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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 2420893" data-attributes="member: 141">Another chain-of-logic feat:[sblock]I wanted a feat that would allow creatures to get the improved form of self-incarnation early.  I thought- why not a feat that gives 8 virtual hit dice?  These dice would fool the feat into thinking your ECL was 8 higher than it actually was, but would count for nothing else.  But of course a feat should be useful by itself, even if the motivation for designing it is synergy with another feat. And then I thought; well, why not make the virtual hit dice help against attacks that vary according to the victim's level?  Like the blasphemy line of spells, or many of the symbols.  But this was hard to balance, because "resistance to effects that vary according to your HD" is not a standard effect.  And it seems logical that virtual HD would grant virtual HP as well, to help protects against power words and the like.  A creature who resists holy words should also resist power words, right?Now resistance (in the form of virtual HD) is clearly worth less than immunity, but how much is immunity worth?  UK's Challenging Challenge Ratings PDF says that immunity to disease and immunity to poison are each worth a feat.  Immunity to sleep, paralysis and stunning are each worth half a feat.  My intuition is that immunity to effects that check hit dice or hit points is worth more than a feat, but not a whole lot more.  For example, it is clearly weaker than a broad immunity like immunity to mind affecting effects, which UK says is worth 2.5 feats.  So the question was to make the resistance low enough to not be equivalent to immunity (e.g. +50 HD would be too much), but high enough to provide a real benefit (e.g. +2 HD would rarely make a difference).  To me at least, 8 doesn't seem obviously unreasonable (and defensive benefits are rarely unbalancing).  Does anyone have a different intuition?The tricky part was to write the benefit and flavor text in such a way that it synergized with feats like self-incarnation but not with feats like practised spellcaster.  Or otherwise have unexpected ramifications.  This feat will make planar binding spells difficult, but that seems appropriate.  Is there any other class of effects that I should be taking into account?  [/sblock]Great Soul (General)You do exceptionally well in situations that call for a strong life force. Benefit:When determining the effects of an ability that checks effective character level (ECL) or hit dice, you are treated as if you had 8 racial hit dice.  These hit dice do not add to your saves, BAB, maximum skill ranks or hit points, do not fulfill prerequisites, do not under any circumstances improve your class abilities or caster level, and do not affect the rate in which you gain experience, levels, or level dependent feats and ability score increases.  They do improve your ability to resist spells like blasphemy, circle of death, cloudkill or daze, and let you bear eight more negative levels without perishing.  An effect that checks hit points (like power word kill) treats each of these virtual hit dice as adding 4+con modifier to your hit point total, but only to determine whether you are adversely affected by the effect; the results of a status spell, for example, would not be affected.Just one other note: If the mechanic for "embracing the void" is ever clarified (i.e. getting the Chthonic template) this feat should help.</blockquote>

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