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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jimmifett" data-source="post: 5417552" data-attributes="member: 55006">Design Notes: My wife wanted to play a medusa ranger after seeing Sheshka from the cover of Queen of Stone by Kieth Baker, so I took that into consideration for designing the race. I looked up the Medusa in MM1 and based stat choices from there, with females using Cha to petrify (originally vs will, but the MM1 Medusa were vs Fort, so i went with that), and the males using Con vs Will (also lifted from MM1) for thier venom gaze. Since Droaam seemed like a good wilderness area and Sheshka is a hunter, I went with Nature and Perception for skill bonuses. Made sense for a rangery type race. Next up I wanted some interesting racial features that weren't broken (at least I hope they aren't). First, I wanted the medusa to be able to walk around Sharn without being killed on the spot. To do that, Medusa are required to wear lockable visors / plates over thier eyes while within city limits and other civilized areas. Depending on the laws of various areas, a simple veil may be all that is required. The character would be able to see a limited distance via thier Serpentine Tresses. I also figured with so many vision sources, a medusa PC should have an extra shot at saving vs blind. For the Asclepius Blood trait, I had recalled from HS that Pegasus and another creature sprang from Medusa's neck, and that her blood was poisonous and could create monsters. Last thing I wanted was little minions cluttering the field, so that was out. I found that via google that Ascelpius was given vials of her blood from each side of her body. Blood from one side can heal, the other could kill. This sounded interesting, and I recalled the fight with a dragon during the DnD Redbox Game Day that would splash acid on adjacent when damaged while Bloodied. Originally, I had it damage enemies for 1 HP, and heal allies for 1 HP. It was during racial feat creation that I realized that this was over powered, esp if I wanted feats to boost racial abilites. All one had to do was stand next to a fallen ally and let yourself get hit while bloodied and they would be back in the fight. At bit broken at 1st level I think, so I changed it to giving allies trivial amounts of Temp HP. Everyone likes Temps, and it would limit the usefullness of the ability without some serious feat investment.  I gave it 3 feats to improve the blood, the first adds minor tiered support to the ability. The second builds off that, and adds minor healing in addition to the temps and minor tiered onoing poison damage. The tiered damage at this level is half con mod (minimum 1) times tier(1/2/3), which could yield around 2-3 ongoing poison in the early game if you pump Con, 6-8 by mid paragon and 10-12 by late epic. I don't think that is very broken (I hope). The last feat replaces half con mod in the previous calculations with full con mod. This is the pinacle of noble lineage pure blooded medusa. With serious munchkin-ing, you could have 5-6 HP of ongoing poison in the early game, 11-13 ish in paragon, 24-27 ongoing poison damage by late epic. I haven't played any epic, so this may be broken in that tier, but you know what, epic probably should be a little broken. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Naturally, this is all save ends and you have to invest feats into it. Next, you have the gazes. Females can petrify and males can envemonate with a stare. I lifted the powers from the Medusa MM1 entries and tweaked a touch. I wanted a small blast size and the ability to make it slightly harder for creatures to save versus your power. I did this with half stat mod /2 (minimum 1) penalty to saves vs effects from those powers. These are not tiered. Early game, a creature could be at a -2 to saving, not taking into account other class powers. At epic, this could be a -4 or -5 penalty. Hmm, writing that, I can see that is beyond broken, especially with it's associated feat. I'm changing it to a -1 penalty with simple tiered feat enhancement. Most of the feats are pretty obvious lifts from Dragonborn breath feats. Increase blast size, target enemies only, adding radiant to the gaze. Unique feats are the now fixed increase of penalty to saves vs gaze powers, reducing the steps to full petrification by 1 on a single target (who gets normal saves), and extending the duration of venomous gaze. This last one I felt needed some offset to it's enhancement (and looking again now, requires some more tweaking to prevent broke-tastic. Fixed). As a Standard, you can maintain dazed and weakend on a single target as long as you stay in range and keep LoS. Due to focusing on your target however, you grant combat advantage. Neat trick, but hefty price to keep dazed and weakened. Finally, the Medusa's Kiss feat. I liked Sheshka's ability from Queen of Stone and wanted the player that takes this feat to not mind quite as much if they catch an ally in the gaze and they get petrified (or save a foe for interogation). This takes a bit of effort on the player's part however in the form of not only giving up a standard action, but also granting combat advantage until start of next turn to clear up that accidental stoning. I think this is a fair enough balance. Yawn, that was a lot of reading. You deserve a cookie.</blockquote>

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