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lesser_minion
2009-01-01, 06:45 PM
The sorceress threw her deadliest spell at the warlord, hoping against hope that it could harm the immortal warrior who had slaughtered her friends. The warlord merely laughed, before hurling his spear at the sorceress, impaling her and pinning her to the wall of the keep. Despite the mortal wound, her eyes showed neither pain nor fear.

In a final effort to destroy the horror, she wove every last ounce of her power, her life energy and even her gift for magic into a spell that nobody had ever seen before. As if in response to her final call, the world seemed to ripple and shift, bringing forth a creature of legend. The tarrasque, a beast of pure destruction that nobody had ever thought controllable, rose from the ground to do battle with the dark warlord.

I suspect that 'endgame abilities' probably feature a lot in films, books and so on - they are the ultimate powers, so costly that a character would never use them except in the direst of straits. These powers are literally something you save for the BBEG. I'll probably find something similar on tvtropes at some point.

These are not suibtable for every campaign, and are probably just a really bad idea that I should have strangled at birth, but in certain cases, there is every possibility that these might enhance a campaign. If you want your antagonists to have something similar, it should probably be escapable - you then get to throw a Load Bearing Bad Guy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadBearingBoss) at your players. Whether or not that's a good thing is basically up to you.

The idea can probably be adapted to any game system you want - these particular abilities include 3E, but 4E versions are not out of the question. I haven't suggested a level at which to hand these out, but they should be OK any time after 17th level.

Manifesting an Endgame Ability:
Endgame abilities are final - some ultimate power of a character. If a character ever uses one, it will almost inevitably be the last thing they do as an adventurer. If a character dies during an encounter in which she manifests an Endgame ability, they can never be brought back by any means as an adventuring character. If they don't die, they pretty much lose all of their powers. As a rough guide to statting up a PC after they have manifested one of these things, think commoner of their original level. An Endgame ability should be reserved for the endgame!

An Endgame ability cannot be blocked or resisted by anything. You may not counter one, dispel one, save against it, resist it or be immune to it. Not even if you have (Immune)n Immunity.

Sample Endgame Abilities:

Well, the flavour text above suggests Summon Tarrasque, so that's a good starting point.

Summon Tarrasque:
Prerequisite: Character must be a full spellcaster.
Effect: The tarrasque awakens anywhere within 90ft of the caster and destroys one of her enemies. The tarrasque remains awake after the encounter, so any surviving heroes will have to deal with it.

A Hero Can Never Fall
Your determination is so strong that you shake off the bindings of death to be reborn as something even greater than you once were.
Prerequisite: Paladin. The player may choose to activate this ability after his character is slain.
Effect: The paladin is restored at full hitpoints, with no level loss, and gains the Half-Celestial and Paragon templates. She may dispel any effect on herself as a free action, even outside of her turn, and is immune to anything that might stop her using this ability. The paladin must hunt down and destroy her slayer, and if she attempts to do anything else, she dies (for real). She also dies for real once her task is complete.

Manifesting this ability prevents the character from ever being restored to life or unlife by any means whatsoever.

Supernova (need a better name!):
You fight through the pain to expend every remaining ounce of your life energy in destroying your enemy.
Prerequisite: Spellcaster or psion
You invoke maybe the most powerful 'blaster spell' of all. The spell strikes you dead, and deals 4d6 damage/caster level to every enemy within 60ft. This damage is energy damage, of the type to which the target is least resistant. I'll leave the description of this multiple energy type extravaganza to you.

Any comments on these powers or this idea, as well as ideas for further powers and so on would be greatly appreciated. I personally think that these are probably balanced for most 'cinematic' games, with the only possible abuse really being "Create character. Use Endgame Ability. Create New Character. Repeat Ad Rocks-Fall-Everyone-Dies".

I'm not sure how seriously you should take these...:smallbiggrin:

Realms of Chaos
2009-01-01, 10:30 PM
Hmm...

I'm sorry to say it but I don't think that this works too well.

The first thing that I want you to know is that the idea is cool and those who apply to the "rule of cool" school of DMing will like this. The idea of using your power by putting forth your soul and body alike in exchange is cool. It is cool for the BBEG cultist who feeds their soul to the Far Realms to create a portal and it is equally cool for the PC cleric who calls a squad of angels with her dying prayers.

That Said, I am led to think that there should be limits on even what the ultimate sacrifice should accomplish. Furthermore, a different format for such abilities may be in order.

First, let's look at somewhat similar abilities. Cracking open Elder Evils, we see that sacrificing your immortal soul can get you 5 bonus feats. In the Fiendish Codex I, the Abyss-Bound Soul feat may let you trade your soul, for example, in exchange for a couple situational skill bonuses and the ability to breath underwater or to summon a demon 1/day. In the Fiendish Codex II, you can trade your soul in an infernal pact to gain a pretty good benefit (you can't imitate any of the above effects but possible benefits even include gold and xp). In the BoVD, a dying evil creature can shred their soul to put a dying curse on their slayer (which can be pretty nasty if the dying creature is powerful).

Meanwhile, I note that there are far fewer abilities in existance that sacrifice a player's life. In Complete Mage, we have the 9th level Wu Jen spell Ascend Mortality, which completely disintegrates you and has a short duration but makes you incredibly hard to kill before then (and can be activated as an immediate action). In Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed sourcebook, we have the 9th level sorcerer spell Legacy (I believe that's the name), a spell that kills you to give someone else a level in Sorcerer. In the Epic Level Handbook, of course, we have the famous Vengeful Gaze of God, which is incredibly likely to kill you.

Now we are left to struggle with the issue of a combined soul-crushing, body-mulching ability to consider its potential power. The first issue to bring up is that unlike most of the sources listed above, an endgame would require no real resources (feat slots, spell slots, gold, etc).

Secondly, your suggested minimum level of 13 is most likely far too early. None of the life-sacrificing abilities listed above are available to characters under 17th level and this may be for good cause. Though there are innumerable players out there who would eat their hats to pull a Gandalf ("You. Shall. Not. Pass"), sanity has to enter the equation at some point. Level 13 characters summoning Tarrasques? Applying +15 CR templates to themselves? Destroying creatures without SR or Saving Throws? This stuff is insane. I'd definitely tone it down a bit. Especially with abilities that can be used after death (in which case the only thing you surrender is your soul).

Conversely, the idea of a minimum level will be repellant to several people (the aforementioned Gandalf wannabes). If a high level character could push themselves past their limits, after all, why couldn't a low level character? One possible solution is to take a page out of the BoVD and make Endgame abilities build up with more power much like the aforementioned dying curses.

Another note to make is that, looking at the example above, shredding your immortal soul seems to be an evil act for some reason. Most likely because you are denying your deity your soul. Although the idea of a paladin acting at the "ultimate pariah" is quite frankly awesome, this is a bit of a shady area as far as DnD morality goes.

At the end of the day, I am tempted to suggest making these abilities into Epic spells with high backlash damage (much like Vengeful gaze of god) but this would restrict such abilities to spellcasters. Perhaps create an epic feat that allows anyone to create epic spells, replacing the spellcraft check with an equal number of d6s in backlash damage and destroying your soul if it kills you. Although it may be tempting to make the an ability that advances over time, it is probably for the best to restrict it to high levels, especially if you see this primarily in the use of BBEGs.

Agrippa
2009-01-01, 11:17 PM
Another way of handling this is to say that the process of using one of these "Endgame Abilities" damages your body and severs its tie to your soul to the point that you need at least a dozen epic-level spellcasters casting true resurrection or similar spells, a lesser deity or cosmic entity of life and death and an incredibly hard to find miraculous holy fruit plucked from a well defended garden just past the most god-awful place in the universe. And the beneficiary is exhausted, has only one hit point, unable to use any class abilities and has to rest five full months to recover. Think the Immortal Emperor of Mankind and Leman Russ's quest to revive him.

Knaight
2009-01-01, 11:32 PM
It does say that if you use them you either die permanently, unable to be revived, or lose all your power.

Zeta Kai
2009-01-02, 12:01 AM
One of my favorite homebrew classes, the Bio-Mage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2487790), has something very similar as a capstone ability. The Bio-Bomb is no SoA, but it's pretty destructive, kills the BM, & prevents normal resurrection.

Poodle
2009-01-02, 01:03 AM
I think it`s a good idea, and anyway these are homemade endgame ability`s that are no doubt constructed by the DM and the player or just the DM, so there use within the campaign will probably be limited to situations where Balance is not overwhelmingly important, particularly when you consider that the player will be ending his characters life in such a way as to make it Insanely hard to bring back or if you have such a thing is an absolutes death in your campaign impossible.

in DnD Core books (non epic ones anyway) a soul will not tend to get you very far but that`s only because the core books (expect epic) Generally work on a very moderate view of making DnD work in almost all situations and let you deal with the Exceptional ones
and so trying to compare and Balance an idea like this against them will only take you so far, particularly when you consider how tied up position in a plot and circumstance is with the abilities

If you want to look at it realistically (in a DnD sense) I would agree with Realms of Chaos lvl 13 is probably too low for such amazing abilities just because the totally culmination of a lvl 13 characters being is not worth that much in a campaign that may stretch to lvl 30 and beyond.


Poodle can`t make names for things:
Upon realising that you can`t win against this enemny who if left unchecked will destroy all that you love you give all your powers life and existence to cast yourself and your enemy from the Multiverse.

Prerequisite: Character must be a full spellcaster.
Effect: The Character and its target are condemned to forever be trapped in the eternal void throwing lemons at each other

lesser_minion
2009-01-02, 01:22 AM
These are really there for the absolute last battle of a campaign. That's the main reason why they offer +15 CR templates to a 13th level character. Not everyone wants to take their campaign into epic levels, which is why they offer potentially epic power at normal levels. I'm working on the idea that the Rule of Cool might permit these kinds of effects to work with an epic sacrifice of power. Saying that, allowing a PC to go CR 13 to CR 30 might be a bit much, so I will probably change all of this to minimum 17th level (so you can only double your CR...).

The effects are unavoidable simply because summoning a massive supernova using every last fragment of your past, present and future potential and then having the BBEG make spell resistance is unsuited to the probable tone of the campaign at the intended point of use. And will probably feature prominently in any Paranoia campaigns I run. Actualy, that is funny enough that you can feel free to use it in D&D even if it does lighten the tone of losing a favoured character...:smallsmile:


Another note to make is that, looking at the example above, shredding your immortal soul seems to be an evil act for some reason. Most likely because you are denying your deity your soul. Although the idea of a paladin acting at the "ultimate pariah" is quite frankly awesome, this is a bit of a shady area as far as DnD morality goes.

Which is slightly odd, because sacrificing your character's very existence to destroy a really big bad evil guy seems to be heroically good-aligned and probably something that a Paladin might even go so far as to aspire to. I think the dying curse thing is put down as evil because it seems to be done out of spite, rather than it being related to the whole soul-shredding thing.

I think all three of the effects above would probably be a 'Summon Epic Breakage of Brokeness' if it was made available on any basis smaller than 'Character is gone, Gone, GONE!' - and I'd probably be lying if I didn't admit that the full-scale abilities weren't an attempt to let off anything stupidly overpowered that I was tempted to make without having to shoehorn it into something intended for a more general character option. (Although then you have the Medusa's Curse trait and the Bodak Eyes flaw, both of which are just plain scary, although not without some appeal.)


Furthermore, a different format for such abilities may be in order.

I've tried to keep the format for the abilities down to slightly less than a normal rule or ability might use, simply because it is mainly up to the DM to hand these out. They are intended to be saved for the endgame - I suspect this is easier in 4E, where there is more of an attempt at forcing an endgame on players (hey, you're 30th level - here, have an awesome ability to use). The minor versions will be a little clearer on how they work, what they can do and what they can't do.

Endgame Abilities do their job if your final fight against the BBEG becomes that much cooler/more cinematic. I'm thinking of creating a few 'lesser' abilities that might see use in pre-endgame play, and I'd probably welcome any suggestions for how best to do those. I think the "You Shall Not Pass" re-enactment probably falls into the "lesser endgame ability" category - even though Gandalf effectively dies in the process of using this one, he could have survived.


One of my favorite homebrew classes, the Bio-Mage, has something very similar as a capstone ability. The Bio-Bomb is no SoA, but it's pretty destructive, kills the BM, & prevents normal resurrection.

Actually, I really liked the Bio-Mage. The inspiration for these powers was a book I read a few years ago where an archmage expends all of his skill and power on closing a magical rift and returns home stripped of all of his powers. The Supernova affects the caster as well, so the "can't be brought back thing" is there to close the Direct Intervention of a Deity loophole for them. I'm going to tone it down from 300ft oblivion effect though.

With regard to the other abilities - a Paladin choosing to heal and go paragon after being killed is strong. It certainly puts them into Epic Level power. I just felt that it would be more satisfying for a paladin to suddenly turn into something that lays down the smackdown, rather than just drop a huge multi-energy supernova on the BBEG.

CarpeGuitarrem
2009-01-02, 01:23 AM
Another note to make is that, looking at the example above, shredding your immortal soul seems to be an evil act for some reason. Most likely because you are denying your deity your soul. Although the idea of a paladin acting at the "ultimate pariah" is quite frankly awesome, this is a bit of a shady area as far as DnD morality goes.

He didn't really say that, though. It's not that you're destroying your immortal soul. Rather, by using this "endgame ability", you declare that this task is the one which your life has been destined for, and that by completing it, you have finished your purpose on earth, and will go on to the afterlife forever. Either that, or you're totally depleted of power, because your power is something that was given to you for a specific task, and now that the task is over with, you settle down as a normal human. No more adventuring.

I actually think this is something you can discuss with your DM. For example, you get all the players together, and concoct some way you can all pool your resources to summon forth a huge, searing bolt of energy, dealing massive damage to the BBEG, and draining all of them in the process. Massive heroic sacrifice, and very epic.

Here's some thoughts on variants you can do...

Warlock: facing the BBEG, your pact-maker, you unleash all of your energy upon your master, at the same time destroying your source of arcane mastery, and reducing you to a mere human.

Rogue: you pool all of your nimbleness, your training, and your skill into a single blow, and on a success, you deal a mortal blow to the enemy, but are now out of tricks, and at his mercy.

Barbarian: you channel all of your rage into one destructive strike, totally draining your body of any remaining energy.

Some potential for cool stuff...

Triaxx
2009-01-02, 09:26 AM
Fah, all these wimpy abilities.

Sacrificial Strike:Living Sphere of Annihilation
Prerequisite: Arcane spell caster of 18th level
Effect: The caster sacrifices the very essence of themself to oblivion, damning them to spend eternity there with no hope of resurrection or salvation. In turn they gain the ability to live for four rounds as a sphere of annihilation and may make one touch attack per round against any enemy. On success the enemy is destroyed utterly, regardless of immunities, and is similarly unable to resurrect.

lesser_minion
2009-01-02, 09:52 AM
Fah, all these wimpy abilities.

Sacrificial Strike:Living Sphere of Annihilation

Well, the Supernova ability was originally a 300ft radius effect which annihilated any enemy within range that was vulnerable to any damage type. So you basically incinerate/freeze/shatter/corrode/electrocute/pummel/slice/stab/corrupt/purify/something else... them into oblivion. Oblivion as in SoA oblivion.

A few people thought it was overpowered, hence the reduction to AoE no-save disintegrate.

Realms of Chaos
2009-01-02, 01:19 PM
As all other arguements have apparently been dispelled, the one point I have left to make is that though endgame abilities have cinematic properties, they seem to boil down to an anticlimax.

As you say, these abilities are made to be used in the "final boss" battle of a campaign, supposedly the toughest battle you would ever face. That said, a player could simply use thier endgame power and bash in the enemy's face.

Even if an ability requires the ultimate sacrifice, there are inherent problems with any ability that allows you to break the power curve. In order to keep the "final boss" battle balanced, you either need to set it at around their power level (in which case endgame abilities destroy them) or make the enemy so overpowered that it can't be beat without one or more players using their endgame abilities. For example, it is almost impossible to make a battle that is challenging whether or not the paladin doubles thier CR.

Furthermore, not every endgame power possesses the same power level, making it difficult to assess how hard that final battle should be. For example, a CR 34 Paladin can easily deal with a CR 32 boss while a CR 17 caster and a CR 20 Tarrasque will make significantly less of a dent, and a single blast dealing 34d6 damage is nice but is currently the weakest of the three as the caster dies immediately afterwards. This means that the caster has to remain a puny CR 17 creature (which can barely hurt the hulking CR 32) until they suspect that it is almost dead.

Berserk Monk
2009-01-02, 01:48 PM
I had this one sort of idea for a story. Somewhere, in a forgotten desert, there is a throne located hundred of miles away from any village. He who sits upon the throne shall gain a power* that surpass all the gods and cosmic entities. However, the person must be willing to be able to sit on that throne in isolation for all time, or he shall forfeit his abilities.


*by power I mean +150 to all abilities, DR 100/-, SR 45, natural armor +90, Regeneration 60/-, +40 to all saves, increase all HD to d12, gain a couple levels of something, able to cast a wide variety of spells as spell like abilities, all spells cast are treated as though they have any metamagic feat applied to them and the spell level doesn't increase, can read the thoughts of an conscious being in existence, can create life at will that obey your bidding. Stuff like that.

lesser_minion
2009-01-02, 02:19 PM
As all other arguements have apparently been dispelled, the one point I have left to make is that though endgame abilities have cinematic properties, they seem to boil down to an anticlimax.

As you say, these abilities are made to be used in the "final boss" battle of a campaign, supposedly the toughest battle you would ever face. That said, a player could simply use thier endgame power and bash in the enemy's face.

Even if an ability requires the ultimate sacrifice, there are inherent problems with any ability that allows you to break the power curve. In order to keep the "final boss" battle balanced, you either need to set it at around their power level (in which case endgame abilities destroy them) or make the enemy so overpowered that it can't be beat without one or more players using their endgame abilities. For example, it is almost impossible to make a battle that is challenging whether or not the paladin doubles thier CR.

Furthermore, not every endgame power possesses the same power level, making it difficult to assess how hard that final battle should be. For example, a CR 34 Paladin can easily deal with a CR 32 boss while a CR 17 caster and a CR 20 Tarrasque will make significantly less of a dent, and a single blast dealing 34d6 damage is nice but is currently the weakest of the three as the caster dies immediately afterwards. This means that the caster has to remain a puny CR 17 creature (which can barely hurt the hulking CR 32) until they suspect that it is almost dead.

I think the assumption behind these tends to be that they come up when you want to face an opponent that your character couldn't possibly defeat normally, and the use of them will generally require your character and party to have already been basically slaughtered. This makes them in some cases just more of a legitimised DM cheat. I have to admit that I am relying on DMs a bit here, but I hope that none of them would allow an Endgame Ability to completely ruin a BBEG fight in the way you describe.

Endgame Abilities can also be worked into a game as an Artifact power - all seems lost, until one of the characters finds the Ring of Tarrasque Awakening. It's only then that the hero discovers that the Tarrasque is loose once it has done the single task that he may request of it. That one is potentially interesting for BBEG replacement - sure, you have a CR20 monster of pure hideousness helping you out, but it will eat you next.

And then you always have the option of banning endgame powers until the BBEG is basically defeated - the monster that will destroy all of creation lies broken before you, but will only remain defeated if one of you sacrifices all of his power to destroy the horror for good.

I think the biggest anticlimax danger is that all of these abilities will run into the risk of scripting - the story dictating the whole BBEG fight to the point that the PCs are manipulated into certain courses of action. That probably does have the potential to create an anticlimax, and I'm not sure if I can offer a solution to it yet.

The minor powers are not up yet, but I will try to write them out soon - they will be a little harder to balance (because they won't be intended to permit balance to be shot twice in the back of the head), and will need to scale with character level.

Realms of Chaos
2009-01-02, 06:09 PM
perhaps the best strategy would be to require the player to be at or below 10% of their maximum hit points and have an additional specific trigger specific to each ability (being targetted by a death effect, witnessing a friend die, etc).

However, there is still the issue of the type of battle that these types of things would require. Most players (I think) enjoy a fight that is right on their level, a bit higher, or even truly challenging (Average party level + 4-6 CR). In order for these endgame abilities to become necessary, however, the final boss would have to be so powerful that noone could do anything against them until they use their endgame abilities. The course of such a battle would end up something like this.
Start: Boss sweeps floor with players, likely killing a couple of them in the process.
Middle: One or more endgame abilities activate and boss has his butt handed to him.
End: Anyone who used their endgame abilities promptly dies.

In short, any battle made to take advantage of these abilities is a death sentence for your players, whether they are sweeped away in the early combat or die after using their endgame powers. Furthermore, the odds of a TPK occuring drastically increase in such a fight both because of the aforementioned reasons and because, endgame ability beside, the player is likely still statistically subpar to their enemy by far. This is a sccenario that few players would want (generally wanting to be alive when the dust clears).

I acknowledge that there are certain exceptions to what I've written down. there are paladins and, indeed, entire parties out there that would gladly lay down their lives for a taste of true awesome. There are certain flashback scenarios when the death doesn't matter or may actually be necessary. It is possible to make a homebrew creature that is immensely powerful but not in a way that directly hurts players or that increase in power over time (eventually needed endgame abilities to properly fight).

In any case, this entire project seems kind of contradictory. On the surface, it looks like any other mechanic or optional rule. It is only used if the DM specifically says so...in a single fight...at the end of the campaign...if that battle is specifically designed for its use. In short, this seems a bit wierd to me. Why even create this system rather than just telling DMs to give players huge benefits when the chips are down?

Then again, coming from the creator of the Deus Ex Machina base class, all of this may just be hogwash. :smalltongue:

lesser_minion
2009-01-06, 11:54 AM
OK, I think I now have a basic idea worked out for the minor form of an endgame ability. The more powerful abilities will probably be relabeled 'Final' or 'Ultimate' abilities.

Considering Realms of Chaos' last post, I think it may be easiest to use the more powerful abilities as a plot device - this may require a pre-agreed PC death or something similarly unorthodox, but if it makes sense for a hero to sacrifice his powers in order to destroy the BBEG forever/close the magical rift/destroy the artifact of doom then it might be appropriate. Equally, you can use these to put an interesting choice before your players - yes, you can close the rift, but it will cost one of you all of his/her abilities.

The Endgame Abilities will be divided into 3 grades (Lesser, Greater and Final). Least and Lesser abilities are balanced to be usable no more than once per adventure by eliminating any spellcasting ability for the next d3+3 weeks. I've got an idea for a Paladin ability worked out, and any ideas for additional ones would be appreciated.

Lesser Abilities become available at 8th level, and should be roughly as powerful as 6th level spells(?)

Greater Abilities become available at 12th level, and are roughly as good as 8th level spells(?)

I think Final Abilities look roughly equivalent to some of the stronger non-cheesy Epic Spells. They actually destroy your powers permanently, and will become available at 16th level.

For a 4e port of this, the abilities should be a bit stronger than mid-tier dailies, and divided by tier. They would be usable once per adventure, assuming a few weeks of downtime between adventures (in the same way that encounter powers assume 'a few minutes' of rest)

A character can use one of these abilities when the situation is desparate - this generally requires DM agreement. Common examples of when the situation is sufficiently desparate include:
An ally falls or surrenders to the enemy An ally flees the battle Immediately when your character recovers from being reduced to negative hitpoints On reduction to negative hitpoints, if Die Hard On stabilising independently, as a special action which doesn't require consciousness When the character 'loses' due to a powerful spell effect (which the character automatically shakes off as part of using this ability, even if actually rendered helpless)

Divine Fury
Least Ability - Paladin
Needs flavour text!
You enter a divine frenzy, the better to smite your enemies. On entering a divine fury, you must designate one target who you have seen perform an evil act, or know to be evil. You gain the benefits of a Barbarian's Rage ability (+4 Str, +4 Con, +2 to Will Saves) and all attacks you make against your designated target are Smites, even if the target is normally innapropriate for your character's Smite ability

In addition, any Smite attacks you make are not subject to penalties from fighting defensively or feats such as combat expertise, tactical expertise or power attack. Attack rolls which are not or can not be smites still suffer the normal penalties due to these feats. You may claim the bonus for Tactical Expertise when smiting an opponent, even if you are using feats which penalise attack rolls on a Smite.

The fury ends when the designated target falls or surrenders, at which point the Paladin loses all of his various class features and immunities (for a Core paladin, as if Fallen) until they complete a reasonable amount of downtime.

While the DM is free to determine 'a reasonable amount of downtime', the idea is to have the character regain his abilities by the start of the next 'adventure' ('story arc' may be a better term).