Legends tell of a beast that roams the earth in search of one being more powerful than itself. Granted immortality by an mysterious entity known as the Shine, the minotaur named Maim is a force of nature, appearing to test the strength of heroes against its own; those found wanting will find their ends on his horns. Those with potential will be allowed to grow and reach their full potential before Maim visits them again, attacking without restraint. None have survived the second visit.
True Power Opening
Each PC may make one of the following skill checks:
Intimidate (DC 17): Unafraid of Maim’s threats and power, the PC stands prepared. Maim has -2 to attacks against this PC during True Power.
Perception(DC 15): You keep close watch on Maim’s attacks, rolling with them to take away it’s powers. Choose 1: gain 20 temporary hit points, or ignore difficult terrain penalties during True Power.
Insight(DC 19): You counter Maim’s bestial nature with attacks of your own. You may attack Maim as an opportunity attack every time you are the target of an attack.
Arcana(DC 19): With magical sight you observe the pulse of energy shining within Maim. You manipulate that energy and bleed it out. If you spend three healing surges, you can reduce the duration of the Worldbreaker by 1 round.
Download Maim’s Monster Builder file.
Credits for inspiration goes to Nosferatu Zodd of the manga Berserk, one of my favorite manga villains ever. Playtest props go to my Wave group, who faced a very “anime-powered” version of this beast.
Maim and other creations can be found on the Worldbreaker page.
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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.
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Very cool. Seems much more reasonable for a normal game than the original anime-ified version. Less in the way of a “gotcha” mechanic, etc. Couple questions/comments, though.
- What is the “Shining” keyword? I haven’t seen it before.
- Raw Strength’s “Push 8″ seems a little huge, if only for the fact that most characters will then need to spend a full round just standing and moving back, and may then just be flung away again. Yeah, Maim will often follow them, but not always. A Push 6 or 5 would have a similar effect to what you’re going for, but let you at least charge back into the fray.
- Rage of the Labyrinth – Stunned save ends? Wasn’t it only Dazed save ends on the more powerful version? Seems strong for a level 6.
- And finally, some minor bookkeeping. “Show Me Your Might”, as an immediate interrupt recharge attack shouldn’t be a basic attack. And “Hammerfist”, as the melee basic attack, should probably be higher up, near the top of the list or powers.
Grand total, though, it looks quite good.
Maim looks terrific! This beast will be nasty at the table — any suggestions for minions to group with him?
One other quibble. Show Me Your Might is a bit confusing as written. Does it grant a melee basic attack or any attack the target wishes? And since the text of the power says that whatever attack the target makes on Maim “automatically hits Maim and does maximum damage,” shouldn’t it be listed as an immediate reaction as opposed to an immediate interrupt?
Otherwise, I LOVE Maim as much as my players will HATE him!
@carolinacharlie
The intent, I am pretty sure, as an immediate interrupt is that the player declares his attack — as a reaction to that attack, Show Me Your Might allows the attack to automatically hit, forgoing an attack roll. Therefore, it has to be an interrupt. Because it is a reaction to a PC’s attack, it doesn’t grant them any type of attack; it is based on whatever attack the character uses. Thus, Maim would never use this on an attack where his foe uses a Daily, because he’d be sucking maximum damage on it — he’d probably only burn it against at-will powers from Defenders or Leaders.
Shane:
That’s a reasonable explanation that I didn’t think of when I read the power — thanks!
@ve4grm Glad you like! The “Shining” keyword is special, but I don’t want to reveal it yet as you are in the campaign where it will be relevant
The stun does seem harsh, but you do get a choice –Low damage and stunned, or high damage output. I’ll take the save ends off of stunned though, since it is a rather severe condition.
For pushing, I made it that way on purpose for Maim to break up the group. It’s basically his version of crowd control.
@carolinacharlie glad you like! The brass golems you posted on twitter would be great, but I’d also like different hazards along with him as well. Anything that Maim could knock someone into
@shane wow, you’re fast! That’s pretty much the exact breakdown. I also considered letting a player abort the attack, giving them a choice of giving and taking a hit, or pulling back at the last moment when seeing the obvious trap.
I’ll post the tweaked xml file shortly. Thanks for your comments!
I have concerns about True Power. It seems like making everything difficult terrain will make it hard to get to Maim, and resist 10 all will make him hard to kill. Both of these will slow down combat without necessarily making it more fun.
This isn’t something I’m necessarily worried about. Ranged characters care about that not at all, and in the opening there are options for ignoring the difficult terrain penalties.
As for the resist 10, it will slow down the rate at which Maim takes damage, but from his brute AC to bloodlust aura to even Show me you might, Maim gives away lots of damage.
In playtest with a specially made high power version of Maim, players unloaded into Maim within four rounds — not exactly “slow”. PCs will definitely be inconvenienced by the worldbreaker powers, but Maim is there for a challenge, and has proven to be survivable.
Thanks for your comments!
@gamefiend -
Stunned (EONT) (or Dazed (save ends)) is much better, yeah. And, maybe I’m understanding this wrong, but do you mean the DM gets a choice, or the target? In the Wave game, it was chosen by Maim, but the way you phrased it there, I’m unclear as to your intent.
For the push, I get the intent. To me, though, a push 8 AND prone is nearly the same thing as a stun for any melee characters. They can do things, but can’t really take any action against the enemy, unless they still have an action point. Light armoured characters can at least run back, but even if they run, a heavy armoured melee character wouldn’t be able to make it.
Eh, having a “useless for a round” attack is alright, but it feels weird to have it as a minor action. Especially when “Push 6 and prone” would still be a “you can’t do anything but a basic attack this round on a charge” for many melee characters.
Not a huge deal. Though I’d advise DMs to watch how it’s affecting their party. If they find that players are basically standing up, running over, and getting thrown away again before they can do anything, they should probably make Maim throw them less after that.
As for the campaign spoilers, check Wave. I’ve got to step out for a while due to time constraints. Might be able to join back up later, maybe with Akhum, maybe not. But my immediate future is busy. I explain it a bit more on Wave.
Quick note: Brian’s comment on difficult terrain makes my worry about the Push 8 a bit stronger.
In those 4 rounds where we unloaded dailies onto Maim, Gawain spent (I believe) 2 rounds just trying to struggle back to Maim, doing nothing else except a second wind, as he was beaten, slowed, and far away. And the difficult terrain hadn’t actually come into play yet.
In addition, I don’t know if the general advice it to tell the PCs the potential results of the Worldbreaker skill checks in advance, but we didn’t know anything about what each skill would do when we fought Maim. As such, while we could have negated the difficult terrain, only one of us chose to make that skill check.
Graham:
Yeah, I think you’re right re: giving players some sense of the consequences of the Worldbreaker skill checks before they choose which one they’ll make. Otherwise, they’ll just go for the skill they’re best in and hope for the best.
How many rounds does the True Power last? what does worldbreaker 2/3 mean? Thanks! I might use this with my group on Wednesday night.
Lots of great feedback! Thank you, I’m going to incorporate all this stuff in Maim 2.0 and will repost here.
@carolinacharlie @Graham I am going to edit the opening with flavor text that you can read to players so they get an idea what they can do.
@james the intention is that the Worldbreaker can trigger every two rounds and then lasts for three. I’m going to need to clear that up to make it clearer.
It might be better to just use existing mechanics for the Worldbreaker powers, actually. First used as a free action when first bloodied, then Recharge 5/6, for instance, would be pretty close to Worldbreaker 2/3.
Less set, though. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means you don’t need to count rounds, for one thing.