[3.5] Fleshwarper

[Burley]

I was poking through Lords of Madness, and I saw the Fleshwarper PrC. Now, I have it in my head that a plastic surgeon would make a fun character. I imagine a Transmogrophist would be the perfect applicant for this PrC.

So, tell me: Is this a good class? Any advice on good grafts? Are there any feats that would lessen the blow of crafting?

[Fishy]

Well, the stupidly obvious choice is Artificer: They've got a caster level so I theeenk they can take Obtain Familiar, and then you're good to go. Take crafting bonus feats, eat magic items, turn them into horrible fleshy things.

If you could swing the Knowledge: Arcana and the familiar, Kalashtar Psionic Artificer might be fun, because Heal is the sill you use to implant quori crystals. (Under people's skin when they come in for a simple procedure, muaha.) Plus, Psionic tattoos.

And from the same book, if you really wanted to be a freak, there's Half-Daelkyr Sorcerer/Ranger/Fleshwarper/Impure Prince. Yay, tentacles!

[The Glyphstone]

Fleshwarper is made of win and awesome....my absolute all-time favorite PC was a Fleshwarper Wizard. Artificer's a decent choice too.

You want the Artisan Feats from Ebberon, or at least the -25% GP and -25% XP cost ones...the -25% time one isn't necessary because of Rapid Grafting at level 6. Oh, and there's a Magical Artisan feat from one of the Faerun books that gives -25% GP and XP costs for crafting, and stacks with the Ebberon feats. Go go dirt cheap grafts!

Fiend Folio has some very nice and cheap grafts if you make a non-good or evil character. Lords of Madness has the high-end and expensive Silthilar grafts. If you can get your DM to ignore the stupid restrictions Magic of Ebberon and Races of the Dragon put on grafts*, those books have useful grafts too.

*According to them, a character may only ever have grafts of one type (elemental, dragon, silithar, fiendish, whatever), because having grafts of two different types causes a fatal reaction. It makes playing a Fleshwarper utterly pointless.

[Akal Saris]

Agreed, it's a fun class - especially if you use it as a springboard to make a combat familiar! Not exceedingly powerful by wizard PrC standards, but with some cool tricks that it can do.

I wouldn't recommend transmogrifist at all, since fleshwarper already loses 1 Caster level, and because transmogrifist is all about polymorphing to a different form, which wouldn't benefit from your grafts.

[The Glyphstone]

There's a lot more to Transmutation than just Polymorphing, though that is the crown jewel of the collection. All of the stat booster spells are Transmutations, as is Tenser's Transformation and some other useful buffs. Transmuter base for a Fleshwarper isn't bad, though I'd personally just stay as a Generalist wizard and either use Elven Generalist Substitution or be a Domain Wizard - grafts require a lot of sometimes esoteric spells from a lot of schools to make, and it'd hurt the flavor a bit if you had to go to other people for help with your needed spells. Ironically, the Transmutation domain is quite bad for this character because it has Polymorph and Shapechange...Battle would be a good choice.

[Alleine]

You want the Artisan Feats from Ebberon, or at least the -25% GP and -25% XP cost ones...the -25% time one isn't necessary because of Rapid Grafting at level 6. Oh, and there's a Magical Artisan feat from one of the Faerun books that gives -25% GP and XP costs for crafting, and stacks with the Ebberon feats. Go go dirt cheap grafts!

You know, I've never seen that feat, but I did find a feat called Magic Artisan that is also pretty sweet. It applies to only one item crafting feat, but cuts the GP cost of crafting by 75%, for extremely cheap items. Since all you're using is graft flesh, the restriction of only one item creation feat doesn't matter.

The only real problems are finding downtime, and covering the heal ranks prereq for graft flesh, aside from that it is probably my favorite PrC. I would kill to play the Fleshwarper I have written up.

[Xenogears]

Fiend Folio has some very nice and cheap grafts if you make a non-good or evil character. Lords of Madness has the high-end and expensive Silthilar grafts. If you can get your DM to ignore the stupid restrictions Magic of Ebberon and Races of the Dragon put on grafts*, those books have useful grafts too.

There is absolutely nothing evil about any of the following Fiend Folio Graft types: Aboleth, Beholder, Illithid, Maug, Yuan-Ti, Undead, not sure if I'm missing any but the point is that even though the best cheap grafts are Fiendish ones the other grafts can be good and are not alignment restricted (Illithid and Aboleth have some penalties though and most of the others are seriously freaky looking...)

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, I was talking about the Fiendish grafts specifically - they're the best cost/benefit ratio, but problematic for good characters. I've always considered Beholder grafts to be far too expensive for what they do, and the others tend to be kinda 'meh'...bite attacks with low-DC poison, small amounts of natural armor, etc.


You know, I've never seen that feat, but I did find a feat called Magic Artisan that is also pretty sweet. It applies to only one item crafting feat, but cuts the GP cost of crafting by 75%, for extremely cheap items. Since all you're using is graft flesh, the restriction of only one item creation feat doesn't matter.



I've never heard of that, but I'm talking about Magical Artisan on page 41 of Player's Guide to Faerun. It lets you pay 75% of the cost when making a magic item with one item creation feat you possess. The cost of making an item is in GP and XP, so the feat's wording applies to both. Put Legendary Artisan and Extraordinary Artisan from Ebberon on top of it, and your Graft Flesh feat makes everything at 1/2 of its normal costs...incredibly handy with the low-point craft pool totals in the first few levels, which would otherwise trickle into nothingness.

With Retraining, it becomes outright amazing. As a Human Wizard, you take Able Learner as your 1st level feat and Magical Artisan as your bonus feat tied to Scribe Scroll from being a Wizard. At 3rd level, get Extraordinary Artisan tied to Scribe Scroll, and you can get Legendary Artisan at 5th level with your Wizard bonus feat (since it is an Item Creation feat). 6th level is whatever you want, because the instant you turn level 7 and have the needed 10 ranks in Heal, you retrain it into Graft Flesh (Silthilar Grafts is the best choice) and retrain all three of your Artisan feats to be tied to Graft Flesh.

At level 8, you enter Fleshwarper proper and suffer through your lost caster level, but at level 9, go kill a dire rat for 20XP then make yourself some +3 Chitin Plating for this level's craft reserve and 9,000 GP. From there on, the sky's the limit, though you won't be able to manufacture the untyped physical stat bonuses that high-end Silithar grafts give you until level 7+. If you're evil, choose Fiendish grafts for your first Graft Mastery and load yourself up with all those delicious cheap bonuses - Strong Leg and Fast Leg in particular are excellent. If you're a goody two-shoes fleshwarper, Yuan-Ti, Maug, or Undead are your best options...Aboleths are impossible to use and Illithids have bad penalties to your Will saves. Beholder grafts are expensive, but it's a decent choice for your last Graft Mastery when you're high enough level to have a big Graft Reserve and can make them.

[Xenogears]

If you're a goody two-shoes fleshwarper, Yuan-Ti, Maug, or Undead are your best options...Aboleths are impossible to use and Illithids have bad penalties to your Will saves. Beholder grafts are expensive, but it's a decent choice for your last Graft Mastery when you're high enough level to have a big Graft Reserve and can make them.

I'd agree about the Aboleth and Illithid being very poor choices but Fiendish needs another note about it.

First of all it gives a penalty to CHA based skills when interacting with good NPC's so dont fiendish graft the evil bard party face...

Second of all if a creature is immune to ability drain then good creatures can have fiendish grafts since the only drawback is wisdom drain (If I recall corretly. My copy of Fiend Folio is dissapointingly missing right now...) So if I do remember right then you can have a paladin with devil wings as long as you can find a way to become immune to ability drain (or damage was it? Meh someone else will know im sure.)

[Alleine]

I've never heard of that, but I'm talking about Magical Artisan on page 41 of Player's Guide to Faerun. It lets you pay 75% of the cost when making a magic item with one item creation feat you possess. The cost of making an item is in GP and XP, so the feat's wording applies to both. Put Legendary Artisan and Extraordinary Artisan from Ebberon on top of it, and your Graft Flesh feat makes everything at 1/2 of its normal costs...incredibly handy with the low-point craft pool totals in the first few levels, which would otherwise trickle into nothingness.

Ohhh, I was going off of the Realms help site, which lists it as Magic Artisan. I just naturally assumed that when it said reduce the cost by 75% it meant GP :smallredface: