Random DM nagging.

[Nephrite]

Clearly his story was some kind of fever dream left over from a jumble of memories.

[Anastasia]

http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,103072.msg1058038.html#msg1058038

As you may know, I posted adamantine golems awhile ago. The one in the goldenfire thread was (almost) identical to this one, so I'd like to take a chance to analyze it here.

The adamantine golem's meant to do three things in battle. I'll focus on those first of all.

Firstly, it's meant to be a powerful melee combatant. I feel it did its job here. It had no luck in round one, but round three's melee combo showed why it's a fearsome and epic level encounter. +49 isn't the best to hit modifier ever, but one of its abilities really shined here.

Crushing Blows (Ex)

The slams of an adamantine golem hit with bone-shattering force. An adamantine golem applies double its strength modifier to damage rolls with its slam attack. It threatens a critical hit on a roll of 15-20 and inflicts triple damage on a critical hit.

Making an adamantine golem a crit monster helps it shine when higher AC targets vex it. It may not hit often, but it has better odds of it being a decisive hit. Jaela's miss chance came through for her, otherwise she'd have been in a world of pain.

Secondly, I wanted it to be a defensive rock. This worked out. It combines decent (for epic) AC with damage reduction 40, fast healing 25 and magic immunity. This shuts down a lot of opponents then and there, only Jaela having a spear that could beat its damage reduction enabled anything but a slow, risky slog against it. If you can deal with the damage reduction, an epic warrior can beat one down, which is exactly what happened.

Finally, it's meant to have a splash of versatility with wall of iron. This one's worth repeating here.

Project Barrier (Sp)

As a swift action, an adamantine golem can mimic the effects of a wall of iron spell (caster level 42nd), except that the wall and any iron from it vanishes after 10 minutes.

Yeah, that one's nasty. It lets it shape the battlefield how it pleases and generally cut allies off from one another. Moreover it gives it options. It can knock over walls, layer them and knock them over to trap creatures and stand on layers of walls to keep a creature crushed and suffocate it. It helps change it from a fairly immobile hunk of iron and give it a secondary means of influencing the battle.

So I'd say it lived up the goals I set for it. Does this make it a good epic monster? Well, when I make an epic monster, I try to make at least one thing that's above and beyond normal monsters, that makes it epic. For example, a ]hunefer's brand of failure changes many things in a way few other things do, including how dice rolls work. That helps  make it an epic and memorable encounter. An elder treant's guardian of the forest ability transforms a forest into a dungeon unto itself and nicely provides the foundation for an epic level forest dungeon.

The adamantine golem does as best it can towards that, withint he confines of being a mindless golem. All the numbers are turned up high and it has one ability it can get a lot of mileage out of. I don't feel one's interesting as a hellfire engine or a mithral golem, but it performs well at what it's meant to do, just like a golem should.

Edit: Meant to include this in the post and forgot. Technically an adamantine golem can only just barely make the Strength check to tip over a wall of iron. It's meant to be able to do so effortlessly. I'll be adding a note in project barrier that it can do so regardless of the Strength check, as otherwise it needs a 19 or 20 to manage it. I believe that was the one point of departure from the linked statblock and the one you fought, and that was purely patching an oversight on my part.

[Anastasia]

Mei reaches level 20!

But first, Voice of the Triune got some revisions when I ported it over to Rules and Setting. Mei gets the benefits of that.

- +2 casting levels for paladin of freedom. This gets her 3 3rd level spell slots. She selects righteous fury x3. This is largely a placeholder, since third level spells offer her almost nothing.

Anyway.

- Warlock 20 and Eldritch Disciple 1.
- 8 on a d8 for a total of 12 hit poitns and a grand total of 183 hit points.
- +1 BAB for a total of 20.
- Exalted strike rises to +5. This boosts her attacks and damage a bit.
- All of her energy resistances increase to 15. Also, warlock raises its bonus energy resistance to 10. It looks like I had those protections overlap instead of stack before. I'll look into an ACF since VoP covers all 5 energy resistances.
- Eldritch blast goes up to 11d6. Yay.
- Gains a new invocation. She selects eladrin form, which can be found below.
- Gains a gift of the divine patron. She selects healing blast. Takes a channel energy use, but her eldritch blasts (and glaives) can now heal instead of hurt for one round.
- Channel energy damage rises by 1d6.
- +2 Fort and Will saves. A final dip at 20 to boost her saves higher.
- +1 Constitution. Wasn't much of a choice here. This makes her new max hit points 203.
- Skills go up as normal.
- Gains a bonus exalted feat at 20. First of all, she's going to retrain extra smiting at 18 for endurance. She'll retrain gift of faith at VoP18 to exalted endurance for +22 hit points. This puts her up to 225 hit points. She takes Ilmater's resolve at 20 for another 11 hit points and immunity to pain.

Pretty great level up since she got so much.

Eladrin Form
Holy; 7th.
You can use eladrin form as the spell of the same name.

[Anastasia]

Mei reaches level 21!

Couple of notes here. I'm using a barebones epic warlock for now, as I never worked one out. This ignores the question of epic invocations for the moment, as the version I did in B2 was extremely raw. Secondly, I do have an epic vow of poverty progression and I'll be posting that on rules and setting a little later.

- Warlock 21 and Fighter 1.
- 8 on a d10 for a total of 13 hit points and a grand total of 249 hit points.
- +1 BAB for a total of 21.
- AC bonus rises to +11. It helps.
- Resistance bonus to saves rises to +4. It helps.
- No change to saves.
- Skills go up as normal.
- Selects toughness as her fighter 1 feat. This puts her hit points up to 260. She also selects epic vow of poverty for her level 21 feat. This also grants her an additional 3 hit points due to her other feats.

Okay level. More when I get epic warlock untangled.

[Anastasia]

Mei reaches level 22!

- Warlock 22 and Fighter 2.
- 6 on a d10 for a total of 11 hit points and a grand total of 274 hit points.
- +1 BAB for a total of 22.
- Gains holy wake. This means she never needs to sleep and is immune to sleep. But as she's already an elf, this is purely academic.
- +1d6 eldritch blast for a total of 12d6. Nice.
- A bonus blast essence shape. She selects eldritch cone.
- No change to saves.
- Skills go up as normal.
- Takes improved initiative as her fighter 2 feat. When you can't get AC, at least going first can help you dodge and limit your exposure.

Okay level.

[Anastasia]

Re: Golden bracelets and CR. Jaela, you can assume that the adamantine golem was CR 30.

I should've known better than to use CR for this sort of thing, but oh well. CR's so subjective in epic that it's useless.

[Anastasia]

Epic warlock's up over on R&S. This one deserves some notes.

- In part it's a bare bones progression since Mei needs that hashed out. The article that went into epic warlocks on Wizard's website used extremely loaded feats to deliver new invocations. This doesn't mesh with the idea of epic invocations.

- Epic invocations have a rule about maximum level equivalent so that one category of invocations can cover it all. A little lazy, but warlock's format doesn't translate well to this.

- More on this as I figure it out and what to do with it.

On a related note, Mei's now due an invocation at 22 that she didn't get before. She selects steal summoning.

[Iron Dragoon]

Not to be annoying, but what about Epic Beguiler?

[Anastasia]

Nah, you can't be annoying. This is the topic for nagging. Anyway, it's done besides epic spells, which will probably be hand waved to a degree. I'll figure out something there.

[Yuthirin]

you can't be annoying.

I will remember this.

[Anastasia]

you can't be annoying.

I will remember this.

Please don't prove me wrong.

[Merc]

He just said he'll remember it! Why nothing insidious was thought by him, I'm sure!

[Anastasia]

Medi updates I didn't get to doing yet.

- Staff of Celestial Valor to Stille. It's pretty neat.
- +20 hit points to Mei. This puts her at 295 hit points.

Next NPC up for transfer is Rosa. Been meaning to do her, I like her build.

[Anastasia]

Rosa reaches level 20.

- Rogue 10 and Fighter 19.
- 3 on a d10 for a total of 7 hit points and a grand total of 190 hit points.
- +1 BAB for a total of 20.
- Gains a special rogue talent. She selects defensive roll.
- +1 Reflex saves.
- +1 Constitution for a total of 17. All her stats were even this level. Brutal.
- Skills go up as normal.

Okay level. Mostly an in between one.

[Anastasia]

Rosa reaches level 21.

- Skullclan Hunter 11 and Fighter 20.
- 4 on a d10 for a total of 8 hit points and a grand total of 198 hit points.
- +1 BAB for a total of 21.
- Bonded armor's insight bonus to AC increases by 1. Always nice.
- No change to saves.
- Skills go up as normal.
- New feats. She selects epic toughness(21) and greater weapon specialization(longsword)(F20). This boosts her to 240 hit points.

Okay level. The HP is super useful and needed.