RadiantPhoenix wrote:That depends -- does this count as an extensive rewrite?
Manipulate Form (Su): At will, a Sarrukh can modify the form of a scaled one native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures. With a successful touch attack, it can alter a valid creature, using the retraining and rebuilding rules in the Player's Handbook 2. The target falls unconscious for 2d4 rounds due to the shock of changing form. A successful DC 22 fortitude save negates both the change and the unconsciousness. Sarrukh are immune to this effect.
Yes, since it complete changes the ability to do something completely unrelated. You might as well rewrite Silent Image in the following way:
Silent Image: You cast Fireball.
Manipulate form, for all the things it does or does not do from clarity, it is supposed to change creatures physically. The PHB retraining rules allow for zero physical changes of any kind, but do allow Fighters to turn into Wizards.
So yeah, if your new ability does something completely fucking different, that counts as an extensive rewrite.
Manipulate Form doesn't need a rewrite because it's supposed to be DM-controlled background bullshit to begin with.
Back to the original topic- are you sure that your players can even defeat The Word? It was kind of made to invalidate literally everything else any other character can do and kill them without any sort or roll or applicable defenses. If your players can invalidate that trick it's just a fight with a wizard, and if your players can't invalidate the Word wording everyone they all die.
A Man In Black wrote:I do not want people to feel like they can never get rid of their Guisarme or else they can't cast Evard's Swarm Of Black Tentacleguisarmes.
Voss wrote:Which is pretty classic WW bullshit, really. Suck people in and then announce that everyone was a dogfucker all along.
spongeknight wrote:
Back to the original topic- are you sure that your players can even defeat The Word? It was kind of made to invalidate literally everything else any other character can do and kill them without any sort or roll or applicable defenses. If your players can invalidate that trick it's just a fight with a wizard, and if your players can't invalidate the Word wording everyone they all die.
Invalidating the Word's big trick is as simple as being a Succubus Paladin or some other form of morally inverted Outsider. A Chaotic Evil Archon also works, or a Chaotic Good Devil, or a Lawful Evil Bralani.
And that's just the simple way to becom chaotic, lawful, good, and evil at the same time.
I am not sure that is actually true. Blasphemy hits creatures who are nonevil, but the alignment subtype rules specifically tell you that you are affected according to both your alignment subtype and your actual alignment: "Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is. The creature also suffers effects according to its actual alignment."
So it goes more like:
Succubus Paladin -> chaotic evil -> not nonevil -> not affected by blasphemy.
Succubus Paladin -> lawful good -> nonevil -> affected by blasphemy.
Not only can you be both evil and good, you can be both evil and nonevil. D&D alignment, hurrah!
Last edited by DSMatticus on Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
RadiantPhoenix wrote:That depends -- does this count as an extensive rewrite?
Manipulate Form (Su): At will, a Sarrukh can modify the form of a scaled one native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures. With a successful touch attack, it can alter a valid creature, using the retraining and rebuilding rules in the Player's Handbook 2. The target falls unconscious for 2d4 rounds due to the shock of changing form. A successful DC 22 fortitude save negates both the change and the unconsciousness. Sarrukh are immune to this effect.
Yes, since it complete changes the ability to do something completely unrelated. You might as well rewrite Silent Image in the following way:
Silent Image: You cast Fireball.
Manipulate form, for all the things it does or does not do from clarity, it is supposed to change creatures physically. The PHB retraining rules allow for zero physical changes of any kind, but do allow Fighters to turn into Wizards.
So yeah, if your new ability does something completely fucking different, that counts as an extensive rewrite.
Having all four alignment subtypes (or just two of them, provided your actual alignment is the other two) is perfectly sufficient to stop The Word's wording. If you wanted to use TW&TW as your setting's BBEGs, you could set up some sort of intermediate quests where players had to bathe in various fonts of pure chaos and shit in order to survive the opening monologue of the villains.
FrankTrollman wrote:Having all four alignment subtypes (or just two of them, provided your actual alignment is the other two) is perfectly sufficient to stop The Word's wording. If you wanted to use TW&TW as your setting's BBEGs, you could set up some sort of intermediate quests where players had to bathe in various fonts of pure chaos and shit in order to survive the opening monologue of the villains.
-Username17
Nah i was planning this to be a one shot/run with it campaign, but planning on TW&TW to murder death kill them so we never try to deal with this with an on going campaign world .
But if they win i guess get the nine hells cause I'm planning for TW&TW to be the replaced asmoeden, as they murder death killed him
erik wrote:Doesn't being deaf or in Silence make you immune to Word?
I'll just do that instead.
Only against mind-affecting sonic spells, strangely enough.
d20 SRD wrote:Unless otherwise noted, a sonic attack follows the rules for spreads. The range of the spread is measured from the creature using the sonic attack. Once a sonic attack has taken effect, deafening the subject or stopping its ears does not end the effect. Stopping one’s ears ahead of time allows opponents to avoid having to make saving throws against mind-affecting sonic attacks, but not other kinds of sonic attacks (such as those that deal damage). Stopping one’s ears is a full-round action and requires wax or other soundproof material to stuff into the ears.
erik wrote:Doesn't being deaf or in Silence make you immune to Word?
I'll just do that instead.
Only against mind-affecting sonic spells, strangely enough.
d20 SRD wrote:Unless otherwise noted, a sonic attack follows the rules for spreads. The range of the spread is measured from the creature using the sonic attack. Once a sonic attack has taken effect, deafening the subject or stopping its ears does not end the effect. Stopping one’s ears ahead of time allows opponents to avoid having to make saving throws against mind-affecting sonic attacks, but not other kinds of sonic attacks (such as those that deal damage). Stopping one’s ears is a full-round action and requires wax or other soundproof material to stuff into the ears.
Pretty sure the point is that this line exists in the Holy Word Description:
Literally the first sentence of Holy Word wrote:Any nongood creature within the area that hears the holy word suffers the following ill effects.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Feb 21, 2015 5:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
Any nonevil creature within the area of a blasphemy spell suffers the following ill effects.
So I guess only some people would be immune to The Word if deafened.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
ubernoob wrote:Can TW & TW not cast the druid version of Blasphemy? I think it's called Word of Balance or something like that.
Not without arguably killing The Word (The Wish uses contingent atonements and can survive a word of balance).
Kaelik wrote:Alternatively, Silence has the statement "This spell provides a defense against sonic or language-based attacks."
More importantly, it is so trivial for TW&TW to generate a joyful noise with a caster level well beyond what is possible to counter with greater dispelling, that the protection provided by silence is non-existent.
Being deaf might keep you alive for one round, but it seems like after the Word failed to kill you, the Wish would realize what was up and wish your deafness away. Maybe one round would be all you need, though. If you have at least two party members who can cast wish, could they wish for the wish and the word to be transported to a dead magic zone? There, they would face the ultimate humiliation: getting killed off by a fighter.
Edit: just saw that they both have a spell resistance of 122, so Wish isn't going to work. Is there some way to get around it?
Last edited by Night Goat on Sat Feb 21, 2015 8:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Why not just take the easy route?
Gate the fuckers and kill them while they are under your control.
Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game
Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
Gate only lets you control creatures if you name a nonunique kind of creature; if you name a specific individual they are not under your control. They may or may not be forced to step through, depending on whether or not they count as "unique".
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
Right. If you gate in a Human then it will pick a random human who may or may not be the Wish or the Word, but will probably be Steve the Crap Covered Farmer who will be very thankful to you for freeing him from the Quasi-ParaElemental plane of Shit (where the Negative Energy Plane meets the Plane of Ooze, obviously) up until you use your absolute control over him to force him to do something suicidal.
name_here wrote:Gate only lets you control creatures if you name a nonunique kind of creature; if you name a specific individual they are not under your control. They may or may not be forced to step through, depending on whether or not they count as "unique".
That is not how it works. Naming a kind of being instead of a particular being just gives you the option of calling more than one if they have very few hit dice.
The real question is whether naming "The Word" constitutes enough information to make them qualify as a "Known Individual." Hard to say, because of course that's a title and not his actual name. Probably you'd have to find out what his name was before you could do that. Cue the obscure rules for researching names.
name_here wrote:Gate only lets you control creatures if you name a nonunique kind of creature; if you name a specific individual they are not under your control. They may or may not be forced to step through, depending on whether or not they count as "unique".
That is not how it works. Naming a kind of being instead of a particular being just gives you the option of calling more than one if they have very few hit dice.
SRD wrote:
Deities and unique beings cannot be controlled in any event.
Also:
Deities and unique beings are under no compulsion to come through the gate, although they may choose to do so of their own accord.
If you use Gate to summon a Balor, then you control it. If you use gate to summon Joe the Balor, then you don't control him, because he's unique. There's only one Joe the Balor.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Sat Feb 21, 2015 7:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote:More importantly, it is so trivial for TW&TW to generate a joyful noise with a caster level well beyond what is possible to counter with greater dispelling, that the protection provided by silence is non-existent.
-Username17
Non-existent...The base radius on joyful noise is 10 ft., centered on the caster. Is there some way to get its radius big enough to get within range of the enemy party and cover them all, or at least cover enough of them at a time that you can kill them all with Words before they can act?
Tumbling Down wrote:
deaddmwalking wrote:I'm really tempted to stat up a 'Shadzar' for my game, now.
FrankTrollman wrote:More importantly, it is so trivial for TW&TW to generate a joyful noise with a caster level well beyond what is possible to counter with greater dispelling, that the protection provided by silence is non-existent.
-Username17
Non-existent...The base radius on joyful noise is 10 ft., centered on the caster. Is there some way to get its radius big enough to get within range of the enemy party and cover them all, or at least cover enough of them at a time that you can kill them all with Words before they can act?
Don't know what spell level it is, but no reason you couldn't just shape spell the thing into a bunch of different cones going off of you in every direction.
Joyful Noise is a 1st level Spell. Shaping it up into a big area is extremely trivial. Silence is just not a counter to The Word at all. It would be a hard counter to a lot of things he might want to do, but because he knows that and there are hard counters to silence available, obviously he uses one of them.
Gate is a trickier one. Neither The Wish nor The Word are Unique Beings. They are humans. If you can pass the threshold of the completely undefined limit that they have to be "known individuals" to you, then you can give them the Free Vacation on the Negative Energy Plane (no save). You could in fact Gate in The Word and order him to hand roll tacquitos for 17 rounds while you try to beat him to death with whatever comes to hand.
Now again, that's one of the few things in the game that could plausibly act as a perfect take down of the duo. And of course they know that. So since The Wish is already on record abusing Craft Contingent Spell, presumably he has some kind of "fuck you" prepared to go off automagically if people hate gate him or his brother.
