Author Topic: Ancient Temple-ToB for dual wielding with elegance and slicing almost everything  (Read 29292 times)

Offline Anomander

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So... a bunch of feats and class abilities to reduce level costs to use a bunch of spells that you don't get back for the rest of the day.
Compared to a stance whose benefits are stand alone and do not depend on any feats and class abilities and can be repeated all day long with a minor delay between the three rounds.
Are you trying to support my claim or tell me that with all your knowledge you do not see that its just too much?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 04:01:50 PM by Anomander »

Offline Raineh Daze

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Four spells, in fact, if they cast both rounds (and don't just leave repeat spell to keep up the damage). I'm sure I saw a thread somewhere that worked out how to stack that stuff to basically OHKO anything that moved.

So, unless you have so many encounters in one day that you completely exhaust said sorcerer's ability to pull off this exact combo (if they have versatile spellcaster, that gets even harder), then it's even worse (not to mention that so many encounters would either get: A) Really boring, or B) give so much loot the party could start a nation).

It depends on having Ancient Temple, using particular weaponry, and is a class ability. You make it sound like every 17th level Initiator has the thing. The major question is what combination of feats you expect to be as useful as any other spells the sorcerer may have for when they aren't raining destruction. :eh

Basically: no, I don't see it as 'too much'. You can use everything it grants anyway, and it doesn't give the ridiculously huge power boost you're suggesting.

Plus you eventually end up in a similar area... that can be anywhere within 1,700 miles. The False Destination stuff is in the teleport description. You can't freely reuse the stance if you actually want to get back to your friends, y'know? You'll just get horribly lost.

Offline oslecamo

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So... a bunch of feats and class abilities to reduce level costs to use a bunch of spells that you don't get back for the rest of the day.
Compared to a stance whose benefits are stand alone and do not depend on any feats and class abilities and can be repeated all day long with a minor delay between the three rounds.
Are you trying to support my claim or tell me that with all your knowledge you do not see that its just too much?
-IL 17 (class)
-Netherworld gardener (Feat)
-Actually learning all the maneuvers and stances you want to spam beforehand (need class abilities and probably feats)

So yes, Six Realms Ageless Obsession is quite far away from standalone. If all you know from Ancient temple is the 9th level stance, then it's basically worthless.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Fine, changed it to 1/day, up to 1/4 your ranks in gardening per week. So that's a 5-day workweek.

Adventurers deserve breaks too. :p

Offline Anomander

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Offline Raineh Daze

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The wording for Six Realms Ageless Obsession already suggests looking at the teleport spell. Uh... :huh

Offline Anomander

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It mentions no destination. You have to assume that since you do not get to choose your destination, the destination is where you currently are.

Offline Raineh Daze

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“False destination” is a place that does not truly exist or if you are teleporting to an otherwise familiar location that no longer exists as such or has been so completely altered as to no longer be familiar to you. When traveling to a false destination, roll 1d20+80 to obtain results on the table, rather than rolling d%, since there is no real destination for you to hope to arrive at or even be off target from.

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Similar Area: You wind up in an area that’s visually or thematically similar to the target area.
Generally, you appear in the closest similar place within range. If no such area exists within the spell’s range, the spell simply fails instead.
Mishap: You and anyone else teleporting with you have gotten “scrambled.” You each take 1d10 points of damage, and you reroll on the chart to see where you wind up. For these rerolls, roll 1d20+80. Each time “Mishap” comes up, the characters take more damage and must reroll.

Oh, wait, you mean destination.

So... reword it like this?

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When you exit this stance, you're swallowed by the endless cycle of Rebirth and disappear in a flash of light and petals. Three rounds later you manage to slash your way trough time and space and end up in a place as if you had suffered a teleport mishap (False Destination) as if the target area was the location you used this stance, including taking damage and chance for another mishap, but all your Ancient Temple maneuvers are considered expended and you're dazed for 1 round.

Offline Anomander

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Eloquently done.

Offline oslecamo

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Applied Raine Daze's cleaner wording, thanks!

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Offline Anomander

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So you end up with more attacks with your secondary weapon than your main weapon. No.
My original take on it was with either weapon. Like a flexible Haste's extra attack. It is a good fit in either cases.

Delusion of Enlightenment
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Well as long as you keep your stance of "I see problems with this, but I refuse to tell you what they actually are", I'll assume that there's no actual problem.
I purposefully gave you something to work with; there are ways to get AoOs against tumblers, defensive casting and around cover/concealment, and that's without counting the obvious uses of great reach, like using melee maneuvers at a greater distance, sundering or creating silence zones.

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Key word being "similar". Also plural. Maiden's Fighting Bounded Field offers a package of nice effects that would otherwise drain you of other resources (perfect flight maneuverability flight in core? Good luck getting it whitout some polymorph tricks). Delusion of Enlightenment offers reach. Exceptional reach, but still just that. And it's still regular reach, so anti-reach measures work just as fine as before.
Right. That's why it fits the general OP level of tobhou. There are tricks to perfect flight but Good is generally well enough, and actually pretty cheap.
The means to get them abounds if we count your homebrews.
Otherwise, it doesn't grant exceptional reach. That would be the reach I suggested. As is, its called ridiculous reach.
I see no other word for something that grants a medium and smaller creature about double the reach of a colossal creature with a reach weapon. You won't find anything "similar".

Slash of The Eternity
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You forgot the part where the celerity is used to cast another time stop, still coming up ahead in actions. Also scrolls, because NPCs don't really care that much about burning their money, plus time stop doesn't care much about CL or DCs (neither celerity for the matter) (and you already support grafts, that are basically a "screw players" in the reward department, as they can't be looted but count towards a monster's treasure).
I saw it coming, to be honest.
Whether the caster burns yet another 9th level spell to get that precious time stop going (unless the initiator or one of his allies readied an action to disrupt his spell, of course, in which case he doesn't even manage that) is irrelevant.
The issue is immediate vs free action for a Counter done as part of a Strike maneuver, and as an immediate action it accomplished much to make the caster waste a lot of resources to accomplish much less than what he was trying to do.
Not sure what you're trying to say by adding a creature's treasures and nontreasures into equation. The CL of a timestop scroll is pretty high to begin with and grafts can actually be salvaged but it is supposed to be a difficult process. Whatever that means in this situation. Though if the caster is taken care of before it can use all these scrolls, that's just more loot.

Six Realms Ageless Obsession
I like it.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 02:58:48 PM by Anomander »

Offline Raineh Daze

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Not sure what you're trying to say by adding a creature's treasures and nontreasures into equation. The CL of a timestop scroll is pretty high to begin with and grafts can actually be salvaged but it is supposed to be a difficult process. Whatever that means in this situation. Though if the caster is taken care of before it can use all these scrolls, that's just more loot.

Really? I would think it means that they don't have these scrolls in the first place. :p

Offline oslecamo

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Delusion of Enlightenment
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Well as long as you keep your stance of "I see problems with this, but I refuse to tell you what they actually are", I'll assume that there's no actual problem.
I purposefully gave you something to work with; there are ways to get AoOs against tumblers, defensive casting and around cover/concealment, and that's without counting the obvious uses of great reach, like using melee maneuvers at a greater distance, sundering or creating silence zones.
All of which demand other significant resources, and an Ancient Temple user doesn't exactly have feats to spare in the first place to grab mage-slayer and whatnot. And again, optimal AoOs builds want to use big two-handed weapons.

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Key word being "similar". Also plural. Maiden's Fighting Bounded Field offers a package of nice effects that would otherwise drain you of other resources (perfect flight maneuverability flight in core? Good luck getting it whitout some polymorph tricks). Delusion of Enlightenment offers reach. Exceptional reach, but still just that. And it's still regular reach, so anti-reach measures work just as fine as before.
Right. That's why it fits the general OP level of tobhou. There are tricks to perfect flight but Good is generally well enough, and actually pretty cheap.
The means to get them abounds if we count your homebrews.
Otherwise, it doesn't grant exceptional reach. That would be the reach I suggested. As is, its called ridiculous reach.
I see no other word for something that grants a medium and smaller creature about double the reach of a colossal creature with a reach weapon. You won't find anything "similar".
You mean the stance actually does something that can't be easily replicated by others? Excellent!

Slash of The Eternity
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You forgot the part where the celerity is used to cast another time stop, still coming up ahead in actions. Also scrolls, because NPCs don't really care that much about burning their money, plus time stop doesn't care much about CL or DCs (neither celerity for the matter) (and you already support grafts, that are basically a "screw players" in the reward department, as they can't be looted but count towards a monster's treasure).
I saw it coming, to be honest.
Whether the caster burns yet another 9th level spell to get that precious time stop going (unless the initiator or one of his allies readied an action to disrupt his spell, of course, in which case he doesn't even manage that) is irrelevant.
The issue is immediate vs free action for a Counter done as part of a Strike maneuver, and as an immediate action it accomplished much to make the caster waste a lot of resources to accomplish much less than what he was trying to do.
That's true. Doesn't change the part where the caster has more actions coming, while the Ancient Temple user just burned up his counter chances.

An high level caster can have spells per day nearing an hundred, while a martial adept just has a dozen or so readied maneuvers if that. Making the caster run out of spells is not an option.

Not sure what you're trying to say by adding a creature's treasures and nontreasures into equation. The CL of a timestop scroll is pretty high to begin with and grafts can actually be salvaged but it is supposed to be a difficult process. Whatever that means in this situation. Though if the caster is taken care of before it can use all these scrolls, that's just more loot.
As Raineh Daze pointed out, the scrolls themselves help make sure the caster survives long enough to use them.

Offline Raineh Daze

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I more meant that I expect they would have no scrolls such as that in their loot if they didn't use them. PC's that kill them before they're used hardly need such things, unless they're using them to do so (in which case, don't include it in the loot to fund the habit)

Offline ketaro

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I was thinking all of a sudden but what really entails a Profession (Gardener) check?

What if you're in a place without vegetation, like a barren rocky landscape? Are you planting plants you didn't actually have with maneuvers that say "as if you spent 24 hours of work on the area with a Profession Gardener check"? If not, could you get away with it by doing, say, a rock garden instead?

What if you're in an area that isn't natural terrain at all, like indoors or something? You wouldn't be able to alter the area with a Profession Gardener check then would you?

Those small details that probably don't matter too much....suddenly started bugging me <<

Offline oslecamo

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If there's no vegetation, a profession(Gardener) implies starting to prepare the terrain so some kind of plant could grow there. Flower pots, bonsais, hydroponics, some green and flowers goes well anywhere!

Offline Raineh Daze

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Hmm... could I turn my Youkai-Forged Blades into a Weapon of Legacy?*

... hell, can't even remember if I can enchant them. :lmao

*treating them as a dual weapon if it comes to adding weapon enhancements.

Offline ketaro

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No you cannot enchant them. It's in the spoiler for the feat that grants the swords.

But maybe they could become a Legacy weapon....that's not enchanting them...

Offline oslecamo

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No. They're already weapons of legacy in their own way.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Except for the part about having fixed capabilities from level 1 up to level 1,000,000 and beyond. :p