sinmissing said:
This may sound weird, but I am trying to design the beholder as a monster class. Unfortunately, I ended up with an ECL of 25. So I started over, with his little brother the gaut.
HD +6
Ray attacks +6
Flight+1
High natural armor +1
Total: 14
I reduced it to 10, because the gaut has no hands. I did not do this for the beholder, because they have telekinesis as a default eye ray.
So what do you think about making the gaut a 10 level monster class?
Too low.
First of all, I hate the savage species rules. Certain abilities should never be in the hands of a PC. Trying to balance out incredibly powerful abilities by reducing hit dice just leads to PCs that have too strong of an effect on the enemy and then die too easily.
Second, using the SS rules, if you give the gauth and ECL of 10, you are giving it a level adjustment of +4. That is too low.
A.) The gaunt has very good ability scores. According to SS, this is probably worth +2. I'd argue for more, but SS never makes it more than +2. You could argue for +1, but I'd make it +2.
B.) The gaunt has 7 points of natural armor. That is worth a +2 level adjustment.
C.) It has a good fly speed. That is a +2 level adjustment.
D.) It gains a bonus feat. That is a +1 level adjustment.
E.) It has supernatural rays. That is stronger than spell-like abilities. The total for all 7 eyes would be at least a +4. This includes the ability to launch multiple effects that duplicate spells each round (up to 6 as free actions and the central eye as a standard action).
F.) It faces a special limitation because it has no hands. That is worth a -1 level adjustment.
When you add it all up, the Level Adjustment should be roughly 10. That means the ECL should be roughly 16, not 10.
If I were to make it a PC race creature, I'd start with it as a small creature with the bonus feat (alertness), a bite attack, all around vision, flight (poor) and darkvision. It would have stats that averages around 10.
It would have no eye abilities at first. It would gain the stun eye ability (DC 13 + charisma) at 3rd level. It would gain the eye stalks (as it advanced in level) in the following order: sleep (5th), scorching ray (7th), paralysis (9th), inflict moderate wounds (11th), dispel magic (13th) and exhaustion (15th). The eye stalks would be standard actions at 5th level. He'd be able to fire 1 per round as a free action at 8th level, 2 per round at 10th level, 3 per round at 12th level, 4 per round at 14th level and 6 per round at 16th level (all subject to the 2 in a 90 degree arc rule).
I'd have it increase to medium size at 8th.
I'd give hit dice at 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 10th and 14th levels.
I'd increase the flight to average at 6th and good at 12th.
Stat increases would be spread out over the entire growth of the gauth.
That is just a rough idea off the top of my head. I hope it helps.
