Is This Unbalanced?

[anest1s]

They need to be alive to get eaten, or dead are ok too?

 

[the Jester]

So, can we make a permanent change balanced and if not, how long should the effect last?

Absolutely not.

I'd make it grant a +4 competence bonus to one skill the victim was trained in for 24 hours.

 

[delericho]

So, can we make a permanent change balanced and if not, how long should the effect last?

Sure, but there has to be a trade-off there. So, you permanently boost your Disable Device skill... at the expense of permanently losing ranks in some other skill.

But, as with Jester says, I'd be inclined to instead give a +4 bonus to one skill for one day. Or something like that - depending on the level of the power.

 

[Samloyal23]

Thematically, I really like the idea of a permanent change, the idea that it alters the cannibal when he does this, but it does look like a gamebreaker, so, more tweaking...

Eat The Soul(su)
By eating a murdered victim’s brain you gain a portion of his knowledge and power. If either your victim’s Int or Wis is higher than yours, you gain that score for 24 hours. Otherwise you gain a +2 bonus to either Int or Wis. In addition you may gain one skills, feat, or spell known to your victim. If you roll over your new Int score you retain this knowledge for 24 hours. Otherwise it is forgotten after 1d4 hours. If you choose a skill you gain up to 4 ranks in one skill possessed by the victim in life. If you select a feat you must meet all prerequisites. If you choose a spell you must be able to cast it based on your class and level. If the victim you select suffers from any type of mental condition or illness, such a geas, charm, or insanity, you automatically contract it, whether permanent or temporary.

You must kill the victim yourself by doing the final damage that ends the victim's life and you must devour the victim's brain within one hour, while it is still fresh, to gain any benefits from it.

 

[billd91]

If you wanted to make it permanent, consider having the PC "bind" the soul into a piece of the dead creature's remains. Then, as long as the remains are worn (or something) as a magic item, the character with the PrC gains some power (+2 to Int or Wis + effective ranks in 1 skill). The benefit then becomes subject to theft, sunder, (temporary) dispel, or (permanent) disjunction.

 

[kinem]

So, can we make a permanent change balanced?

Yes, but it needs limits and a permanent cost to balance it.

One way would be by adding a class feature (and obviously subtracting other class features - like skill points or BAB, etc - until balance is roughly achieved!) that lets you make permanent just one gain of 4 points of permanent gains to skills, or one feat or spell, your choice, from the ones you steal temporarily. So in the end, you're not better than other characters. To sweeten the pot and add flavor, though, maybe you can swap out your "permanent gain" and lose it in place of the new shiny one you want.

 

[Samloyal23]

If you wanted to make it permanent, consider having the PC "bind" the soul into a piece of the dead creature's remains. Then, as long as the remains are worn (or something) as a magic item, the character with the PrC gains some power (+2 to Int or Wis + effective ranks in 1 skill). The benefit then becomes subject to theft, sunder, (temporary) dispel, or (permanent) disjunction.

That is an interesting idea. It could explain why some serial killers keep trophies...

 

[Light Knight]

Is the secondary name for this ability called "The Sylar Effect"?

 

[Samloyal23]

Is the secondary name for this ability called "The Sylar Effect"?

Lol... Sylar didn't eat brains, he just studied them using lethal methods. This ability is based on the primitive belief that when you eat someone it consumes some of their mana.

 

[Noumenon]

Wow, this looks atrociously unbalanced. There's no spell or magic item that will give you that big of an intelligence boost. There's no spell or magic item that will give you feats and spells outside your class (without actually changing to a different animal). Compare this to something like death knell. It just doesn't look slightly like the sort of thing it's safe to do in a balanced game.