@ Gorbacz - you forgot the harem of deity simulacrums. =P
I hear someone say they needed a harem of deity simulacra? I know a guy...
Orcus is statted up in the Tome of Horrors. Perhaps that would be more suitable than an unstatable god being.
/sarcasm
What, Asmodeus CR 36? That's two rounds of combat from a moderately optimized mid-level party, and when I say "moderately optimized" I mean that even chimpanzees could do that, let alone human beings who actually comprehend what 'math' and 'balance' mean.
/sarcasm
Well, I can't speak for mid-level, moderately optimized parties or anything, but if you throw a CR 36 against a party of level 20/tier 10 heroes, you're almost certainly looking at a 1-2 round fight, tops. Either he'll be dead within that first twelve seconds of mythic combat or they all will.
I mean, CR 30s have a rough average of about 775 hit points, right? Based on Nocticula and Cthulu and such . . . . At CR 36, you're probably not looking at much more than 1100 or so, which still places this "god" within single round for a buffed up melee type or wizard that can bypass any and all immunities or resistances.
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They statted out C'thulu in Bestiary 4 and he's only a CR 30, there's got to be stats for Asmodeus somewhere.
He however comes with the Immortality (Ex) Feature which makes him go back to his tomb so you can never really kill him.
The other Great Old Ones all have it actually, their conditions for return are all different to coincide with their insanity.
Considering that myself and one other conversationally figured out how to have a party of 5 reliably kill Cthulhu 9/10 times, CR30 isn't THAT hard at 20 with no Mythic levels...
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That's more an issue with Paizo lowballing the stats for CR 26+ creatures.
It's a good thing we're not playing a wargame, then.
If you really looked at the nub of things and compared Pathfinder/D+D with story oriented games such as Amber, White Wolf, Everway, and others, and were really honest about it, you'd admit that we're playing a wargame that has had roleplaying elements bolted onto it.
99 percent of class mechanics, about the same percentage of spells, are either about combat directly, or modifying the battlefield where combat takes place. We use square and hex measurements in the exact same way they do in minature wargaming. Yes there mechanics and rules which are geared towards roleplaying, but if you took every bit of them out of the rulebooks, for the most part, they really wouldn't shrink that much.
I will simply note that you and I disagree about a great many things, and this is one of them.
Tacticslion, Laz's statement is objectively true IF you are talking about comparison to the games he mentions.
The emphasis on combat in Pathfinder isn't subtle. I'd expand it from a combat emphasis to a Power emphasis, because I think that better describes the nature of the game.
If you're looking to tell a story that isn't about power or battle, then you can probably find a better tool than Pathfinder. Doesn't mean you can't do it in Pathfinder, but again, we're talking about what the content of the game is focused on.
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Urg, Lincoln, I really didn't want to get into this.
But okay.
If you guys want to get technical, let's get technical.
Tacticslion, Laz's statement is objectively true IF you are talking about comparison to the games he mentions.
If and only if you are specifically looking at it from the angle that he mentions - i.e. "those games are less about combat than PF is".
From any other angle it ceases to be true, which means that, on the whole, it is incorrect (except for a very, very narrow definition of "truth"), and even then the accuracy is suspect at best, as PF is not a "a wargame that has had roleplaying elements bolted onto it" but rather, if one wants to be pedantic (which it seems is what Laz is attempting to be) a small-scale tactical combat[i] game with role play elements [i]ingrained into it (which, though they can be excised, cannot easily be excised from the various combat elements directly and intimately associated with it, due to interactions between those same combat elements and the role-play elements, such as alignments/smites, social interaction/personal saves v. spells, and similar).
There is no "war" here, outside of these rules, which are explicitly for mass combat (i.e. the kind of combat that war games rely upon for large-scale battles, i.e. the kind of thing that war relies upon).
While one could run a "war" with the "Core" stats, it would be exceedingly cumbersome and boring to do so - I can't imagine having to roll all those dice. What. A. Pain. that would be.
Hence, I disagree.
I know the origins of D&D and the hobby. It came from a war game hobby that got boring, so instead of units of troops, it was one troop and instead of a catapult it was a wizard. Instead of laying siege to the castle, it was infiltrating the dungeons, and it went on from there.
Other systems decided to minimize or emphasize more or less combat elements or change how those elements related to the game, or whatsoever have you.
That is neither here nor there. Pathfinder is a Roleplaying system with a high focus on the interpersonal local tactical elements of the Role Play genre. It is not a "miniature war game with RP elements attached".
Okey, so, that noted, I'd like to go back to the actual topic of the thread, if that's cool with you guys - Big A's stats.
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Urg, Lincoln, I really didn't want to get into this.
But okay.
If you guys want to get technical, let's get technical.
By the way, I wish to be clear: I really like you guys, and I understand where you're coming from, I just deeply disagree with the fundamental nature of what the game is with your assertion of it.
I understand that there are other game systems that focus less on combat than PF - a lot less. I accept that and am, in no way, disregarding that truth.
Instead, the fact that PF does have a huge amount of combat-focused mechanics does not make it a combat simulator with a few fiddly bits attached. Such an assertion is misleading.
The purpose of the game system is to focus the imagination to give players a clear set of boundaries with which they can interact with the world around them.
This is the same purpose as all RPGs.
The difference is purely what a given system finds necessary to codify for the purpose of expressing the story, and how the story heads toward the end.
Claiming that PF is a wargame is somewhat like claiming that Risk is a "historical war simulator" - while it takes very important cues and basic principals from the roots it's based in, it is a very, very different creature.
Risk doesn't simulate historical war. It drapes itself in trappings that one might have seen in historical warfare around specific periods and decides to be a game with that as the theme.
It is less accurate to call PF a wargame in that context because Risk, at least, tries to be a game about historical elements of warfare in both the way it purports itself and what it's trying to do.
PF, on the other hand, just provides a tactical chassis for resolving combat as part of the game about telling stories of heroic violence (and has a "bolted on" wargame to add to its tactical simulation game).
Still, you can feel about it however you want, it's just a very annoying thing to come into someone else's thread about stats for Asmodeus and say, "You're playing the wrong game, go somewhere else that cares." which, really, is what Laz's statement comes off as, intentional or otherwise.
And the really odd thing? Owing that this is a tactical game, statting up Asmodeus (or other major entities) is actually far, far more important than less combat-oriented games, as the resolution mechanics are entirely different and (with several notable exceptions, some of which I've discovered with your posts, Evil Lincoln), less important in the resolution of direct opposition.
"How powerful is Asmodeus?" becomes irrelevant when it's a maximum of five tabs or ranks, or rock/paper/scisors, or opposed suites of a few d10s. None of this is the wrong way to play, mind - and all are excellent in their own way - it's just different and having a full spread to get an over-all idea of "what can this character do" - especially at such power levels as a creature such as Asmodeus - is something that is less common to games other than the tactical-level RPG.
Hence this thread.
(Also, it's really frustrating when this is something like the fourth or fifth thread someone makes on the subject and they'd told "Stop liking this sort of thing, jerk." by posters.)
But none of this makes me like you guys less, which I can see the above post coming off as - and for that, you have my deepest apologies, as it's entirely unintentional. I just didn't want to get into that kind of a debate in this thread which isn't about that kind of thing.
Still, you can feel about it however you want, it's just a very annoying thing to come into someone else's thread about stats for Asmodeus and say, "You're playing the wrong game, go somewhere else that cares." which, really, is what Laz's statement comes off as, intentional or otherwise.
Which is strange, because I consider the case of combat and powers emphasis in Pathfinder a good argument FOR statting gods.
But, like I said upthread, I think the official tack is a wise one, and I think individual GMs must decide for themselves what role the gods play in the setting.
A while ago on giantitp, someone did a pretty good job statting up Rovagug, just by starting from the 3.5 divine rank rules and the assumption that it'd take multiple max-divine-rank gods (Asmodeus and Sarenrae) to beat him. Backtracing that block into Asmodeus' might work.
Of course, said block is wildly incomprehensibly unbeatable within the Pathfinder ruleset. 3.5 statted deities have too many meta-tricks (precognitive portfolio sense) for a PF-only party to ever stand a chance without equally divine backup.
Which is strange, because I consider the case of combat and powers emphasis in Pathfinder a good argument FOR statting gods.
That's more or less what I meant by:
Still, you can feel about it however you want, it's just a very annoying thing to come into someone else's thread about stats for Asmodeus and say, "You're playing the wrong game, go somewhere else that cares." which, really, is what Laz's statement comes off as, intentional or otherwise.
And the really odd thing? Owing that this is a tactical game, statting up Asmodeus (or other major entities) is actually far, far more important than less combat-oriented games, as the resolution mechanics are entirely different and (with several notable exceptions, some of which I've discovered with your posts, Evil Lincoln), less important in the resolution of direct opposition.
"How powerful is Asmodeus?" becomes irrelevant when it's a maximum of five tabs or ranks, or rock/paper/scisors, or opposed suites of a few d10s. None of this is the wrong way to play, mind - and all are excellent in their own way - it's just different and having a full spread to get an over-all idea of "what can this character do" - especially at such power levels as a creature such as Asmodeus - is something that is less common to games other than the tactical-level RPG.
But, like I said upthread, I think the official tack is a wise one, and I think individual GMs must decide for themselves what role the gods play in the setting.
Mmmmmmmeh. I disagree with official tack because, much like anything, I always have the power to adjust things for my game and make things that work for me using the toolsets provided.
The reason I'd like to see printed ones are many and varied, but are actually somewhat parallel to why I like Bestiaries, NPC Codexes, and Adventure Paths; or even rule-sets in the first place - I like to see "official" takes on things which I can then adjust to my own tastes or borrow and adapt for my own games.
Making things whole-cloth is never easier than remaking things.
A while ago on giantitp, someone did a pretty good job statting up Rovagug, just by starting from the 3.5 divine rank rules and the assumption that it'd take multiple max-divine-rank gods (Asmodeus and Sarenrae) to beat him. Backtracing that block into Asmodeus' might work.
Of course, said block is wildly incomprehensibly unbeatable within the Pathfinder ruleset. 3.5 statted deities have too many meta-tricks (precognitive portfolio sense) for a PF-only party to ever stand a chance without equally divine backup.
Given they used (no-longer-extant) 3.5 rules to make the things, sounds like you'd need 3.5 rules to confront the things!
For a PF-tier-variant, some gestalt-like combination of uvuudaum, gibbering orb, and infernal (that summons qlippoths instead of demons or devils) would work out pretty well if layered with the various mythic templates (and, of course, the creative blood salient ability or access to epic spells or something similar to periodically create his spawn; maybe layering the paragon, psuedonatural, and/or monster of legend template(s) onto it, and (naturally) qlippoth traits just to give it a nice bit of "really, no, why did we decide to fight this again?" feeling). While I've not really balanced the above at all outside of really, really, really rough eyeballing it, something like that would push the limits of, say, a group of level 20, mythic 10, [extra template] optimized creatures working at the top of their game. And, given the existence of imprisonment it would, in fact, be far more likely to be imprisoned than successfully killed (simply by spamming that particular effect), which, you know, wouldn't make it go away forever...
ANYway. That's just me slapping something together, and it's not quite tough enough for world-destroying shenanigans. It's just within the reach of PF critters by ganging up on it, curbstomping until it's down for a bit, and shoving it into a box.