...
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2022-06-24, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
IIRC it's every three racial hd, not every three levels.
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2022-06-24, 02:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
As I recall there are some very weird restrictions to how many class levels you can take as well, like if you have x number of class levels you have 3 rhd and an age category forced onto you?
I will have to go back and read through Drac but I do remember reading something like that and scratching my head over how game breaking dragons are to use for characters...
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2022-06-24, 03:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Resurrecting the Negative LA thread, comments and discussion are very welcome!
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Do you want to build monstrous characters with reasonable LA? Join the Monster Mash! Currently, round XII: One-Punch Monster!!! Come judge single-strike entries!
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2022-06-24, 03:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
+1 W, +0 VY, -0 all others
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2022-06-25, 04:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
If you have 25 years in-game to go from Wyrmling to Juvenile, I think your GM can handle juggling variant LAs!
I'm happy to go with +1 W, +0 VY and Y, -0 all others.
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2022-06-25, 10:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-07-06, 02:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles
Sorry about the delay, folks. Calling it as +1 W, +0 VY and Y, -0 all others. This also marks our first non-Wyrmling dragon to avoid a -0.
Next on the docket is... ****, another Dragon. Typing up that last one was painful.Kaedanis Pyran, tai faernae.
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