Amuzing Character

[Darth Stabber]

A couple of years ago I had a player with an interesting character concept for the game I was running. His character was going to level in templates, and he proceeded to do just that. He started out as a Minotaur Barbarian1/fighter1. He was the same ECL as the rest of party minus 2. He then proceeded to become a Chameleon, wererat, feral, half Dragon, psuedonatural, half celestial, Mineral warrior, ect. Some of the templates I reduced the cost of, eg. Half celestial, given he already had wings from helf dragon. Upon dinging 21 i let him trade off some of the stuff for the paragon template, and start getting more from there. net result is that this character was something of a glass cannon. If he set his axe to it, it was making a save against massive damage. I think he had a grand total of 9 hitdice by lvl 23 (another fighter lvl). The back story behind the character was that he escaped from a wizards lab, and the experiment had made his form Change over time over time, so A Wizard Did It.

anybody else let a character lvl in templates?

[Theodoriph]

Did you mean Amazing or Amusing?



But in short, no. I value things making sense in my campaign, so randomly adding templates is a no-no. :smalltongue:

By the way, reducing the cost of the half-celestial template (and apparently others) because you already have wings is ridiculous. That's like saying....I want to be a drow, but I don't want "this" and "this" because I think they're useless, so I'm going to reduce their level adjustment to 1.

You take the good with the bad.


{Scrubbed}

[Dyllan]

Theodoriph: A bit harsh, I think. I don't know if I'd allow something in my campaign, but it is an interesting idea.

And I agree with adjusting some LAs... a lot of the templates are not balanced well, and if you're also modifying them.

And given his flavor, I can see having templates removed as well.

Still, by the end he must've had rather unreasonable base stats. I wouldn't have wanted to try to balance encounters against that.

[Darth Stabber]

Amazing + Amusing = Amuzing or Amasing. But in game it made as much sense as anything given that everyone was required to have at least 2ecl(with no hitdice) worth of template or race (because the game was supposed to be strange from the get go). We also had the Elven Saint brothers(one cleric one paladin), Chameleon( template from FR Underdark, It gives a bonus to hide, and you may deliver touch spells with your tongue at a range of 15ft) drow Wizard, a Feral aasimar rogue and a druid with some Mechanus template, so the minotaur was really only a mild stand out.

So the better question is has anyone run a game the was goofy for the sake of being goofy, what ended up being the weirdest thing about it.

And actually I my have some jonny walker before hand, but not enough to make me think that it was going be a reasonable game.

[Theodoriph]

Amazing + Amusing = Amuzing or Amasing.


The only thing worse than an ambiguous spelling mistake is someone who tries to claim that their ambiguous spelling mistake is really some kind of clever combination. :smalltongue:

[valadil]

I enjoyed the character but would never allow such an abomination into one of my games. Still, there's definitely a place for characters like that.

[Olo Demonsbane]

I did this once, I had a fighterish person who had just leveled up quite a lot (we level up after the entire mission is finished). After a discussion with my DM, I decided that his grandfather and grandmother on one side of his family revealed to him their identities: A Great Wyrm Gold Dragon and A solar celestial. The shock granted him the templates that he was born with...It sounds pretty stupid like that, but it was actually pretty cool in practice.

[The Glyphstone]

The only thing worse than an ambiguous spelling mistake is someone who tries to claim that their ambiguous spelling mistake is really some kind of clever combination. :smalltongue:

So what does it say about me, that I opened the thread assuming that it was to be about characters who were both funny and amazing?

Also...there is a great deal of precedent for "lesser" templates, it's not ridiculous at all.
-For example, the Lesser Drow (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20040215a&page=2), who are not as good as full-on Drow, but - HEY! - they're lost the +2 LA that would be crippling to a Drow of either gender playing their favored class (Wizard or Cleric).
-The Lesser Aasimar/Teifling from...Races of Faerun, maybe? They are regarded as quite cheesy, since they only trade their outsider type immunity for a shiny +0 LA, but they are there.
-The Half-Celestial template itself from Book of Exalted Deeds actually has a variant that strips away most of the spell-like abilities, and - whadda ya know - it's a +2 LA instead of a +4.

[MustacheFart]

Well, I don't think it's that out of place or cheesy if explained correctly and worked into the game fairly.

{Scrubbed}

I mean it's one thing to say most DMs wouldn't allow such a character but it's another to say if they do they're on crack!

-----------

WARNING long post below:

Anyway, back to the topic of this thread. Now I've never played a character who's leveled in templates nor have I seen someone do that personally; however, I did have a similiar goofy character I played not long ago.

Basically, for a campaign the DM had us make 2 characters. 1 was to be an evil character and 1 was a good character. We would switch off every so often at both the DM's and the parties' discretion (usually when the party wanted to). Both characters were in the same game world. The whole idea was that we were playing our guys against each other. Our evil party would be out there making the world worse off while our good party would be out there trying to save it.

I came in late to the game so for my two characters I came up with a pretty interesting idea. The big antagonists for the good party were Necromancers. So, I decided to make my evil guy a badarse Dread Necromancer pretending to be a formerly enslaved but recently freed ("they killed my slave master" lol) Sorceror who "was" the assistant/slave to a powerful Necromancer the good party had flushed out, caught, and killed. What the party didn't know but both the DM and I did (he wanted me to come in as a variable BBEG for the good party since they were getting a little full of themselves), was that I was the Master Necro and the Necro that they killed whom they thought was the Master Necro was really my puppet. Right there I have one cross-over character.

For my good guy, I figured, "Hmm why not have my good guy have a direct connection to my bad guy?" The DM liked the thought so I came up with a Mindblade monk who had been given all kinds of crazy Grafts, in particular, undead skin as well as a couple others.

The concept behind the character and his connection to my evil character, was that he was an accomplished Martial Artist from a far off Oriental region (used some OA stuff). He was a wandering do-gooder whom of which was of royal decent but had decided at a young age that the life of nobility was not for him. This was solely because he realized he had a knack for martial combat. From that he knew he could do more good if he was out actually using his skills--not sitting around taking part in political affairs. He also knew that to stop the many powerful evil enemies he knew he would surely face, he'd need more power. Therefore, he left his home, setting out to destroy any evil he faced and learn new styles of martial arts from any powerful sources of good he should find/encounter.

This quest for power led him astray and eventually he was tricked & captured by my evil character and taken to a location of great evil. There my Evil character with his minions, performed various tests and experiments on him. It was my evil characters goal to create the most powerful soldier of destruction that he could bend to his will. They "enhanced" my good character with many evil grafts and tools they thought would allow him to serve them better than anyone that came before. Before the last implant/graft could be bestowed, divine intervention freed my good character and he escaped for his life.

He then joined the good party with the soul intent of getting revenge on my evil character for turning him into the monster that he'd become. Interestingly enough, my character was blind as the last graft he was going to receive was beholder eyes. His original eyes had been cut out. Even more interesting was the fact that in the good party we had a paladin of Heironeous. It made for some interesting roleplaying when he first used detect evil and saw that the monk, who was also using detect evil, had several evil auras about him.

The DM actually had no problem balancing it all out. In fact what he/we did, was have my character start out with very minimal benefits from the grafts. The DM and I came up with the idea that as my guy leveled he would better learn to utilize the evil yet powerful grafts for good.

The easiest way to think of my two characters would be: Darth Sidious vs. Vader, if both had lived and Vader had rejoined the lightside.

So, to make a long story short, Yes I am a big fan of "experiments gone wrong" as player characters. You just need to work it out with the DM and have a DM who can handle it.

[Satyr]

In an Angel cmapaing (yes, based on that series), the final group of characters consisted of a friendly, protective Demon cop, a trio of witches of the virgin, mother, crone trinity (the virgin was a 14 year old Goth, the Mother was a Kindergarten teacher and the crone the old, stereotypic cat lady... who was actually a cat shapechanger) and Quoth. Quoth was a sentient, intelligent Raven and officially the Familiar of the youngest witch. Inoffficially, he was a flying, cowardish comic relief character with the greatest annoyance potential ever. It was hillarious, especially in contrast to the very serious, honorable, and even chivalrous demon warrior.

[Nightson]

By the way, reducing the cost of the half-celestial template (and apparently others) because you already have wings is ridiculous. That's like saying....I want to be a drow, but I don't want "this" and "this" because I think they're useless, so I'm going to reduce their level adjustment to 1.

You take the good with the bad.


LA

Level Adjustment

AKA an attempt to measure how much gaining the template increases your power compared to taking class levels. To suggest that adjusting them in different circumstances is wrong/bad/ridiculous is crazy. That's ignoring the purpose of the rules to follow the letter of them.