Player wants to be a hulking hurler.

[IhaveJunk]

So I have a player who joined my campaign a few weeks ago. So far he's been a good fit. However his character kicked the bucket the other night and he approached me with a question after the game.; "Can I make a hulking hurler?" I've never had one in a game before but I have heard the horror stories. But from what I've seen in other games, I think he's honestly in love with the concept more than the mechanics. So I'm going to let him do this provided I'm involved with the process.
Now how are some ways I can curb the power of the character? Both creation wise & in game. The big ones I have are he can't be a quadruped or pick up levels of war hulk.
Races would also be appreciated, as I am still a little confused on how exactly the large ruling works. Does the character have to be permanently large or can levels be picked up but only used when you are large? (like a Goliath barbarian with mountain rage.)

Thank you in advance.

[Lerondiel]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?258580-Famous-optimized-character-builds

Hulking Hurler is famous build #6, and a breakdown of everything that gets it out of hand. Enjoy :)

[Flickerdart]

Temporarily satisfying the prerequisites of a PrC has two caveats:

You must meet the prerequisite when taking a new level in the class.
Whenever you do not meet the prerequisite, you lose everything gained from the class except HP, skills, and BAB.

So a Goliath would gain Hulking Hurler stuff only while Mountain Rage was active.

As for Hulking Hurler shenanigans, there are basically two things you need to watch out for.

One is feats that increase carrying capacity, since they tend to multiply it rather than add to it. This includes size increases - larger creatures carry more. If your PC accesses Hulking Hurler through Mountain Rage you don't have to worry too much; other sources like Expansion that can catapult him into Huge or bigger might cause issues. Regular Strength increases help too, so keep an eye on those.

The second and most dangerous thing is custom ammunition. It's no good to be able to carry fifty tons if there's nothing around that weighs fifty tons, and things that big are very difficult to take with you since they tend to be enormously huge. Clever hulking hurlers get custom shot-puts or other throwable objects forged from dense metals like gold, where a cube weighing a metric ton will only be 37cm (14.5 inches) per side. While that much gold would cost a lot (2204 pounds in a metric ton, 50gp per pound of gold = 110,200gp) a common trick is to use major creation to create a sufficiently large cube of gold (or iridium or osmium, which are even denser than gold).

[dascarletm]

A Lead sphere (which is quite a bit cheaper) would need to be ~53cm in diameter to weigh a ton... Pretty big, though that's what bags of holding are for.

[Flickerdart]

It's large for a human-sized creature, but for a Large or larger creature such a sphere wouldn't be too much to carry, especially if he gets a chain or something to attach to it. Though you want multiple spheres so you can use iterative attacks.

A 1-ton sphere would deal 14d6 damage (5d6 for a 400lb object, then +1d6 for each extra 200lbs, which is +9d6 for extra 1800lbs of weight) which isn't even that ridiculous since the average is only 49 damage. The danger is when those spheres get bigger (a 2-ton sphere deals 25d6, a 3-ton sphere deals 36d6, etc).

[ComaVision]

Without optimization, it's pretty reasonable. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gQ4Ix_6tyGbsS-9QeLje1Y77ouuHEBkV_rpRwyfIqPg/edit?usp=sharing)

But it easily explodes into 1000s of damage if they try.

[Platymus Pus]

Whats the maximum distance for thrown items?
If it's short I'm now seeing how it's better than your standard archer.

[Flickerdart]

Whats the maximum distance for thrown items?
If it's short I'm now seeing how it's better than your standard archer.
The range increment is 10ft + 5ft per size category the hurler is above Large - so a Colossal hurler can throw multi-ton lead spheres in 25ft increments, or 125ft total. Far Shot (double your range increments) is an obvious choice, resulting in a 250ft range for the deathcannon.

Your average archer will have a longer max range, but that's not really going to matter.

[Blackhawk748]

Does he just want to be King Kong and hurl carts? Because if thats all then its not a huge deal. Also chucking a lead ball on a chain sounds like a great plan, keeps things reasonable as i doubt they want to pay the thousands of GP to keep upgrading it in weight because where are you gonna keep finding that much lead?

[Platymus Pus]

The range increment is 10ft + 5ft per size category the hurler is above Large - so a Colossal hurler can throw multi-ton lead spheres in 25ft increments, or 125ft total. Far Shot (double your range increments) is an obvious choice, resulting in a 250ft range for the deathcannon.

Your average archer will have a longer max range, but that's not really going to matter.
Your average archer will win ini as well though, and it only takes some kind of spell that increases movement to get out of that range.
Because who would want to get close to that?

[Flickerdart]

Also chucking a lead ball on a chain sounds like a great plan, keeps things reasonable as i doubt they want to pay the thousands of GP to keep upgrading it in weight because where are you gonna keep finding that much lead?
I was considering that when giving the advice above - simply limit the amount of metal available at your average blacksmith - but the Hurler could just collect the weapons of his enemies and get them welded to his ball-and-chain like a throwable Iron Throne or an especially pointy Katamari. Steel isn't as dense as lead, but it's still pretty dense.

[Necroticplague]

If you really want a Hulking Hurler weapon that isn't the size of a small city, look up Planar Loadstone. A peice the size of a sling bullet weighs 50 pounds (which I think makes it the densest thing known of in DnD, barring bringing real-life things not statted in DnD, like neutronium). Just Soveraign Glue a bunch together.

[AvatarVecna]

I've been putting in some work on a thrown weapon combat handbook, and here's some things I can tell you about hurlers:

1. In most games, as long as they keep their Str at reasonable levels for a PC, their DPR will be pretty comparable overall, although their ability to nova is ridiculous. Incidentally, try to make sure they don't go too far into "moon hurling" cheese territory.

2. Barring some extreme cheese, a hulking hurler will only ever get one attack per round: you can throw a light or one-handed weapon as a standard action (allowing for iteratives), but throwing a two-handed weapon requires a full round action. According to the same rules that make the hulking hurler's damage ridiculous, the difficulty of wielding an improvised object is based on its weight; hulking hurlers can wield super-heavy objects, but anything beyond 40 lb (for a Large creature) is going to be a two-handed object, which means throwing it is going to require that full round action. Anyone trying to stick to that one-handed limit (so they can get iteratives) is going to have terrible damage; at best, they can get up to base damage 3d6 if it's a sharp object. It's probably gonna be better to let them get the one massive object, even if it deals like 12d6 or more at 10th level.

3. You're player is going to want a magic weapon to throw around; at the very least, they'll want a +1 returning weapon. Unfortunately, RAW doesn't like people trying to make magic improvised weapons, as they can't be directly built as masterwork (and thus can't be enchanted usually). That said...there is a way: if you make your improvised weapon out of a special material like adamantine or mithril that grants automatic masterwork quality to whatever weapon it's used to make, then you can enchant it by RAW...or at least, it's close enough that RAI should support it. Now, by RAW, this doesn't increase the weight of the object, but if you've got a solid sphere of adamantine, I'd probably rule it to be heavier than other metals if I were DMing, and I suggest you do the same.

4. Again, I must stress: as long as they don't go off the deep end with their Strength (like Cancer Mage cheese, Reserves of Strength+Greater Consumptive Field cheese, template-stacking, tons of dipping, tons of grafts, etc.), their Strength will never be enough for it to get extremely ridiculous. Here's an example:

Goliath Fighter 2/Barbarian (Mountain Rage) 3/Hulking Hurler 2/Barbarian +12

Take "Reckless Rage". Assuming you put an 18 into Str at character creation, took the Overburdened Heave Hurling Trick, and barely optimized your items for Strength, final total Strength while Mountain Raging would be 40 (18 Base+4 Goliath+4 Level+6 Belt+8 Greater Mountain Rage) while Large size. This gives you a medium load of up to 8500 lbs or so; if you get an item like that, it deals 45d6 damage when thrown, averaging about 200 on a hit, 400 on a crit. That's pretty comparable to an ubercharger in terms of Damage per round (since that's the only shot they get). Beyond that, they have a 42 Str, Large size, and full BAB; they'll be a decent melee brute (or ubercharger) if you built them that way.

Bottom line: keep a firm hand to keep them from straying into moldy cheese territory and it'll be fine; the last thing you want in your game is someone (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18472541&postcount=67) capable of killing a literal god-wizard's epic, super-template'd pet mundane in one blow, guaranteed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18475318&postcount=80).

Because turning into an super-angry, super-furious bear and whipping out a magic adamantine bowling ball that can crush any epic monster it's thrown at is kinda broken.

[IhaveJunk]

Does he just want to be King Kong and hurl carts?

That's what I got from it, although the example was some MtG character named Brion Stoutarm.

I really appreciate all the work you guys just put in, this is helping a bunch. From what I've been reading here, looking into a hardcap for strength may not be a terrible idea. Ammo also seems to be a big factor here, mayhaps a toned down returning version of Grom's Metal Rock of Death would be fit the bill. (the party is around 7/8th level so +1 returning wouldn't be too bad.)

One more question. The race he's presented me with is a Incarnate Construct Maug. What would be your opinons on that one?

[AvatarVecna]

That's what I got from it, although the example was some MtG character named Brion Stoutarm.

I really appreciate all the work you guys just put in, this is helping a bunch. From what I've been reading here, looking into a hardcap for strength may not be a terrible idea. Ammo also seems to be a big factor here, mayhaps a toned down returning version of Grom's Metal Rock of Death would be fit the bill. (the party is around 7/8th level so +1 returning wouldn't be too bad.)

One more question. The race he's presented me with is a Incarnate Construct Maug. What would be your opinons on that one?

One of the aspects of hurling that often gets ignored if ability drain/damage: anything that knocks down your Str might make it impossible to use your main weapon, since it might not qualify as a light/medium load anymore. Make sure the player is aware of this, and they'll either give themselves enough cushion to keep that from being a problem...or you'll make sure they regret such hubris. And yeah, a +1 Returning Adamantine Boulder is probably on par for that level; their DPR should be pretty respectable without being overkill for your level (rogue's can beat that on a good round, but pale in comparison on a bad one).

In regards to their race choice...I suggest you handle this player and their character very carefully: maybe it's just me, but reading "new player", "Incarnate Construct", and "Hulking Hurler" when reading about a character concept, I begin to suspect munchkins. Incarnate Construct is a decent template that takes away LA while also taking away basically everything that made the race powerful...except for their size and strength (their construct type and all its immunities are gone, though, so that's something). Consider this: Incarnate Construct is a 3.0 template often used to take advantage of how they reduce LA, while Maug is a very odd race from one of the many 3.5 splatbooks. If you're willing to allow these things in your game, that's fine. Just think about what it's says about the player that they have specific things like this already picked out.

One final note: if you end up allowing them their race of choice, get someone here on the forum to help you make sure that his stats are on the up-and-up, for both your sakes: the maug have a stat-block, and a little fluff paragraph saying they can be used as a PC race, but they don't have a PC race write-up, so you'd have to figure it out from their base stats, and then you'd have to apply the Incarnate Construct race to them.

[Blackhawk748]

In the new guys defense he may have heard of the Maug from Dungeon command, as it has a stat card and a sweet mini, also Incarnate Construct comes up a lot in forums discussing playing as a construct. Hell he probably read the Hulking Hurler Handbook (not sure if thats an actual thing, probably is) which would most likely recommend something along those lines for race, i would have recommended Half Ogre personally.

Now that being said i second everything AvatarVecna has said, playing a thing that doesnt have a direct stat adjustment line is annoying and weird.

[IhaveJunk]

Okay, I did some talking to him and the one who played with him before and I think I have this figured out: Mr. Hurler will fall in love with a concept, and try to make it as good as he can, however not at the cost of his concept.

He apparently approached the group's optimizer about this so he had some starting point to talk with me about, and amongst the suggestions were Incarnate Maug which Mr. Hurler liked because, as Blackhawk748 put it, the 'sweet mini'.

So I cut a deal with him where I would look into the Incarnate Maug. But if i didn't like it, he'd go with half ogre if I skinned the character to be some other giant.
I may end up just going with the skinned half ogre because I have concrete stats for that, and a cosmetic change was all I needed to win him on it.

[AvatarVecna]

Okay, I did some talking to him and the one who played with him before and I think I have this figured out: Mr. Hurler will fall in love with a concept, and try to make it as good as he can, however not at the cost of his concept.

He apparently approached the group's optimizer about this so he had some starting point to talk with me about, and amongst the suggestions were Incarnate Maug which Mr. Hurler liked because, as Blackhawk748 put it, the 'sweet mini'.

So I cut a deal with him where I would look into the Incarnate Maug. But if i didn't like it, he'd go with half ogre if I skinned the character to be some other giant.
I may end up just going with the skinned half ogre because I have concrete stats for that, and a cosmetic change was all I needed to win him on it.

I can't speak for the Half-Ogre race (since I'm less familiar with it), but I know that the Half-Ogre template (http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/half-ogre.shtml) makes the base race Large one size larger than normal, up to Large, and lets the character count as a giant for all intents and purposes while still being a humanoid (just a reminder: you don't need to actually have the giant type to qualify for Hulking Hurler, you just need to be Large-sized at some point).

[Douglas]

Hulking Hurler isn't really that much of a campaign breaker. It has one trick - damage output of "enough" - and there are all sorts of situations where that trick is not applicable or only part of the solution. In particular, it has no meaningful defenses, depending entirely on hitting first. Let the player optimize his damage, and get creative with encounters and obstacles where pulverizing something once (or a few times) per round isn't an instant win.

[Blackhawk748]

I can't speak for the Half-Ogre race (since I'm less familiar with it), but I know that the Half-Ogre template (http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/half-ogre.shtml) makes the base race Large one size larger than normal, up to Large, and lets the character count as a giant for all intents and purposes while still being a humanoid (just a reminder: you don't need to actually have the giant type to qualify for Hulking Hurler, you just need to be Large-sized at some point).

Half Ogre is a race from RoD. The main difference between it and the template is more nat armor and bigger stat boosts, though the template is more flexible. Honestly its a matter of preference, though the race is LA +2. Personally i find it worth it.

[Sian]

Incarnate Maug would have

2 Giant RHD (although they get skillpoints as Outsiders)
Level Adjustment +1

+10 Strength
+4 Dexterity
+2 Intelligence
+2 Charisma

+7 Natural Armor

+4 Craft (Stoneworking)
+4 Knowledge (Architecture & Engineering)

Alertness as a bonus feat

[Chronos]

The tricky thing with Hulking Hurlers is that their damage is an exponential function of their strength score. This makes them very difficult to balance, because it means that, if there's some amount of damage that you consider reasonable, increasing strength just a little bit above that level results in a huge increase in damage.

[ExLibrisMortis]

You could do worse than to rule that the first 100 lb is 2d6 damage, and each doubling of the weight adds 2d6* damage. That should help curb the max damage somewhat, without banning any options - useful if you want to allow war hulks and template stacking. For example, the 8500 lbs AvatarVecna looked at, normally for 45d6 damage, would be 14d6 damage instead (2^6 being 64). A 60 strength huge quadruped would lift 6 (huge quadruped) * 266 (20 str medium) * 4^4 (four +10 increases past 20) for 408576 lb, which would deal about 26d6 damage (2^12 being 4096, you'd need 61 strength really).

*If 26d6 damage isn't enough for the 60 strength quadruped, you can add 3d6 or 4d6 per doubling. The first few hundred lb increase would be very useful, allowing even common objects such as full barrels and armoured soldiers to deal 10d6 damage per throw (for a 400 lb object/soldier - trow half-orc knights or something, make sure they have armour spikes). Adding loads of strength increases would be less useful quite quickly, with 6400 lbs dealing 26d6 damage, and 409600 lbs dealing 50d6 damage.

[AvatarVecna]

I made a comparison upthread to rogues, and I think it makes a good benchmark: a rogue 10 gets maybe 3 attacks per round (dual-wielding or Rapid Shot, whatever) and can attach 5d6 to each attack. This comes out to a total possible DPR somewhat equivalent to 20d6; keep in mind that a rogue only gets that much damage if they have some sort of tactical advantage. By balancing HH DPR against that, you can keep them within an acceptable range. Also, as has been said, what's broken about the Hurler is their damage output, and not much else; that said, it's possible for them to be built in such a way that they completely ruin the immersion. A Colossal quadruped with the Natural Heavyweight feat who wears a Belt of the Wide Earth can hurl the moon with Str 333, and can hurl Earth with Str 364.

Sound like something that could never happen? I've built hurlers that could reach 160 pre-epic without super-cheese, and it just gets easier when you break out the Gouda: Cancer Mage+Festering Strength changes Str 364 from "never gonna happen" to "we've got about 6 months before the Earth gets knocked out of orbit". Heck, 393 is what a Large biped with no items would need to hurl the earth, and that's just another month. Of course, you could always build your Hurler on a Clericzilla build, and let Reserves of Strength+(Greater) Consumptive Field do the heavy lifting. Just go to a sewer, crush a swarm of rats (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/swarm.htm#ratSwarm), and bask in the 600 extra Str you just gained from fighting a pathetically easy encounter.

EDIT:


You could do worse than to rule that the first 100 lb is 2d6 damage, and each doubling of the weight adds 2d6* damage. That should help curb the max damage somewhat, without banning any options - useful if you want to allow war hulks and template stacking. For example, the 8500 lbs AvatarVecna looked at, normally for 45d6 damage, would be 14d6 damage instead (2^6 being 64). A 60 strength huge quadruped would lift 6 (huge quadruped) * 266 (20 str medium) * 4^4 (four +10 increases past 20) for 408576 lb, which would deal about 26d6 damage (2^12 being 4096, you'd need 61 strength really).

*If 26d6 damage isn't enough for the 60 strength quadruped, you can add 3d6 or 4d6 per doubling. The first few hundred lb increase would be very useful, allowing even common objects such as full barrels and armoured soldiers to deal 10d6 damage per throw (for a 400 lb object/soldier - trow half-orc knights or something, make sure they have armour spikes). Adding loads of strength increases would be less useful quite quickly, with 6400 lbs dealing 26d6 damage, and 409600 lbs dealing 50d6 damage.

Not that it should ever come up, but it still ends up broken at one end or the other: if the increase is too big, then the little Str increases on the low end have a huge return-on-investment: +4d6 means that hurling 100 lbs gives 2d6, hurling 200 lbs gives 6d6, and hurling 6400 lbs (Large Str 38, so not very hard to reach, even during the mid-levels) gives 26d6; that's a lot of damage for that level. On the other hand, at the other end (moon-bowling, as above), it can become almost survivable if the upgrade is too low: if you only increase by 2d6 per doubling, then bowling with the moon deals out 142d6. You may notice that makes getting hit with the moon easier to survive than getting charged by a high-level ubercharger, which is stupid*.

Perhaps even more unfortunately, the only way I can think to solve this problem is by houseruling the bonus to gradually increase, via some calculated exponential rate, but at that point the math will get very complicated, and that's more than most players will want to mess with for a character they just wanted to have throwing cars at dragons.

EDIT 2:

*: Not as stupid as throwing the moon at an army and only hitting the one person you were aiming for, but still.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Not that it should ever come up, but it still ends up broken at one end or the other: if the increase is too big, then the little Str increases on the low end have a huge return-on-investment: +4d6 means that hurling 100 lbs gives 2d6, hurling 200 lbs gives 6d6, and hurling 6400 lbs (Large Str 38, so not very hard to reach, even during the mid-levels) gives 26d6; that's a lot of damage for that level. On the other hand, at the other end (moon-bowling, as above), it can become almost survivable if the upgrade is too low: if you only increase by 2d6 per doubling, then bowling with the moon deals out 142d6. You may notice that makes getting hit with the moon easier to survive than getting charged by a high-level ubercharger, which is stupid*.

Perhaps even more unfortunately, the only way I can think to solve this problem is by houseruling the bonus to gradually increase, via some calculated exponential rate, but at that point the math will get very complicated, and that's more than most players will want to mess with for a character they just wanted to have throwing cars at dragons.

EDIT 2:

*: Not as stupid as throwing the moon at an army and only hitting the one person you were aiming for, but still.
It does end up broken one way or another, because carrying capacity is just like that, but the 26d6 for 6400 lbs is still lower than you'd get from the vanilla rule (you calculated 8500 lb for 45d6 upthread), and the higher increase at lower levels encourages your players to stick with adamantine shot-puts* rather than a great wyrm's skull cast in (and filled with) obdurium. A simple adjustment is to give +1d6 from the first doubling, +2d6 from the second etcetera. That's annoying to calculate, but if it's mostly for a pre-made weapon that doesn't change, it's doable. Or you could have a lot of 'default boulders' lying around, all conveniently 1600-3199 or 3200-6399 lbs each (four or five doublings, for 12d6 and 17d6 respectively). That was my original idea, but, like you also note, it seems a bit too complicated for on-the-fly calculating.

The moon, with 70 doublings, would be (1 + 70) * 35 + 2 = 2487d6 damage.

*Throwing random debris, which I imagine is one of the perks of being a hulking hurler, requires pretty generous scaling early on, because most non-building things around town/dungeons aren't that massive - after all, commoners need to be able to move them. If all those full barrels (say, in the 200-399 lb range) are 4d6 damage each, that's pretty disappointing. 6d6 just makes it a little sweeter.

Come to think of it, you could do 4d6 for the first doubling, 3d6 for the second, 2d6 for the third and 1d6 after that (or start a little higher and give higher boosts up to the 5th or so).

[Flickerdart]

One thing you could do is have throwing object damage be decoupled completely from the object's weight, outside of specific categories. So small objects like chairs might have one damage category, tables and carts another, and then giant lead wrecking balls a third, but the damage for all of them would be calculated based on the hurler's HD or something. It's decidedly less cool than a sweet wrecking ball, but if you have concerns about balance, it'll fix things.

[ExLibrisMortis]

One thing you could do is have throwing object damage be decoupled completely from the object's weight, outside of specific categories. So small objects like chairs might have one damage category, tables and carts another, and then giant lead wrecking balls a third, but the damage for all of them would be calculated based on the hurler's HD or something. It's decidedly less cool than a sweet wrecking ball, but if you have concerns about balance, it'll fix things.
Now now, don't go being sensible when we're doing dice physics!

You're still right, though.