D&D 3E/3.5 Oozeforged!

[Rystil Arden]

Ah, well that's a misunderstanding then. Aberrant feats require that you be Humanoid -- the Dralasite is clearly not qualified.

Don't know about Totemist, but I'll look into it when I get that book. I seem to recall some builds on the optimization forum featuring the Totemist, so I'll assume it's a Tier-1 cheesy class. If you post what it can do, I'll be happy to consider it.

Thanks, -- N

Totemist (and the other Incarnum classes) aren't really that powerful, but I guess some people can use it for cheesy combos solely because they have the ability to get extra attacks from their soulmelds, kind of like what the Dralasite gets for free, actually, with the pseudopods. In D&D, eventually number of attacks becomes king in most crazy builds that I've seen.

 

[Spatzimaus]

A few suggestions:

1> Have the ooze wake up with NO limbs, having to extrude all of them.
2> If you want a lower LA, add a penalty: each limb beyond the first causes a cumulative -1 penalty to all attack rolls, skill checks, saves, etc. due to having to concentrate harder on maintaining a rigid form and independently controlling "limbs" that he was never built to have. This'll encourage players to use fewer, and allows room for Feats that reduce the penalty (one extra limb per feat?).

Inspiration for how I'd design an intelligent Ooze is the comic Schlock Mercenary. When the hero generally sports anywhere from 1-3 arms, and only grows leg-like structures when he needs to move REALLY fast, you get what I'm thinking of.

 

[Nifft]

If the build involves Rogue, the Dralasite would do better in a party group for flanking (same goes for the halfling of course), but I am confident that a Dralasite can outdamage a halfling regardless by just avoiding Rogue since its a soloing contest. The big question is, will it be okay to say they advance and attack on subsequent rounds with full attacks, or are you going to have them all moving around with spring attacks so that nobody can get in the full attack? Also, what level are we looking at? Looks like perhaps level 4 would be good for those opponents.

Regarding "King of Smack" and such things -- yeah, I agree, if you allow all sources of anything to stack, you end up with a situation where you can easily break # of attacks. Of course, I've also seen optimization builds make Kobolds look broken (Pun-Pun), so I don't give too much credit to the idea that just because something exists in a CO build, it is inherently broken.

Part of the reason I'm so blase about the four arms thing is the existance of things like the Thri-Kreen (XPH, but not SRD). There's also the Neraph Charge feat in the Planar Handbook. Finally, any Rogue in a party that's facing the kind of challenge you seem to assume will wind up polymorphed into something with multiple attacks and maybe even Pounce. With a reasonable Charisma and some ranks in UMD, you can turn yourself into a Lizardman, Troglodyte, or whatever (via a wand of alter self), and have three natural attacks. (Trogs get Multiattack as a racial bonus feat, so that's probably your best choice. Ooo, and +6 natural armor! Yeah, I win. )

Level 4 is fine. I expect opponents to behave as intelligently as they are capable of doing -- skeletal minions will come right at you, wolves will circle, flank and try to trip you, pixies will invisibly snipe at you, grick will try to ambush you (and then full attack), goblins will snipe & try to run away, Necromancer will cast spells and try to stay out of melee, etc.

Is that okay with you? Maybe we should throw in something big & stupid like an Ogre (who will be very confident in his melee ability, and thus more likely to stand & take it)?

Don't just focus on your melee damage, though. I'll need to see skill ranks and saving throws, too.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Nifft]

A few suggestions:

1> Have the ooze wake up with NO limbs, having to extrude all of them.
2> If you want a lower LA, add a penalty: each limb beyond the first causes a cumulative -1 penalty to all attack rolls, skill checks, saves, etc. due to having to concentrate harder on maintaining a rigid form and independently controlling "limbs" that he was never built to have. This'll encourage players to use fewer, and allows room for Feats that reduce the penalty (one extra limb per feat?).

This, I like. Let me run some numbers and see what I come up with. If he gets no limbs by default, he'll need to get a slam attack. (Can't have a little ooze wake up defenseless, can we?)

Thanks! -- N

 

[Spatzimaus]

If he gets no limbs by default, he'll need to get a slam attack.

Right. Slam attack, 10' movement, all the basics. Depending on what kind of sensory organs it uses, you might do something similar there; give it Tremorsense 30' as a base, and allow it to extrude "eyes" to improve its senses in other ways, at the usual multi-limb penalty. One eye gives normal vision but all ranged attacks are at -4 to hit, two gives low-light and removes the ranged penalty.

If you do that, allow for 2 "free" limbs, so that he can have one eye and one arm as a baseline. Of course, the question becomes, what exactly can he do with a single leg? So maybe just do a -1 penalty per PAIR of limbs (two arms, two legs, two eyes).

 

[Rystil Arden]

Part of the reason I'm so blase about the four arms thing is the existance of things like the Thri-Kreen (XPH, but not SRD).

Don't get me wrong--four arms may be powerful, but the thri-kreen are balanced. Of course, they also aren't LA +0, though.

Finally, any Rogue in a party that's facing the kind of challenge you seem to assume will wind up polymorphed into something with multiple attacks and maybe even Pounce. With a reasonable Charisma and some ranks in UMD, you can turn yourself into a Lizardman, Troglodyte, or whatever (via a wand of alter self), and have three natural attacks. (Trogs get Multiattack as a racial bonus feat, so that's probably your best choice. Ooo, and +6 natural armor! Yeah, I win. )

That requires investing skill points and cash for a temporary buff. I don't think anyone will argue that someone who spends their money on temp buff items can beat someone who spends the same money on permanent items while the temp buffs are still up. And if I were that Rogue, I wouldn't want to spend feats that I could only use in the alternate form (some GMs wouldn't even let me), so something like Multiattack is out of the question. Furthermore, when in a Lizardfolk form, you get three attacks, and that's it, no iteratives. That's the other side of the Tentacle feat from LoM too. If you go for a short-term build like either of those, the Dralasite will outlast you at high levels because it gets to make a full iterative routine with each arm (so at level 11, the Dralasite Fighter has 12 attacks and the Lizardfolk still has 3 with claw/claw/bite or 4 with slash/slash/slash/bite. Even the LoM tentacle guy only has 5 with slash/slash/slash/tentacle/tentacle).

How about this--in the vein of some of Spatz's excellent suggestions, as well as your own admission that you based the race on the LoM feat, what if the extra pseudopods were too clumsy to use as normal hands for weapons but could be used to make secondary slam attacks?

 

[Nifft]

I wouldn't want to spend feats that I could only use in the alternate form (some GMs wouldn't even let me), so something like Multiattack is out of the question.

Dude, seriously. I even explicitly wrote "racial bonus feat". You get that for free when you cast alter self and turn into a Trog. In fact, you can't avoid getting it.

your own admission that you based the race on the LoM feat

I object to that characterization, but whatever.

The multi-slam thing is just as broken at low level as the multi-dexterity thing, isn't it? And if it's the guy's only attack, it's his primary attack -- so they're all at full BAB.

I'm thinking of making several pre-set forms (biped, pool of ooze, and a tentacled mass kind of thing), with a few optional additions to each form, and a few feats to modify them also.

-- N

 

[Nifft]

I think these guys are cool and it brings up memories of playing star frontiers.

Thanks!

*Have fortification start out at light and have two feats to improve it (medium fort and heavy fort).

Trouble is, Warforged have one feat to go from Light -> Heavy. The feat does some other stuff, too. So I figured having the starting point better would allow a feat that has fewer mitigating factors.

*Give them the slippery mind ability for the oozy mind ability
*for oozy metabolism dirt should not be considered organic matter.

Cool! and why not? (in that order)

* Dralasites should have access to DR as a feat somehow, since their bodies are made out of "rubber" and their internal organs are deep inside of them. Maybe DR/1 for a feat and take it up to three times.

I don't see any oozes that get DR. Rubber is pretty easy to cut, isn't it?

*If I remember right they could not see as well as a human.

ISTR that the text said they can't see color, but their black & white vision was excellent. Low-light vision in humans is mostly black & white (rods vs. cones), so I figured it was a reasonable gloss. I'm not all that interested in adding mechanics -- "color blindness" might be a cool RP trait, but I don't want to give them immunity to color spray or hypnotic pattern and "balance" it by making them incapable of doing some game plot-specific thing like ringing the green bell before the red bell, or whatever.

*They generally wore a "harness" and didnt realy fit into clothes. I might do some warforged feats that gave them an armor bonus. And include that they flat out cannot wear armor other than specially made light armor.

The current mechanics certainly discourage medium or heavy armor, but perhaps I should rule out any armor at all. Psion and Wizard become a lot more attractive.

*Oh yeah, they also had problems breathing in water because they used their entire bodies as their lung. They breathed through their skin. This could be an area for a penalty if you wanted to add one.

Yeah... I think that's the other reason they couldn't wear much clothing. Hmm. Maybe a stronger penalty to various activities when wearing armor is in order.

Thanks! -- N

 

[Nifft]

8: Do they have vitals organs? If no then why are they subject to critical hits and precision damage?
9: Why are the attribute modifiers not even? Is this as a counterbalance to their other abilities, or for another reason?

I think the rest have been addressed, but let me know if you want more info on one of the ones I've skipped.

8: Yes, brains and eyepatches. They have a complex nervous system comparable to that of any other race with an zero Int modifier.

9: Exactly. They're similar to the Warforged (ECS) and the Elan (XPH) in that they have a special not-a-humanoid type and a bunch of special abliities. By making them weaker melee combatants, I hoped to balance the extra arms thing.

Thanks, -- N

 

[Rystil Arden]

Dude, seriously. I even explicitly wrote "racial bonus feat". You get that for free when you cast alter self and turn into a Trog. In fact, you can't avoid getting it.

Ah, I thought you meant Lizardfolk, who get it as a non-bonus, which you were using for comparison's sake earlier, but yeah, the trog is a nasty customer.

The multi-slam thing is just as broken at low level as the multi-dexterity thing, isn't it? And if it's the guy's only attack, it's his primary attack -- so they're all at full BAB.

If you make the extra two pseudopods beyond the first secondary slams, it should be okay. The reason you can keep it from being broken is that you can assign a damage to it (say 1d4 like the tentacles), thus preventing the acquisition of a large number of more powerful enchanted weapons. And also it might be somewhat more balanced by the need to take both Multiattack (for the extra two) and TWF (for an offhand weapon) to get all four attacks available, plus then the secondaries would be at -4 when two-weaponing.

I object to that characterization, but whatever.

Let me re-iterate: the basis for the creation and balance of this race are:
+ Aberrant feats from Lords of Maddness

Either way--just saying.

I'm thinking of making several pre-set forms (biped, pool of ooze, and a tentacled mass kind of thing), with a few optional additions to each form, and a few feats to modify them also.

Now that could be cool!