Talk:Eldritch Horror (3.5e Race)

Ratings

	Qwertyu63 is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.
	laughter* This is very funny, and still works. Sadly, the listed LA is too low for what it gives; so I can't rate any better than this.

Okay, let me get this straight...

LA 0, never loses limbs for long, shaken aura, can render a man insane as the insanity spell at will, and you also get 50% Fortification?

Holy freaking crap that's broken. And I have no problems with a ghost touch force blade with a 10-20 critical range that deals large amounts of damage, as well is a extraordinary effect, yet this race trips a "need rebalancing" flag on my board. Even if they have to be helpless... One sleep spell, a few turns of whispering, and no one is sane anymore.

And in case you try to asspull "not insanity spell, just doesn't wear off", that's exactly what the insanity spell is. A confusion spell that doesn't wear off.--YX33A 07:39, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this. Well, mainly the permanent confusion aspect. Last I checked, races don't give save or sucks. I'd remove it completely. Give the fear aura a save and add a +8 racial bonus to swim checks (it has a swim speed after all) and I'll consider this balanced. --Havvy 14:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey, a discussion. Time to throw my hat in here as well. Focus on the problems first I suppose. Race names are lower case within sentences (such as human, taco demon, orc). I kinda wish their was more to the flavor, but I suppose it's intentionally written to be open to players to be forced to come up with the details themselves on a "per individual" basis. Now, for mechanics.

Aura of Horror, it should really have a save, with a successful save staving off the effects for 24 hours (a fairly common thing). With the potential annoyance of affecting lower-level party members and cohorts and animal companions and such, consider making it an ability that needs to be activated (as a free action as part of another action) such as describing "When the eldritch horror does something, it can do it really scary like. Creatures not hostile toward the eldritch horror get a save bonus maybe."

Whispers of Madness needs a complete rewrite. May I recommend Maddened (3.5e Condition)? It has a broader range of debilitating effects and overall isn't as likely to completely hose a target. Granted, the ability now seems like it was designed for out of combat usage. I should also point out that, if you have a target as helpless, it's pretty simple to coup de grace. Whispers of Madness just makes you be a dick to them instead. A duration based on making a new save each hour at a lowered DC might be something to look into.

Unstable Physiology could use some simplification as well. Consider making it a straight 24 hours for lopped limbs. Clears up some paperwork in the process. Optionally, make it so they heal lost limbs after 24 hours of having full HP. The fortification is unnecessary, and given the written flavor above makes little sense considering it supposedly has exposed organs, which would, if anything, make it more susceptible to precision damage.

That's about it for now, I'll see if I can wrangle some more ideas for you, Fox. --Ganteka Future 17:48, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I really don't see what all the fuss is about Whispers of Madness. Really, how often is it going to turn out to be more useful than a scythe? It is a coup-de-grace ability, you know. Making everybody insane is only a minor advantage over making everybody dead, isn't it?

Is shaken really all that big a deal? It seems like making it have a save would add a lot of rolling. Also, you can turn it off, but only if you get one level of Insidious Parasite.

Perhaps it has spares of those exposed organs today, but if you think the Fortification is making it too strong, I suppose removing it is justified. 24 hours would clear up a bit of paperwork, but I don't see how it's all that big a deal to have an ability that's random flavor-wise be a bit random mechanically, too. --Foxwarrior 18:48, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Start This Discussion Over

I've been putting off commenting again for long enough. I'm just going to start over, though I'll probably repeat a few things anyhow. I'll post the abilities in question here so you don't have to keep glancing back and forth to look at 'em:

• Aura of Horror (Su): Creatures within 30' of the eldritch horror that don't have more HD than the eldritch horror are shaken.

This ability shouldn't stay the way it is. It really needs some rewriting. A big problem is that the ability is non-discriminant. Any "traveling with the party" NPC (like a guide or a rescued princess), animal companion, shopkeeper, cohort, mount or small village is going to be afraid of you. That hurts the party, and that's bad. If it was intended for this ability to be a drawback to the character, success achieved. The reason that not having a save bothers me (and I might be in the minority here, I'm not really sure) is that DnD is a game of checks and "having a chance to succeed, no matter how slim". When you remove those checks, it invites a feeling of "cheapness". There's a big difference in player attitude for how they see "roll a really high save with a 10% chance of success" and "sorry, you don't even get to roll". It causes frustration. In addition, imagine an NPC of this race being used against the PCs. If he's meant to be a pushover, his Aura of Horror affects no one and is useless (or it possibly scares that princess traveling with the group). If he's meant to be tough, it affects everyone. There's essentially no in-between. Even dragons, which are enormous and scary, force a saving throw against their Frightful Presence, and their ability only works when they do something scary. It looks like Aura of Horror is a striped down version of Frightful Presence, but just too much got striped away. It's a cheap ability and it doesn't function like it should.

• Whispers of Madness (Sp): As a full-round action, the eldritch horror can whisper into the ears of an adjacent helpless creature. Unless that creature succeeds on a Will save (DC 10 + character level + Charisma modifier), it is permanently confused.

Permanent confusion simply isn't level appropriate and should be taken out on that basis alone. Used on a PC, it could just ruin a game. It presents a problem that PCs aren't able to overcome until higher levels (access to powerful spells to remove the enchantment in this case). Because of this ability, it makes this race unusable as a combatant, as the creature is intended to use the ability (since it's written into the stat block), for low level parties. I personally don't mind that it functions similarly to a coup-de-grace (as I mentioned in my previous comment). It makes the user feel insidious and creepy for using it, but it just shouldn't be permanent. As for a level in Insidious Parasite, as I don't know what that is (until I just manually looked it up), and it isn't listed on the race, I can say it doesn't matter, since it's not in the base race, which is the discussion here. Please, list paragon classes on a race if players are encouraged to play them with the given race.

• Unstable Physiology (Ex): The eldritch horror replaces lost or damaged body parts 3d20 hours after they are damaged with new body parts that serve the same function. In addition, the inconsistent placement of the eldritch horror's internal organs gives it 50% fortification.

The justifications given for this ability in the above comment section really confuse me when compared with how simplified Aura of Horror is. One the one hand, you defended using simplicity to make the game easier by taking away rolling and then fire back about how having rolling and randomness to mechanics is fine. I don't care to get into the intricacies of why that is now. I'll try to get to the point, since this is running long. The fortification I could go either way on, though, I'm going to recommend that instead of 50% Fortification to go with something like "takes half damage from precision-based damage." The flavor also really doesn't match up to the reasons you give. Getting stabbed in the spleen still hurts a lot, regardless of how many spleens you have.

In closing, I don't want this to sound like an attack, I just want the article to be as usable and awesome as it can be. I know we really don't always see eye-to-eye on race design. I want to give it an awesome "thumbs up, good job", but it just needs a bit of revision. The racial features it has should be massive selling points to play the race. Flaunt them. Make players want to play a horrid creature from beyond the dark side of the moon. Though also, make sure it works as both a PC and an NPC. --Ganteka Future 21:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Rolling for Aura of Horror is completely different from rolling for Unstable Physiology: With Aura of Horror, every time a creature comes within 30 feet of the Eldritch Horror, they would have to roll dice, which is easily one die roll every 10 real-time minutes. With Unstable Physiology, however, entire campaigns can go by without anybody losing a body part, so this ability only adds one die roll every dozen real-time hours or more. Personally, I don't see why you would want to add dice rolling to avoid some minor statistical penalty. I do agree that the non-discriminant part is imperfect, though. If you've got a suggestion for an Aura of Horror that doesn't require a die roll for every creature you meet and discriminates suitably, then I'd be interested to hear it.

Getting stabbed in the spleen still hurts a lot, but the Rogue is likely to incorrectly guess that spleen's location. Therefore, (in my esteemed opinion) Fortification actually makes more sense on this creature than it does on the average creature that has it.

Are you saying that death is less of a problem than permanent confusion? If a PC is hosed because they go mad, they can be dumped into an insane asylum or murdered or something, and the player is just as free to make a new character as they would be when stabbed to death by a Kobold. --Foxwarrior 03:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Aura of Horror: Making the ability discriminate against targets solves the problem you seem to have with "too many dice rolls". The problem is already solved in Frightful Presence, which I had linked above. Heck, you could even make it a Cone of Horror so he could be scary directionally. When it discriminates (with the capacity to use the ability when making a desired action or as part of another action), rolling is not only fine, it is preferred, since DnD is a game of checks.

Whispers of Madness: As you have it written, yes, death is less of a problem than permanent confusion. The means to raise a character from being dead come much earlier than the ability to remove this penalty, which is why I said it's not level appropriate. Making a new character should always be at least Plan B. In earlier editions of DnD, this wasn't the case, but now it is. Players don't want to have to make a new character (and shouldn't unless it's there fault they died, rather than a fluke of the dice or a miscalculation on the part of the DM). This is why people complain about the SRD:Shadow. It's designed to do things the players shouldn't be facing at their level.

Here's the full run-down on why removing death is easier. This is based on a lack of rebuttal of "this isn't like the insanity spell" as well as some information that's just missing from the ability (in the form of caster level for a spell-like ability). It seems that this ability is intended to affect creatures instantaneously, like the insanity spell. However, if the lack of rebuttal on insanity and omission of caster level were both oversights, and the duration of the ability was actually meant to be "permanent", allowing the ability to be dispelled, that does change things. As it appears, I can't make that judgement. So, To remove insanity, as the ability looks like it is written to function, you could get at earliest/easiest/least expensive a casting of heal as a 6th level spell. Raise dead is a 5th level spell, and if you really wanted to go the route, reincarnate is 4th.

So, with whatever proper duration it ends up with, it needs to be removable at that level. Don't forget that you can always scale the duration with level to solve this as well, granting "permanent" or whatever at the appropriate HD when a cure becomes available.

Unstable Physiology: Fortification (due to it's basic physical form) doesn't make more sense on a creature with more organs (and visible exposed organs) than it does on say, an earth elemental, which is made of rock. I'd find a more appropriate reference point, but SRD creatures with partial fortification are apparently rare enough that I can't locate any to link. I'll say it again though, I could go either way on it. It's not necessary to really fulfill some aspect of the flavor in the mechanics and the power granted by it could be better served with a different ability. It's not a big concern, it's just that the justifications for it are sloppy. Something along the lines of "Eldritch horrors have loads of organs for sure, but not all of them are all that important, and finding and damaging the right ones is a tricky task. They gain 50% fortification to resist precision-based damage such as sneak attacks and critical hits." might fly a bit better for matching up with the flavor text. Which, I mention flavor text last because it really could use some beefing up and expanding to really sell the race to players and get them in the mood to write one up and play it. --Ganteka Future 20:51, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Aura of Horror has been changed. For Whispers of Madness, I forgot that permanent lasted longer than a lifetime. That has been fixed. --Foxwarrior 22:38, 23 January 2011 (UTC)