Is there a better thought out book than Savage Species?

[shilsen]

9th level psion.

Is that from Lords of Madness? It's not the case in the MM mindflayer.

 

[Klaus]

The +4 Charisma is nice for a sorcerer but a Savage Species Pixie is 5 ECL when it finishes it's Monstrous Levels.

A human Sorcerer 10 has 6/6/6/6/5/3 spells per day and knows. The Pixie's spells per day are 6/6/4. The Human has access to 5th level spells, the Pixie gets second level spells. The pixie's Cha will get it perhaps 1 or two more spells per day of the ones it knows but that doesn't begin to add up to the huge spell advantage the human has.

I'm not seeing the pixie superiority here.

Then look harder. The ECL 10 Pixie Sorcerer 5 has +8 Dex (great for ranged touch attacks and AC), +6 Int (tons of skill points), +4 Wis (Boosting Will saves), +6 Cha (which nets +3 to spell save DCs), Fly speed 60 (no need for the fly spell), DR 10/cold iron (making up for the reduced HD), Spell Resistance 15+class levels (so we're looking at SR 20, which gives a Sorcerer 10 50% chance of his spells simply not working!), several spell-like abilities (including dispel magic at caster level 8th!!! and polymorph!!!) plus the icing on the cake:

Greater Invisibility at will!

Sure, he has only 5d4 hp and BAB +2, but his DR, Invisibility and Dex modifier more than makes up for that.

 

[IcyCool]

I'm not seeing the pixie superiority here.

That's because you aren't using a Pixie Sorcerer 10, you're using a Pixie Sorcerer 5, because you want an even ECL. Of course a Sorcerer 5 is inferior to a Sorcerer 10 as far as spellcasting. The Pixie gets a boatload of abilities to offset that. But if you want a Pixie Sorcerer that is just as good at magic as a Human Sorcerer, why aren't you comparing like for like? Yes, the Pixie Sorcerer 10 is ECL 15, but so what? It's still superior to a Human Sorcerer 10 (ECL 10). They are both 10th level Sorcerers. The Pixie, by virtue of its superior magical ability is better than the human. In pretty much every way.

 

[Moonstone Spider]

Then look harder. The ECL 10 Pixie Sorcerer 5 has +8 Dex (great for ranged touch attacks and AC), +6 Int (tons of skill points), +4 Wis (Boosting Will saves), +6 Cha (which nets +3 to spell save DCs), Fly speed 60 (no need for the fly spell), DR 10/cold iron (making up for the reduced HD), Spell Resistance 15+class levels (so we're looking at SR 20, which gives a Sorcerer 10 50% chance of his spells simply not working!), several spell-like abilities (including dispel magic at caster level 8th!!! and polymorph!!!) plus the icing on the cake:

Greater Invisibility at will!

Sure, he has only 5d4 hp and BAB +2, but his DR, Invisibility and Dex modifier more than makes up for that.

Savage Species Pixies lose quite a few of those abilities. For instance they have no DR anymore. Add in that See Invisible is a second level spell for the human sorcerer and the pixie's a goner probably in the second or third round. All it really takes is a spell that ignores spell resistance, or for that matter a couple of fireballs is fairly sure to overcome it's SR and take it's HP to zero in a round or two.

And of course since it's favored class is "Pixie" you can't multiclass your Pixie hero without jumping through tons of hoops, unlike your human.

And pixies are probably the best bet in the book, IMO the most powerful for the ECL.

Icycool, why on earth would I compare a human ECL 10 to a Pixie ECL 15? The entire OP is about how you can't create competitive monsters because of the ECL and you're idea is "Ignore the ECL?" Good luck finding the GM who will let you create a Pixie with 10 character levels in a level 10 game.

I think the real problem with Savage Species can best be summed up by page 16, the box on breath weapons. It uses the air Mephit as it's example of how to figure out how many levels a breath weapon should cost. The ECL 6 mephit has a 1d8 breath weapon. A level 6 wizard can cast a 6d6 fireball. So the mephit's breath weapon should only cost 1 level. Somehow they don't see anything wrong with a 6d6 attack being about as expensive in levels as a 1d8 attack which is also a much smaller area of effect (Ableit you can breath more often so it's not inferior in every single way).

 

[Bauglir]

....I'm assuming the Incubus is like a succubus. Where is that from, BTW? Just Savage Species?

The 3.0e Monster Manual says "Succubi usually take a female form, but occasionally appear as males (called Incubi)." in the Succubus entry. Seems to be gone in the 3.5e version.

 

[Voadam]

I'd like to get some options for monster PC/NPCs, and frankly, Savage Species is just plain horrible.

-You can't create a 'caster' monster that isn't pathetically weak. Adding Sorcerer levels to an Incubus is just a waste. Forget about an Imp Wizard.

-HP, BAB, and saves are all absolutly terrible.


If you take X levels of Y monster, you should get the same degree of benefits as if you took X levels of Z class. It sure does not feel that way.

Has someone done a book similar to Savage Species, except they put a little more thought into it?

CR for encounters or ECL for characters. Two different calculations.

Take the CR calculations in the MM for advancing monsters.

Monsters usually gain two levels of spellcasting class (as not being good synergies) for each CR increase until they hit their HD, so it is not so bad. Giant high level sorcerers are both tough and OK spellcasters and increase CR at 1/2 levels of advancement. Compare that to adding sorcerer levels onto a human sorcerer opponent which increases CR 1/1. The giant catches up in spellcasting.

 

[Nail]

Ah.

(...After I posted I found a pdf of SS and saw the incubus entry.)

 

[mattdm]

+STR +BAB monster classes at least stack with melee based character levels.

Spell like ability monsters don't stack with caster based character levels.

All this means is that WotC wrote half-baked rules. I'm looking for rules that work, not excuses for why I shouldn't want those rules.

Look at the "magic rating" on page 136 of Unearthed Arcana. This makes caster level work sort of like BAB -- every class gets some, but the classes more focused on magic get more. Choose the appropriate progression for your monster HD. And I'd go a step further and also grant spells known and spells per day to match

As for the encounter aspect of it, the only way I see to do it, is to just make the monster WAAAAAAAAAAY over-powered, and just 'hold back' on the fly. Which is dumb. Its just dressed up desu ex machina at that point.

Tacking spellcasting as a caster of a level a little bit less than the creature's HD isn't necessarily as overpowered as it sounds, because adding spellcasting doesn't add more actions per round. By the DMG, adding a second creature with a CR two less than that of the first only raises the encounter level by 1. Adding a creature with a lower CR than that generally doesn't have much of an effect. The important thing here though is that adding another set of options to an existing creature is _much less_ effective than adding a whole second creature, because the "gestalt" creature gets half as many actions.

 

[IcyCool]

Icycool, why on earth would I compare a human ECL 10 to a Pixie ECL 15? The entire OP is about how you can't create competitive monsters because of the ECL and you're idea is "Ignore the ECL?" Good luck finding the GM who will let you create a Pixie with 10 character levels in a level 10 game.

Actually, the OP appears to be complaining about both a difficulty in creating NPC monsters, and with creating PC monsters.

My post was specifically in regards to your statement:

As written, the most magical inherent caster species, beings that can instinctively cast spells practically at birth, are supremely inferior magicians in comparison to a human.

Which is, as I showed, false. However, if you are attempting to make equal ECL characters, you will of course find that the 5th level sorcerer is an inferior caster to the 10th level sorcerer. It isn't that pixies make bad sorcerers, they don't. It's that the level adjustment of a pixie makes it a suboptimal choice for a player character.

 

[Klaus]

Savage Species Pixies lose quite a few of those abilities. For instance they have no DR anymore. Add in that See Invisible is a second level spell for the human sorcerer and the pixie's a goner probably in the second or third round. All it really takes is a spell that ignores spell resistance, or for that matter a couple of fireballs is fairly sure to overcome it's SR and take it's HP to zero in a round or two.

And of course since it's favored class is "Pixie" you can't multiclass your Pixie hero without jumping through tons of hoops, unlike your human.

And pixies are probably the best bet in the book, IMO the most powerful for the ECL.

Icycool, why on earth would I compare a human ECL 10 to a Pixie ECL 15? The entire OP is about how you can't create competitive monsters because of the ECL and you're idea is "Ignore the ECL?" Good luck finding the GM who will let you create a Pixie with 10 character levels in a level 10 game.

I think the real problem with Savage Species can best be summed up by page 16, the box on breath weapons. It uses the air Mephit as it's example of how to figure out how many levels a breath weapon should cost. The ECL 6 mephit has a 1d8 breath weapon. A level 6 wizard can cast a 6d6 fireball. So the mephit's breath weapon should only cost 1 level. Somehow they don't see anything wrong with a 6d6 attack being about as expensive in levels as a 1d8 attack which is also a much smaller area of effect (Ableit you can breath more often so it's not inferior in every single way).

The book must have suffered from the quasi-3.5 status, since the racial levels should give you a creature with all the powers of the MM version. So the pixie should give DR 10/cold iron.

You say See Invisibility is only a 2nd-level spell. But how many sorcerers take it? And how would the sorcerer know that there was an invisible pixie fluttering about so he would cast See Invisibility? With Cha 20 (very easy, since the pixie has +6 Cha), he can cast Otto's Irrestible Dance (an 8th-level spell!!!) once per day. It's a no-save ability that renders the target unable to do anything else (including spellcasting) for 1d4+1 rounds! So our Pixie sorcerer can fly in invisibly, cast Otto's Dance, then proceed to cast spells or attack with impunity!

Is a Pixie Sorcerer 5 a worse sorcerer than a Human Sorcerer 10? Of course, since you're only measuring class prowess. But is it a worse *character*? Not at all!