Feat: "Create Chimera"

Okay I admit this is heavily influenced by "Full Metal Alchemist". That out of the way, the background of the campaign where this feat (or something like it) exists is one where few creatures out of the MM(s) exist. It is relatively quite a conservative, low powered, & heavy dialogue world where a creature out of the expected norm is great cause for alarm. The term "Chimera" is used within the context of any creature created from combining other creatures, not the iconic "Chimera" that exists with the MM. Anyhoo:

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Create Chimera (Item Creation)
You are capable of transmuting multiple creatures into a "Chimera".
Prerequisites: Craft wondrous items, greater spell focus (alteration), alchemy 8+ ranks.
Benefit: You can create any chimera whose prerequisite you meet. Creating a chimera takes 1 day for each 1000gp of base price. To create a chimera you must expend 1/25th of the base price in xp and use up raw materials costing 1/2 of base price. A chimera must combine at least two creatures of which one must be an animal. To provide the chimera with intelligence greater than animal, one of the base creatures must be a sentient humanoid.

Base price = (chimera hd * 1000) + (chimera cr * 1000)

Sample chimera "Owlbear" requires: brown bear; human; owl; base cost 9000gp (4500gp componants and 360xp)

The transmutation process requires the required creatures to be within an enscribed transmutation circle during the process, at the end of the process the creatures are slain. Any humanoid slain in this process must make a will save (DC = 10 + 1/2 caster level + primary spell casting ability score modifier), success allows the chimera to inherit memories and emotions.
Special:The chimera's living existence thwarts any attempt to use raise the dead on any of the componant creatures. "Speak with dead" cast on a living chimera allows communication with the dead humanoid, while if cast on a slain chimera, functions normally.

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I am not so much as worried about balance, the whole idea is to present a 'forbidden' process to the players in a structured manner. It did cross my mind to make this a spell but that struck me as too easy to aquire. Nup, the idea of a prerequisite and "componant" heavy feat was that you'd have to try hard to acquire it and thus you would have decided to use it before bothering with such effort.

Anyway, what's the verdict?

You know I bought Ecylcopaedia Arcane: Crossbreeding and liked certain parts of it. But your feat looks almost exactly what I have specifically looking for. Well written and well thought out. Thanks for sharing!

a couple of thoughts and some questions:

A lot of this can be disregarded if you aren't trying to stick as close to FMA as you can, so take it how you wish

First - If you want to be more in the keeping of the flavor of chimera in Full Metal Alchemist I would add a requirement of extensive research time invested pre-creation of the chimera. Only one human in the FMA world was any good at creating chimera, and he'd spent years trying (and most of them ended up flawed anyway). Along the same line - I might require the use of Craft (Chimera) checks (DC 20? 25? 35? this is very advanced research and easy to botch) because it seems as though the creater was never sure how the chimera would turn out until it was finished (at least the first run through, I am unsure of later "batches" of the same type). This adds another bit of discouragement to players: necessary investment of skill points.

example of research time: 1 week per HD? 1 week per 2 HD? Owlbear would take 9 weeks or 4.5 weeks to research (respectively), and that doesn't seem out of keeping with the amount of time Tucker (that was his name, yes?) spent researching before creating something that ended up being successful at all.

Second - In a FMA-style setting money is basically a non-issue. The idea of "equivalent trade" is largely ambiguous, but certainly does not mean anything to do with monitary value: Ed can easily turn coal into gold. (although I think there's compelling reasons to have money be largely a non-issue in just about any game, w/e). Presumably though the exp cost, feat investment, (and possible skill point investment) would be prohibitive for PCs anyway.

Third - I would allow the use of an "Alchemist's Stone" to pay the EXP cost. Perhaps in D&D terms "equivalent trade" basically means "blood for blood" (similar to how it is used in FMA) and that translates into "EXP for goodies", "Limbs for goodies", "Perminent Stat loss for goodies", or "Life for goodies". You may have planned this already and just decided not to put it into the feat discription (or you may be lifting one idea out of FMA and putting it into a totally non-FMA style setting)

Fourth - (removed as I forgot part of the origonal post) :O

Fifth, and last, for now - awesome work, I'm definately gonna yoink this, tweak it a bit, and incorporate it into my campaign.

Sidetrack: I've been working on a blend of FMA (Alchemy), Wild West (Guns, Trains), and Steampunk-esk elements for an upcoming game. Have you done any work with FMA-style Alchemy at all other than this? I've been combining Grim Tales magic (a bit) with Elements of Magic (a lot) and homebrew stuff (a lot) to try to get the effects that I desire, but if you've already got something awesome, why reinvent the wheel?

again, nice work, the only problems I have are nit-picky flavor issues and those only matter if you're trying to stick as close to FMA as possible

EDIT:
wow, totally missed "Any humanoid slain in this process must make a will save (DC = 10 + 1/2 caster level + primary spell casting ability score modifier), success allows the chimera to inherit memories and emotions." so disregard some of the above

Thanks guys, I appreciate the compliments, it was all made up but I did need to draft it and tweak a little before posting.

I've just finished episode 51, JDowling, and while the cool factor was still abuzz within me I thought twice about going full-on nuts and implementing the FMA magic system, that would just logically lead to more work. Instead I just went for making a feat with a bit of homage to FMA's coolness.

I'm thinking of dropping the alchemy requirement to just 8 ranks as that would allow a dedicated wizard to take the feat at 5th level - and my introductory NPC needs to be lower level than 10th.

Btw, I haven't done any major modifications that are noteworthy, in fact the current campaign is 'back to core-rule basics'. I'm trying to avoid heaps of game mechanical house rules, instead I'm concentrating on making campaign 'soft rules' that affect behaviour (e.g. we just nutted out the laws of inheritance in the case of raising the dead).

I know this was in the wayback, but I'm bumping it anyway because it's a damn good feat.

Thanks for the bump, I missed it the first go-round!

How did the feat pan out in play?
Are there anymore 'recipies' for Chimera?