Cambion racial stat modifiers - WTF?

[sckeener]

I prefer James' version of the CAMBION and ALU-DEMON.

Because D&D already has rules for half-fiends. Both alu-demons and cambions are just humans with the half-fiend template.

Put another way, not all half-fiend humans are cambions or alu-demons, but all cambions and alu-fiends are half-fiends.

I was, however, tempted to put in an altered set of abilities for alu-demons and cambions (similar to how we're handling lemorian half-fiends in the Savage Tide Adventure Path), but in the end there just wasn't enough room in the article. BUT! There's certainly room in this thread! So what follows is my "quick and dirty" rules for creating cambions and alu-demons (drawing upon their 1st edition incarnations) by altering the half-fiend template slightly:

CAMBION
Armor: Natural armor improves by +4 instead of by +1
Speed: A cambion has no wings, but gains a +10 ft. bonus to its base land speed.
Full Attack: A cambion gains claw attacks as a half-fiend, but does not gain a bite attack.
Special Attacks: Cambions cannot smite good.
Spell-Like Abilities: Replace darkness 3/day with detect magic at will. Replace desecrate with cause fear 3/day. Replace unholy blight with levitate 3/day. Replace contagion with polymorph.
Abilities: Str +4, Dex +4, Con +4, Int +2, Cha +2

ALU-DEMON
Armor: Natural armor improves by +4 instead of by +1.
Full Attack: An alu-demon gains no claw or bite attack. She does gain a special touch attack usable once per round as a standard action. If she hits, she deals 1d6 points of negative energy damage plus additional damage equal to her Charisma bonus. She gains half of any damage inflicted in this manner back as healing.
Special Attacks: Alu-demons cannot smite good.
Spell-Like Abilities: Replace darkness 3/day with charm person 3/day. Replace desecrate with detect thoughts 3/day. Replace unholy blight with suggestion 3/day. Replace poison with polymorph 3/day (humanoid form only). Replace contagion with dimension door.
Abilities: Str +2, Dex +4, Con +4, Int +2, Cha +6

 

[BryonD]

There is. Extra feat, extra skill points, favored class any. No LA, no racial HD, etc. Why not strive to make them equal, rather than flat out inferior? An ogre fighter will hit harder, but less accurately, and have fewer feats than a human fighter.

That is all built into the +0 ECL. I'm talking about as a total package there should be a motive to choose the human.

So a good system is one that is intentionally poorly designed, with the idea that the DM fixes it? Sorry, too much like 1st edition for my tastes. If you're going to write rules, do them properly.

No, giving the core an edge IS doing it correctly for the great majority of games.

Why should humans be the most common PC? Or even common? Thats a campaign decision. Keep that stuff in the world books, not in the core rules.

You are confusing YOUR preference with what is best for D&D across the board. The core books should serve the default expectations and allow for people, such as yourself, to easily adapt as desired.

 

[Ripzerai]

Could be, but what of WotC's vaunted development staff?

Indeed.

From Wolfgang Baur's Q&A:

"What else about process? It's all a bit of a blur, but I can say with confidence that it got much, much, much more time in development and editing than other WotC projects I've done. I'm still unclear on why that is, actually. I was initially told there would be an in-house playtest, and then that didn't happen (so I organized my own, in some haste and with much gratitude to the playtest group that stepped up). Development was.... strange in other ways. What seemed to me to be the best playtest recommendation was not adopted. I'm too far removed from WotC current processes to say any more than that. You'd have to ask the developer."

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Could be, but what of WotC's vaunted development staff? Surely they should know the rules to their own game, yes? I thought it was their job to catch stuff like this. Do we know who developed this book?

Well, that's really the issue. Wolfgang's goal is to provide error-free quality work, but he's not the last line of defense. The editors and developers at WotC let these howlers slip through, when it's specifically their job to catch such things (and avoid inserting them in themselves).

 

[Remathilis]

There actually are a lot of errors in that stat block...

Many cambions either leave the lands of Eberron upon reaching the age of majority or become diabolists (Book of Vile Darkness 56) or summoners themselves.

Shouldn't that be "age of maturity"?

Hopefully, these will be fixed in the final copy, if not WotC REALLY dropped the ball on this one...

 

[Ripzerai]

Shouldn't that be "age of maturity"?

No. "Age of majority" is the correct term. Google it.

"Age of maturity" doesn't mean anything in particular.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Sorry. You're barking up the wrong tree. The d20 3.5 system is much more coherent than previous editions but still has a long way to be 'fixed'.

Totally agree. However, when you go into making something with the intent that it be unbalanced, thats not a good sign.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

That is all built into the +0 ECL. I'm talking about as a total package there should be a motive to choose the human.

There is. More skills. More feats. More HD. Better BAB.

If the answerr is to always choose human, why include ogre? Or dwarf? Why do you set out to make the ogre fighter noticably inferior? Why cant they be roughly equal?

Sure, you dont want ogres better. Or humans. But why do we have to make an ettercap a laughable choice as a character?

if you cant write good rules, dont write anything.

"Non-core sucks" isnt going to really get that many interested in buying new books now is it? If it doesnt add anything worthwhile, why am I reading it?

 

[frankthedm]

There were steps they could have taken. For instance, if they thought the various "at will" abilities that most monsters have would be disruptive, then they should just converted at-will usage into limited-use abilities, at least for the PC version.

A DM can take it upon themselves to make "PC" versions of monsters, but there is not a "PC version" of any of the MM monsters other than the demihuman races that appear in the PHB.

LA is a wonderful tool that helps reduce the amount of adventuring parties that look like a freak show. If a DM wants a menagerie of monstrous PCs, the DM can lower LA’s or adjust races to make the monstrous PC more playable. I can’t say for certain, but from the complaints I hear about LA, plenty of DMs agree with LA being set semi prohibitively.

 

[frankthedm]

But why do we have to make an ettercap a laughable choice as a character?

Because it was written to challenge PCs in a fight, not BE a PC. Its stats were chosen and abilties were set ONLY to be a foe. You don't handicap a monster in plans of making it a PC.

Now once that monster is made, THEN you set the LA based on how it's abilties compare to the PC races, erring on the side of caution.