New Tome-style feat: Timeless Guardian [Paragon]

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:13 pm

Unceasing Guardian [Paragon]
Your ancestors watched over something and protected it for, like, a hundred millennia without a bathroom break.
Prerequisites: Outsider-type race
Level:

1: You don't need to sleep at all, though you can go to sleep instantly, and you're immune to effects that make you sleep. You can recover from effects that normally require eight hours or less rest to recover from by sleeping for one round.

You can enter a Warden's Trance as a full round action. While in a Warden's Trance, you are paralyzed - you can cease to be paralyzed instantly in response to anything, but this ends the trance. There is no upper limit as to how long the trance can last. In Warden's Trance, you can sense in every direction as if you were constantly looking about, even though you do not move. This grants you all-around senses, granting you a +4 bonus on Spot and Listen. If you hide before entering a Warden's Trance, your utter stillness gives you a +4 bonus on Hide, and the Listen DC to hear your breathing or heartbeat is 10 higher than normal.

While in Warden's Trance, you have Darkvision of 30 ft. per level, you can hear even if you've been deafened, and you add half your level as a bonus to saving throws against illusions.

6: You don't neat to eat or drink, though you can if you wish. When you don't eat or drink, you don't need to void your bowels or bladder, but if you do eat or drink, you can hold your waste indefinitely if necessary. Effects that would cause you to be exhausted instead cause you to be fatigued, and you're immune to effects that cause fatigue (except the previous one, don't get smart with me.) While in Warden's Trance, you can See Invisible creatures, as per the spell.

11: You can ignore ingested toxins. You don't need to go to the bathroom no matter what; your intestines are very mysterious. You're immune to exhaustion. While in Warden's Trance, you have True Seeing and can Detect Scrying as per the spells.

16: You don't need to breathe, and you can ignore inhaled toxins. While in Warden's Trance, you have Foresight, as per the spell.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:20 pm

A more specific request for feedback:

I'm hoping to take this for an Aasimar Assassin character. Primary advantages it confers, from a mechanical perspective, is you can rely on being able to strike your opponent while they're sleeping or exhausted at level 1, and at level 6, you can simply pick a location and wait there, indefinitely, for your target to arrive.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:27 pm

The feat does nothing. Look at the real Tome feats. And honestly, while it might be on the average level of 3.x official feats, Savvy Rogue, Shock Trooper and others exist. Also, monstrous feats traditionally are called just that, and don't scale, but there's no real problem in breaking with those traditions - with the tradition of being worth taking, OTOH ...

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:27 pm

Then you're eventually looking at immunity to aging and not dying from the passage of time.

The problem is that's mostly character flavor/trait.

Well, maybe at higher levels he can save up some of the time that should be happening to him, and then use it to hit people (or himself) with Slow and Haste, at his option.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:29 pm

Maxus wrote:Then you're eventually looking at immunity to aging and not dying.

The problem is, this is mostly character flavor/trait.

The character's an assassin, right? So he waits ahead of the target for them, and waits until they're off-guard.

Well, maybe at higher level he can save up some of the time that should be happening to him, and then use it to hit people (or himself) with Slow and Haste, at his option.

Maybe he can do something worth talking about right from level 1: perhaps slowing?

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:30 pm

I could throw in some resistance to tiredness or the like. What do your think I could do to spruce it up?

Thank you for the suggestions for the higher levels.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:35 pm

Is not needing to sleep seriously that irrelevant? It's practically like a Sleep spell targeting EVERYONE EXCEPT ME that goes off every night.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:38 pm

OK, first, scaling feats normally have 5 benefits, because the first's what a non-specialist would get at level 1 - just saying. Also, I'd make the first be "you gain +3 against any condition that'd reduce your number of actions, and you only sleep if you want to", or something of the like.

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Is not needing to sleep seriously that irrelevant? It's practically like a Sleep spell targeting EVERYONE EXCEPT ME that goes off every night.

Who cares? You group has night watchers, it's just not negotiable - and you could get half of something even better just by having an ... argh ... all-elf party (and it's not like there's a lot of classes that elves don't do better than, say, humans, at). Someone going out and doing story-related stuff shows as often as a screentime balance problem as not, and, while the official item creation rules didn't allow benefit from less sleep, the ones in Book of Gears weren't finished. So, yeah.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:51 pm

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:I could throw in some resistance to tiredness or the like. What do your think I could do to spruce it up?

Thank you for the suggestions for the higher levels.

Resistance to fatigue and exhaustion are nice things to have. Especially if this character also takes Great Fortitude.

As a flavor thing though, I'm strongly reminded of the History Monks from the Discworld novels.

If you're not familiar with them, they're a bunch of monks who observe, record, and steer history the way it's supposed to go--and, yes, there is a plan for History.

One of the more esoteric things they do is move time around from where it's not needed (like the deep ocean, and boring museums, and classrooms of bored students), and put it to where it'd be useful--activities which explain how hours can pass without you really feeling them, and also how a handful of seconds can feel like eternity.

On a more personal level, they--or at least some of them--learn how to stretch or shrink their personal time, speeding themselves up or slowing themselves down. There's also a related trick called "circular aging" where they just refeed themselves the same small amount of time. It's basically immunity to aging and, by extension, a kind of immortality.

To spruce it up, I'd really suggest throwing around time-related effects, and, as Bigode suggested, from level 1. But give them a scaling number of rounds of the power (X + level/2 seems to work well around here) that recharge each day. Could make some flavor text about capturing a little bit of time each day, and as they practice it (get higher level), they get more of it.

Could eventually have the effects penetrate Spell Resistance, just so you can slow a dragon or high-level demon or whatever when you need to.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:55 pm

Circular aging! I'm liking that... I think I'll steal something along those lines for the revision.

I'm not as interested in time-related effects as you are, I'm afraid - but I'll see what I can do to make this more useful and intriguing to non-specialists.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 11:50 pm

Unceasing Guardian [Paragon]
Your ancestors watched over something and protected it without a bathroom break for, like, a hundred millennia.
Prerequisites: Outsider-type race
Level:

1: You don't need to sleep at all, though you can go to sleep instantly, and you're immune to effects that make you sleep. You can recover from effects that normally require eight hours or less rest to recover from by sleeping for one round.

You can enter a Warden's Trance as a full round action. While in a Warden's Trance, you are paralyzed - you can cease to be paralyzed instantly in response to anything, but this ends the trance. There is no upper limit as to how long the trance can last. In Warden's Trance, you can sense in every direction as if you were constantly looking about, even though you do not move. This grants you all-around senses, granting you a +4 bonus on Spot and Listen. If you hide before entering a Warden's Trance, your utter stillness gives you a +4 bonus on Hide, and the Listen DC to hear your breathing or heartbeat is 10 higher than normal.

While in Warden's Trance, you have Darkvision of 30 ft. per level, you can hear even if you've been deafened, and you add half your level as a bonus to saving throws against illusions.

6: You don't neat to eat or drink, though you can if you wish. When you don't eat or drink, you don't need to void your bowels or bladder, but if you do eat or drink, you can hold your waste indefinitely if necessary. Effects that would cause you to be exhausted instead cause you to be fatigued, and you're immune to effects that cause fatigue (except the previous one, don't get smart with me.) While in Warden's Trance, you can See Invisible creatures, as per the spell.

11: You can ignore ingested toxins. You don't need to go to the bathroom no matter what; your intestines are very mysterious. You're immune to exhaustion. While in Warden's Trance, you have True Seeing and can Detect Scrying as per the spells.

16: You don't need to breathe, and you can ignore inhaled toxins. While in Warden's Trance, you have Foresight, as per the spell.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:27 pm

Its... kind of cool.

But it's not very mechanically juicy. It's seriously mostly still just "fluff" that can be taken as a feat.

I don't know how to improve it because in most of my games the DM seriously waves his hands and says, "You're high enough level that that shit is taken for granted."

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:35 pm

You pick up immunity to exhaustion, immunity to breathing and most toxins, and superb sensory enhancement. What the hell do you people want? HOW HIGH DO MY NUMBERS NEED TO BE BEFORE THEY SATISFY YOU?

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 12:34 am

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:You pick up immunity to exhaustion, immunity to breathing and most toxins, and superb sensory enhancement. What the hell do you people want? HOW HIGH DO MY NUMBERS NEED TO BE BEFORE THEY SATISFY YOU?

It was retarded at first, but looks worth taking to me now. But fit this into your head - if you know what a RNG is: it's not the numbers that matter, it's abilities, immunity to fatigue isn't and true seeing is (maybe even better than the average combat feat, which might now be a worry in itself). Oops: I'd gradually downgrade the action for the trance.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:26 am

So, I'm making this feat specifically for one character, for one game. Because of that, trying to nail it down specifically in terms of mechanics is kind of dumb until I understand how it'll interact with the rest of the party.

Unceasing Guardian [Paragon]
You're basically Fantasy Angel Solid Snake.
Prerequisites: Outsider-type race
You have lots of time to get solo stealth work done at night, when you can see fine, and the few people who are awake can't see crap. You can steal things and scout out enemy personnel and location during this time, and in the worst case scenario you have time to get naps. Sometimes, if it makes a lot of sense and you won't take up too much time at the gaming table, you can murder people.

There are no mechanics here, obviously, because I'm describing the niche the feat is designed to help me fill. How do you think I should mechanically implement this idea?

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:33 am

This feat is really strange, to get the most out of it you need to have your party carry you around on a liter(sp?) and you pop back into consciousness in time to warn them about hidden things, but when you're actually required to act in anyway the feat is rather weak, just immunity to ingested and inhaled poisons, breathing, fatigue and exhaustion; not useless, but not good.

Perhaps at each iteration the abilities you used to only get during Warden's trance you gain all the time, i.e. you'd gain the Darkvision and All-Around Vision at level 6, See Invisibility at level 11, and True Seeing and Detect Scrying at level 16. That is, in addition to the normal schedule for ability gain during Warden's Trance.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:44 am

Gah, being carried around didn't even occur to me. I need to revise the feat.

That's a great suggestion, though.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:47 am

If I'm going to be an independent scout, I'm going to need strong senses. So, if the primary, base ability is 'don't sleep', with little bonus treats like 'don't eat, don't breathe', I can supplement those with the increasing inherent sensory advantages and the fatigue resistance?

Where by 'sensory advantages' I mean the See Invisible, All-Around Vision, that sort of thing.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:48 am

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Gah, being carried around didn't even occur to me. I need to revise the feat.

That's a great suggestion, though.

Could add in an ability to let the party use you to bridge gaps while you're in a trance. Or maybe use you as a lever...

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:49 am

No. You can give a sense worth a crap each time and add whatever fluff you want on the side.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 2:16 am

Look, I was EAGER to buy this feat back when it was just 'you don't sleep'. I was ready to give up one of the Combat feats from the Frank & K book. Maybe that makes me an idiot, but this whole paradigm is so far out of my experience that I feel like I'm getting the bends from shooting up in power so quickly.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 2:59 am

Fluff:

No sleep.

No hunger.

No breathing.

No fatigue.

No exhaustion.

Useful scout-senses:

At-will, close range Clairvoyance/Clairaudience.

Darkvision.

All-around vision.

See-Invisible.

See through illusions.

See the true form of things.

See through magical darkness.

See through opaque matter.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:17 am

Sounds like you're shifting from an 'inherently ageless' thing to a
'meditation/trancing' thing. That would open up the feat to all characters, which IMO is a good thing.

I'd try to work in one or two combat abilities (something relating to delayed actions, probably), but the 'ignore needs' things are a must-have, and the trancing senses are pretty cool too. Becoming ageless should be a part of the feat.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:59 am

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Look, I was EAGER to buy this feat back when it was just 'you don't sleep'. I was ready to give up one of the Combat feats from the Frank & K book. Maybe that makes me an idiot, but this whole paradigm is so far out of my experience that I feel like I'm getting the bends from shooting up in power so quickly.

OK, but man, read those feats (again if need be) - each does a lot of really useful stuff; no problem if you find something interesting and wanna take it, but once you're into level scaling, stuff needs to be appropriate to level. And you might wanna include the time manipulation stuff too.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 5:04 am

I guess I'm having difficulty thinking of what 'appropriate to level' means in the context of these sorts of abilities.