The Gaming Den

So a few days ago, I had discovered the Liber Demonica project. Though I have enjoyed what I've seen so far, and it seems balanced to Tome quality standard.

Link (probably gonna have to "go to google" search it) http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Liber_Demonica ... ourcebook)

I do wonder to is to the quality of this material, if there will ever be write-ups for the other Demon Lords, and otherwise how well the material can be trusted. I only recognize some of the contributors, I think I might've seen the co-author on Wizard of Coast website years ago, seen the main author on here, and obviously aware of Frank/K. Now, I don't mean to come off as insulting to those involved in this project, just with these unfamiliar names, I'm not sure what material they've made in the past, wishing to inquire about it, and I've wondered why I haven't seen a thread about this on here before, seems odd. Also I'm quite curious to know, what contributions did you Frank and K, make this project, if you don't mind me asking?

Pardon if this is not the correct forum for it to go to, it seemed proper enough where Tome material seems to go.

The primary authors there are MisterSinister, who mostly lurks here at this point, and ThunderGod Cid. MS has written a bunch of stuff over the years, but I can't think of anything super popular here off hand. He's got a bunch of stuff in the stickied repository thread but most of his new stuff is wiki only. Cid has written a bunch as well, including the wiki's Tome Ranger, but none of it is here other than a discussion thread on teh ranger. The sourcebook was intended to be balanced to that end of tome, so if you like the later tome stuff or Cid's ranger it's probably fine.

I have no idea why MS didn't put it up here, but if I had to guess I'd say it was because it wasn't finished yet. He also hasn't been really active here, and may have just blown it off. The other demon lords are planned though (and some of them are in sandboxes I could point you at if you wanted to see them already), but they get finished on their own schedules.

I think the contributor credits on there are a bit generous, probably just for conceptual stuff. So I would ignore them. They might actually be misleading in the case of F&K, however, because I don't think they contributed even that much. I've got a question in on the talk about it.

[Edit]... and Frank and K are no longer listed as contributors.

I recently looked at the ranger, and recall liking bits of it, the favored enemy part was a pretty cool touch. However, I'm not sure of the newer stuff in general, that is, I'm not sure of the difference behind the newer stuff, is it less strong material, seeking to be more reasonable, like a mix of above Rogue, but not quite Wizard or what?

Not sure how you mean by "sandboxes" I assume its referring to how they were statted in people's D&D campaigns, that were rather open ended, or a community based campaign with revolving door of characters? Though I guess I'm not too much in a rush to see them, all the same I'd be interested in seeing them why not, rather curious to how they were done.

Also, within that material, there seemed sections not as clearly written as they could be, like with Yeenghou's own entry on his flails. Such as, do they all do 10d12, so if it turned up the Balor head, it'd also do 10d12 base +10d12 [insert energy here] +regular damage in his entry (which also each 1-3 heads do additional 2d10+24? so if all three heads hit, it'd be..40d12+6d10+96?), as well seems implied in the entry he has 24 strength, not 34, and doesn't seem to be including the +8 enchantment bonus to damage rolls as well. Also despite his damage potential, and thus wouldn't need it, in general I inquire, shouldn't attacks not go down by 5 past the second attack, or did that change with "later tome stuff"?

I'm pretty sure the ranger suffers from power creep. It looks like this stuff plays at the level with the barbarian.

Also, a sandbox is a place on the wiki where people put unfinished, unpublished material that they're working on so that it doesn't get deleted.

Hey, Cid here. Tarkis directed me to this thread.

Aryxbez wrote:I recently looked at the ranger, and recall liking bits of it, the favored enemy part was a pretty cool touch. However, I'm not sure of the newer stuff in general, that is, I'm not sure of the difference behind the newer stuff, is it less strong material, seeking to be more reasonable, like a mix of above Rogue, but not quite Wizard or what?

Most of what MisterSinister and I have aimed for is the level of Wizards and perhaps more power-creep Tome classes, under the general assumption that these monsters are fighting wizards or, at the very least, properly optimized rogues making very liberal use of Use Magic Device. This pretty much applies to the Ranger as well as the Liber Demonica.

Aryxbez wrote:Not sure how you mean by "sandboxes" I assume its referring to how they were statted in people's D&D campaigns, that were rather open ended, or a community based campaign with revolving door of characters? Though I guess I'm not too much in a rush to see them, all the same I'd be interested in seeing them why not, rather curious to how they were done.

Being a combination of lazy and busy has prevented us from finished the demon lords, and our timetable for completion is pretty much nonexistent at this point. That said, I can direct you to links for our notes on certain incomplete lords (these pages may be rife with copied text, so don't be surprised if you see that).

Grazzt: http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/User:Miste ... nster_Cage

Demogorgon: http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/User:Thund ... Demogorgon

Orcus: http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/User:MisterSinister/Orcus

Aryxbez wrote:Also, within that material, there seemed sections not as clearly written as they could be, like with Yeenghou's own entry on his flails. Such as, do they all do 10d12, so if it turned up the Balor head, it'd also do 10d12 base +10d12 [insert energy here] +regular damage in his entry (which also each 1-3 heads do additional 2d10+24? so if all three heads hit, it'd be..40d12+6d10+96?), as well seems implied in the entry he has 24 strength, not 34, and doesn't seem to be including the +8 enchantment bonus to damage rolls as well. Also despite his damage potential, and thus wouldn't need it, in general I inquire, shouldn't attacks not go down by 5 past the second attack, or did that change with "later tome stuff"?

I have tried to amend the wording on the flail; there were discrepancies between the table and text that needed clearing up amongst other issues. I also looked at the Strength damage and don't see what the problem is there; with a +12 Strength modifer, he adds one and a half times that for a two-handed weapon and then gets the +8 added on for a total of +24 damage. The one thing I was missing is that the +8 overrides the +6 of the weapon, which is standard for our lords but something that I forgot to insert there.

As for the attack routine, it is made to be able to be used with non-Tome material as well as Tome, so as a result it has non-Tome BAB progressions. We figured it was a simple enough task to convert those when necessary.

Hope that helps. Thanks for the feedback!

TG Cid wrote:Being a combination of lazy and busy has prevented us from finished the demon lords, and our timetable for completion is pretty much nonexistent at this point.

That is quite unfortunate to hear, even though I imagined the project was more or less canceled. Though, how do you go about making monsters, in a broke game like 3rd edition, with little actual rules for monster design? Such as deciding what attributes are what, what defenses should equate to, and so on. I know ye have the general context of Tome Material, so it compared to an actual RNG of an average Tome PC's to hit, spell DC's and such would be at this level?

Though oddly you say it's for "power-creep", yet the custom feats used on the lords, for example, don't seem that much more powerful than regular D&D feats. I guess it might be better than most feats, likely at point as good as the best 3rd edition feats, just not sure if they're to standard of Tome Feats. At least, they're not in multiple ability format to give you more bang for your choice sort of thing.

I have tried to amend the wording on the flail; there were discrepancies between the table and text that needed clearing up amongst other issues. I also looked at the Strength damage and don't see what the problem is there; with a +12 Strength modifer, he adds one and a half times that for a two-handed weapon and then gets the +8 added on for a total of +24 damage. The one thing I was missing is that the +8 overrides the +6 of the weapon, which is standard for our lords but something that I forgot to insert there.

Well, I suppose I kinda aim to help with that by commenting on it, though I wouldn't know the intent, so I'd be hardpressed what's supposed to go down. Is it only supposed to do 10d12 per head, instead of melee damage above, perhaps the reverse, are they meant to be added together and so forth?

As for the strength bit, that would be fine, but in second sentence under Combat: "Yeenoghu also adds his total Strength score (not his Strength modifier) to attack and damage rolls." Since some Demon Lords seem to have hidden abilities in their combat entries like that (Obox-Ob states has no penalties on his secondary natural attacks,also in 2nd sentence of his Combat entry, for example). Which case, it would be +32 with the "Lord of The Abyss" bonus, or +42, if the 34 strength was the intended (though seemed in the statblock the 24 was the more intended value).

Hope that helps. Thanks for the feedback!

Much obliged for taking the time to comment,as well to TarkisFlux for contacting you, I was thinking I'd do that at some point to get some more discussion in this thread going ideally. Perhaps discussing this matter would allow you to get back into action of designing this stuff again (least for the lazy part).

I like that list of alternate rules that you guys cooked up over time, as well.

edit: Especially this sizing 'revamp'

edit2: Is http://dungeons.wikia.com the same as http://dnd-wiki.org?
Or rather, are they supported by the same people? They share the same logo and such, but sometimes have different content.

codeGlaze wrote:I like that list of alternate rules that you guys cooked up over time, as well.

edit: Especially this sizing 'revamp'

edit2: Is http://dungeons.wikia.com the same as http://dnd-wiki.org?
Or rather, are they supported by the same people? They share the same logo and such, but sometimes have different content.

The wikia was where material navigated after the Great Exodus from dandwiki, and when the wikia went through a visual overhaul that looked kind of terrible, there was another Great Exodus to dnd-wiki.

So go to dnd-wiki.

...You Lost Me wrote:The wikia was where material navigated after the Great Exodus from dandwiki, and when the wikia went through a visual overhaul that looked kind of terrible, there was another Great Exodus to dnd-wiki.

So go to dnd-wiki.

Thanks.

Aryxbez wrote:Though, how do you go about making monsters, in a broke game like 3rd edition, with little actual rules for monster design? Such as deciding what attributes are what, what defenses should equate to, and so on. I know ye have the general context of Tome Material, so it compared to an actual RNG of an average Tome PC's to hit, spell DC's and such would be at this level?

As far as monster creation goes, MisterSinister and I largely based it around making the monsters generally equivalent statistically to a PC of the same level. This is in part because NPCs with class levels generally make effective enemies, but also because it was simply convenient (note the running trend of things we did due to being lazy). That said, I don't think that could be considered a universally applicable statement given that monsters inherently have different needs than PC's.

It is probably more accurate to say that PC's served as a guideline of determining when it was OK to give monsters a certain ability, so as to ensure they continue to be challenging throughout the game for PC's of an equivalent level. Flight, for example, is present on pretty much any monster above CR 5, and any creature that doesn't have it instead has ranged options to prevent it from being easily kited and thus rendered obsolete in a game.

Other than that, I must admit that I designed stuff on the basis of "ooooh, that sounds cool" rather than any particular formula aside from the "HD is equal to CR" thing that they all share (which is in itself very minor and mostly aids in keeping numbers under control).

It also occurs to me that this may not have been the answer you were looking for, so if that is the case I apologize for rambling.

Aryxbez wrote:Though oddly you say it's for "power-creep", yet the custom feats used on the lords, for example, don't seem that much more powerful than regular D&D feats. I guess it might be better than most feats, likely at point as good as the best 3rd edition feats, just not sure if they're to standard of Tome Feats. At least, they're not in multiple ability format to give you more bang for your choice sort of thing.

In comparison to Combat feats and the like, they are definitely not as up to par in most cases. That said, the wish to preserve playability outside of Tome-only settings prevailed in this case, leaving us with not much choice other than to play it as we did.

Aryxbez wrote:Well, I suppose I kinda aim to help with that by commenting on it, though I wouldn't know the intent, so I'd be hardpressed what's supposed to go down. Is it only supposed to do 10d12 per head, instead of melee damage above, perhaps the reverse, are they meant to be added together and so forth?

As for the strength bit, that would be fine, but in second sentence under Combat: "Yeenoghu also adds his total Strength score (not his Strength modifier) to attack and damage rolls." Since some Demon Lords seem to have hidden abilities in their combat entries like that (Obox-Ob states has no penalties on his secondary natural attacks,also in 2nd sentence of his Combat entry, for example). Which case, it would be +32 with the "Lord of The Abyss" bonus, or +42, if the 34 strength was the intended (though seemed in the statblock the 24 was the more intended value).

Since it seems as though it would cause more problems than it solves, I removed the bit about adding his Strength score to attack and damage rolls. It may still be OK for damage, but the base damage and additional effects are probably enough. TarkisFlux also corrected my math to +26, so hopefully that is now resolved for good.

The damage given is per head, so the idea is that each hit deals the base damage (10d12) and the Strength-based damage. It’s a lot, but not substantially more than any other demon lords we have created if at all superior. If there’s any way for me to improve the wording there, I’m all ears.