Earth Elemental Help

[monboesen]

Some time ago I allowed a small earth elemental as an improved familiar for a pc wizard.

It took about two sessions before I had to take it away and give him another familiar. The earth glide ability wreaks havok with most adventures in the hands of a clever player. It would only get worse if it was the player rather than a familiar who had that ability.

The scouting potential, bypassing/disrupting traps and barriers potential, stealth potential, casting/attacking with only hands and head above ground potential etc. is very hard to deal with in my experience.

 

[Tonguez]

I once had a character that was a 'brick Troll' - essentially an Urban earth elemental it was and stated above oit was way powerful - walking through walls and slamming enemies from below and behind is kewl but unbalanced anf no doubt a headache for DMs.

I'd start with the custom spell list and build up to elemental form

 

[Hypersmurf]

The 5-level Earth Dreamer PrC from Races of Stone gets Earth Glide as its capstone ability, but you can't enter the class until 8th, so you'd get Earth Glide at 12th. (Although I understand that Cityscape may have introduced some possibility of exceeding the normal skill rank cap? The limiting factor is the 10 ranks in Spellcraft... if you could get that before 7th, you could enter Earth Dreamer before 8th.)

The Savage Species racial class for Large Earth Elemental looks like your best bet - you get Earth Glide at 1st level!

Edit - helps if I keep reading.

Druid 5 / Stonespeaker Guardian 5 looks like exactly what you're after. The Stone Form feat lets you use Wildshape to assume a 'stony and rocklike form' with a slam attack, and the Stonespeaker Guardian gets Earth Glide at 5th level.

The only problem is that you need Wildshape to take the Stone Form feat, and it's a prerequisite for Stonespeaker Guardian. You don't get Wildshape until 5th level, and you don't get your next feat until 6th, unless you can talk your DM into alternate class features or delayed feats or something similar.

The feat and the class are both from Races of Stone.

-Hyp.

 

[escaflowne777]

Actually that might work. I'll check it out and get back to here. And also, i noticed that the major controversy is about Earth Glide, I don't even really want that feature, just the abilitys like push and devastating blow.

 

[frankthedm]

Earth glide is the "Deal Breaker". Elemental immunties are potent, the unbypassable DR is awesome, but earthglide changes LA +X to LA -

 

[escaflowne777]

alright, but that changes nothing.

 

[werk]

I could see talking your DM into modifying wild shape so your druid would be able to assume elemental form earlier than 16th level, but for much weaker versions...and the 16th level ability includes smalls.

RAW...I don't know of any.