NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jin" data-source="post: 1739498" data-attributes="member: 1484">Yeah, Ryllandaras was a pack of jackals at one time, but the later “upgrades” to wolves somehowBoth look pretty good.  Do you really need two different templates though?  The only real differences I saw are that one has a swarm form & you made that one less organized.I’m assuming you’re using Gryllen (aka The Tide of Madness) as your example swarm as he was the most obvious.  He was quite insane however.  (I’ll get back to this point later.)  There are two other swarm D’ivers seen in Deadhouse Gates as well – giants wasps & ants.  They work much better as a team than all of Gryllen’s rats.So, I’d say that the swarms should also have the one mind ability.  The only thing keeping all of the separate creatures from working together is how insane the shape shifting humanoid has become since it became a D’ivers.  You also have to keep in mind using your example to Ryllandaras, that he was exceptionally sane because he was also a Soultaken who later became a D’ivers during the ritual, as did his brother Treach (although Treach had completely lost his marbles & even forgotten that he wasn’t actually a tiger by the time he died anyway).The amount of HD of creatures formed & associated level loss for one of the pack’s deaths is a tricky one.  It would be easy enough to just use max HD of creatures equals character level or character level X some number.  The D’ivers gets a random creature or gets to choose one upon transformation & goes from there.  Later on, it is possible to change the creature’s type some how.I don’t know how close to canon you want to make this, but I’d go for the following:1)    They all give off a spicy scent.  Can be detected at a few hundred yards for creatures with the scent ability or a few dozen feet for any creature without it.  They may not know what the spell is, but it’ll be obvious.2)    They all go insane.  Not sure how quickly, but I know Cthulu has these rules.3)    They all hate each other (this could be part of the insanity) & can sense when another D’ivers is near.4)    They become immortal as far as natural lifespan goes.5)    It’s not contagious.  You can only become a D’ivers through a powerful ritual.6)    No hybrid form.The HD thing is tricky though.  Here are a few examples:Ryllandaras – 6 large wolves.  As they are bigger than a man, dire wolf works much better.  SO, that gives him 36HD when split apart.  Being that he is super old, 1HD per character level could work.  He’d just be 36th level.Gryllen – “Like a seething, lumpy black carpet, the D'ivers rolled over the cobbles. Rats, hundreds. Yet one. Hundreds? Thousands.; The rats hissed and twittered in a deafening roar, and surged higher on the road. Dust-grey eyes glittered in a seething storm...a wave of greasy fur; Four pale men in rags were carrying a palanquin on which sat, beneath an umbrella, a vast, corpulent figure wearing voluminous silks in a splash of discordant colours. Slitted eyes peered out from sweat-beaded folds of flesh. The man raised one bloated hand and the bearers halted.; Nawahl seemed to blur beneath his silks, his skin deepening into glistening black fur. Sharp spice overpowered the citrus perfume in a hot gust. Rats poured forth, a growing flood.; The last time he'd seen this D'ivers, the rats had been present in their hundreds. Now they were in their thousands, perhaps tens of thousands - he could only guess at their numbers.”  That’s a whole load of rats – good thing they are 1/4HD each.  So, what character level to HD conversion would this monster swarm use?  If it were under 100 rats, that would at least keep him topped out at 25th level with a 1 to 1 conversion…Anyway, as for your question about ECL, it really depends on how many HD of creatures you’re going to let someone shift into.  If someone shifts into the same number of HD as they have character levels, I’d keep it around a normal lycanthrope ECLs + 1 to 3 more.You also might not have gotten much of an answer because most folks in the US haven't even heard of these books yet.  That's really too bad as I'd say they are the best I've ever read.</blockquote>

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