Help With Templates

[dvvega]

Greetings All,

I have a need on how to give a Template to a character. I am the DM so it's all okay with my game that the character has the Template in question and I have modified it a little to bypass a slight restriction.

The Template in question is the Revenant from the Forgotten Realms Monstrous Compendium. I have assiged a +4 CR to it for use as a PC Template.

However I have no idea where to start adding the template to a Character (A Wiz12 in this case). Additionally allowing him to continue playing the character.

I am only after the mechanics of this, not advice or criticism on the roleplaying aspects of the allowance.

Thank You

 

[Crothian]

Well, there seems to be two ways you can do this. The first is add the whole template and then treat the character as 16th level (12 wizard plus 4 for the template). He won't gain 17th level for a long time since he still only has the XP of a 12th level character.

The other way is to break up the abilities the template gives into 4 levels and then have the character gain levels in the template.

 

[Nightfall]

Either of which would work for Revenant as it could be part of say a curse instead of just instant revivication.

 

[dvvega]

Either of which would work for Revenant as it could be part of say a curse instead of just instant revivication.

I decided on option 1 since his conversion to Revnant was instantaneous.

The modification is that he can think for himself, however the desire for revenge MUST be foremost in his mind. Essentially he has to do the revenant thing but it won't interfere with the party too much right now.

Would +4 be a valid level adjustment?

 

[Nightfall]

Mm let's see being undead: +1 I'd say easily.

Being unable to stay undead even after being reduced to 0, definitely another +1

Adding in the other modifiers....and the fact he's also able to sense his killers, yeah +4 LA sounds fine.

 

[dvvega]

Mm let's see being undead: +1 I'd say easily.

Being unable to stay undead even after being reduced to 0, definitely another +1

Adding in the other modifiers....and the fact he's also able to sense his killers, yeah +4 LA sounds fine.

Ah yeah forgot about that. He doesn't sense his killers, he senses those people on his "revenge list". And this is only activated within 120 feet range from him.

Now I have the mechanics out of the way I can explain the situation.

In my campaign world I allow a system of Benefits and Hinderances (influenced by my days of playing Deadlands). One of them is Veteran which means you've been around for a long time and know a lot of spooky things (ala Veteran from Deadlands). The downside is that I (the DM) add something to your background that you don't know of.

In the case of this Wizard, he came to me with the character and a good background of how he was extremely vengeful, he had a list of all the people in his youth and pre-adventuring life that had slighted him (either validly or not) and he wanted revenge. This was great in my opinionl. I decided his "bad side" was that he was actually dead but just didn't realise it. In fact one of his "revenge list" had killed him.

Not to give the game away I let him play his human wizard. No special abilities until he officially died. That didn't happen until level 12. Great player, great thinker, great survivor. At that point I took him aside and told him "you now realise that you're undead - in fact you have always been undead (here take this template)." He loved it. And so my query about templates.

Essentially he's a revnant, however his mission is to hunt down the list of people and exact his revenge on them all. When this is done he will crumble to dust. His list was originally 30 odd people long, however he gathered more as they adventured - the surly barkeep he wanted nothing to do with the "powerful wizard" etc.

And that is that ... thank you for the replies. I'm glad I've pegged the level adjustment decently. And he's a great roleplayer and thus it's not a munchkin thing, it's definately a roleplaying thing.

 

[Nightfall]

Mm Well most reverants know they are dead cause they remember being killed...but hey if he blocked that out, it's all good. I like it.