Fantasy Genetics: Half-breeds

[Kai Lord]

I have trouble concieving a Half template on a half orc. To get a half orc, you need one parent a human, the other an orc.

Not necessarily. Both parents could be half-orcs.

 

[NewLifeForm]

Designer Genes

In a campaign I ran about, oh, 20 years ago, one of the PCs was a 1/3 Elf. That is, his father was Human and his mother a Half-Elf. After some 4 years of real time, the player was made into a demi-god. It was then discovered that his mother was not really a Half-Elf, but a Half-Dragon. A Dragon in Elven Form was her father, a Human was her mother. Now remember, this is all 1st Edition...

Some 4 or 5 years ago, the character, a ranger named Arigon, appeared in a new campaign as a legendary figure many believed dead. Few knew that he became a demigod. Lots of people have heard of the Patron Saint of Dragonslayers or just "The Dragonslayer", but no one knows it's Arigon.

We run this campaign for the next four years. It follows the lives of several Elven PCs and eventually covers generations, skipping ahead to the next when the first characters became too powerful (my wife's second PC is the daughter of her first, then her third is the daughter of her second). Now get ready...

My wife's second PC marries a Gold Dragon shaped changed into Elven Form. Their daughter, a 1/2 Dragon-1/2 Elf, marries Arigon. Their child, whom we have never made stats for as of yet, is...

A Human, Elf, Dragon with God Blood!

I'd work out the math but it makes my head hurt worse then time travel on ST: Voyager.

How would I even go about making this person up? It would only be an NPC of course.

You know, you always say your never going to have one of these kinds of characters in your game and then...darn, if only the plot and set up didn't warrant it

NewLifeForm
Where No One Has Gone Before...

 

[Danzilla]

There's a draconic template in the latest Dragon Mag (301)...

And, getting back to the original request...

While discussing a Half-Dragon (Copper) templated Half-Orc PC I hope to run in a PbP thread here, I came up with the following thought, which I'm now posting here so as not to hijack the PbP reqruitment thread. Here goes:

Here's a lineage stumper:

What would you call a character whose grandparents were a Half-Elf and Celestial on one side (resulting in a Half-Celestial templated Half-Elf) and a Half-Orc and a Dragon on the other side (resulting in a Half-Dragon templated Half-Orc)?

Lineage would be 1/4 Dragon, 1/4 Celestial, 1/4 Human, 1/8 Elf, and 1/8 Orc.

Name that bad boy!! And as an added challenge, stat the template up and assign it an ECL.

statting a creature with such a mixed bad of pros and cons would get kind of tricky, but first I would start by taking the average CR of each creature and multiplying it by the pecentage included in the new creature. (ie. dragon 1/4 would work out to (.25*(average dragon CR))) don't have my books with me right now so I can’t be more specific...apply this method to each of the base parents and the largest amount would point to the "base" creature’s stats...

use the template for the base creature (assuming it’s not human, elf or orc) as your baseline for the template...

add to this the pros and cons from the other templates modified by their individual percentages... (ie. subtract 87.5% of the elves bonuses and 87.5% of their weakness if they have any and I would limit that to at least one of each if the number is reduced below 1)

continue with each template until finished and for any abilities that overlap, go with the largest bonus...

should give you something interesting...

as to what to call it...I vote for Bob...

 

[garyh]

Curses. I approached Dragon about doing the Wyrm-Touched.

For the record, it's hardly a novel concept, I'm sure it was arrived at independently.

Well, this looks to be a template, and yours is an ECL race, so it may still have a shot!!

 

[garyh]

Re: Designer Genes

A Human, Elf, Dragon with God Blood!

How would I even go about making this person up? It would only be an NPC of course.

Since I bought it a couple days ago, I've been pimpin' Natural 20 Press' Four Color to Fantasy, and I'll be darned if I didn't just come up with a way to do it again.

Using Hero levels, buy powers appropriate for the genetic background. Buy Energy Attack an enhance it to be an appropriate breath weapon, get Enhanced Vision for lowlight or darkvision, add Elemental Resistance to your breath weapon type, use Heightened Ability to raise your stats appropriately, maybe Heightened Defences for a natural AC bonus...

You get the picture. And it works with the original Dragon, Celestial, Human, Orc, Elf just as easily.

Anyway, however many levels of Hero it takes to do all this, that's essentially a custom-created ECL race of the given level.

Four Color to Fantasy - I'm hooked!!

 

[Voadam]

The Thread Rises From The Dead!

Link to this amazing Monte treasure?

http://www.enworld.org/d20reviews.asp?sub=yes&where=currentprod&which=BTVL

Here is the product blurb:

Beyond the Veil is a D20 System adventure designed for characters of 9th level and up. It includes:

Stats for the deviant Black Dragon Storamere's half-dragon progeny, including a monstrous stone giant, umber hulk, giant constrictor, manticore, carrion crawlers, and dark elves, all with dragon parentage.

***
New D20 rules for dragon bloodspawn -- those creatures with a quarter dragon blood in their heritage -- and stats for a bloodspawn vampire.
***

Maps and damage rules for navigating Storamere's lair, a semi-solid palace made of a dangerous, corrosive liquid five feet thick and located in another plane.

I don't own it so I can not comment on what he did for the 1/4 dragon.

 

[Ferret]

I created this already for my game, I actually posted it here. Called it the Wyrmtouched. I made a few alterations to it, so here's a repost:

The Wyrm-touched

Dragons' magical nature allows them to crossbreed with virtually any creature. This usually occurs while the dragon has changed its shape; it then abandons the crossbreed young. These young are often spurned and rejected by the society they are born into for their bestial appearance. Sometimes they are able to become part of society, and have children of their own, and those children have children, and so on. Over time, the dragon's blood is diluted, but its presence is rarely washed out permanently. In such families, every few generations a child will be born who bears the marks of his Draconic ancestors. These are the wyrm-touched. The wyrm-touched have no culture or way of life common to the race, given their disparate origins. Occasionally groups of wyrm-touched will find one another and form collectives where their differences aren't as remarkable.

Personality: The wyrm-touched have physical aberrations that can cause them and the families that produce them to be ostracized and feared. On the other hand, their personal magnetism gives them an undeniable mystique. The wyrm-touched grow up in a world where few people get close, and those who do have a relationship more akin to worship than to love. As a result, many are inexperienced with emotion and can come off very arrogant--if charmingly so. They seem to possess an innate drive to excellence and an insatiable curiosity for the occult and the unknown. Often, they also inherit a covetous streak from their ancestors.

Physical Description: Wyrm-touched children grow up to be about a foot taller and proportionally heavier than their parents on average. They are usually well-muscled and beautiful, or at least impressive. Wyrm-touched also display two or more features that hint at their heritage. These could include things like:

· metallic- or color-tinged skin;
· slitted pupils;
· unnaturally cold or hot skin;
· an acidic, sulfurous or ozone scent;
· thin, translucent scales;
· small, bony ridges on the jaws, eyebrows, elbows, spine or other extremities;
· one or more small horns;
· jaw fringes or whiskers;
· crested or bat-winged ears;
· sharp and/or jagged teeth;
· vestigial tail;
· hairlessness;
· spinal- and/or head-crests;
· nictitating membranes;
· long, narrow and/or forked tongue;
· vestigial, non-functioning wings;
· monochromatic eyes; and so on.

Due to their size alone, the birth of a wyrm-touched child can be painful. If the child's manifestations are physically inconvenient enough the birth may even be physically dangerous to the mother. Maternal mortality with wyrm-touched children is significantly higher than normal, further adding to the stigma that such children bear.

Relations: The lot of the wyrm-touched can be a difficult one. Often treated as outsiders--if not actively ostracized--by their parents' race, they rarely feel comfortable among them. They tend to fare better among other races who are less disturbed by their "wrongness".

Alignment: Wyrm-touched have no tendency toward any particular alignment, other than that they tend to gravitate toward extreme and strongly-held points of view. More often than not, their alignment has no neutral component to it, and true neutral wyrm-touched are very rare.

Wyrm-touched Lands: The concept of lands for a people who have no culture is something of an oxymoron. There is the occasional commune, however. These places can be idyllic magical utopiae or hives of the worst kind of horror and degradation imaginable, depending on the prevailing attitudes of the enclave. The only constants are isolation from other civilization, and that magic is ubiquitous in these mini-societies.

Religion: All wyrm-touched have direct experience of self-generated magical power. Combine that with their tendency toward arrogance and very few of them tend to believe in gods, or to count on them for very much. Some wyrm-touched clerics worship the concepts of "dragonness" or power. If aware of their heritage, some worship the gods of dragons, or dragons themselves. Dragon-worshipping wyrm-touched are often regarded as deluded by other members of their race.

Language: The wyrm-touched speak only the language that they were born to. If they learn Draconic, they are able to become so fluent that they're indistinguishable from a native speaker.

Names: Wyrm-touched names vary greatly. They lack a unifying deity to give them a touchstone for their culture; indeed, they lack a culture at all. Therefore, no wyrm-touched names are truly typical. Some orphaned or abused wyrm-touched children get descriptive names: Scaly, Snakeboy, Witch-eyes, Forktongue, etc.

Adventurers: Wyrm-touched find themselves drawn to strange careers and unusual company. Taking up the life of an adventurer comes easily to many of them. They are driven by a ravenous curiosity and a seemingly endless greed.

WYRM-TOUCHED RACIAL TRAITS
· +2 Strength, +2 Charisma. Wyrm-touched have a shadow of the strength of their draconic ancestors and the strength of their blood makes them more attractive, fascinating or terrifying than others.
· Medium-size. As medium-size creatures, wyrm-touched have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
· Wyrm-touched base speed is 30 feet.
· Resistance 5 to any hit point damage from dragon breath. Immune to the frightful presence ability of dragons.
· Darkvision: Wyrm-touched can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and wyrm-touched can function just fine with no light at all.
· +2 racial bonus on Listen and Spot checks. Like dragons, the wyrm-touched are intensely attuned to their surroundings, and notice things most others miss.
· Prestidigitation (Sp): Wyrm-touched can use prestidigitation once per day as cast by a sorcerer of their character level.
· Dragon blood. For all special abilities and effects, a wyrm-touched is considered a dragon. Wyrm-touched, for example, can use special dragon weapon or magic items as though they were dragons, and are susceptible to bane effects that target dragons. Any favored enemy bonuses that would apply to dragons also apply to Wyrm-touched.
· Level Adjustment: +1
· A wyrm-touched's favored class is sorcerer.

[color=burlywood]Adulthood    Bbn, Rog, Soc     Brd, Ftr, Pld, Rng   Clr, Drd, Mnk, Wiz
15 years        +1d4                  +1d6                +2d6

Middle Age         Old       Venerable      Maximum Age
200 years       300 years    500 years      +3d% years

          Base Height    Height Mod.    Base Weight    Weight Mod.
Male        5' 10"         +2d10          150 lb.      x(2d4) lb.
Female      5' 5"          +2d10          105 lb.      x(2d4) lb.[/color]

NOTE: The game rule information above relates to wyrm-touched birthed of humans, but wyrm-touched born to other creatures will have different game rule information.

Can I use this? Put it one of my documents?

 

[Caliban]

While discussing a Half-Dragon (Copper) templated Half-Orc PC I hope to run in a PbP thread here, I came up with the following thought, which I'm now posting here so as not to hijack the PbP reqruitment thread. Here goes:

Here's a lineage stumper:

What would you call a character whose grandparents were a Half-Elf and Celestial on one side (resulting in a Half-Celestial templated Half-Elf) and a Half-Orc and a Dragon on the other side (resulting in a Half-Dragon templated Half-Orc)?

Lineage would be 1/4 Dragon, 1/4 Celestial, 1/4 Human, 1/8 Elf, and 1/8 Orc.

Name that bad boy!! And as an added challenge, stat the template up and assign it an ECL.

So, any takers?

Traits don't always breed true, so the offspring may tend to express the attributes of once ancestor predominately, or several of them equally.

The results of the pairing could be (depending on how the genetic dice roll and how much you bribe the DM):

Odd-looking half orc (no other traits are expressed to a degree that affects game mechanics).

Odd-looking half-elf (No other traits are expressed to a degree that affects game mechanics).

Odd-looking Half-dragon human (No other traits are expressed to a degree that affects game mechanics).

Aasimar with tusks, pointy ears, and minor draconic traits.

Half-Dragon Aasimar with pointy ears and tusks.

 

[Kai Lord]

Lineage would be 1/4 Dragon, 1/4 Celestial, 1/4 Human, 1/8 Elf, and 1/8 Orc.

Name that bad boy!!

Tiger Woods.

 

[RobNJ]

Can I use this? Put it one of my documents?

As long as it's not being published. Out of the 5 ideas I sent to Dragon, this is the weakest, but if there's a shot, I'd like the chance to develop it more properly.