The rust monster option in 4E

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 10:43 am

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rp ... ost4690948

Looks like the rust monster is now among the most efficient "convert magical items" option. Someone in the thread also mentioned that you can use them to double your magic with some ring that halves the residium costs of rituals.

Not quite the infinite wishes/wealth loop, but it's not really balanced if that works.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:25 pm

4e shouldn't have played "rape the economy" in the first place.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:31 pm

With a Ritual Ring and knowledge of Raise Dead you can actually hold a fucking job. You make 4,250 gp in Residuum per day by feeding a rust monster a weapon, harvesting the rust monster, remaking the weapon, and raising the rust monster from the dead.

That is literally the first economically viable career that 4e D&D has written up. Rust Milker.

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:00 pm

I thought only people with a destiny could be raised, everyone else was dead.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:01 pm

And now we have a new named piece of stupidity, right up there with Balor Miner, Phoenix Duplicator and so on.

Man, things were so much easier in the old days. You could simply buy an iron pot, smash it into iron, then sell the iron at a profit. Or "buy" staves (for nothing), snap them into firewood, and sell the firewood at a profit. Sure, that's what we call "working for a living", but still. What a broken loophole.

Now in order to do broken things like working for a living, you need to farm rust monsters.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:03 pm

Fuchs wrote:I thought only people with a destiny could be raised, everyone else was dead.

Possibly that is said somewhere. But the book just says "creature" when discussing valid targets for Raise Dead. Indeed, player characters get boned by that ritual, because characters of higher tier destinies cost more to Raise. While creatures just cost the base rate.

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:16 pm

Yes, I just checked - I think I must have remembered something from the previews. Of course there's the "Soul must be willing to return" clause, and the "gods can intervene", so a GM could say the rust monster doesn't want to return after the Xth time it was killed.

That of course just means one needs to breed them.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:02 pm

I can't believe they let Ritual Ring work on the Enchant Item rituals.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:23 pm

One more reason 4.0 Fails. Right along with horse archers, door kicking wizards, and... ah fuck it, it'd be easier to just say Rituals = Fail, and then get into the specific non ritual Fails.

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:19 pm

Fuchs wrote:Yes, I just checked - I think I must have remembered something from the previews. Of course there's the "Soul must be willing to return" clause, and the "gods can intervene", so a GM could say the rust monster doesn't want to return after the Xth time it was killed.

That of course just means one needs to breed them.

Breed them in packs
Set 'em loose in a cave
Hire adventurers
Equip them yourself and "quest" them to clear the cave of rust monsters
Rez "the heroes", wait 'till they leave
Rez the rust monsters
Repeat ad filthium wealthium
laugh out loud

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:25 pm

Roy wrote:One more reason 4.0 Fails. Right along with horse archers, door kicking wizards, and... ah fuck it, it'd be easier to just say Rituals = Fail, and then get into the specific non ritual Fails.

Why do horse archers fail?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:37 pm

Why do horse archers fail?

The same reason why people complained about flight + archery so bitterly.

sake · Post by **sake** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:31 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
The same reason why people complained about flight + archery so bitterly.

Ah yes... the good ol ' 'ranged characters shouldn't be allowed to use sensible tactics' complaint.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:04 am

sake wrote:Ah yes... the good ol ' 'ranged characters shouldn't be allowed to use sensible tactics' complaint.

Actually its the ranged combat automatically beats every monster no matter the die rolls complaint.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:28 am

Also known as "I can't be bothered to put cover on the map, so archers are overpowered".

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:34 am

It's more like 'Fight in a closet or die, bitch'. Because as long as you can hit the MOB at all, it can't hurt you, it can't catch you, so you win. Full stop.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:27 pm

Or get the enemies some bows as well.

I've got no problem with melee monsters being dead meat on open ground against archers.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:47 pm

Except that this is 4.0, where if you go outside your little closet sized 'role' you get hit hard with the nerf hammer. It's not their JOB to actually act intelligently.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:42 pm

Hasn't anyone every heard of 'trees'?

-Crissa

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:39 pm

In what context?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:43 pm

Trees don't really help against archery in a system where the attacker moves and attacks between the actions of the defender, arrows fly to their target in the action they are released, people never run out of arrows, and people can continue riding a horse in combat indefinitely.

-Username17

Manxome · Post by **Manxome** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:55 pm

Tangential trivia: in Descent, standing in a "tree" space makes you flat-out invulnerable to attacks from anything more than 1 space away from you.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:15 pm

Hide behind a freaking tree. Trees limit range because you have to shoot between them. If there's random 5' trees on the map, then the paths to make long range shots become lessened.

Not to mention terrain making some paths impassible to mounted archers ot blocking avenues of shots. The mounted archer is still at an advantage, but they at least have to chase down their quarry.

-Crissa

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 12:03 am

In my experience having a grid map and putting trees on it gets really really complex.

Firstly the DM often has no real idea of what woodland looks like and so tropical rainforest or other exotic woodland is hard to do and secondly putting trees on a grid is laborious and argumentative. Then there's the fact that most trees are much less than 5' across and so on.

Just putting random 5' trees on is slow to set up, complex to run (having to use a ruler all the time to work out whether one can see another and so on) and much slower to play.

I found it a lot easier to shade in areas and say that one section is open, another run (runnable forest), another fight (very heavy vegetation) and so on. Then, in run you can move at full speed but you can't charge and you get so much range penalties per 10ft, heavy you can only walk and you get so much cover and fight you take full round actions to move 5ft and you get full cover. Within some areas you can take a move action to get more cover, and you can say that some areas have low branches so it counts as a low ceiling or cramped conditions.

Sort of like marking off areas of the map as swamp or quicksand.

Oh, and depending on whether the wood is being harvested, you may get long avenues of shots. For example I've been in a lot of woods where all the trees are planted in lines: you get rows of forest and you can run easily in some directions. If you have woodland like that you could easily move to a good vantage point and shoot each round.

The best argument for stopping horse archers in forests is the terrain. It's lumpy, there are often fallen trees, bracken and other vegetation and the branches are more likely to get in the way of the riders. Making it stupidly dangerous to ride horses in combat in woodland without reliably brilliant rolls is easier, more understandable and less debatable than messing about with cover.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 6:05 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Trees don't really help against archery in a system where the attacker moves and attacks between the actions of the defender, arrows fly to their target in the action they are released, people never run out of arrows, and people can continue riding a horse in combat indefinitely.

Well, one tree certainly won't, but if you've got a full blown forest that is going to limit sight due to extensive foliage, then it helps out quite a bit. For instance, if he can only see 5 squares, the archer's advantage is effectively crippled, because he can easily get charged and attacked as soon as he sights a target.