First post, help with Yuan-ti

[Fox_Moxin]

Hello all, this is my first post here, so be gentle please ^_^

I'm actually pretty bad with house rules. I'm no good at determining fairness and power levels and all that, so i was told to come here and that if i ask nicely i can get help...

Anyway..erm..

Here's the thing.

My group is trying an experiment. everyone is going to play a monster.

To do so we're useing th emonster character classes as described in chapter two of "Savage Species"

Now everyone else managed to pick a monster out of appendix two quite happily, but one of my players wants to play a Yuan-ti.

I told him i'd make the race up into a Monster characetr class as best i could.

I'm failing miserably here. He wants to be a pureblood and quite frankly, i'm stumped. I've read the rules over and over and i just can;t figure out how to convert it into a char class. All i've got is the ECL fromt he back of the book, and i think i have the stats figured out.. but i can;t get these powers down...

If anyone has already done this, or can gimmie a hand here i'd really appretiate it...
i wouldn't ask if i wasn't a bit desperate, thanks ^_^;

 

[FireLance]

I haven't got a monster class off the bat, but a good quick and dirty method is to spread out the abilities evenly amongst all the levels, with spell-like abilities coming around the time that a pure class character would be able to obtain the spell.

For a yuan-ti pureblood, with 6HD and ECL+5, it would be an 11-level monster class. As a first step, you could assign the HD gain to every odd level, i.e. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th level.

Spell-like abilities for a pureblood yuan-ti are: 1st - Cause Fear, Entangle; 2nd - Animal Trance; 3rd - Deeper Darkness, Suggestion; 4th - Neutralize Poison, Polymorph Other. You could give them out at the even levels to compensate for the lack of HD gain at those levels.

Ability score increases can be spread out evenly among the 11 levels in batches of +2. Since pureblood yuan-ti have on average +24 to ability scores, you could give a +2 at each level and two bonuses at 11th level.

With Psionics, you have the additional flexibility to limit the uses per day before giving the character unlimited use at 11th or close to it. Some of the powers are minor enough that unlimited use, even at the lower levels, may not be unbalancing. For example, I would be quite happy to allow unlimited use of Detect Poison even at 1st level.

You could use the rate at which the character gains his other psionic abilities and to round out levels where the character does not appear to gain much (especially the even levels, if HD are gained at odd levels) so that he feels like he is getting something useful at each level.

Hope this helps!

Edit: P.S. Welcome to the boards!

 

[Gilwen]

Just to add something....

Also remember that the characters don't gain feats quite the same way either.... they get them based on HD not level until they complete their monster class (which they have to complete before taking any other class).

They get the one feat all characters get and won't get their another feat selection until they have 3 HD. I have a player in my game that is playing an Azer so he doesn't get his feat until 7th level because he has 2 HD for 6 levels.


Bryan

 

[Fox_Moxin]

Thanks everyone! someone has already contacted me and informed me that he has a yuan-ti thingy made up and will send it to me.

Are you sure they don't get feats the same way a regular PC does too? i thought they would....

 

[Olive]

Are you sure they don't get feats the same way a regular PC does too? i thought they would....

I'm pretty sure they get a feat like characters do: every three HD. Just remember that feats are tied to HD, not to monster class level, and you should be fine.