How would you handle a half-celestial PC in your campaign?

[Azlan]

Generally speaking, I don't care for player characters that are not of the standard races. While I'll allow the occasional drow or half-ogre as a player character (i.e. a non-standard race with an ECL +1 or perhaps even an ECL +2), I think anything beyond that is too bizarre and too difficult to maintain campaign balance.

Well, a player in a recent Forgotten Realms campaign of mine talked me into letting him playing a half-celestial. (It just so happen to fit okay within this campaign's theme and storyline.) But that was before I fully realized what all a half-celestial entailed. When I read in depth the template provided in the 3E MM, I freaked out. I mean, that template is too powerful, even for an ECL +3!



Ultimately, I nixed the idea of a half-celestial in my campaign, and the player went instead with an aasimar. But I'm wondering: How do other DMs handle it when a player wants to apply the the half-celestial template in the 3E MM to his character?

BTW: I have access to only the following: the core 3E books, the 3E splatbooks, the 3.5 PH, and just about every 2E Forgotten Realms source material ever published by TSR.

 

[Cerubus Dark]

Generally speaking, I don't care for player characters that are not of the core races. While I'll allow the occasional drow or half-ogre as a player character (i.e. an ECL +1 or perhaps even an ECL +2 race), I think anything beyond that is too bizarre for, and too difficult for me to balance within, my campaigns.

Well, a player in a recent campaign of mine talked me into letting him playing a half-celestial. (It just so happen to fit okay within the campaign's theme and storyline.) But that was before I fully realized what all a half-celestial entailed. When I read in depth the template provided in the 3E MM, I freaked out. I mean, that template is too powerful, even for an ECL +3!



Ultimately, I nixed the idea of a half-celestial in my campaign, and the player went instead with an aasimar. But I'm wondering: How do other DMs handle it when a player wants to apply the the half-celestial template in the 3E MM to his character?

BTW: I have only the core 3E books, the 3E splatbooks, and the 3.5 PH at my disposal.

When I let my half-fiend cleric apply the template to his character, he has to "grow" into his powers. It will take him 3 levels to become the total fiend he is ment to be, but in that time it gives him a chance to deal with his ablities.

As far as starting with a half celestial.
Allow it, but don't give them all the powers. Give them a new power every other level untill they reach a point that will not unbalance your game.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Hmmm...The Half-Celestial.

STR +4
DEX +2
CON +4
INT +2
WIS +4
CHA +4

DR 5/Magic; progressive spell-like abilities, +1 AC, energy resistance 10, immune to disease, darkvision, and some extra skill points.

Remember that the character requires many more experience points to go up the next level, so the other players will be advancing and gaining additional new abilities at a much faster rate than he is, while he will just be maintaining, essentially.

Depending on what the character rolls for stats, he may essentially have roughly stats from 14 across the board to a few 20's and 22's. This may seem huge, but it can be reasonably challenged.

I tend to run my campaigns with a strong heroic emphasis, and I try to keep in mind that its a game, and that players want to have fun, and that they want to experience heroic, larger than life characters, so I try my best to accomodate them. As the DM, I can deal with half-celestial characters. I would rather me spend the extra time and effort working on challenging encounters and scenarios rather than being seen as always saying "no" to what the players really want to play. In my experience, half-celestial characters have never been a problem. I also look at the role-playing and plot potentials that such characters inherently bring into the campaign as something that is positive, and helps to add heroic and dramatic elements into the campaign as a whole.

I suggest that you let the player play a half-celestial character, and run with it! Imagine what kind of adventures that you can design with such a character in mind, and imagine the fun the player will have with such a cool and potentially powerful character!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Plane Sailing]

The biggest problem that I could foresee is if he overshadows the other PCs.

Why don't you get a piece of paper and scribble down comparisons for the half-celestial and the other PC's when they are at level 6, level 10, level 14 - just so you can eyeball what you think the HC will be giving up and what he'll be gaining compared to the other characters. e.g. a Sorcerer 10 vs Sorcerer 7 half celestial will have many more spell slots including 2 4th level spells and 1 fifth level spell, while the HC will have a couple of 3rd level spells, whatever spell-like abilities he'd have and much greater survivability (DR, ER, AC and hp bonuses from attributes)

I don't know what class the HC is planning on, and what classes the other PCs are, but a simple exercise like this will give you a good idea of how they are likely to match up when you try to answer the question "will everyone have equal fun?"

Cheers

 

[Voadam]

Generally speaking, I don't care for player characters that are not of the standard races. While I'll allow the occasional drow or half-ogre as a player character (i.e. a non-standard race with an ECL +1 or perhaps even an ECL +2), I think anything beyond that is too bizarre and too difficult to maintain campaign balance.

Well, a player in a recent Forgotten Realms campaign of mine talked me into letting him playing a half-celestial. (It just so happen to fit okay within this campaign's theme and storyline.) But that was before I fully realized what all a half-celestial entailed. When I read in depth the template provided in the 3E MM, I freaked out. I mean, that template is too powerful, even for an ECL +3!



Ultimately, I nixed the idea of a half-celestial in my campaign, and the player went instead with an aasimar. But I'm wondering: How do other DMs handle it when a player wants to apply the the half-celestial template in the 3E MM to his character?

BTW: I have access to only the following: the core 3E books, the 3E splatbooks, the 3.5 PH, and just about every 2E Forgotten Realms source material ever published by TSR.

Depends on the tone of the campaign the DM wants. There is nothing wrong with a choice to limit PC races to 0 ECL or winging it wide open.

A high ECL character has a lot of stats and some powers but they are fairly vulnerable to be being smooshed, particularly when they have only 1 HD. It also means that they are several levels behind in class abilities which particularly hurts spellcasters. So whether they go combatant or spellcaster as their class niche, they take a big blow.

 

[Arnwyn]

But I'm wondering: How do other DMs handle it when a player wants to apply the the half-celestial template in the 3E MM to his character?

I tell them to "take a hike, you filthy munchkin! What, is an aasimar not good enough for ya?" (Hypothetically speaking, of course. None of my players would even dream to ask such a thing since it's inappropriate for the tone/style of my campaign.) But that's just me.

(I, too, would like to "apply" the uber-kewl-d00d template on to all my PCs, but I resist the temptation to ask the DM.)

 

[Nifft]

Let him take Celestial Disciple levels...

http://klimt.cns.nyu.edu/~fishman/DnD/templates.shtml

-- N, a house rule for every occasion!

 

[Psiblade]

Count me for another one, that does not allow extreme ecl races. If the character type does not fit your campaign, do not allow it! In the past, I have seen that a overly powerful pc will dominate the action. This leads to boring campaigns for the other players. I really like point buy (28 or 32) with standard or +1 ecl races for this reason. The pcs tend to need each other in order to survive because no single pc is strong enough to handle everything.


-Psiblade

 

[Jakathi]

depends

it really all depends on the type of celestial you're talking about.
the character i'm working on is way powerful, because she's a dragon-shapeshifter with a bit of god thrown in. however. she also has the nasty tendency to attract the meanest bad-guy within 3 dimensions of her because she's so powerful. Also, she's pissed off the first evil and around 5 or so hell-gods of the aztec bent by destroying their cities in an insane killing spree. and to top it all off, her uncle (shao kahn from mortal kombat) wants her for his pet killing machine and has captured her before, infusing her with an adamtine symbiont to that end.

she escaped and has partial amnesia because of it. so. the end line is. if that guy wants to play a celestial, or a half-celestial. load him up with enemies and a few nasty flaws. (like amnesia, horrible prophetic nightmares, killer headaching inducing precog. I.E: like i'm doing with my character.) it'll add both depth and balance to the character as a whole and realism. cuz anything powerful is gonna attract equally powerful opposing attention.

 

[rpgHQ]

You should get Savage Species then, it shows level progression to acquire full ability for a lot of 'monster' races. They start out with an ECL but this allows them to work towards full ability.

Or if oyu allow ECL over +2 you should do it for the whole party. That is even folks with standard races or ECL =2 and below in your players group should be allowed to take on templates that are ECL +1 or +2, tenplates that would get everyone on the same ECL level so xp progression doesnt become too lopsided between the pc's in the group. Theres lots of nifty templates floating about for free on the web and in published print or pdf for prices significantly less than what WotC books cost, so you could get several books.

Letting the pc's have the option to take on templates during your campaign also can be the seeds for many fine adventures and subplots (or even turn into major plotlines) in acquiring them. Or even forcing a template on a character if you can figure out a good plotline for it happening. The player might stick with it or if they dont like the 'change' you have got fodder for more adventures down the road in them trying to return to normal. I had a group of players whose characters were not too carefull and had a major combat encounter in a mad wizards lab and they all ended up with a ooze template on their characters, lots of nifty side bennies to that but I made them make concentrate checks all the time when under duress or excited or nervous, or else they would momentarily loose control of keeping a solid form and bits of armor and other equipment would sink into or fall off them, or things like loosing their features while in deleicate talks with someone (one character was 'shy' around woman and a rather attractive barmaid saw his face go 'rubbery' while she flirted with him, the party ended up with a whole village after them with pitchforks and torches, thinking them dopplegangers). They all decided to find a way to revert to normal which led to a grand ol' adventure that lasted 10 game sessions of about 4 to 6 hours each. But when they finally had the means to revert back 1 of the 6 players (character was a halfling rogue type) decided the benifits outweighed the penalties.

Just remember that most templates cause some type of noticable physicality to mark the character as not 'normal', can give you fodder for all sorts of adventures just from that perspective.