Null Stats [Rebalancing 3.5]

[Midnight_v]

And to answer your question:  Undead Giants depends on what kind of undead and what kind of Giant.  As a rule, a Giant is a poor choice to make undead

Ahh... you might be right I was thinking of this from the handbook.

Level 5: Assuming that you have the Deathbound Domain, your Cleric can make up to 30 HD at one time. Now, you lose everything you already controlled if you make more than 20 HD of Undead, but you specifically have control over everything you animate in one go even if it's over the cap. So you could animate the skeletons of two Fire Giants at once. Once you outfit them in some very reasonably priced armor and give them access to some Large Greatswords, these suckers will dish out more hurt than anyone else in the party (2d8 + 18 damage is no joke). If you have Corpsecrafter, both Giant Skeletons will have 157 hit points, which makes them individually competitive with the entire party.

But where are you going to get Fire Giant Skeletons? Certainly not from beating them in combat, they're CR 10. You're going to try to convince the DM to let you go graverobbing in the Giant Town or something. And this is pretty much your life with Animate Dead from now on. Even at the lowest level you get it, you'll be able to very plausibly craft some bruisers that are going to overshadow the party Barbarian in tanking and damage outlay, but access to corpses is probably going to be very tightly controlled.

Which is too grand an assumption really. So as a rule of thumb your right except for very specific cases whe we can break the cap. Dread necro 8 and all that but ... I digress I dont' wanna detract from your argument.

[JaronK]

Yeah, but while Giants are cute, I don't tend to like them as undead critters.  As you say, they're too hard to get at the levels where they're useful, plus you waste that nice natural armour.  Zombie Hydras are of course the best, and Skeletal Pyrohydras are awesome too (dual immunities!), but Giants are hard to transport and hard to get.

That said, you can ride around inside them.  That's fun!

JaronK

[veekie]

Yeah, but while Giants are cute, I don't tend to like them as undead critters.  As you say, they're too hard to get at the levels where they're useful, plus you waste that nice natural armour.  Zombie Hydras are of course the best, and Skeletal Pyrohydras are awesome too (dual immunities!), but Giants are hard to transport and hard to get.

That said, you can ride around inside them.  That's fun!

JaronK

Is that a necromantic mecha I see?

[SiggyDevil]

Hm. I kid not about the 'overhaul' but I don't think it would have to be approached from the perspective that all monsters need to be rewritten.

Rather (and I digress greatly, probably to the point of needing a new thread), if designing monsters properly they should be set up with similar level/ability/race combinations instead of the typical "the ends justify the means" process of designing monsters.
For instance, rather than abilities tied to every specific monster as by phenotype, the powers would be sorted in to level-appropriate stratum and grouped by creature type (Undead, Dragon, Ooze, etc) much like Pokemon ability lists.
It would be the opposite of rewriting; you pull features from preexisting monsters and put them in to a new chassis. There could be a universal "Monster Class" with slots for monster racial abilities. Increasing HP that normally varies by type would be left to specific abilities similar to Improved Toughness & friends.

From there one might decide "This undead creature is level X which means they have access to undead powers up to level X". Subtype is chosen such as ghoul, lich, whatever, and traits applied. Bam. Done.
Just like making a PC.
The range of customizable options such as skills and items would be irrelevant since you can just pick a handful of skills at maximum rank, much like the prefab PC samples in the PHB at the end of every class section.
You'd pretty much be putting race and powers list (1 per level?) together and apply ability scores.

As far as an 'argument' goes, which I never saw it as anyway, I think I'm done. It pretty much comes down to trying to convince another of ones own way of seeing things and since none of us are in the wrong or absolutely needing changes I'll bop off to some other projects.
I don't think I ever did like debates but this one has been quite informative.

In sum (IMO): null stats can be changed to base 10 with little difficulty but they don't need to be.

Skeleton giants do make great transportation. Unlimited fuel. Great protection.
Read "Abara" by Tsutomu Nihei for some really creepy skeletal creatures, although they are living biomechanical creations rather than undead.

[JaronK]

Rather (and I digress greatly, probably to the point of needing a new thread), if designing monsters properly they should be set up with similar level/ability/race combinations instead of the typical "the ends justify the means" process of designing monsters.

Okay, but you just said you didn't want to overhaul everything, and that's what this is.  Also... why bother?

For instance, rather than abilities tied to every specific monster as by phenotype, the powers would be sorted in to level-appropriate stratum and grouped by creature type (Undead, Dragon, Ooze, etc) much like Pokemon ability lists.

Seriously?  You want it like pokemon?

It would be the opposite of rewriting; you pull features from preexisting monsters and put them in to a new chassis.

That's called "overhauling the base chassis" and it's a MAJOR rewrite... with no gain.

There could be a universal "Monster Class" with slots for monster racial abilities. Increasing HP that normally varies by type would be left to specific abilities similar to Improved Toughness & friends.

So, reduce overall options for what monsters can be by shoehorning everything into one class (thus restricting how many abilities something can be for a given HP), do a massive rewrite... and we still have no actual benefit given.  All you do is require a lot of work and remove the ability to have really big creatures with lots of HP and HD that are weaker than small low HP/HD types that use special powers.

As far as an 'argument' goes, which I never saw it as anyway, I think I'm done. It pretty much comes down to trying to convince another of ones own way of seeing things and since none of us are in the wrong or absolutely needing changes I'll bop off to some other projects.
I don't think I ever did like debates but this one has been quite informative.

The issue here is that you're proposing a change that requires massive work to avoid ruining balance, which also means that anyone who wants to use this fix has to read through tons of stuff, just to... have the same balance.  You're fixing something that already works without actually improving it.

In sum (IMO): null stats can be changed to base 10 with little difficulty but they don't need to be.

Right, they don't need to be, you gain nothing, you do a lot of work, and the end result may actually be worse due to less flexibility.  Gone are the days of nifty utility undead like Ghostly Visages that have few HD but nice abilities.  Gone are the days of giant hulks with high HD that are little more than bricks (like, you know, classic giant zombies).  But nothing is gained in return.

Skeleton giants do make great transportation. Unlimited fuel. Great protection.
Read "Abara" by Tsutomu Nihei for some really creepy skeletal creatures, although they are living biomechanical creations rather than undead.

Easily creatable already with existing skeleton-like undead (Giants do make good other sorts of undead, just not Skeletons and Zombies) and if you want biomechanicals, check out Haunt Shift.

JaronK

[SiggyDevil]

I don't think it would be much work. I've dabbled in the concept of a universal monster class but it's been abandoned repeatedly out of lack of interest on my part. Haven't touched the stuff in a year, but just might again now...

[JaronK]

But you'd have to adapt every monster to that, or throw out all the old monsters, thus destroying all old modules.  And since we've still not established that there's even a balance problem in the current iteration, we have no reason to do it.

JaronK

[SiggyDevil]

But you'd have to adapt every monster to that, or throw out all the old monsters, thus destroying all old modules.  And since we've still not established that there's even a balance problem in the current iteration, we have no reason to do it.

No, you wouldn't have to throw out anything old if the new versions were in line with the same ECL balance.
The option for custom monsters would mostly be for people seeking a stable method for making new ones.