Ancient Class Thread
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Attached document first draft at 3.5/d20 Ancient class
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I believe we have talked about this previously, but wanted to confirm. In normal 3.5/d20 rules there are limits on magic items per slot that you can be actively wield at one time. One set of boots for the feet slot, two rings one on each hand, etc… I know there are feats that let you fudge some of this. But for Ancients am i correct in assuming they no longer have such limitations?
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I’ll have to let @dwarf weigh in. I’ve never done a campaign with you all and an ancient.
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erm… yes and no. the limitations are there because without them you’d have people clanking around in platemail over chainmail over leather looking like a bundled up eskimo and still expecting to fight like Jason Statham…
it’d be more accurate to say that as the de-facto experts on CRAFTING magic items, an ancient would simply LAYER the effects he wanted to produce onto a single set of armor (for instance). in game terms, an ancient isn’t bound by how many “levels” or plusses he can put on an item - his own ability and crafting skills being the only “cap” he has to contend with.
so, for example, a 20th level caster would still be bound by the rules to max out a wand at 4th lvl spell efx - whereas an ancient could easily craft Wands of Disintegrate or even Meteor Swarm. along the same lines, he could make a Chameleon Ring of Evasion and Protection +8 - which would have even old Elminster scratching his head and muttering “How the hell did you get all those to work together ??”
as the ancient grows in power and skill, he can also learn how to BEND reality a lil, and bypass other limitations (like the one-ring-per-hand rule) - presuming he even NEEDS to, and hasn’t crafted a RingStaff or similar gizmo along the line already. and then, of course, you’ve got their whirling and orbiting ItemCloud that others prefer, both for defense and enhancing their offensive magics.
lotsa options, so little time…
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Any insight into what you are thinking about? Without giving away your plotting against the manaverse?
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Well i have been pondering Ancients here and there for about a level or so now, and trying to get a sense of them. One night at Show-Mes, after we had finished the discussion of bending the Manaverse over, i asked Dwarf about Ancients and how they see or interact with magic items. It was interesting because they really don’t use metamagic feats, not like an artificer’s does. If you want that sort of affect they either have a class ability, build a add-on to generate it, or create a item that did what you needed.
Since Ancient’s I think would be technically be classified as a Epic prestige class (at least i think so), the newly minted Ancient would need to do something with all the feat slots they once filled with metamagic abilities. So that got me thinking about the notion of metaitem feats, and the obvious epic metaitem feats, not to be confused with Crafting feats. Since this is a 10E/ForgottenMess/Manaverse/3.5/d20 Hybrid with a dash of 2E sprinkled in, it seems like that would be a obvious evolution, that was somehow missed.
So following that line of thinking, i started thinking about item clouds, item interoperability, item shape change, item inheritance, item locks, item sequencers/matrixes, item swarms, multiple item layering/slots, and item mastery concepts, etc… basically all around what some metaitem concept feats may look like, which is how i came around to asking that the above question, trying to get a sense of the class.
-Kargin
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So one of the class features of the Ancients, is they are able to use/operate any magic item they pick up at their class level or higher. How would that work with cube technology?
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Constructs seem to be a significant area of crafting, that i know little about with regard to Ancients. @dwarf do you have any long forgotten lore about Ancients and their Crafting of Constructs sloshing around in that beers soaked brain of yours?
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well the cubes themselves do not change - a 3rd level cube for Mezron is the same 3rd level cube for Daren. if Mezron jacks it into a Fireball Wand, it pukes out a 6d6 fireball when he says the command word - watching it sail across Obelisk Square and explode harmlessly across Sorvani’s tower, which becomes covered on one 40’ area with soot. lounging inside on his leafy elven recliner, Sorvani gets annoyed.
however if Daren takes it out of his hand and triggers the same wand, using the same cube by saying the same word - a YUUGE fireball belches out of the wand, scorching its tip and rattles the entire tower to the tune of 52d6 (or whatever level D is at nowadays), coating it with inches of soot from top to bottom. Sorvani gets worried.
enjoying himself now, Daren kicks on his full array of One abilities - drawing out the remainder of the cube’s charges, running them through all his amplification circuits and inscribes a quick Mystran rune on the wand which causes reddish-orange burning cracks to run along its length. channeling the titanic manawave back into the wand unleashes a MASSIVE white-hot hellball of plasma that screams across Obelisk Square - triggering a protective dome of blue spherecrystal which builds upward from the earth towards the sky.
time seems to slow to a crawl as the dome races the hellball - which impacts Sorvani’s tower and becomes a mushroom cloud of burning manacite and magnesium as the explosion is channeled upward by the uncompleted dome into the skies above V’ral, scorching birds and spying laputans to fine white ash in a blink of unparalleled pain. Sorvani finally learns what it is to be white.
peering incredulously up at the One, Mezron wets himself when Daren reaches out and grabs him by the top of the head - lifting him an inch off the ground. grinning mischievously, the firstborn powermaster whispers “Fate Point” and rewinds time for everybody but himself and Mezz.
The bluish crystalline dome unspools back into the ground, hellish plasma gets sucked from the sky back into the reassembling tower and the titanic white ball of MEAN gets yoinked back across Obelisk Square into Mezron’s wand as he watches. Unscribing the divinity rune, Daren pushes 8 charges back into the cube as time stops for a second - then starts back up again normally.
“Cool wand, Mezz - needs a little work tho !” Daren advises, handing it back and vanishes with a BIP noise. Across the square, Sorvani casts open the soot-blackened shutters on his tower and glares at the hapless mage-thief. “THE HELL ARE YOU DOING !?!?!”
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constructs… are a “phase” that all wizards and crafters go through. they get this idea that building an automaton will somehow save them time and money - channeling a great deal of both into crafting one or more.
then adventurers happen - and they learn first-hand how EXPENSIVE constructs really are, when repair costs start rolling in. then they either bankrupt themselves playing Magic Repair Mechanic or figure out that peons are cheaper and more easily replaceable in the short and long term.
eventually, they wind up relegating the construct to either boring guard duty over unneeded and long-forgotten assets (like an unpaid and unsleeping security guard over your rental storage unit) or giving it one task and then sneaking away to make it someone elses future problem
so yeah - most ancients either don’t bother or just make “one-shot” constructs to do one specific task over and over again. “You, dig out rocks. You put rocks in wheelie cart. You move wheelie cart outside. You empty wheelie cart.” rinse and repeat.
once in a blue pube, someone will get the bright idea to make an INTELLIGENT construct, then wind up having to deal with free will on top of everything else you already have to pay for. “Whaddya mean you want a vacation ?? Motherfucker i BUILT you !! Get back to work !” goes about as well as giving free will to humans did
. . . go figure
