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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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DragonParadox said:
Stained crimson were her wings now,
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Ah, I had just thought how cool it would be if the Erynies sworn to us had their wings turn Crimson, as they likely turned from white to black when they fell.
Goldfish said:
Rather than paying too little for an untyped +2 Strength bonus, for example, we could pay 400 IM for a constant Enlarge Person effect on the armor, which would make the wearer Large-sized and provide a +2 size bonus to Strength.
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Which is incredibly better.

I would price constant Enlarge Person at about ~2000 IM to craft, tbh. And humanoid only.
 
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egoo said:
man.
Please, stop.

This is not an argument with TNE.

From what I see here, Goldfish is genuinely trying to understand the underlying principles of this write-up and get to a compromise.

it seems to me, you're strawmanning and reacting as if it's TNE again.
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I'm just supremely sour on the whole topic by now. I've been banging my head against the idea of Power Armor since forever, and every avenue that first looks promising goes up in smoke.

And now I got @Snowfire being categorically against it, which is fair if he has SoD issues with this.
And @Goldfish says that he is unwilling to invest that much money into this and that it's underpriced. So I'm not seeing an avenue for a compromise there either.

So... why frustrate myself further with this?

Edit: Also, I spitballed this against TNE first and while that was some intense arguing, we found some common ground we could both live with.
 
Azel said:
The write-up should have made it clear that these are grounded in Construct creation and thus magic powered.
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In which case, well, Goldfish said it better than I,

Goldfish said:
All I've been trying to say is that the pricing used is much too low based on standard D&D 3.5/Pathfinder item creation rules. That's not a matter of compromise.

The Steam and Sorcery book is giving insanely low prices to accomplish things that are already outlined in non-third party material.
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They need to operate on the standard magic item creation baselines, and I'm sorry TNE, but the negative side of things that have been stated just aren't enough to justify the pricing insanity. I have no objection to magical power armour as a concept. But it needs to actually cost what it should. The way I see it, magical power armour should function similar to the artefact suits that we have an example of from Pathfinder. You could reverse engineer them, yes, but it'll cost a small fortune. This sort of gear is endgame stuff for a high level party, and it should be. Otherwise the entire foundation of fluff around the multiversal empires and how they fight wars just implodes.

I wouldn't be comfortable with pricing these sort of things below a significant portion of WBL for a character in the 17-20 level bracket. Anything less, as I said before, invalidates the idea of standard magical as a concept.

If we want to make power armour for like, a handful of small squads of elite Praetorians? Sure, I'm fine with that. But the prices listed in the writeup would allow for mass production, and that breaks everything. The Legion is already skating on the edge of that, to be quite honest. Project Praetorian on its own is skating on the edge of that. Combine the latter with power armour, with the listed costs from Sorcery and Steel? I repeat, it breaks everything. Mechanically and fluffwise. These should be treated like the artefact level items they should be. Not...well, look. The Warden armour would set back a party with a crafter bitch 80,000 gp. That's....a fifth of a level 15 character's WBL. There is literally nothing better for any character that doesn't rely on Dex or has to suffer ASF than that.

The fact that I can say that straight-faced is not a good thing.
 
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Azel said:
And now I got @Snowfire being categorically against it, which is fair if he has SoD issues with this.
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To add on here. I'm not categorically against it as a concept. I'm categorically it shitting over the entire established magical item creation system like the pricing listed in S&S does and taking a sledgehammer to how wars would actually be fought between the planes. If we can come up with it, then the people who never lost magic sure as hell could have too. Make it lost extraplanar lore, or something that, idk, Axis sometimes deploys or whatever. But the only way to control it in the long term is to rack up a price point that makes it impossible even for polities like the Peerless Empire to equip significant numbers with it.
 
Snowfire said:
In which case, well, Goldfish said it better than I,



They need to operate on the standard magic item creation baselines, and I'm sorry TNE, but the negative side of things that have been stated just aren't enough to justify the pricing insanity. I have no objection to magical power armour as a concept. But it needs to actually cost what it should. The way I see it, magical power armour should function similar to the artefact suits that we have an example of from Pathfinder. You could reverse engineer them, yes, but it'll cost a small fortune. This sort of gear is endgame stuff for a high level party, and it should be. Otherwise the entire foundation of fluff around the multiversal empires and how they fight wars just implodes.

I wouldn't be comfortable with pricing these sort of things below a significant portion of WBL for a character in the 17-20 level bracket. Anything less, as I said before, invalidates the idea of standard magical as a concept.

If we want to make power armour for like, a handful of small squads of elite Praetorians? Sure, I'm fine with that. But the prices listed in the writeup would allow for mass production, and that breaks everything. The Legion is already skating on the edge of that, to be quite honest. Project Praetorian on its own is skating on the edge of that. Combine the latter with power armour, with the listed costs from Sorcery and Steel? I repeat, it breaks everything. Mechanically and fluffwise. These should be treated like the artefact level items they should be. Not...well, look. The Warden armour would set back a party with a crafter bitch 80,000 gp. That's....a fifth of a level 15 character's WBL. There is literally nothing better for any character that doesn't rely on Dex or has to suffer ASF than that.

The fact that I can say that straight-faced is not a good thing.
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OK, I see your concerns and understand them, but the thing is I find the idea of magical power armor interesting and not just as end-game loot for god-slayers. I like the whole pseudo-astartes aesthetic I have ideas of where you could find the lore to make it. So that just leaves the question of price. I firmly believe we can reach a middle ground on that since it's just nuts and bolts not the themes of the story.
 
@Snowfire, your argument ignores the VS needed for the suit. If we price VS the same as Mythral, it would cost 8,000 IM in enchanting and 6,500 IM in materials for a total of 14,500 IM, which is the entire WBL of a 14th level character and nearly half of that of a 17th level character.

Titan pattern would be at 31,000 IM with this calculation, also known as nearly the entire WBL of a 17th level character.

It is already that expensive.

Edit: With the VS for a Titan armor, you could make 25 Longswords +2, going at 800 IM a piece and 20,000 IM total. With this calculation method, the Titan Patern costs 41,000 IM, nearly the entire WBL of a 18th level character.

This will never be used outside of very, very selected circles.

And frankly, if the Shaitain, Efreeti and Djinn break out their own versions of this for the war, I would be overjoyed.
 
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Azel said:
The point is a untyped Strength bonus, not cheesing around with Permanent Enlarge Person.

Really. Whatever. You are not willing to pay the price as-is, let alone if we make it more expensive.

Write-up deleted.
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Please don't do that. The ideas are awesome. :(

Yes, I think the price is too high, but that doesn't mean we can't work out something that's more reasonable that provides most of the same effects.
Azel said:
I'm just supremely sour on the whole topic by now. I've been banging my head against the idea of Power Armor since forever, and every avenue that first looks promising goes up in smoke.

And now I got @Snowfire being categorically against it, which is fair if he has SoD issues with this.
And @Goldfish says that he is unwilling to invest that much money into this and that it's underpriced. So I'm not seeing an avenue for a compromise there either.

So... why frustrate myself further with this?

Edit: Also, I spitballed this against TNE first and while that was some intense arguing, we found some common ground we could both live with.
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I love the concept of Power Armor. It was the idea of playing a character in Power Armor that got me into role-laying games decades ago, when I started playing Palladium's Rifts, long before I ever got into D&D or Shadowrun.

And just to be clear, I'm not against investing that much money into the armors. My initial misunderstanding was that you wanted it for all the Praetorians that reached 6th level. You cleared that up really early, but then we got sidetracked when I started trying to work out how much the armors should cost.

There are simple things we can do to reduce the cost of your armors.

Cut out the Lightning Resistance, for example. It's niche and easily gained elsewhere from allied spellcasters.

Looking over your notes, the system you are using to provide air is actually too expensive. We can use a constant Air Bubble spell to provide the same effect for just 400 IM instead of 725.

Constant Touch of the Sea can provide a Swim speed of 30 for 400 IM without needing to use an Armor Crystal, or requiring the Enhancement bonus to be increased to +3.

They already have a 30ft Enhancement bonus to their ground speed. If the armor is man-sized, why can't that still apply, so as to avoid being limited by the Power Armor's reduced speed?

Etc.
 
DragonParadox said:
squee
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DragonParadox said:
OK, I see your concerns and understand them, but the thing is I find the idea of magical power armor interesting and not just as end-game loot for god-slayers. I like the whole pseudo-astartes aesthetic I have ideas of where you could find the lore to make it. So that just leaves the question of price. I firmly believe we can reach a middle ground on that since it's just nuts and bolts not the themes of the story.
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How about finding a relatively fixed amount somewhere (and then each requiring a swarm of tinker fairies for maintenance).
Basically we can make them as powerful as we want, ignore crafting prices, at the cost of not being able to produce them ourselves i.e. "finding ancient mystical warmachines in a dwarfen dungeon".

(though personally I'd rather invest time into getting warforged)
 
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Azel said:
@Snowfire, your argument ignores the VS needed for the suit. If we price VS the same as Mythral, it would cost 8,000 IM in enchanting and 6,500 IM in materials for a total of 14,500 IM, which is the entire WBL of a 14th level character and nearly half of that of a 17th level character.

Titan pattern would be at 31,000 IM with this calculation, also known as nearly the entire WBL of a 17th level character.

It is already that expensive.
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What does the VS add? I'm arguing against the suits on the basis of building them out of straight steel, at which point you're getting far more than +10 worth of armour for only 3000 IM more. Unless the VS actively modifies the stats in a serious way, then the simple ability to construct them from steel leaves us with the same problem.
 
Snowfire said:
To add on here. I'm not categorically against it as a concept. I'm categorically it shitting over the entire established magical item creation system like the pricing listed in S&S does and taking a sledgehammer to how wars would actually be fought between the planes. If we can come up with it, then the people who never lost magic sure as hell could have too. Make it lost extraplanar lore, or something that, idk, Axis sometimes deploys or whatever. But the only way to control it in the long term is to rack up a price point that makes it impossible even for polities like the Peerless Empire to equip significant numbers with it.
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No. No they wouldn't have.

Virtual creative stasis is a huge problem in every dnd setting.

The blood war has been more a mess the same for tens of thousands of years.

The city of brass has always been the city of brass.

On top of that they don't need the escalation like we do. Not 100% all the time.

If a pit fiend wanted an elite warriors, but extra elite. They would make a bearded devil, and then stack the advanced template on to it.

If told about our power armor and project most outsiders will probably turn their noses up at the idea, until a praetorian breaks it.

That, the outer planes never really change. Ever. Is one of the staples of their existence and a HUGE part of what makes them so existentially horrific.
 
zxzx24 said:
No. No they wouldn't have.

Virtual creative stasis is a huge problem in every plane.

The blood war has been more a mess the same for tens of thousands of years.

The city of brass has always been the city of brass.

On top of that they don't need the escalation like we do. Not 100% all the time.

If a pit fiend wanted an elite warriors, but extra elite. They would make a bearded devil, and then stack the advanced template on to it.

If told about our power armor and project most outsiders will probably turn their noses up at the idea, until a praetorian breaks it.

That, the outer planes never really change. Ever. Is one of the staples of their existence and a HUGE part of what makes them so existentially horrific.
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Mortals exist on the inner planes in significant numbers. There are outsiders specifically dedicated to the idea of innovation. This argument is a fallacy and I wish people would stop propagating it.
 
zxzx24 said:
No. No they wouldn't have.

Virtual creative stasis is a huge problem in every dnd setting.

The blood war has been more a mess the same for tens of thousands of years.

The city of brass has always been the city of brass.

On top of that they don't need the escalation like we do. Not 100% all the time.

If a pit fiend wanted an elite warriors, but extra elite. They would make a bearded devil, and then stack the advanced template on to it.

If told about our power armor and project most outsiders will probably turn their noses up at the idea, until a praetorian breaks it.

That, the outer planes never really change. Ever. Is one of the staples of their existence and a HUGE part of what makes them so existentially horrific.
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This is also true. Humans are tool users first and foremost, Outsiders are magic users. They would view issues from different perspectives.

Edit: also while humans exist in the Outer Planes they are in generally subservient positions, not dictating the policies of the City of Brass.
 
Snowfire said:
Mortals exist on the inner planes in significant numbers. There are outsiders specifically dedicated to the idea of innovation. This argument is a fallacy.
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Patently absurd is more correct.

How do I say... Hnrg.

This is some pretty incredible setting and lore dissonance, especially for settings besides aswoah

Is there an official reason the Forgotten Realms is stuck with "medieval" technology?

Alright, so TLDR. The forgotten realms, and other DND setting had to be set in stasis because the world was supposed to be high fantasy. Which resulted in their being some weird and aguely worrying justifications shoved out the door.

Like Gond (sole god of gunpowder) making it literally impossible for gunpowder to work.

He just straight up divine fiated an entire chemical reaction.

It also gets tossed around that, on top of not really struggling days to decades to centuries with a wide variety of issues like humans do. Outsiders were deliberately created with almost no creativity.

To say nothing of how worthless the tiny incremental improvements of technique and technology we use here would seem worthless to say... A solar?
 
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I'm with Snowfire on this one. :/

It may seem the case of "Give Frodo a lightsaber = give Sauron a Deathstar", but...

Well, my own SoD would break if there was literally no progress happening all around the Planes throughout millennia.

Sure, it may be slower than mortals, but eventually they would have came to the same technological/magical/technomagical conclusions, had they been cost-efficient.
 
zxzx24 said:
Patently absurd is more correct.

How do I say... Hnrg.

This is some pretty incredible setting and lore dissonance, especially for settings besides aswoah

Is there an official reason the Forgotten Realms is stuck with "medieval" technology?
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Probably best not to being up Forgotten Realms 'world-building'. For instance the very concept of 'Good' gods allowing the Wall of the Faithless to exist is enough to make anyone with a functioning moral compass want to throw the source books against a wall
 
@DragonParadox, can we get the mechanics for Lich regeneration via phylactery if you're not too busy? Depending on how it works (gradually over the course of days or instantaneously after a set amount of time) we have wildly different responses for dealing with it.
 
egoo said:
I'm with Snowfire on this one. :/

It may seem the case of "Give Frodo a lightsaber = give Sauron a Deathstar", but...

Well, my own SoD would break if there was literally no progress happening all around the Planes throughout millennia.

Sure, it may be slower than mortals, but eventually they would have came to the same technological/magical/technomagical conclusions, had they been cost-efficient.
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Don't worry there is progress, it's just progress on a scale of immortal beings with millennia to refine their ideas and make them into fact.
 
Goldfish said:
There are simple things we can do to reduce the cost of your armors.
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We are arguing diametrically opposed things by now. Snowfire wants them expensive. I'm peachy with expensive and stronk. You want them cheap.
Goldfish said:
Cut out the Lightning Resistance, for example. It's niche and easily gained elsewhere from allied spellcasters.
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I'm fine with axing that.
Goldfish said:
Looking over your notes, the system you are using to provide air is actually too expensive. We can use a constant Air Bubble spell to provide the same effect for just 400 IM instead of 725.
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I'm using a Bottle of Air, which has the advantage of allowing others to draw breath from it. That's a deliberate choice. I a pinch, the suit wearer can take of his helmet and share his breathing mask with someone else.
Goldfish said:
Constant Touch of the Sea can provide a Swim speed of 30 for 400 IM without needing to use an Armor Crystal, or requiring the Enhancement bonus to be increased to +3.
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I want that enhancement bonus anyway and Touch of the Sea is hard incompatible fluff-wise. Also, it wouldn't negate the combat penalties under water, the crystal does.
Goldfish said:
They already have a 30ft Enhancement bonus to their ground speed. If the armor is man-sized, why can't that still apply, so as to avoid being limited by the Power Armor's reduced speed?
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Personally, I would rather see the armor being incompatible with other speed increases, due to bulk, but keeping the current way of alleviating the issue.
Snowfire said:
What does the VS add? I'm arguing against the suits on the basis of building them out of straight steel, at which point you're getting far more than +10 worth of armour for only 3000 IM more. Unless the VS actively modifies the stats in a serious way, then the simple ability to construct them from steel leaves us with the same problem.
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It provides it's usual +2 Enhancement and without that and the ruling from DP that it can be further enchanted as if it was +1, the price goes up a bit.

How about simply ruling that steel isn't cutting it and that you need to use either VS, Mithral or Adamantine for this?
 
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