Troll[spoiler]
1-Kobolds get three natural weapons base. And kobolds are a race, not even a class. As for PCs, they're usually using a manufactured weapon, that will hit harder than any of the troll's natural ones. Also I don't see where you're geting 3 attacks on a charge, it doesn't have pounce. It can unleash 4 attacks on a fullattack, but will be drawing an Aoo.
The kobold isn't really a good example, in part because its a variant and because the design notes explain why they could be granted to that one race. IE: The troll does not start with -4 Str.
Manifactured weapons only give a die advantage when their real power is behind the STR modifier. Two claws with full STR and a bite with half of it.
Str score of 20 means 3d4+12 vs a greatsword's 2d6+7. On three chances to deal any damage instead of one. It could also pick a longsword and use a claw and a bite instead.
Reckless Assault allows it to deal two attacks in a charge and a potential 3rd if the AoO misses. But I meant Full Attack Action. It gets something in ways better than Pounce in Overrun but that's not an issue.
2-Taking a standard action is already punitive enough, at least from what I saw of the troll player. You're spending a turn for healing when your oponent is still bashing you. And if you were already in melee, you can't really get away whitout drawing an Aoo.
Indeed. Though drawing an AoO shouldn't be something it would be particularly afraid of considering it triggers automatically if he drops to 0 (should be a daily limit on that, by the way, or the Troll can avoid death CON mod times per day). There are clever ways around those issues but I am mostly pointing at the ability by comparing it to Lay on Hands or the Monk's Wholeness of body. This is a lot of healing. When it gets its regeneration it will heal both its nonlethal and lethal damage. Using it in battle should be more penalizing.
3-Hunter leap is part of a charge. Charges are in a straight line and nothing on the ability contradicts that (you get to ignore difficult terrain and a hole in the ground, but you wouldn't be able to leap over a large boulder that blocked movement for example).
You're right, but there are ways to make turns during a charge (items, skill trick, maneuvers...) that would be weird if applied during a jump.
You already ignore holes and difficult terrain while jumping until you land on them. The text states it can jump up to its speed as if flying, which makes it sound like it can ignore jump height distance, and thus get over boulders or reach a bird 30ft up in the sky.
5-Rend demands you to get a fullattack off and hit with both claws. Yes, when it does happen it can easily shred low level enemies, but then, a raging barbarian with a greatsword will also 1-hit kill pretty much anything at this level, and can do it in a charge as well.
Assuming they both have a Str score of 20, at third level a raging barbarian can still only do one attack per round. Average of 17 damage if the attack lands (not counting feats like power attack the troll could also get).
A 3rd level rogue with average HP and at least 14 in Con (19 hp) would still be standing. Fullround attack from a 3rd level troll would deal an average of 7 damage per claw (x3 claw attacks) and 4 damage from the bite. If but two of those 3 claw attacks hit, the average damage would be 28, including the Rend. If everything hits: 39. Either way; dead rogue.
I'll note that a troll has the opportunity to make 2 claw attacks whenever he charges, courtesy of Reckless Assault and can thus trigger a Rend without a fullattack action.
Barbarian can rage once per day. Troll can do that all day.
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Cheshire Cat[spoiler]
1-Yes, one of the goals of this project is for the monster abilities to don't become irrelevant as they grow up.
I don't see how Hide in Plain Sight becomes irrelevant at higher levels. Rogues even get it a level 10.
Unbeatable invisibility is also something that shouldn't exist considering there should be a counter for the DM to use against everything. A sorcerer usually tries to avoid melee combat, so the distance needed to see it shouldn't ever come into play if the cat is remotely smart.
2-It's not just sacrificing familiar progression, it's also locking itself into having around half his spells known being illusion spells, hands, and picking a race like human for extra feat and skill points.
The point was that is isn't really sacrificing anything as far as the familiar is concerned. It gets Cat Skills, more skill points than a Sorcerer and a wider class skill selection, and the hands are well taken care of with a certain Innocent Form feat, instead of spending it in Eschew Materials, which it is given (though Alter Self could take care of that too; its a sorcerer). The limit on spellcasting isn't such a bother considering everything illusions (shadow conjuration/evocation) and enchantments can do. Its abilities give it so much synergy with those two schools that it probably would abide to that limit even if it wasn't there.
3-And yes I left the DR out because it was more than filled with good abilies. However I'm a much more bigger fan of limiting spellcasting in some way than slowed caster progression, because if you're playing a magic being, you better have some magic at first level.
I perfectly agree. In this instance though I feel the cat is simply getting way too much for only 3 levels. Cheshire cat taking 2 sorcerer levels before entering a Prc would lose nothing over any core race taking 5 levels of sorcerer before prestige.
Perhaps allowing the cat to see its class abilities improve if it takes Sorcerer levels (instead of improving automatically upon reaching a specific HD) and be denied the familiar would be a good compromise.
[/spoiler]
Tarrasque[spoiler]
3-Maybe. But so far besides your jumping trick, it really hasn't done much so far. Will keep an eye on that.
In our specific situation, indeed. A tarrasque facing wizards using long range spells will appreciate quadruple land speed this early a tad too much though.
Its more about how they scale in power. (almost) Everything can be useful in the right context.
6-MM monsters can afford themselves to have high scores in everything. Players cannot. Monster SLAs will always be based on something the player can afford. Also I'll admit it may be a bit early, but it's still unreliable transportation, so what's the worst that can happen?
The problem is not about whether or not a player can afford it. Its just the rule. SLA abilities use Charisma.
Changing that is leading to free Min/Maxing. A player wishing to be good with its SLA could increase its charisma the way a cleric decides to get a good Cha score for Turn uses. There are more uses to charisma than just SLAs, and to be honest a Tarrasque can certainly afford a high charisma score with the great gains in Str and Con it receives anyway.
There is a limit to how something can just be good at everything it can do, which is why many classes offer many options a player might want to specialize in (even though the Tarrasque itself as little to gain from it).
7-Freedom of movement fully blocking grapple is something that should've never existed. And even if it catches the oponent, low str enemies usually have some kind of teleportation trick.
It ticks me a little too but there has to be something at least giving a significant bonus. At least its a spell, and those can be dispelled or ignored if the grappler is within an AMF. Its probably on almost every spell lists for a reason. A PC grappler could be helped by the party's caster if he dispelled it. Grappling is not really a problem for DM encounters since he chooses what the PC fights anyhow. Teleportations can sure screw a grapple but they have their own counter; not every casting classes can teleport and not every low Str characters are casters (rogue-types/dex-based damage warriors/most swordsages/etc).
Otherwise, Freedom of Movement could instead grant a bonus of +20 on grapple checks against monsters with a similar anti-FoM ability. It supposed to help significantly after all.
8-It's a huge bulging monster charging at you recklessly. That isn't charisma.
So is the Frightful Presence of a dragon. Yet its still Charisma based. Its
imposing a Fear effect. The fact the thing is huge and very dangerous and coming straight for you is already reason enough to instill the logical idea of escape if you do not have the ability to fight it like any other massive monsters. Looking like an avatar of destruction being the reason the fear is imposed seems like a charisma based effect as well.
9-The tarrasque's main weakness it's its short range. If you try to keep away and pelt it with arrows, you better bring a lot of them.
I meant to say that Carapace had received a big nerf since the original ability worked at any distance. I'll note that Carapace offers no protection against arrows, seeing how arrows aren't rays, lines, cones or a magic missile spell. But neither did the original ability. Rush is meant to counter the range issue.
Otherwise, although the class itself does not offer any kind of ranged damage until Eruption, nothing stops a player to build the character to be able to handle ranged combat, or to assimilate items that will help it do so.
10-Well that's the idea. The tarrasque's a melee monster that'll shred you if you get close, but try to kite it at range and you have to punch trough its carapace.I think the big Str gains already help it achieve that status without a cheap counter trick, but that's just me. A player could always just pick the Robilard's Gambit or Karmic Strike feats if being even more dangerous to attack in melee was desired.
I didn't give the tarrasque those immunities because it will already have godly Fort saves and I don't see why it should particularly be resistant to fire.
1-Being hard to kill is the Tarrasque's main selling point.
I'll note that energy drain usually does not grant a save. Same goes with some ability damage, and I reckon some requiring Will saves.
There is the Fort/half saves that wouldn't be negated without Mettle as well. I don't know why it would be immune to fire either, but for some reason the original monster is.
Kind of how Devils are all immune to fire by default or how Demons are all immune to electricity, for some reason.
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Wild Hunt[spoiler]
2-Eeerr, the hounds don't get companion abilities, and they already get Wild Hunt abilities. Also it's not even like they have actual abilities, they're just HP chunks with a single attack per round. They hardly can make up for a party besides being meat shields.
I meant that the hound should work like an animal companion does for a ranger, progressing in power at a similar speed. Although they'd work like animal companions they'd acquire some wild hunt abilities instead of the powers gained by animal companions.
They are also more than just chunks of HP.
-Their BAB, large size and massive Str scores makes them great grapplers. (notice how they inflict Dimensional Anchor as well while doing so)
-Their single attack deals great damage via skirmish, high STR and the Wild Hunt's own Wis modifier.
-Their high hp, dex, con, SR, DR and immunities make great tanks out of them.
-Their high racial bonus to Hide and Move makes them great sneaks.
Its like having a few tanky rogue/scouts to bother his enemies in melee while he slaughters them at range. And they don't turn on you thanks to focused mind.
A normal animal companion doesn't even compare, and he gets a bunch of them to boot.
3-All classes have to be playable using only net-available material, so Phantom Stag is out.
Alright. I mostly wanted to point out that the Phantom Steed spell already improves as the Wild Hunt rises in levels, and cannot become useless at higher levels.
6-Well, what's the worst that can happen here? It doesn't actualy help you kill the monsters. It's more of a flavor ability actually.
Put yourself in a DM's shoes. Two examples:
-The DM's favorite lich BBEG get killed and because of that ability he cannot have it return 3 chapters later for a big showdown.
-The DM sends a Wild Hunt against a ECL14 party. Wild Hunt gets a crit and kills Gandalf. Gandalf's player now has no choice but to roll another character because there is fat chances that his companions will be willing to pay 25,025gp for the True Resurrection component, go through all the trouble of finding a near epic Cleric wiling to help and spend xp for a Miracle. Or spend even more money for a Wish scroll. Now the DM feels like a dick.
It will likely end in grief.
8-Moon depandant is just too situational. Changed it to be based on spot ranks (don't complain, casters usually boost their own CLs).
You're right. Limiting it to see only in non-enclosed areas might be more thematic without being too situational. There would be synergy with the ability to throw a storm at his found targets and appear nearby to pursue the hunt.
I won't complain. I suggested a more balanced opposed check and that definitively is one.
9-Remember that they get 2 ghost levels that count towards your control cap, so it can't get that many minions. Also again, ressurection-preventing is more of a flavor thing than anything else. How many enemies you meet you think will worry about that?
Oh, its fine. I just didn't really like the ability because its such a huge table turner that can be activated with only a single round (compare to the 1 hour casting time of Create Undead). I don't like the anti-rez property for the same reason as #6 except it can be done even if the Wild Hunt isn't the one doing the killing blow.
Since it takes a single round to activate and requires no expensive components or anything like that, pretty silly things could be achieved. Example:
Party faces a Wild Hunt +4 treants encounter. Each hounds dash at every party member and initiate a grapple, the treants move to help them maintain the grapples while the Wild Hunt shoots at them. 2 rounds later one of the pups rolls a crit and kills Gandalf, the only caster in the group able to cast Freedom of Movement (uh-oh). Wild Hunt uses Gather the Dead and now Gandalf is in his team, along with recovering one of the treants the party managed to kill.
10-That's the kind of "epic" abilities that aren't that bad at this level. You're level 18, you should be geting to do extra badass stuff by now!
Those abilities are just worth around a million gp that won't be increasing the worth of his bow's abilities further. I think that falls under high epic level badass, actually. Like level 30.
11-Remember that enanchment bonus don't stack, and by this level the Wild Hunt certainly already has better weapons from normal treasure. This is more of a "emergency" button, and also makes secondary weapons more viable, since I picture the Wild Hunt as wielding a wide variety of weaponry.
I remember. But enhancement bonuses are hardly an issue. What you mention is exactly the problem: they get better weapons at that level.
You]re probably are aware that when you enchant a weapon with a special ability, the cost of further enhancements increases drastically.
As written, this ability would allow a Wild Hunt to draw his +1 Speed Unholy Anarchic Flaming Burst (+10 weapon) composite bow and enchant it with additional abilities on the need, like Brilliant Energy against living foes. BAM. The bow bypasses the radical price increase of adding abilities past +10 and is now an epic bow (plus the epic weapon ability it already gets from Perfect Hunter). The worth of such a bow's combined abilities goes from 200k to 8 millions, at level 19. A level 36 character could afford one if he spent about everything on it.
12-Immortality won't save him from disabling effects like temporal stasis and Flesh to Stone.
But not everything else. Which is a massive load of things. His pets could always kill him to save him but I don't think having an Achilles' Heel justifies this ability. Which the original monster didn't have either.
13-I must ask you in how many epic games have you been. I'll admit I'm no specialist on them, but I've played over 20th level, and by then players usually have stacked multiple prcs and will be able to pull out some pretty crazy stuff.
More importantly, everybody worth their salt will have their saves boosted to the sky between cloaks of resistance, spells, paladin dips and whatnot, or being monsters with butloads of HD on top of massive stats, so even with the DC being Dex based, most enemies should still be able to shrugg it off in anything but a 1 by now.
If you must, about 4 or so, not counting those that failed to launch properly. Reached level 35 and 40 in two of them. To make Epic level manageable a DM must be very strict because a game is easily broken at that level.
I am somewhat familiar with what can be achieved at that level and what would be considered a normal amount of power with and without uber optimization and cheese.
As to massive saves. Taking a look at the epic monster encounters and I fail to see really impressive save modifiers until the very high CRs. If a DM has to optimize every monster it throws at its players just to have them survive their abilities for two rounds, the players are doing him a great disservice. A DM can use disjunction, AMF or dead magic areas to take care of ridiculous numbers for a while.
Speaking of which, specifying when a class ability is SU or EX would be a good idea.
It wouldn't be such a problem if it was something else than free instant death every attack.
And even then, an archer can manage a pretty impressive number of arrow shots per turn, so a LOT of saving throws. Even against godly saves, everything rolls a 1 eventually. People with godly saves are attacked by some sort of improved Vorpal effect that works against everything and destroys their soul. Those who don't have such saves just die.
[/spoiler]
Xixecal[spoiler]
1-It's still just DR 1 by then, so even if nobody has the right weapon, it hardly makes a diference.
Tell that to the barbarian who gets it at level 7. Don't forget the SR that is always good at an equal level CR. I remember the barbarian players I played with being pretty happy to get it.
3-It's an abomination, one of their key traits being massive blindsight/telepathy ranges.
Its also a PC, and thus has a PC's power curve to follow. Its not an encounter meant to solo an entire party on his own anymore.
5-Yes, the Xixecal's suposed to have a pretty good movement speed.
See #3. Its all about balance. It already begins with a good movement speed and gets Haste to improve it further. Note that even the monk's massive movement speed is mostly an enhancement one that doesn't stack with Haste.
6-This! Is! Homebrew!
And this is a bad excuse to illegitimate min/maxed power. It is also unfit to be played as a PC among other characters that aren't Xixecals. Even the original Xixecal deals with its SLA with Cha. There are many other options for this: increasing Str, Con and Cha in turn instead of only Str and Con; the choice of not giving it SLAs at all since it doesn't have the big Cha increases to use them better than anyone else and give it something else instead, among other things.
If the class is meant to fall into a whole different power curve then there is no need to change anything.
7-Well, a caster by then could Slow multiple targets, and wouldn't even need to hit them in melee. A dragonfire adept could do it whitout even allowing a save.
And would need to spend a standard action, a spell slot, use a DC that doesn't scale with his HD and a single attempt at slowing. A dragonfire adept's slows doesn't deal damage and they hardly lasts as long. Xixecal can force a saving throw each attack every round all day and more than once with a full attack.
8-Meh, tradition of mine by now, as well as all other monsters with dispel SLA so far.
Haha. Its fine. I just meant that you should call it Greater Dispel Magic to begin with to avoid redundancy.
9-Abomination traits, gained little by little. I would expect you to like that since you insisted on that kinda of idea early on.
Oh, I don't mind them! I'm just saying that it acquires them fairly early.
10-Even if it's drain, even if it's in every hit, it's still just 1 point at a time. Your oponent will die of regular damage much before being drained to 0. But I'll agree 10 HP may be too much, changed it to 5 HP.
I agree. They will die of regular damage before that happens because every 2 Con points lost reduces the hp of the target by an amount equal to its HD. Along with making its fort saves worse against all its save-or-die effects.
11-A Xixecal player can't really afford to pump Charisma unlike the original monster.
As said in the Tarrasque entry, with all the gains in Str and Con a Xixecal can certainly afford a decent Charisma score if it wanted to do great in those class abilities or simply ignore them to focus on brawling melee damage. The Xixecal has a wide array of ways it can act in battle and choosing what it wants to be best at is a form of balance.
12-Dire winter isn't that hot cold. It's automatic minimal damage, and dimensional-lock mostly screws casters, noncasters really won't be bothered by it.
Dimensional Lock is also a level 8 spell with a small and static area of effect. The range of dire winter is HUGE. You also made a deal out of casters using nasty teleportation tricks to avoid grapples. And casters are the foes to really watch out for, especially with a vulnerability to fire.
14-Clarified right at the start of the class, it has Cold subtype and takes extra damage from fire, the usual.
Yes. 50% more. This is
double damage now.
15-Like the others before, they're purely offensive and aren't super-utility stuff.
I fail to see why it being a save-or-lose SLA is a justification to acquiring it early.
16-You still need to hit them first. The Xixecal may be fast, but can't fly, and even with invsibility by now is taking a massive penalty to hide from size alone.
The question of "will it miss" doesn't dismiss the result. High Str and many attacks in a fullround action has good odds to accomplish this, either way.
Flight is easy to get with the many ways it can be acquired. Potion, magic items, spell from your party's caster, graft, you name it.
17-Power attack. Sneak attack. Stone dragon maneuvers. Transmuting weapons. Attacks that don't care about DR to begin with.
Power attack decreases the odds of hitting the thing along with dealing additional damage that would had gone into its HP instead of being wasted in the DR; same for Sneak Attacks.
Stone dragon maneuvers are one-hit attacks. Melee damage is fearsome when its given in full attacks.
Transmuting wastes a round to adapt and does not bypass the regeneration. It also still falls into the issue of 'very specific weapons' being needed but a fair option otherwise.
Most non-casting monster encounters care about DR very much.
18-Still only a 1/5 chance.
I know its not huge advantage on its own until it gets ridiculous at the later levels. Its kind of like Concealment, but special senses and Blind-Fight doesn't help you against it.
The problem is that there should be a way to bypass it other than looking for some rare means to acquire the Xixecal's size. There should always be
some way to fight past a monster's defenses otherwise they become abilities not meant to be used by players and receiving a big LA to discourage playing it, if any.
19-And most of them are Fort-based. Even with the DCs being based on Str, enemies on this level should have an excellent chance of passing them. An adult red dragon (CR 5) for example gets +18 on Fort saves base, so if the Xixecal had 16 starting Str, +17 from being monster, that's a +11 modifier, DC 29, the red dragon passes it half the time despite being two levels lower. Now you could find extra Str buffs for the Xixecal, but the red dragon would also certainly have some gear and defensive spells of its own.
I must say that dying half the time against a creature's constant barrage of save-or-die abilities is not something it will have the opportunity to do very often.
20-If it needed a swift action, then it would be useless against imobilizing effects.
Immobilizing effects do not prevent mental actions. If Iron Heart Surge, one of the most broken maneuvers there is, can afford a standard action for the awesomeness of cleansing oneself from a status effect. I don't see why this ability cannot.
21-Touch attacks need a target. Sometimes you just want to blast an area. Also the Xixecal has it, and I found the idea of the living glaciar liking to throw massive balls of fire too amusing to keep out.
I didn't say it should be removed. You can in fact make touch attacks in empty spaces with 50% chance of hitting if something is actually there and you beat the touch AC.
The issue was not in that it granted a touch attack either either; its that you have no penalty for choosing to use a touch attack. You get two chances to deal full damage including one without a save or you deal half damage on the second attempt with a successful save. If you just want to blast an area, aiming it at someone that might not get a save seems like a no brainer.
22-It's 19th level, there's really not much fairness around.
Only if the DM has no control over his campaign and over his players and/or has no balls.
23-Check the original Xixecal, it has a freaking 50/50 face/reach. I expect a player wanting to play a Xixecal to expect to at least be bigger than everything else by epic levels. Also the Xixecal still can't use all its abilities with just two swift actions.
Indeed, but its size modifiers aren't changing past Colossal. Only the space reach should be improved, to respect the original creature. Else, one virtual size bigger, at most, just to make a point.
Sill, gaining more Swift actions allows the Xixecal to own the action economy on top of everything else, and that is too much. Having many many uses for a swift action is not a reason to give a creature more of them. Giving anything more actions leads to an unfair lever of power.
24-This is epic levels now. All bets are off. Things are suposed to be geting crazy by now.
Yes. But not that kind of crazy. See #22.
And for the record, 1 mile/5 HD is hardly covering the whole planet. A big city perhaps.
I wasn't being literal. Its an aura of death affecting a very very large surface. No epic spells can achieve something similar and be cast at level 26. Hardly at even double that level.
I didn't bother commenting the rest of the abilities after those since it was escalating the beyond insanely powerful ladder and should be self-explanatory.
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Genie, Kahayal[spoiler]
2-It's a hide check, it has no duration.
Okay. Just wanted to make sure. You make a new hide check every time you move, so having a duration would maybe had been too good at that level.
[/spoiler]
