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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6058095" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 300: October 2002part 6/10The minions of darkness: Well, transformative prestige classes have obviously proven both popular and easy to write, because here's another 4. After all, you just need to pick a monster, take their iconic powers and squeeze them into a roughly balanced level progression, write a few requirements and flavour bits, and presto! You could keep that running almost as long as the ecologies if you were so inclined. Let's see what gribleys they've picked this time, and if the resulting transformations are sufficiently vile and dark for the issue.  Faceless Ones are doppleganger wannabes, and tend to be even more organised and malevolent than the real thing, infiltrating and taking over places because they want to control, rather than just to survive. Since they only get mindreading a limited number of times a day, rather than at will, they'll still be more vulnerable to being caught out than the real thing, even at max level. But then, I guess that's where backup comes in handy. If you have someone pretending to be you while you pretend to be someone else, figuring out your real secret identity becomes a hell of a lot harder. And if there's a group of you controlling the government and law enforcement, it doesn't matter how much evidence they gather, they'll be the ones on the wrong side of the law, not you. Deep Thralls are scarred by Kraken and used as their eyes and mouths on land, which means they're stuck with a close relationship with their masters that makes them particularly ill-suited as PC's. They gradually become aquatic, tentacular and able to grapple with great brutality, and also get an intelligence boost, which they'll probably need, since their powerset isn't very strategically powerful. Still, just the threat of weather manipulation powers can buy you a lot of help with a few ranks in bluff and diplomacy. Shoal Servants are humans that worship Blibdoolpoolp, and acquire a bit of the innsmouth look along the way. They also become aquatic fairly quickly, setting us up for some nasty turf wars between the fish men and the squid men. Since Kuo-Toa have some pretty unique but not overpowering abilities, this prestige class turns out quite cool. The ability to see things in neighbouring dimensions and generate co-operative lightning bolts will certainly come in handy. Tiger Masks are the biggest suckers of all, serving as lackeys and cannon fodder for Rakshasa. This means they actually attract bolt attacks that would seriously inconvenience their masters, and have to deal with their finger joints painfully inverting. The illustration is appropriately gruesome, and the whole package is something I'd design if I was a rakshasa. So I think this article comes as close as any to putting actual mature consequences for taking the dark path amongst the gross stuff. Dork tower once again holds off on a punchline that is more than worth the wait.</blockquote>

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