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Coplantor
2010-08-05, 03:00 PM
So, after the Optimize or Die thread, and The Darkness thread I started to think... what would an E6 Elder Evils campaign would be like?
Characters are suppoused to end up fihting against aspects of beings from beyond time and space whose sole presence on a plane endangers every single living being on it, a hard task if your ECL is 7 or 8 (after a ton of feats).

So, how would you defeat the worm that walks or any other of the Elder Evils when you are level 6?

Yora
2010-08-05, 03:02 PM
I think the best approach is working with the dm. Gathering resources to perform a massive ritual involving 200 clerics or waking a slumbering demigod in his mountain tomb, or something like that.
You don't stop an Elder Evil by hiting it with a piece of metal.

Coplantor
2010-08-05, 03:04 PM
Well, on E6 not, and in a normal game it might prove hard... that's why you have wizards :smalltongue:

Mr.Smashy
2010-08-05, 03:04 PM
Ask them nicely if they want to talk about their anger issues, and if you can get them a spot of tea.

Urpriest
2010-08-05, 03:07 PM
Ask them nicely if they want to talk about their anger issues, and if you can get them a spot of tea.

Did We Just Have Tea With Cthulhu? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlewbt6s033?from=Main.DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthul hu)

Mystic Muse
2010-08-05, 03:08 PM
Ubercharger?

Emmerask
2010-08-05, 03:36 PM
So, how would you defeat the worm that walks or any other of the Elder Evils when you are level 6?

I summon you plot device x :smallwink:

Mystic Muse
2010-08-05, 03:37 PM
Ooh! I know! Cast summon bigger fish!

arguskos
2010-08-05, 03:41 PM
I summon you plot device x :smallwink:
SRSLY.

Alternatively, you find a way to stop their schemes before they really get going. Interrupt the cultists summoning Zargon, kill Edwin Tolstoff early, find a way to summon a celestial host to fight and kill Gorguth, figure out Soelma's plan and shank her when she's not expecting it, use deception against Axihuatl to get the shard from him early, convince Irthicax Vane to side with you against Ragnorra, let the gods of light know about Avamerin's continued existence, etc.

The tough two are Father Llymic (he's got no real cult or anything to stop before they release him) and Pandorym (I guess you can try convincing the Inevitables of the folly of what they're doing, but goooood luck with that one).

Mystic Muse
2010-08-05, 03:43 PM
The tough two are Father Llymic (he's got no real cult or anything to stop before they release him) and Pandorym (I guess you can try convincing the Inevitables of the folly of what they're doing, but goooood luck with that one).

Diplomacy solves everything.

Sir_Elderberry
2010-08-05, 07:08 PM
Alternately, use something else as an Elder Evil. A few Balors (crazy optimizing thread notwithstanding) is bad news for the material plane if even their greatest, mightiest heroes are level six.

RickGriffin
2010-08-05, 07:10 PM
What if you had all the level 6 super optimized characters you needed?

Tyndmyr
2010-08-05, 07:27 PM
What if you had all the level 6 super optimized characters you needed?

Super optimized? Four will be plenty, thank you. Seriously, by feats alone, there's at least one way to avoid any cause of death at least once per day(luck feats in CS), and that's not even that expensive. You can do a *lot* with feats. Especially if you optimize.

arguskos
2010-08-05, 09:02 PM
What if you had all the level 6 super optimized characters you needed?
Well, let's look at Atropus. Atropus' avatar has a call down that does 20d6 damage with a DC 53 save for partial. It can cause all divine spellcasters in a 1000-mile radius to make another DC 53 save or take 66 VILE damage. It's got 858 hp. It AUTOMATICALLY deals out 5 negative levels to anything that isn't immune to them (no save, btws).

Now, if you feel like a set of 4 level 6 characters can deal with this thing on it's turf (as Elder Evils suggests)... more power to you. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough. :smalltongue:

dextercorvia
2010-08-05, 10:03 PM
Well, let's look at Atropus. Atropus' avatar has a call down that does 20d6 damage with a DC 53 save for partial. It can cause all divine spellcasters in a 1000-mile radius to make another DC 53 save or take 66 VILE damage. It's got 858 hp. It AUTOMATICALLY deals out 5 negative levels to anything that isn't immune to them (no save, btws).

Now, if you feel like a set of 4 level 6 characters can deal with this thing on it's turf (as Elder Evils suggests)... more power to you. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough. :smalltongue:

What is his initiative? SR? Is he immune to mind effecting? Ability Damage? Death? There is likely a weak point -- That is where you build your Fromage Forte. :smallbiggrin:

Tyndmyr
2010-08-05, 10:08 PM
Honestly, I believe that would be unlikely to kill a single party member in my optimized party for the balor challenge. 3 of the four are flat out immune to negative levels, all use the luck aavoid death trick, and have a 10% chance of surviving anything with a dc. And rerolling the check if they fail.

Plus, there's the wings of cover, the ability to counter any spell as a free action, etc.

It'd be an interesting matchup, and with further optimization, the party would only get stronger

Riffington
2010-08-06, 04:00 PM
Honestly, I believe that would be unlikely to kill a single party member in my optimized party for the balor challenge. 3 of the four are flat out immune to negative levels, all use the luck aavoid death trick, and have a 10% chance of surviving anything with a dc. And rerolling the check if they fail.

Plus, there's the wings of cover, the ability to counter any spell as a free action, etc.

It'd be an interesting matchup, and with further optimization, the party would only get stronger

How do they deal with the Blasphemy SLA?

Stompy
2010-08-06, 04:45 PM
How do they deal with the Blasphemy SLA?

They're all evil. Next question. :smallbiggrin:

dextercorvia
2010-08-06, 10:36 PM
How do they deal with the Blasphemy SLA?

My party was evil, but dealt with all of the Balor's Attacks, by going first, and winning before its initiative count came around.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-06, 10:40 PM
They're all evil. Next question. :smallbiggrin:

All evil, three are immune to death attacks, all of them have a free extra life due to luck points, and no less than three of them are capable of downing the balor solo from long range, with init boosters.

I believe in excessive force.

Skeppio
2010-08-06, 11:19 PM
Pandorym (I guess you can try convincing the Inevitables of the folly of what they're doing, but goooood luck with that one).

One thing I never got about the whole Obligatum chain is that in the Fiend Folio, there are two castes of Inevitable designed solely to prevent the very thing Obligatum is trying to do. Quaruts exist to protect space and time, which Pandorym will devour. Varakhuts exist to protect the gods, whom Pandorym will devour. Did Wizards forget they even wrote the Fiend Folio in the first place? PLOT HOLE THE SIZE OF THE SUN!


Well, let's look at Atropus. Atropus' avatar has a call down that does 20d6 damage with a DC 53 save for partial. It can cause all divine spellcasters in a 1000-mile radius to make another DC 53 save or take 66 VILE damage. It's got 858 hp. It AUTOMATICALLY deals out 5 negative levels to anything that isn't immune to them (no save, btws)

This gets me too. Look at an Atropal from Epic Level Handbook. It's certainly not a unique creature and seems like a good guardian for Atropus. Except, it's stronger than Atropus. A non-unique magical fetus zombie is more powerful than the core of a world born as undead from the universe's creation. :smallconfused:

Zaydos
2010-08-06, 11:26 PM
One thing I never got about the whole Obligatum chain is that in the Fiend Folio, there are two castes of Inevitable designed solely to prevent the very thing Obligatum is trying to do. Quaruts exist to protect space and time, which Pandorym will devour. Varakhuts exist to protect the gods, whom Pandorym will devour. Did Wizards forget they even wrote the Fiend Folio in the first place? PLOT HOLE THE SIZE OF THE SUN!



This gets me too. Look at an Atropal from Epic Level Handbook. It's certainly not a unique creature and seems like a good guardian for Atropus. Except, it's stronger than Atropus. A non-unique magical fetus zombie is more powerful than the core of a world born as undead from the universe's creation. :smallconfused:

This just means that it's inevitable that the inevitables fight amongst themselves. Somehow that doesn't surprise me, and actually pleases me.

As for the atropal I would really say that campaign ending threats for non-epic campaigns have to be made assuming epic level stuff doesn't exist. Otherwise they'd have to be so far epic as to be unusable in almost any campaign. Still a plot hole.

Edit: Just looked at Elder Evils description of Atropus, it includes him making atropals so maybe WotC is just... not very observant.

Prodan
2010-08-06, 11:41 PM
So, after the Optimize or Die thread, and The Darkness thread I started to think... what would an E6 Elder Evils campaign would be like?
Characters are suppoused to end up fihting against aspects of beings from beyond time and space whose sole presence on a plane endangers every single living being on it, a hard task if your ECL is 7 or 8 (after a ton of feats).

So, how would you defeat the worm that walks or any other of the Elder Evils when you are level 6?

Ram them with steam ships.

jseah
2010-08-07, 12:17 AM
What if you had all the level 6 super optimized characters you needed?
You don't want to go there. Depending on your level of optimization you call super optimize.

There was the "casts as a 84th level sorceror" swarm/Dark Speech thing I did for a joke on the E6 vs Balor thread. And that's not even vaguely near the limits of optimization.
- IIRC, because swarms don't take up space, you can stack multiple of them. There was something involving Gate to summon swarms and stacking them on the same square to get a ~1000th level sorceror or something dumb like that.

Fancy miracle as a cantrip? Check.
Gate stuff and steal their abilities? Check..
NI ability scores and spells/PP? Check...
NI action loops? Check....

Will probably involve a Thought Bottle, Level up/down and Ability Rip/Assume Supernatural Ability and the Dark Chaos Shuffle. Applied to some manner of Killer Gnome using a spell slot scaling trick to get a Heighten to 10th level for his Silent Image as a cantrip.

true_shinken
2010-08-07, 11:12 AM
My party was evil, but dealt with all of the Balor's Attacks, by going first, and winning before its initiative count came around.

Ridiculous, since the balor could and would pull a surprise round anyway.

Kris Strife
2010-08-07, 01:01 PM
This gets me too. Look at an Atropal from Epic Level Handbook. It's certainly not a unique creature and seems like a good guardian for Atropus. Except, it's stronger than Atropus. A non-unique magical fetus zombie is more powerful than the core of a world born as undead from the universe's creation. :smallconfused:

You don't fight Atropus himself, just an aspect of him, and the only place you encounter it is probably a far more hostile environment than the average fight with an Atropal, which probably should be too common either, as they're undead, still born god fetuses.

Tiki Snakes
2010-08-07, 03:28 PM
One thing I never got about the whole Obligatum chain is that in the Fiend Folio, there are two castes of Inevitable designed solely to prevent the very thing Obligatum is trying to do. Quaruts exist to protect space and time, which Pandorym will devour. Varakhuts exist to protect the gods, whom Pandorym will devour. Did Wizards forget they even wrote the Fiend Folio in the first place? PLOT HOLE THE SIZE OF THE SUN!


That's because Inevitables are soley designed to stamp on Players, NOT anything else in the world. :smallwink:

Beelzebub1111
2010-08-07, 03:32 PM
That's because Inevitables are soley designed to stamp on Players, NOT anything else in the world. :smallwink:

Well, it introduces a solution for E6 characters, do research on inevitables, find out that there are inevetables for this kind of thing. find a way to mechanus and implore them to help.

Tiki Snakes
2010-08-07, 03:47 PM
Well, it introduces a solution for E6 characters, do research on inevitables, find out that there are inevetables for this kind of thing. find a way to mechanus and implore them to help.

Other inevitables show up and stomp on the PC's for trying to pervert their arbitrary vision of 'the natural order' by trying to co-opt Inevitables into doing stuff for them.

That's how it usually goes, I think? :smallwink:

(No, it's a good E6 solution, but from how people discuss them, it doesn't really fit with what they genuinely seem to exist for.)

olelia
2010-08-07, 07:04 PM
Ridiculous, since the balor could and would pull a surprise round anyway.

I'm pretty sure calling in Schrodinger's balor ruins validity in D&D discussions :smallsigh:.

dextercorvia
2010-08-07, 09:43 PM
Ridiculous, since the balor could and would pull a surprise round anyway.

Not with Foresight. Here's my team (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9010150#post9010150).