[D20 Legends Project] Ashiel's Crunchy but Approachable D20

[Klara Meison]

Started on the core classes. The only other class document that was currently on my google drive was a temporary placeholder for an exceedingly early playtest my brother convinced me to run. Here's the new core class document that is in progress. Currently the warrior (fighter replacement) is being written. I've been working on it between periods of unconsciousness over the past 24 hours (I'm kind of sick but recovering ).

D20 Legends - Classes - Alpha v2

I see Blood Tempest already received a much needed nerf.

Do I understand it correctly that all techniques share a single cooldown timer? I.e. if you use Technique 1, you can't use Technique 2 next turn?

[Ashiel]

I see Blood Tempest already received a much needed nerf.

Do I understand it correctly that all techniques share a single cooldown timer? I.e. if you use Technique 1, you can't use Technique 2 next turn?

That's correct. D20 Legends' core combat system is much more mobile and fluid than regular D20 (mostly because of the removal of the full-attack system), so part of the design goal with the warrior is to not avoid the combat system by activating abilities every round, but to mix using abilities in with your basic combat options.

You'll also have a sort of mini-game that exists where you can perform certain actions, or use certain abilities, and certain stances, to reduce your cooldowns. This will hopefully lead to a minigame where you increase your tempo by fighting a certain way (the exact way may vary depending on your choices).

Here's an Example
Let's say we're building a sword & board wielding tank who's role is going to center around putting pressure on enemies and making a nuisance of himself to your enemies. By 4th level, we might be looking at a build that looks like this:

Talents

1. Warrior Class (you're now a warrior)
2. Sword & Board (when you use a heroic strike attack, you get a free shield bash)
3. Shield Slam (when you shield bash, you reduce your cooldowns by 1)

Techniques, Boosts, and Stances

• Stance Guardian's Wrath (school cooldowns reduced by 1, heroic strike reduces cooldowns by 1)
• Stance Opportunist Stance (opportunity attack when a combat maneuver succeeds)
• Technique Intervene (move to an ally and intercept an attack)
• Boost Heroic stand (gain a bunch of temporary HP until end of your turn)

Strategy
The idea is that we'll move around and pound enemies in the face. Whenever we're about to take a big hit, we activate Heroic Stand and absorb damage. When our friends are in danger, we activate Intervene allowing us to defend them (and putting us in melee with our enemy, where we want to be). When we use our abilities, the cooldown is only 4 rounds instead of 5 (because of our stance), and when we use a heroic strike we reduce the cooldown by 1 (and we'll do this a lot).

We're very hard to kill and remarkably mobile (since Intervene allows you to move up to your speed to get back to an ally, you can "bungee" yourself back to any ally that's being attacked). So we charge around the battlefield smacking people with our sword & shield, and every few rounds get to absorb a big damaging attack, or defend our adventure-bros. In some situations we may change to our Opportunistic Stance and focus on beating people up with extra attacks when we're using combat maneuvers with our allies (so if you bull rush someone away from your friends you can attack them for free, and the free attack could be a shield bash which reduces your chooldowns).

Attacking: So the idea here would be to focus on moving around and making heroic strikes (these function similar to vital strikes in Pathfinder). When we make a heroic strike, we also whack a dude with a shield bash. Our damage against our target is generally pretty sexy this way (assuming we're using a d8 main-hander and a shield, we'd deal about 1d8+4+2d6 on the heroic strike, and 1d6+4+1d6 on the shield bash). We also have 3 attacks per round if you count dual-wielding, so our attack routine options would look something like this.
1 Attack Either sword or shield at +8 (mwk or buffs not included)
1 Heroic Strike Either sword or shield at +6 (w/+1d6 damage) and a free shield bash
2 Attacks Any combination of sword or shield at +6/+6 (good for most but you get more out of heroic striking, unless your foe is resistant to shield bashes).
3 Attacks Some combination of sword and shield at +4/+4/+4 (this might be desirable if fighting lots of mooks or foes with bad AC).

Cooldown Reduction Strategy
Because our abilities synergize with our fighting style, using any ability in our Guardian's Wrath stance reduces the cooldown from 5 to 4.
We then make a heroic strike which reduces it by 1 while in this stance (4 to 3). Because of our Sword & Board and Shield Slam talents, we get a free shield bash when we heroic strike and shield bashing reduces our cooldowns by 1 (so now we've gone from 3 to 2 in the same round). If we can keep this up, we can activate an ability every other round (technically since our abilities are immediate actions, we could probably use them every round if we opened our turn by heroic striking and shield bashing people and making the cooldown on our turn).

EDIT #1: Incidentally you can use abilities like Intervene to rush down enemies and tag team with things like rogues in your party. For example if your party's rogue charges into combat at top speed while you're fighting someone else or buffing with potions or something, when the foe retaliates against the rogue you can burst onto the scene (and possibly counter attack). Now you and the rogue are adjacent to each other and flanking is a natural choice from there. If you can keep your cooldowns down, each time your victim tries to attack the rogue you can try to take the hit for him.

Also, if our party is making use of summoned allies or pets, such as animal companions or friendly summoned monsters, they can be spread out onto multiple enemies allowing you to use them for leap-frogging (since you can immediate-action rush to one if they're attacked, then continue moving on your turn while whacking foes in the face).

[Klara Meison]

Will there be Claims and similar abilities in D20L? I.e. things that heavilly penalise enemies from attacking anyone but the activator of the ability, by either debuffing them to hell and back or by directly harming them if they try to do so(e.g. by making them provoke opportunity attacks).

[Ashiel]

Will there be Claims and similar abilities in D20L? I.e. things that heavilly penalise enemies from attacking anyone but the activator of the ability, by either debuffing them to hell and back or by directly harming them if they try to do so(e.g. by making them provoke opportunity attacks).

Probably. I assume you mean mechanics like the Harbinger's dark claim? Yeah, I'd bet money on it. I like mechanics like that a lot.

[Zilrax]

Harbinger and Zealot are my favorites so yeys!

[Ashiel]

Harbinger and Zealot are my favorites so yeys!

Fortunately, the way I'm writing the Warrior, it would be fairly trivial to add new combat schools later (or to homebrew your own), so if the cooldown mechanic appeals (I rather like it but the best laid plans and all that) then expanding the warrior for other purposes and themes should be pretty easy in the grand scheme of things.

For example, it wouldn't be terribly hard to turn the warrior into some sort of death-knight sort of thing by adding some abilities that revolve around doing things like inflicting debuffs and diseases and stuff like that on foes. Or even a support specialization that does things like heal, buff, and cleanse status ailments for your allies.

[Zilrax]

Well the Harbinger, well base Harbinger cus the archetypes alter their fighting styles, is more of a skirmisher who picks a target and isolates and eliminates. I think they might be better off as something based out of the Rogue since they are all about comboing curses and mobility and such. Things you've put to the rogue.

That said, the Crimson Countess might make a better warrior possibly, as her thing is putting a time limit on combats by being a constant threat. Everyone she marks loses hp over time and she get's stronger from it. So you have to choose between killing possibly more immediately dangerous targets like casters and allowing the Countess to get swole, or focus her down, and you know she's going to be tanking up. A rather effective form of aggro.

The Raven archetype one where the Harbinger splits off his negativity into a murderbird and they tag team is probably a mix of rogue and ranger. Ranger for the pet mechanics, rogue for the if one hits, other applies debuffs in response and so forth.

Omen Rider is harbinger on a horse, probably ranger again.

Zealots a funnier duck. He's probably Champion and... Whatever you eventually stuff stuff like the Vitalist Collective under, as he absorbs damage from allies, is all about aid another and then can grant them his abilities in turn. But mostly I really love the Solipsism Style aka Sleeping Goddess or "I reject your reality and substitute my own, the fighting style." Because I can have a character apply this sort of logic to reality.

http://www.prequeladventure.com/this...trapolate.html

I always go back to this when I feel down as well. It helps. Side note, when you succeed changes the text.

[Ashiel]

Okay, that thing you linked is awesome and now I wanna play Morrowind or Skyrim again. What have you done to me!?
So...many...mods...to...install...

[Zilrax]

Fear the powers of Making a Cat Cry!

Also amusing given the concept is a prequel to Oblivion and it made you wanna play the two Not Oblivion games :3

But yeah, that ghost is awesome and I enjoy me some crazy ghost logic.

"It requires cunning and Linear thinking!" "You mean lateral thinking?" "No, Linear thinking! Thinking about an idea in a straight line and letting nothing, not even reason get in your way!"

Or as my Stalker/Zealot decided after taking Unbroken Stride stance: "Well, people float. Ergo I float." *stands on the surface of water* "I float." Later it allows you to walk on walls and ceilings like spiderclimb. "Well, everything get's pulled down. You all decided down was that way, I never agreed to this! Reality is not a democracy! I say down is this way! It's not my fault you guys are so hung up on your interpretation." Later can fly but not hover. "Look, if a dragon can fly, so can I because I am way lighter than a dragon. I can't hover because I don't have wings obviously, but it's not my fault you all decided you had to live on the ground." Later can fly perfectly. "Well, you know how I decided down was that way? Well me and gravity got into an argument and we're not speaking to each other anymore. I hope you're happy, you all caused this! You and your determinations and now gravity won't touch me anymore and I have to swim everywhere. Of course I can swim in it. Air contains water, that's where clouds are from. So if you can swim in water you can swim in the air."

[Ashiel]

Fear the powers of Making a Cat Cry!

Also amusing given the concept is a prequel to Oblivion and it made you wanna play the two Not Oblivion games :3

But yeah, that ghost is awesome and I enjoy me some crazy ghost logic.

"It requires cunning and Linear thinking!" "You mean lateral thinking?" "No, Linear thinking! Thinking about an idea in a straight line and letting nothing, not even reason get in your way!"

Or as my Stalker/Zealot decided after taking Unbroken Stride stance: "Well, people float. Ergo I float." *stands on the surface of water* "I float." Later it allows you to walk on walls and ceilings like spiderclimb. "Well, everything get's pulled down. You all decided down was that way, I never agreed to this! Reality is not a democracy! I say down is this way! It's not my fault you guys are so hung up on your interpretation." Later can fly but not hover. "Look, if a dragon can fly, so can I because I am way lighter than a dragon. I can't hover because I don't have wings obviously, but it's not my fault you all decided you had to live on the ground." Later can fly perfectly. "Well, you know how I decided down was that way? Well me and gravity got into an argument and we're not speaking to each other anymore. I hope you're happy, you all caused this! You and your determinations and now gravity won't touch me anymore and I have to swim everywhere. Of course I can swim in it. Air contains water, that's where clouds are from. So if you can swim in water you can swim in the air."

I didn't really ever get around to playing Oblivion much. I bought it for the Xbox360 but I was so busy with a new job at the time that I never actually played it for more than maybe a couple hours. I'm a big fan of Skyrim's mechanical changes (makes the game more intuitive), and really love both modded Morrowind and modded Skyrim. I would probably like modded Oblivion too. I just haven't gotten around to bothering with it, even though I did buy it when it was super cheap on Steam.

EDIT: Also, that sounds both crazy and hilarious.

[Klara Meison]

1) What do you think is the worst consequence of limiting publicly availible (as in, the kind you can buy with money) spellcasting at level 5?

2) How would you split population by level in Pathfinder and in D20Legends? I.e. what % is lv1, what % is lv2, et cetera.

[Ashiel]

1) What do you think is the worst consequence of limiting publicly available (as in, the kind you can buy with money) spellcasting at level 5?

Well, it means regenerate is beyond the means of the PCs to attain without a dedicated healer in the party and that could selectively suck (though honestly it's not worth being a 7th+ level spell anyway, I have no idea what they were thinking). I personally would miss create undead.

Aside from that, I started to say the lack of stone to flesh, but humorously the break enhancement spell can be used to dispel flesh to stone and it's a lower level spell, albeit it does require a CL check (so you might have to cast it a few extra times). Humorously, it's safer than using stone to flesh since break enchantment doesn't force a DC 15 Fortitude save or die (and that save isn't always super easy since your gear is inert, so you're rolling with only your base save + base Constitution + feats, no magic item support).

In a lot of ways it would probably make the game better overall. With no ready access to things like greater teleport, and regular teleport being imperfect for arriving precisely where you need to, it would make traditional forms of travel a bit more practical even at later levels. It would also reduce the implied number of high level casters significantly (since the mechanics in the core rulebook imply that 15th and under are common enough to be peddling their services in any community of the appropriate size). 5th level spells would imply that common casters are below 11th level (9th for mages, 10th for sorcerers), which is probably a good idea from a world-building perspective for many, many reasons.

2) How would you split population by level in Pathfinder and in D20Legends? I.e. what % is lv1, what % is lv2, et cetera.

I'm not sure off the top of my head, honestly. I'm generally happiest with the vast majority of the world feels somewhat normal, which means I'd definitely set the demographics for higher level individuals progressively smaller and smaller as their levels rose in question. Though in my own games I tend to use CR in place of levels (so a lot of the champion sorts of badasses that are relatively common are usually stacked with NPC levels). If I was just spitballing a number off the top of my head, maybe something like 1/10 people are above 1st level (10%), and 1/10 of those is above 3rd level (1%), and 1/10 of those were above 5th level (0.1%), and 1/10 of those were above 7th level (0.01%), and 1/10 of those were above 9th level (0.001%), and 1/10 of those were above 11th level (0.0001%), and so forth. Which would put 20th level individuals at about 10 in a billion.

This is basically under the assumption that to reach a particularly high level you have to be doing particularly dangerous things, and adventuring tends to be dangerous, and so it's got this really nasty tendency to kill off individuals before they reach higher levels, or encourage them to quit while they're ahead. Lots of would be high level folks might call it quits at some point, many others fall to various bad ends, achieve their goals, or stop being challenged as fiercely (which causes their advancement to slow as a result).

Traditionally speaking, it takes significantly more experience to level with each subsequent level. Incidentally, that means unless you are facing challenges that grant more experience, your XP gain will slow naturally. As you rise on the "food chain" as it were, the number of competitors dwindles (as they are as rare as you are), so it becomes harder to find greater challenges without either explicitly looking for them, or them looking for you, etc. It is because of this that I generally go with the "more is more" approach when designing encounters, especially high level encounters. They're usually saturated with tons of lower-tier enemies and dotted with one or two major contenders (and even those major contenders are going to be lower in level than the PCs).

For d20 Legends specifically, I'm going to need to decide on if and how I would like to promote a "soft cap" on levels. In Pathfinder, the soft cap his at 20th level, where advancing beyond 20th provides little in the way of additional power growth, but the XP budgets on encounters become so high that you'd eventually be facing tons of enemies that are challenging in their own right. For example, a CR 25 encounter is the same XP budget for 21+ planetars (each planetar being capable of casting 8th level spells and such). From 20th to 25th level, you've probably already maxed out your magic items, inherent bonuses, and so forth a long time ago, so aside from a few increased HD, you're not really much stronger than you were at 20th level. Thus it becomes near impossible to keep progressing at any sort of rapid pace without just getting destroyed (because the encounter budgets will eventually drown you).

There are several ways to go about handling it and I haven't decided on what I'd like to set as the "default" experience. I'll very likely include three or four experience charts depending on the sort of game intending to be ran. I personally kind of like the idea of an XP chart that stretches as levels get higher (so you'd level relatively quickly at low levels, then slow down, and then slow to a crawl at higher levels), which would have the side effect of allowing you to get the core of your toys quickly, then draw out the "sweet spot" longer, and make the higher levels feel more worthwhile. Though I think that sort of style is more suited for characters who are going to be played across multiple campaigns, and has probably largely fallen out of fashion in modern gaming. I'd like to include it as an option though.

[Klara Meison]

In a lot of ways it would probably make the game better overall. With no ready access to things like greater teleport, and regular teleport being imperfect for arriving precisely where you need to, it would make traditional forms of travel a bit more practical even at later levels. It would also reduce the implied number of high level casters significantly (since the mechanics in the core rulebook imply that 15th and under are common enough to be peddling their services in any community of the appropriate size). 5th level spells would imply that common casters are below 11th level (9th for mages, 10th for sorcerers), which is probably a good idea from a world-building perspective for many, many reasons.

That has been my reasoning when I asked the question. I realised that I'd need some sort of Cheliax demographics for some aspects of Mint Rebels campaign I am working on, so I went searching and found not much. Only demographic rules I have seen so far are in the "Settlements" section under availible spellcasting, which imply how common spellcasters are(e.g. since you can get lv1 spells in a village of 20 people, it probably means there is at least 1 wizard, 1 priest and 1 witch in that village, and casters in general are at least 5% of the population)

But then you get to higher levels of spellcasting, and based on those numbers, there would be 50-100 lv 15+ casters in Cheliax that sell their spellcasting on the market, which means at least 150-300 in total...

That's just too much magic for my tastes, considering that Queen Of Cheliax is a lv 16 sorcerer. How would she even keep her throne with that many casters of equivalent power in the country? Plotting Settlement numbers on this glorious graph (red-vanilla, blue-my adjusted numbers. Population of Cheliax is assumed to be 4 million, equal to 1500-s England, with major cities like London being 50-100k) you can see that number of high-level casters drops slower than the number of low-level casters in Pathfinder, which would imply that it's easier to gain experience at higher levels than at lower levels, which is just plain weird.

I adjusted the numbers so that the curve would look generally straighter. Now there are just a dozen of high-level casters(High Priests, Queens, and other nationally-important people, along with their secretaries and leutenants). Most people are in the 1-5 level range, with 6-10 levels being where most locally and regionally known people lie. Then there is a drop between 5-th and 6-th level of spellcasting, since most people just can't go over level 10.

EDIT: Red graph is vanilla numbers for spellcasters willing to cast spells for money, whereas blue graph is for spellcasters total. If you adjust vanilla graph for the fact that, obviously, not all spellcasters will sell spells, it's even higher.

[Zilrax]

Obviously the answer is high level casters can cast planeshift and go punch elementals!

[Ashiel]

Obviously the answer is high level casters can cast planeshift and go punch elementals!

This is pretty reasonable. There is an argument to be made that at a certain point the material plane holds no more wonders for the restless soul that the ever reaching leveler. Odds are, anyone who has the dedication to climb ever higher probably has no goals that require the material plane. I mean, even conquering the world. Do you really gain anything by going through the effort if you're so powerful that the riches of the material world mean nothing?

Time to explore the multiverse!
Or take up hobbies.

[Tels]

Or take up hobbies.

Knitting is fun...

[Zilrax]

I want to knit golems now.

[Ashiel]

Knitting is fun...

This is essentially why I often scoff at the idea that immortality will lead to absolute boredom. There is always something new to do, or new to learn, or new to create. Have you truly learned everything there is to learn about, say, biology? Go learn computer programming. Can you code like a god in every programming language to date? Now go become the best player of Age of Empires. You're the best player now? Now go write. Write what? Everything. Hell, your auto-biography would probably look like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Write a story. Take up painting. Push a field of research to new heights. Invent something. Figure out how to make the world more awesome. Become an astralnaut, exploring new planes of existence. Find the edge of the known universe. See what's beyond the known universe. Take up golfing. Invent Pokemon. Then play Pokemon. Invent Roleplaying games. GM the best roleplaying games. Become a marriage guidance counselor. Play The Sims using people, by secretly gaining ownership to all lands, businesses, and government in an area and see if you can make them super successful (if occasionally drenched in their own blue liquids).

Of course, as someone who cannot find enough time to do all of the things I want to do, and having by the large found myself not playing video games because I'm too busy writing, socializing, or working or something, the prospect of being a lich sounds freaking awesome. Or better yet, if I could magically split myself to engage in all of my interests all at once.

Boredom is a False God
Here's a list of things that I would like to be doing at any given time, in no particular order.

• Writing RPG Material
• Hanging out with friends
• Learning to draw and paint better
• Messageboards
• Modding Final Fantasy Tactics
• Making an RPG Maker game
• Writing a novel
• Writing adventures
• Playing video games
• Exercising and working out
• Playing MMOs
• Learning to play the keyboard
• Playing Dance Dance Revolution
• Singing
• Learning C++, Java, and Lua efficiently enough to create games
• Building computers
• Finding that special someone
• Watching youtube videos about economics and politics
• Porn

[JBPuffin]

Fear the powers of Making a Cat Cry!

Also amusing given the concept is a prequel to Oblivion and it made you wanna play the two Not Oblivion games :3

But yeah, that ghost is awesome and I enjoy me some crazy ghost logic.

"It requires cunning and Linear thinking!" "You mean lateral thinking?" "No, Linear thinking! Thinking about an idea in a straight line and letting nothing, not even reason get in your way!"

Or as my Stalker/Zealot decided after taking Unbroken Stride stance: "Well, people float. Ergo I float." *stands on the surface of water* "I float." Later it allows you to walk on walls and ceilings like spiderclimb. "Well, everything get's pulled down. You all decided down was that way, I never agreed to this! Reality is not a democracy! I say down is this way! It's not my fault you guys are so hung up on your interpretation." Later can fly but not hover. "Look, if a dragon can fly, so can I because I am way lighter than a dragon. I can't hover because I don't have wings obviously, but it's not my fault you all decided you had to live on the ground." Later can fly perfectly. "Well, you know how I decided down was that way? Well me and gravity got into an argument and we're not speaking to each other anymore. I hope you're happy, you all caused this! You and your determinations and now gravity won't touch me anymore and I have to swim everywhere. Of course I can swim in it. Air contains water, that's where clouds are from. So if you can swim in water you can swim in the air."

I stopped by to see if Ashiel had some material up...and saw this majestic post. Can I sig this?

[Zilrax]

Feel free, I certainly do not mind.

[Ashiel]

Brainstorming Monster Stuff
I've been strongly considering removing the supertypes of creatures since they largely feel redundant since things like BAB/HP/Skills aren't tied to creature type anymore. This would make it so that creatures are more defined by their individual species (such as all devils having devil traits) and relevant subtypes (such as the new mindless subtype) that can belong to different kinds of creatures.

In this case, creatures would be assigned a body type. So you'd have things like humanoid (traditional races, some monstrous creatures like succubi or rakshasas, etc), bestial (dragons, hydras, animals, most monsters), or formless (things like some aberrations, some constructs, oozes, or some elementals). These body types would determine certain basic fundamentals about the creatures in question (such as their ability to use tools, or natural weapons and such).

In doing this, I'd need to change planar binding slightly (mostly set it to tie it to targeting creatures on the outer planes rather than keying it to supertype). I'm actually not really concerned with things like charm person vs charm monster type things since that could just as easily be giving level based limits similar to sleep, or not really modified at all (there's not supposed to be much difference between a CR 11 humanoid vs a CR 11 non-humanoid).

This would make making monsters simpler and significantly less redundant. It should also theoretically make the game easier to learn and GM, since it would be a bit more intuitive as to what is what. Whereas in vanilla-D20/PF, there's a lot of things that look like dragons and aren't, lots of humanoid creatures that aren't humanoids, and strange overlaps with things like aberrations, fey, magical beasts, dragons, etc.

Some Hypothetical Examples
So let's say you want to create some devils, right? So we want to make a Lemure, and Imp, and a Lilin themed devil.
Species: Devil (for everyone), Mindless (for lemure)
Form: We decide lemures are formless (is a formless blob with some natural attacks), imps are bestial (natural attacks), and lilins are humanoid (can wield weapons and stuff).
Path: Lemures are warriors, imps casters, and our lilin will be a hybrid.

Now we've got the basic statistics for three different types of devils. We set their relative strength by setting their level (lemures and imps can be low level, lilins could be a bit more advanced). We can add special racial features or classes to them in much the same way we will for PCs (by expending talents). Easy.

Mega Monsters
Another concept that's being toyed with is a new type of monster that's intended to be an encounter all unto itself. Specifically reserved for creatures that are big and/or have lots of threatening segments of their bodies, such as dragons, hydras, or kraken, these creatures will be designed as an encounter rather than an individual, and will have an HP pool built up of multiple sections of their bodies. To kill the creature, you'd have to wear down it's total HP, but by dealing enough damage to different portions of its body, you could disable those portions and thus deny it advantageous action economy and abilities.

So for example, 6 CR 6 creatures is a CR 11 encounter. We could build a big dragon that consisted of a head (which bites, casts spells, or uses a breath weapon), 2 arms (which attack independently of each other), its wings (which make wing attacks, fly it around, or kick up dust), its body (which can be used for crushing or ground movement), and its tail (which can be used for giant AoE sweep slaps). So each round it would make an attack routine for each claw, cast a spell or breath fire, fly around and crush things or move around and kick up dust, and deal physical AoE damage with its tail.

Just using the PF monster chart as a loose example, it would have 420 HP total, with each section of its body having 70 Hp. Dealing enough damage to a segment of its body would cause that body part to become injured and become unusable (so if you reduced the dragon's wings to 0 HP, it can't fly or kick up dust clouds, reduce its head to 0 HP and it's too injured to bite, breath fire, or cast spells, reduce its body to 0 HP and it can't move effectively or perform crush attacks, etc). Essentially, it's an encounter's worth of enemies built into a single super beast.

Effects like flesh to stone would target individual limbs. So for such massive creatures, you'd need to petrify them multiple times to effectively kill them. Otherwise you'd just disable a limb. AoE damage would target all the segments at the same time (but resistance would apply for each individually). Grappling would grab a single limb, disabling the limb until it could break free.

Something like this: A visual representation

[Zilrax]

You display chimera as example but all I can imagine is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqYruhUlG3A

All the limbs flailing independently of each other in every direction to attack in some horrifying nightmare.

And of course this is how the dragon would fly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqDaMSk00wA

[Tels]

One brings up Chimera, another TF2, and here I am, thinking a long the lines of Legend of Dragoon.

[Zilrax]

Actually there IS one other thing that it makes me think of. After all if 6 cr 6's makes cr 11, how many cr 1's makes a cr20?

Spoiler

Show

[Ashiel]

Actually there IS one other thing that it makes me think of. After all if 6 cr 6's makes cr 11, how many cr 1's makes a cr20?

Spoiler

Show

Um, 768, actually.
EDIT: Giving such a beast something around 11,520 Hp. But it'd die a horrible death the moment you whacked it with a fireball.

One brings up Chimera, another TF2, and here I am, thinking a long the lines of Legend of Dragoon.

That's roughly the idea as well. One thing D20 doesn't really excel at is big fights with single really powerful monsters, mostly because of things like action economy. It's also never really done really epic monsters very well (such as shadow of colossus style stuff). For example, without being outright immune to lots of things, and really exploiting the terrain and traps in their lairs, a dragon can be easily dismantled since it can be crowd-controlled like most anything else, and it's outnumbered. 4E tried to simply inflate a boss monster's HP and give them an extra action, but I never felt like it really bridged the gap.

However, thinking about my preferences for encounter design, I realized that perhaps I was approaching such creatures from the wrong angle. The way I traditionally solve the action economy issue is using multiple creatures. It also tends to increase the net HP pools of encounters (which makes characters who deal more damage more impactful) and make them harder to collectively CC. Why not apply the same sort of mechanic to epic monsters?

[Ashiel]

Actually there IS one other thing that it makes me think of. After all if 6 cr 6's makes cr 11, how many cr 1's makes a cr20?

Spoiler

Show

I'm clearly not getting my inspiration from the right sources. Team Fortress is clearly filled with more horrors than anything by Lovecraft. :P

More Conceptual Inspirations
Dragon's Crown Legendary Dragon Boss
Dragon's Crown Kraken Boss Pt 1 and Pt 2.
D&D Arcade Game Boss

[Klara Meison]

Brainstorming Monster Stuff
I've been strongly considering removing the supertypes of creatures since they largely feel redundant since things like BAB/HP/Skills aren't tied to creature type anymore. This would make it so that creatures are more defined by their individual species (such as all devils having devil traits) and relevant subtypes (such as the new mindless subtype) that can belong to different kinds of creatures.

In this case, creatures would be assigned a body type. So you'd have things like humanoid (traditional races, some monstrous creatures like succubi or rakshasas, etc), bestial (dragons, hydras, animals, most monsters), or formless (things like some aberrations, some constructs, oozes, or some elementals). These body types would determine certain basic fundamentals about the creatures in question (such as their ability to use tools, or natural weapons and such).

In doing this, I'd need to change planar binding slightly (mostly set it to tie it to targeting creatures on the outer planes rather than keying it to supertype). I'm actually not really concerned with things like charm person vs charm monster type things since that could just as easily be giving level based limits similar to sleep, or not really modified at all (there's not supposed to be much difference between a CR 11 humanoid vs a CR 11 non-humanoid).

This would make making monsters simpler and significantly less redundant. It should also theoretically make the game easier to learn and GM, since it would be a bit more intuitive as to what is what. Whereas in vanilla-D20/PF, there's a lot of things that look like dragons and aren't, lots of humanoid creatures that aren't humanoids, and strange overlaps with things like aberrations, fey, magical beasts, dragons, etc.

Some Hypothetical Examples
So let's say you want to create some devils, right? So we want to make a Lemure, and Imp, and a Lilin themed devil.
Species: Devil (for everyone), Mindless (for lemure)
Form: We decide lemures are formless (is a formless blob with some natural attacks), imps are bestial (natural attacks), and lilins are humanoid (can wield weapons and stuff).
Path: Lemures are warriors, imps casters, and our lilin will be a hybrid.

Now we've got the basic statistics for three different types of devils. We set their relative strength by setting their level (lemures and imps can be low level, lilins could be a bit more advanced). We can add special racial features or classes to them in much the same way we will for PCs (by expending talents). Easy.

Mega Monsters
Another concept that's being toyed with is a new type of monster that's intended to be an encounter all unto itself. Specifically reserved for creatures that are big and/or have lots of threatening segments of their bodies, such as dragons, hydras, or kraken, these creatures will be designed as an encounter rather than an individual, and will have an HP pool built up of multiple sections of their bodies. To kill the creature, you'd have to wear down it's total HP, but by dealing enough damage to different portions of its body, you could disable those portions and thus deny it advantageous action economy and abilities.

So for example, 6 CR 6 creatures is a CR 11 encounter. We could build a big dragon that consisted of a head (which bites, casts spells, or uses a breath weapon), 2 arms (which attack independently of each other), its wings (which make wing attacks, fly it around, or kick up dust), its body (which can be used for crushing or ground movement), and its tail (which can be used for giant AoE sweep slaps). So each round it would make an attack routine for each claw, cast a spell or breath fire, fly around and crush things or move around and kick up dust, and deal physical AoE damage with its tail.

Just using the PF monster chart as a loose example, it would have 420 HP total, with each section of its body having 70 Hp. Dealing enough damage to a segment of its body would cause that body part to become injured and become unusable (so if you reduced the dragon's wings to 0 HP, it can't fly or kick up dust clouds, reduce its head to 0 HP and it's too injured to bite, breath fire, or cast spells, reduce its body to 0 HP and it can't move effectively or perform crush attacks, etc). Essentially, it's an encounter's worth of enemies built into a single super beast.

Effects like flesh to stone would target individual limbs. So for such massive creatures, you'd need to petrify them multiple times to effectively kill them. Otherwise you'd just disable a limb. AoE damage would target all the segments at the same time (but resistance would apply for each individually). Grappling would grab a single limb, disabling the limb until it could break free.

Something like this: A visual representation

What? All "Humanoid" creatures would actually be humanoid, and all humanoid creatures would be "Humanoid"? What is this heresy? Next you'll say you are going to let martials move and full attack.

On a more serious and slightly less facetious note, let me explain about massive creatures some more. Suppose you have a dragon whose body has 500 HP, and an arm that has 100 HP (500:100). You attack an arm and get it down to 20 HP. Now dragon is at 500:20. You attack an arm again and get it down to -60. Dragon loses arm's maximum HP from his body HP pool. Now dragon is at 400:-60, so damaging limbs is still worthwhile if you just want to kill the thing. If dragon were to heal his arm back to positive health (say, to 10 HP), he would be at 500:10. Body of such a dragon would usually have better defences, both passive(AC, saves) and active(counters by limbs) than the limbs, so it should be even decently hard to one-shot such a dragon with your average ragelancepounce build.

Splitting health into separate weakly interracting health pools also means that while such creatures may be vulnerable to AoE damage, they are also very much anti-vulnerable to AoE heals, which any self-respecting Evil GM would use in such an encounter.

As for "768 CR 1 critter monster" idea, that's obviously the wrong way to go about it. AoE damage should depend on the direction you are attacking such a creature from, and critters hit first should shield ones in the back from the blast. E.g. suppose you throw a Widened fireball for 50 damage, and each critter has 15 HP. First row takes 50 damage and dies. Second row takes 35 damage and dies. Third row actually saves because of stacking save/defence bonuses, takes half damage(10) and doesn't die. Fourth row is jolly fine and untouched. Fireball radius has been effectively reduced from 40 to 15 feet.

You actually probably won't do it like that, since nobody will want to track 768 pools of health, and would instead use some sort of scaling defence/DR/ER as you go into deeper layers of the critter, with separate health pools for each layer instead of each individual critter. I had some ideas for a critter like this, based on a certain character from Worm webnovel, but you can't really develop two ideas at the same time, so I am only working on a dragon right now.

Then this ball of flesh uses some sort of AoE heal/regeneration and you are back to square one. Enjoy doing this all over again)

[Ashiel]

The way I'm probably going to handle further damage to extra limbs would be to overflow the damage to the creature in question, so if it's got 420 HP, dealing 420 damage across all the limbs would be enough to kill it, or dealing 420 damage to one limb could kill it, but spreading out your focus would be ideal if possible since it would reduce the creature's action economy. It could also make an optional mechanic where upon taking a certain amount of overkill damage one of the limbs was actually destroyed rather than wounded, in which case the limb would have to be regenerated or else the creature is now permanently maimed (so you might have a three-legged dragon or a dragon whose wings have been tattered to the point it can never fly again).

[Kryzbyn]

Have you talked about how energy types will work in legends?

[Ashiel]

Have you talked about how energy types will work in legends?

Elaborate?