Once, he owned the arena and all who fought inside it looked to him as its champion. Kaimonn took every risk to the delight of the fans. When Kaimonn fought, fans expected his blood spilt as much as his opponent’s; arms would be severed, eyes punctured, stomachs split, then all injuries would be recovered in an instant before their eyes. Taking the opportunity, Kaimonn would grab his opponent and rend it apart with his bare hands.
Fighting this way stressed his troll regeneration to its limit. He recovered each time, but not even he could fully heal decades of severe head trauma. Kaimonn’s damaged brain lost control of his regeneration at times, throwing him into an unstoppable, mutating battle frenzy.
His handlers tried to retire him, but Kaimonn would not stop fighting. When he would not quit they ran arena games without him. The champion always arrived into the fray. Out of options, the handlers and his fans abandoned the arena. Kaimonn would not leave.
And now he waits, sitting on a dust throne and looking for challengers.
Blood of the Last Champion Opening.
Kaimonn bellows and raises his claws to the sky. His wounds begins to heal. Caught in the field of his regenerative force, your body begins to heal as well. But something’s wrong. You’re body is unaccustomed to healing this fast, It has no mechanism to tell your cells to stop growing, to stop healing. Without that limiter, there’s no telling what will happen.
Refusal (DC 32) – You resist the the gift of Kaimonn’s regeneration. It’s more of a curse. Skills: Endurance, Heal, Nature. Success: You gain regeneration 5 instead of regeneration 20 from Blood of the Last Champion.
Reckless (DC 23) –You realize that you must not let your body get back to a healthy state or this regeneration will push you past that with its unchecked growth. You must be reckless in your fighting style to counteract Kaimonn’s abilities. Skills: History, Nature, Heal, Athletics. Success: As a free action, you can add 10 to any damage you take once per turn.
Uncontrolled Growth
Caught in the Kaimmon’s regenerating field, your own healing properties begin to grow. Before you know it, they have grown out of control. Driving you beyond the limits of your body’s structure and capacity for growth, the champion’s regeneration leaves you in a worse state than before.
Roll a 1d6 and consult the following table:
1– target takes 3d8+13 damage.
2– target takes 3d8+13 damage and knocked prone
3– target takes 3d8+13 damage and weakened (save ends)
4– target takes 3d8+13 damage and is dazed and weakened (save ends both)
5– target takes 4d6+18 damage and is considered helpless against attacks (save ends)
6– target takes ongoing 15 damage (save ends) and is stunned until the end of its next turn.
7– target takes damage equal to bloodied value and takes ongoing 15 damage (save ends)
8+ target is dropped to 0 hit points.
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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What dice is rolled for the Uncontrolled Growth table?
What’s the roll for determining the Uncontrolled Growth result?
Loving it, man. I like the status removal method, I like the attacks, I like the minions. I have a couple concerns, but none are major.
1) I don’t know how many rounds a level 18 solo will generally take, but you have the worldbreaker ability activating 3 times for 3 rounds each time, likely. so we have the worldbreaker on for a total of 9 rounds, and many/most battles don’t take that long in my experience. This will mean the worldbreaker will be active for the majority of the fight, and will almost never be inactive for the last 3/4.
If that’s the case, is there a reason to not have it just stay on? Or should it have a lower duration, or activate less frequently? This may need some more thought.
2) Kaimmon has some trouble in a couple situations:
- It should be specified that Smash doesn’t require a grabbed enemy, and that it is a melee basic attack. Otherwise, Kaimmon has no melee basic, and no standard-action attack to use when he isn’t grabbing anyone.
- Kaimmon potentially has to move to enemies to attack them, but still has to make a strength check to move the grabbed enemy. One PC with a good Fortitude can effectively anchor Kaimmon, unless he releases him. And Kaimmon only has his minor-action attacks against that enemy. If he’s immobilized, he can’t even just release and move. He can use Crush All Challengers against the one enemy he has grabbed, but if it isn’t recharged, he’s SOL.
As such, I’d suggest a “Fling” power, throwing one grabbed enemy at another within range 5.
Alternatively, he could have the ability to drag enemies with him while moving without a check.
Thanks guys!
I’ve updated the post, but just to be clear: It’s a 1d6 for Uncontrolled Growth, meaning you can’t get the worst results unless you have at least two minions around you.
@ve4grm These are really good thoughts.
as for 1 — I have to see. I’m putting the Worldbreaker stuff through playtest right now, so I’ll see about that.
2 — This is another thing I’m going to put on the table for the next revision.
These comments are really well thought out and helpful. Thanks!
I really like this: my players are in the middle of a fight in an arena, and are level 16, so I think on Thursday when we pick up the game the giants they are fighting will release Kaimonn.
I have one comment: 40 to 50 Blood minions will likely appear during the fight – am I reading that right, and is that really what you meant? My players do 20 to 50 damage per hit so will always trigger at least a couple of minions per hit. I guess you mean to round down (so 25 equals two minions) but this still equals a lot of minions on the table. That in itself is not a negative, but I just wanted to check that that was how you saw things playing out. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Hi Avalanche!
To answer your question…yes.
keep in mind that this power is only during the worldbreaker and since it is an immediate reaction, only happens once a turn. So Kaimonn really wants to use this against your character that deals the most damage. It can’t use that power against every PC each turn.
You can still get many minions that way, but not as much as maybe you thought initially.
I would love to hear how the fight goes!
-Quinn
OK, I ran this last night under less than perfect conditions, and little luck through the early stages of the combat. I really enjoy all these articles, and read and play as many as I can. I appreciate the effort it must take to write them so thanks. The fact that I ran this means I thought it was a great idea so don’t take the comments below as negative. This is how it went and felt at my table last night for better or worse.
Neither of the strikers turned up (only three of five players played), so it was down to the rogue (run by another player) to do the damage. She consistently rolled poorly through about five rounds of combat. With four 16th level characters, over around nine rounds of combat and two and a half hours the party reduced Kaimonn to just over a hundred hit points. So it looks like they have him beaten, but we’ll find out next week. This lengthy combat was due to the rogue and ranged character not hitting. The swordmage was left as the only damage dealer (less than 20 damage per round), with the cleric stood behind him throwing heals.
To the feedback: I did not find this enjoyable to run because as DM I had no attacks if no one was grabbed. The swordmage stood toe to toe with Kaimonn. I used the minor to try to grab him and invariably failed because of his high defense. When I did grab him his teleport got him out of trouble. When I did have someone grabbed I used Smash against two people, if not I used Smash against one opponent. So round after round it turned into try grab then Smash, repeat. Because of this I used Slaughtering rake as an attack despite not being in Blood of the last champion mode just to mix stuff up.
These comments could be accepted if Blood of the last champion had worked well. But in my game two of the characters resisted (5 regeneration which they thanked me for). The one character who failed took the sixty hit points regen and then 23 damage and was weakened – he looked at me bizarrely and said thanks (he actually took 58 points of regen to full HP). So over three rounds I dealed out almost 90 points of healing, 23 points of damage and one weakened state to the cleric who saved after one round. Kaimonn is an ally not a monster ! (yes there were four characters but only three players – we forgot to apply the regen to the rogue since it was the second character run by one of the players).
The blood minions did help me add a bit of excitement. Around twenty have turned up over the combat so far. But their flavour did not work for me. I thought it was great that as he was hit great spurts of blood came from him and splashed around him. But the players asked me why they only appeared on certain rounds. It seemed strange to me that Kaimonn could control when blood was released – either it happens when he is hit or not. To be able to pick which hits (the ones that did most damage) caused the effect did not feel right story wise to me. I would pick a higher threshold (say hits that deal 30 damage or more lead to 1 minion per 10 hit points) and for me it would feel more right.
One other interesting meta gaming point. When the regeneration happened the players all said “fire or acid stops trolls regenerating”. I said “not this troll” Bu thought afterwards, there does not seem to be any story element like this that could help the party out of trouble. He did not have the old scholl flavour of a Troll.
So first things first —THANK YOU!
getting ready to walk out the door, but I just wanted to say that playtests are never bad. You’ve helped me a tremendous amount and both I an Kaimonn thank you again! I have a few questions which I’ll ask you later.
So Kaimonn is now dead.
This session was much more fun than the first session. Five characters including two strikers reduced Kaimonn from just under 150 HP to dead in around three more rounds. I did not use the “official” Blood of last champions rules bacause that would have meant Kaimonn was under that state all the way from bloodied until dead. Maybe that is what you intended. Regardless I allowed it to expire and then invoked it again after one round. This time no one saved. Two of the characters at or near full HP were rendered helpless in one round and took twenty some damage (what you intended I suspect). But the Swordmage who was down to three or four surges and 90 HP damage said “I don’t attempt to resist” and took the 20 regeneration. Meta gaming, maybe, but I allowed it since he’d seen the effect on his companion a few seconds earlier.
No more minions appeared partly because the strikers missed for the first two rounds (swordmage and cleric did 14 some damage each and I was waiting for more). And partly that by the final round, when both strikers did 50 plus damage, it was obvious the combat was ending, so I did not want to delay the inevitable.
I sent the players to this site as we paused post combat and their overall opinion was that this was just about the right balance. Their opinion was that the encounter was a good one overall.
So thanks for your efforts here…now the party just have to crawl through the sewers under the coliseum, enter the dwarven castle and relieve the dwarves who are under siege by an army of dragonborn and giant mercenaries – should be a breeze after Kaimonn !