Savage Species is Broken?

[dagger]

Half-Ogre is too good for its LA....it was updated in one of the Races of books though.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

That's odd I always felt that SS was absurdly restrictive in many ways and the potential abuses were more indicators of its overall failure than anything else. I've found that using its guidelines automatically penalizes non-PHB races to subpar levels and that you can't build certain PHB races without suffering LA using them.

Sadly, that was the DESIGN, and the biggest flaw with Savage Species. They intentionally made the majority of the monster races weak to discourage their play. Which to me kind of defeats the purpose of the book in the first place. Run an ettercap or an umberhulk through even a single combat, and you'll see how truly useless they are.

 

[The Forsaken One]

Yes, Savage Species does have a lot of abusive and unbalanced material (check the Feral template, for one). But, as Crothian said, that doesn't mean your character is necessarily overpowered or abusive. Ask the DM politely to explain what's wrong with the character specifically, rather than focusing on the book.

Feral just goes on Monstrous HD, not class levels so it's not broken imho .

 

[airwalkrr]

Savage Species has no lycathrope templates in it.

Yes, but it has guidelines for developing savage progressions for all monster races. We used a savage progression from Dragon, toned it down, and the DR was still just too good.

 

[Klaus]

Yes, but it has guidelines for developing savage progressions for all monster races. We used a savage progression from Dragon, toned it down, and the DR was still just too good.

The Lycanthropes, Vampires, Liches, Drow, Aasimar, etc, etc, etc, were detailed by Sean K Reynolds in WotC's website feature "Savage Progressions". Highly recommended.

 

[Li Shenron]

The Lycanthropes, Vampires, Liches, Drow, Aasimar, etc, etc, etc, were detailed by Sean K Reynolds in WotC's website feature "Savage Progressions". Highly recommended.

We used the Vampire progession for a PC that fell victim to a vampire NPC in City of the Spider Queen. It turned out to be pretty good as far as she progressed (campaign ended before the progression was complete).

I was planning of offering a PC in our current campaign the gift of becoming some sort of celestial, but I didn't remember that there was an Aasimar progression in those articles, I might need to check it out!

Anyway, they were definitely great articles IMO, and I think it was a shame not to have those progressions in Savage Species, since the progressions for acquired templates are potentially way more useful than those of monster races.

 

[Klaus]

There are also transitional levels, to turn, for instance, a Celestial creature into a Half-Celestial.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I think Crothian has hit the issue on the head. GM doesn't like the book for whatever reason.

I'd chat to him and see if you can reach an agreement - get him to look at your PC specifically and discuss anything that he doen'st like...

If that doesn't work, then IMO you should consider looking for a different character? Possibly take a monster PC from the MM? Plenty of interesting stuff in there...

 

[helium3]

There are also a fair number of errors in the progressions that result in creatures that don't add up to what the final creature is in the MM. Make sure you check that if you want to use SS.

 

[Klaus]

Tauric Medium Scorpion with plans to go into Ranger if the character ever makes it to character levels.

I gave the character a reach weapon (So it can't have an overwhelming full-attack by hitting the same creature with weapon and claws), a low Con and Str (So it's Bonus wouldn't run it's HP or To-hit up past anybody elses), and minimal armor (So the natural Armor wouldn't make it unhittable.). His LA also removes it's poison and most of the Con Bonus (So now the Rogue has more HP). If I'd built a more optimized character I might not be upset but as-is I feel like it's a giant walking bullseye.

He couldn't identify anything on the character that was broken, just pointed to the Feral Whale as proof that the Scorpion is too powerful. I'm just going to play it as he wants it and see what happens, if (As I suspect will happen) the character gets killed in the first battle I'll just roll up a new character that won't set off his GM-sense.

You could just play a scorrow ranger (scorrow = drow/scorpion hybrid from Secrets of X'endrik).