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I think it is kind of slow around here...(postponed)

I'll have to refresh my memory on level adjustment, I've never bothered with it before because I've had no interest in any of the races. I am rapidly warming to the idea of some sort of skeletal caster, though. As long as I had access to Alter Self and similar things.

Any other templates spring to mind that might fit the bill, CM? I bow to your experience here!
 

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Necropolitan is a template in Libris Mortis. It is Level Adjustment +0 and changes your type to undead, with no other changes.

Gravetouched Ghoul is another template in Libris Mortis that gives you the benefits of being a ghoul without losing your original racial traits or class levels. Its Level Adjustment is +2.

Mummified Creature is yet another template from Libris Mortis. As with Gravetouched Ghoul, it gives you most of the abilities of a Mummy without sacrificing your existing racial traits or class abilities. Level Adjustment +4.
 

Ahh, I don't have Libris Mortis, although now you mention it, the book of the dead would of course be the logical place to look. Time for some net research.
 


Cliched Creepy Demonic Little Girl reporting! She drove her mother insane after making her consume the flesh of her husband and her other children, and then sent her on a rampage of lust, offering her to any man interested, only to brutally murder them in their sleep afterwards. The little bastard ran away from the angry mob + chirch inquisitor, and is now happily exploiting the gullable peasants who only see her as a fragile eight year old. She is still dragging her mother along, compelling her to do her bidding, the wretched woman following against her will.

The mechanics are from Heroes of Horror:

[sblock=Unholy Scion]Not all births that follow from the mating of an evil outsider and a mortal result in a half-fiend. If the female partner in such a union is impregnated in an area of high taint, the result is the unholy scion. An unholy scion can also be created when a fiend mentally possess an unborn child within the womb. In either case, it is a creature with fiendish power and malignance, all the more terrifying for its ability to pass as mortal.

Even worse, the horror gestating in its mother’s womb is already fully intelligent and possesses the ability to influence its mother’s actions and observe the world through her senses. A mortal woman in such straits is often compelled to commit all manner of depraved acts, without ever fully understanding why she is forced to act in such ways—at least, not until the child is born.

Unholy scions look like normal members of their mortal parent’s race, but they are subtly disturbing. Their features might be ever so slightly off, their eyes possessed of an evil gleam, or they might simply make everyone around them nervous for no obvious cause. The overwhelming majority of unholy scions are humanoid, although animal scions are not unheard of.

All unholy scions are irredeemably evil. By the time the child is born, it is no longer possible to separate the possessing fiend from the newly developed mind and soul; they are one, forever intertwined. The fiend can never return to its original form, and slaying one requires slaying the other. The precise personality of the child depends on the nature of the fiend parent or possessor. Unholy scions formed from devils are deceptive and scheming, while those possessed by demons are likely to be more wantonly destructive. Unholy scions formed from taint rather than possession tend toward chaotic.

“Unholy scion” is an inherited template that can be added to any living humanoid or animal (referred to hereafter as the base creature). Animal scions are exceptionally rare; the overwhelming majority of unholy scions are humanoids.

An unholy scion uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature’s type changes to outsider (evil, native). Do not recalculate Hit Dice, base attack bonus, or saving throws. Size is unchanged.

Armor Class: The unholy power of a scion grants it a deflection bonus to AC equal to its Charisma modifier (minimum 1).

Attack: An unholy scion gains a claw attack if it did not already possess one. (The creature’s nails or claws do not appear to be any stronger or sharper than normal for its race.) If the base creature can use weapons, the scion retains this ability. A scion fighting without weapons uses its claws when making an attack action. When it has a weapon, it usually uses the weapon instead.

Full Attack: An unholy scion fighting without weapons uses its claws when making a full attack. If armed with a weapon, it uses the weapon as its primary attack and its claws as a natural secondary attack.

Damage: Unholy scions have claw attacks. Use the damage values in the table below, or the base creature’s damage values (if any), whichever is greater. (cut the table, Medium is 1d4)

Special Attacks: An unholy scion retains all the special attacks of the base creature and gains the following special attacks.

Familial Charm (Su): An unholy scion’s mother is under a constant charm person or charm animal effect (as appropriate), generated by the scion. The mother might be aware that her actions are inappropriate, even that her child is evil, but she cannot shake her emotional devotion to it. The scion can switch between its own senses and its mother’s at will as a free action. The scion can use any of its spell-like abilities with its mother, rather than itself, as the source, much as wizards can deliver touch attacks through their familiars.

Familial charm does not allow a save, and applies even before the scion’s actual birth (since the unborn scion is already intelligent and knowledgeable enough to have its own agenda).

Spell-Like Abilities (Sp): An unholy scion with an Intelligence or Wisdom score of 8 or higher has spell-like abilities depending on its Hit Dice, as indicated on the table below. These abilities are cumulative. Unless otherwise noted, an ability is usable once per day. Caster level equals the creature’s HD, and the save DC is Charisma-based.

Unholy Strike (Su): An unholy scion’s natural weapons and any melee weapon it wields are treated as evil-aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. In addition, all such attacks deal an extra 2d6 points of damage against good-aligned opponents.

Special Qualities: An unholy scion has all the special qualities of the base creature, plus the following special qualities.

Damage reduction 5/good or magic (if HD 11 or less) or 10/good or magic (if HD 12 or more).
Darkvision out to 60 feet.
Fast healing 4.
Immunity to poison and mind-affecting spells and abilities.
Instant Knowledge: The moment a fetus is corrupted or possessed, it gains a working knowledge of the world and has full access to its mental abilities, skills, and spelllike abilities.
Resistance to acid 5, cold 5, electricity 5, and fire 5.
Spell resistance equal to creature’s HD + 10 (maximum 35).
Abilities: Increase from the base creature as follows: Dex +2, Int +6, Wis +2, Cha +4. (Note: Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma modifi ers apply even before birth.)

Skills: An unholy scion gains skill points as an outsider and has skill points equal to (8 + Int modifi er) × (HD + 3). Do not include Hit Dice from class levels in this calculation—a scion gains outsider skill points only for its racial Hit Dice, and gains the normal amount of skill points for its class levels. Treat skills from the base creature’s list as class skills and other skills as cross-class.

Organization: Unholy scions are usually solitary creatures (not counting any minions they might gain), regardless of the proclivities of the base creature.

Challenge Rating: HD 4 or less, as base creature +1; HD 5 to 10, as base creature +2; HD 11 or more, as base creature +3.

Alignment: Always evil (any).

Level Adjustment: +5.

HD:.......................Abilities:

1-2....................... Charm animal or charm person 3/day1
3-4....................... Desecrate
5-6....................... Enervation, protection from good 3/day
7-8....................... Major image 3/day, poison 3/day
9-10..................... Dominate animal or dominate person1, baleful polymorph
11-12....................Animate dead (An unholy scion can control up to four times its HD in skeletons and zombies with this ability, in addition to any similar ability the scion might gain from class features), True seeing 3/day
13-14..................... Unholy aura 3/day, unhallow
15-16..................... Harm
17-18..................... Gate (This ability can only open a gate to the home plane of the parent or possessing fiend who created the scion. If the scion was created by taint rather than by fiendish possession, the gate opens to the Abyss.)
19-20..................... Polymorph any object​
[/sblock]
Not sure how this can be scaled per level, the template is LA +5. Also the mother can be a level 1 Commoner since I won't have Leadership and can't justify her having class levels. That might change later on?


 
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screw conflicted bad guy, I'm just gonna go all out evil twisted, sadistic jerk. The kind of guy I WISH I could put against my PCs, but they would just kill him anyway, this guy might survive...
 


Yes I got scared just reading her semi-background :eek:

I see one character the Dark Powers will be watching with interest. And go ahad and see what you can do crazy_monkey1956 to bring it down for lvl one status.

Also while on that topic, your progressions for the troll and flesh golem are very good. So going by them the character is a full fledged monster by the time they reach their max lvl? And with the troll is it more like he is growing up than actually training (as it is with standard classes) I get that from the he would start at medium size and end up large.

So I figure he will be growing up. But that can't be the case with the flesh golem how do you explain away it's increase in abilities. Not that you need to just want to have something to RP with.

Also A troll may take lvls in another class as it is "growing up" correct?

HM
 

By the rules as written in Savage Species, a monster character must complete their monster class before multi-classing. So, a troll character would have to complete all 11 levels of the Troll "class" before taking a level of a regular class.

However, in my own games, I often house rule that a monster character can multi-class whenever they like. Note that, regardless of when they are allowed to multi-class a monster character's monster class always counts as a Favored Class in addition to any other Favored Class they may have.

Template classes are a special case since they do not provide actual HD (they are purely LA). Thus a character taking a template class usually has to take a level of a traditional class or monster progression at 1st level and then start taking their template class levels. This works well for acquired templates like Lycanthrope or Vampire as it allows the character develop into their curse over time. With inherited templates, it can represent the character's true nature revealing itself over time. For example, the Unholy Scion character is still a child and progressing in the template merely means the character is unlocking her infernal powers as she ages.

With many creatures, the monster class can represent the character "growing up" or maturing into its full abilities. With something like a Flesh Golem and other construct type characters I generally go with one of two styles of back stories. Either 1) the character used to be a fully operational member of its type but was severely damaged. It's level progression represents a slow self-repair process OR 2) the character is newly constructed and the enchantments were either interrupted or intentionally designed to give the creature power over time to allow the creature to mature into its abilities.
 

The Unholy Scion is:

LA 5
It grants static bonuses (SR, Attribute bonuses, Immunites etc.)
It grants scaling bonuses based on HD (SLAs, SR, etc.)

It is also explicitly stated that it gets It's Familial Charm (controlling the mother) and it's attribute bonuses even before it is born.

The way i see it, it can be done like so: Static bonuses scale from level 1 to 5, scaling bonuses progress normally per level.

The problem is that I want her to be human but one can't normally determine how many hit die the character gets on level up without also getting monster HD or class levels. If she got Outsider HD she could have been progressed as a creature, but the template specifically states it does not recalculate HD.
 

Into the Woods

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