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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Thurbane
I wonder if he's friends with Lhosk? He looks like he might be!
Maybe if the lhosk took pity on him. I mean, the lhosk isn't exactly on top of the list here, but she has some class, you know?
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Originally Posted by
ViperMagnum357
Marginally related: if/when we get to those books, can we break down and discuss the Celestial Paragons and Archfiends from BoED and BoVD? Like, treating them as if they were a base monster rather than unique, and run them through our analysis here? I think that would be very interesting.
That does sound interesting. Maybe as a warm-up to the ELH, if Inevitability wants to cover those monstrosities?
It could be neat to break down the gods in Deities and Demigods, too, if only so we could compare the ECLs of Pelor and Demogorgon.
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Originally Posted by
Random Sanity
For some reason this thing makes me think of Pablo Picasso doing the cover illustration for a Lovecraft book.
If there's an afterlife, I hope those two collaborate. I mean, Giger and Lovecraft could be neat, but that would be a bit more...incestuous. Picasso would bring more that Lovecraft wouldn't.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Random Sanity
For some reason this thing makes me think of Pablo Picasso doing the cover illustration for a Lovecraft book.
Can I sig this?
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
ViperMagnum357
Marginally related: if/when we get to those books, can we break down and discuss the Celestial Paragons and Archfiends from BoED and BoVD? Like, treating them as if they were a base monster rather than unique, and run them through our analysis here? I think that would be very interesting.
And the Fiendish Codex Archfiends, when we get to the Fiendish Codices? I think that's the right plural of Codex.
We will likely get to FC1 and FC2 before BoVD on account of them being 3.5e to the BoVD's 3.0.
Not sure about doing the full-on gods of Deities and Demigods. Demigods, sure, but Salient Divine abilities are really swingy. Anything with Divine Rank 1 or better can get the Alter Reality SDA, which is a bit like having an at will 0xp Miracle or Wish, only better. That's not exactly conducive to game balance.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
javcs
...
Not sure about doing the full-on gods of Deities and Demigods. Demigods, sure, but Salient Divine abilities are really swingy. Anything with Divine Rank 1 or better can get the Alter Reality SDA, which is a bit like having an at will 0xp Miracle or Wish, only better. That's not exactly conducive to game balance.
Agreed, I am much more interested in seeing the Monsters of Faerun dissected since it contains a copious volume of good-stats-to-HD Effigy bodies.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
Unique, hyper-powered outsiders (demon lords, celestial paragons...) will be treated as actual monsters.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
Not sure if there's much point to doing ELH or Deities and Demigods. Most of those are so high ECL that it's basically impossible to rate (Corellon Larethian is ECL 69 including his classes and racial hit dice. What does a tier 3 ECL 69 build look like?). Deities and Demigods does have a few normal monsters, but I don't think it's worth doing those two particular books before something like the Fiend Folio or MM2.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
OgresAreCute
Not sure if there's much point to doing ELH or Deities and Demigods. Most of those are so high ECL that it's basically impossible to rate (Corellon Larethian is ECL 69 including his classes and racial hit dice. What does a tier 3 ECL 69 build look like?).
Mm, fair point.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
This doesn't seem like a decision being made by popular vote, but just to throw in my voice, I'd rather exhaust most or all of the more low-level/"typical" books before getting into the Epic stuff. (Especially since basically every Epic creature's guidelines can come down to "does it have Epic Spellcasting or a seriously intense way of dealing with Epic Spellcasting? If yes, it's 'playable,' and if not, it's a joke." Give or take divine ranks, but to be honest, I don't feel like dealing with those.)
Personally, I'm fine with Monster Manuals (and maybe the Fiend Folio) for a while longer. What non-MM books have we done already? Just ToM and HoH, right? We might dip into the XPH for a while, or perhaps some of the environmental books (Sandstorm/Frostburn/Stormwrack). We might also look at Thurbane's "Monster Manual 6" with all the bizarre online critters. Lords of Madness has lots of monsters, but I don't know if they'd mostly be interesting or mostly just boring -0s. I know that Libris Mortis is going to be almost all -0s, given how awful undead HD bloat is.
Of course, there's still over 50ish monsters left in MM3, so we'll be a little longer, no?
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Zaq
What non-MM books have we done already? Just ToM and HoH, right?
ToB, not ToM.
The Book of Nine Swords, not the Book of 2/3 Pages Mysteriously Blank.
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Originally Posted by
Zaq
We might dip into the XPH for a while, or perhaps some of the environmental books (Sandstorm/Frostburn/Stormwrack).
Seconding XPH.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Nifft
ToB, not ToM.
Typo freely acknowledged. My bad. ToM might be fun as well, though. There's a handful of neat monsters in it.
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The Book of Nine Swords, not the Book of 2/3 Pages Mysteriously Blank.
I've written an awful lot about some of those "blank pages," sir.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Zaq
Typo freely acknowledged. My bad. ToM might be fun as well, though. There's a handful of neat monsters in it.
Yeah fair enough. I'd second ToM as well.
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Originally Posted by
Zaq
I've written an awful lot about some of those "blank pages," sir.
Pardon my deliberate blindness to those pages. I prefer to retain my ability to taste ice cream.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Zaq
This doesn't seem like a decision being made by popular vote, but just to throw in my voice, I'd rather exhaust most or all of the more low-level/"typical" books before getting into the Epic stuff.
Agreed. I thought it might be fun to churn through the books that don't have a ton on monsters first, like we did with ToB and HoH...
Miniatures Handbook would be a pretty quick one.
Not to mention that most deity-like beings, even if LA +0, aren't going to be playable in anything but epic games.
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Originally Posted by
GreatWyrmGold
Maybe if the lhosk took pity on him. I mean, the lhosk isn't exactly on top of the list here, but she has some class, you know?
Not sure if this came up in the discussion on the Lhosk, but I just found something that I find hilarious.
It looks like the Lhosk was originally going to be called the Gorilchnid.
Also appears like the Protean Scourge was going to be called Grakka...
http://archive.wizards.com/default.a...040903a&page=4
There's a few others:
Grimweird = Hellbringer
Lurking Strangler = Spiralle
Stonesinger = Tralusk
Ironclad Mauler = Warbear
Chelicera = Weerthask
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
OgresAreCute
Not sure if there's much point to doing ELH or Deities and Demigods. Most of those are so high ECL that it's basically impossible to rate (Corellon Larethian is ECL 69 including his classes and racial hit dice. What does a tier 3 ECL 69 build look like?). Deities and Demigods does have a few normal monsters, but I don't think it's worth doing those two particular books before something like the Fiend Folio or MM2.
The bulk of the value would likely be in the templates.
I agree that there's no point in assessing the gods, or divine rank greater than 0.
On the other hand, considering the contents of the ELH, most of that will be a flaming pile of -0.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Thurbane
Not sure if this came up in the discussion on the Lhosk, but I just found something that I find hilarious.
It looks like the Lhosk was originally going to be called the Gorilchnid.
Also appears like the Protean Scourge was going to be called Grakka...
http://archive.wizards.com/default.a...040903a&page=4
There's a few others:
Grimweird = Hellbringer
Lurking Strangler = Spiralle
Stonesinger = Tralusk
Ironclad Mauler = Warbear
Chelicera = Weerthask
G . . . Gorilchnid. I'm kind of in awe of how terrible that looks.
I mean, it's more understandable than "lhosk." There's a discernible etymology, and "lhosk" is still a garbage name. On the other hand, at least "lhosk" doesn't contain the string "LCHN," which is beyond jarring to this native English speaker's eye. If you didn't know that you were talking about a gorilla/spider centaur thing and hadn't already primed your brain to think about gorillas and arachnids, you'd spend a long time trying to puzzle over that one, because it simply looks terrible.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
I vote for the XPH next. Partly because I just like psionics, but also because it's SRD, because some of the monsters are psionic variants so it probably won't take too long, and because if we're going to rate psionic monsters at all we might as well start with the book that introduced them. Plus it's not that long, either.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
-0 easy.
I'm voting for either the ToM or XPH next.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
I agree with doing XPH next.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Inevitability
Centaur good, ogre good, ogretaur disappointingly bad.
Isn't there a template for creating centaur-like monsters? Seems like it would be better. Not even sure my vote is needed at this point, but -0.
Also another (somewhat selfish) vote for the XPH
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Luccan
Isn't there a template for creating centaur-like monsters? Seems like it would be better. Not even sure my vote is needed at this point, but -0.
Also another (somewhat selfish) vote for the XPH
Yep. The Tauric creature template. Savage Species, I think.
Edit: Yeah, Savage Species. Though the Tauric template can produce something akin to driders and the lhosk, too.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
javcs
Yep. The Tauric creature template. Savage Species, I think.
Edit: Yeah, Savage Species. Though the Tauric template can produce something akin to driders and the lhosk, too.
On the one hand SS is kinda unbalanced - on the other hand, fairly sure Tauric isn't terribly OP, considering that's the book with Illithid Savant of all things.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
danielxcutter
On the one hand SS is kinda unbalanced - on the other hand, fairly sure Tauric isn't terribly OP, considering that's the book with Illithid Savant of all things.
IIIRC, the LA only considers 1 side of the Tuaric mixture. So the other side could be templated out the wazoo without affecting LA at all.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
Adding in a vote for the Book of Exalted Deeds as it's got a number of Good-focused monsters. It also got a 3.5 accessory update as far as I remember.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
Nifft
Pardon my deliberate blindness to those pages. I prefer to retain my ability to taste ice cream.
Only one-third of the book threatens one's ability to taste ice cream. The shadow-whatever is bland as all heck, but it doesn't affect the taste of other stuff.
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Originally Posted by
MesiDoomstalker
IIIRC, the LA only considers 1 side of the Tuaric mixture. So the other side could be templated out the wazoo without affecting LA at all.
Or just stupid powerful without too much HD bloat.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
MeimuHakurei
Adding in a vote for the Book of Exalted Deeds as it's got a number of Good-focused monsters. It also got a 3.5 accessory update as far as I remember.
Why do people constantly confuse this? Book of Exalted Deeds is 3.5. Early 3.5, but still 3.5. Book of Vile Darkness is the 3.0 one.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
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Originally Posted by
MeimuHakurei
Adding in a vote for the Book of Exalted Deeds as it's got a number of Good-focused monsters. It also got a 3.5 accessory update as far as I remember.
Nope, BoED is 3.5. BoVD is 3.0, and never got an update. Though some of the Archfiends got restatted (and nerfed, IIRC) in the two Fiendish Codex books.
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Originally Posted by
GreatWyrmGold
Only one-third of the book threatens one's ability to taste ice cream. The shadow-whatever is bland as all heck, but it doesn't affect the taste of other stuff.
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Or just stupid powerful without too much HD bloat.
Nope, HD of both the base humanoid and base creature get added together. Minumum of 1 RHD each.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
Between dragon type, pounce, rake, okay stats and Large size, I'd argue the rage drake would be a viable mouthpick PC if it had a few less HD. As it is right now, the fourteen levels this eats up are just too much to justify playing one. -0 LA.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
A sure -0. What CR are they with 14 rhd? I thought they were like 7 or 8 but I do not remember.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
More than 8 RHD with nothing but numbers and no meaningful active abilities? -0. Moving on.
Worry is cute, but it's not actually enough to make this worth the level cost.
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Re: The LA-assignment thread V: Escape from LA
What a boring, uninspired monster. They could have at least called it a "rake drake" to give it a punny name.