TabletopNuke
2009-11-10, 06:01 PM
Here's something I'm working on for my Breakdown setting. I've playtested this race a bit, but I've done some tweaking since then. I ran this version through RaceCalc already, but I'd like to see what you guys think of it. I'm eager to hear any new ideas.
Edit 01/12: I reformatted and updated the thought eater bloodline. I think the last feature was powerful enough without the damage reduction. Oh, and I finally decided on languages.
Here's a picture of my destroyer PC, Forty-Nine:
http://th02.deviantart.net/fs51/300W/i/2009/297/e/f/You__re_Gonna_Go_Far__Kid_by_Pencil_of_Sketching.p ng
Destroyers are genetically engineered creatures created to serve as psychic soldiers. While mostly human, their psychic abilities come from their other ancestor; though eaters (more on those further down). This strange and normally incompatible marriage of physical being and incorporeal entity resulted in a race gifted with destructive psychic powers and rampant insanity.
Destroyer:
-2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, +2 Charisma. Destroyers are quite agile, but their small, lean frames possess little strength or durability. Destroyers are self-confident and sharp of mind, but have poor judgment and a strong predisposition towards mental disorders.
• Medium Aberration (Psionic) Destroyers are not subject to spells or effects that affect humanoids only, such as charm person.
• Base Land Speed: 30 feet.
• Unlike most aberrations, destroyers do not have darkvision.
• +1 Natural Armor Bonus: Destroyers have surprisingly tough skin.
• Major Thought Eater Bloodline: All destroyers have major thought eater bloodlines. Destroyers manifest more and more of their otherworldy heritage as they grow in power.
• Hypermobility (Ex): +8 racial bonus on Escape Artist checks. Destroyers can always take 10 on Escape Artist checks. A quirk of their unnatural genetics, destroyers have very loose joints with an abnormally large range of motion.
• Naturally Psionic: Destroyer gain 2 bonus power points at 1st level. This benefit does not grant them the ability to manifest powers unless they gain that ability through another source, such as levels in a psionic class.
• Preprogrammed Knowledge (Ex): Destroyers receive most of their education during incubation, through cybernetic implants. They are always literate.
• Quick Learner (Ex): 4 extra skill points at 1st level and 1 extra skill point at each additional level. Like human, destroyers are highly adaptable and quick to take to new skills.
• Rapid Metabolism (Ex): +2 racial bonus on saves against poison and disease. Destroyers have such rapid metabolisms that they often work toxins through their bodies to quickly too take any harm from them. This accelerated metabolism also results in a very high body temperature that makes for an inhospitable environment for pathogens.
However, this rapid metabolism means that destroyers require a much more food than most similarly sized creatures. Destroyers require three times as much food as other medium-sized humanoids.
• Uncultured (Ex): -2 Penalty on Diplomacy, Gather Information, and Sense Motive checks. Raised in laboratories with minimal outside contact, destroyers have very little understanding, and even less experience, in social interaction.
• Heat Tolerance: +2 racial bonus on Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of hot weather. Destroyers have high body temperatures and very little body fat, making them surprisingly heat-tolerant.
• Cold Vulnerability: -4 racial penalty on Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of cold weather. The same traits that make destroyers resistant to high temperatures also make them very sensitive to cold weather.
• +2 racial bonus on Spot checks in dim light. Destroyers can see in the dark better than humans can.
• Automatic Languages: English (Common in standard campaigns), Bonus Languages: None. Incubating destroyers are instructed in in their native tongue though their cybernetic implants. Most destroyers develop telepathy shortly after reaching adulthood, rendering further language instruction redundant.
• Favored Class: Mindscourge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131476)
• Level Adjustment: +0
The Uncultured racial trait isn't really meant to balance anything. It's mostly for flavor. I haven't included languages in this because I'm still deciding the language selection for Breakdown
Thought Eater Bloodline (If you're unfamiliar with these, the rules can be found here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm)
1st - +2 on Bluff Checks
2nd - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
3rd - Intelligence +1
4th - Telepathy (Su) (2)
5th - Thought Eater Affinity +2 (3)
6th - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
7th - +2 on Intimidate Checks
8th - Mindsight (Su) (4)
9th - Charisma +1
10th - Mental Sustinance (Su) (5)
11th - Thought Eater Affinity +4 (3)
12th - Blindsense (Su) (6)
13th - +2 on Concentration Checks
14th - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
15th - Dexterity +1
16th - Blindsight (Su) (7)
17th - Thought Eater Affinity +6 (3)
18th - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
19th - +2 on Use Psionic Device Checks
20th - Extradimensional Transformation (Ex)
The footnotes are under the spoiler tag.
(1) At the indicated levels, you may select any madness feat for which you meet the prerequisites as a bonus feat. Madness Feats can be found here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129960
(2) You gain the supernatural ability telepathy from page 316 of the Monster Manual. You can communicate telepathically with any other creature that has a language within 5 feet per character level. You can address multiple creatures at once telepathically, although maintaining telepathic conversation with more than one creature at a time is just as difficult as simultaneously speaking and listening to multiple people at the same time. This is a mind-affecting affect.
(3) You gain the indicated bonus on all Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Intimidate, and Perform Checks to interact with thought eaters.
(4) You gain Mindsight as a bonus feat (Found in Lords of Madness, allows the user to detect sentient creatures within range of telepathy)
(5) Your physiology becomes more like that of your thought eater ancestors. You develop the ability to feed off thought. When a creature susceptible to your telepathy spends at least one continuous minute within range of it, you do not need to eat or sleep for the next 24 hours. You still need 8 hours of rest to prepare spells, ect.
(6) You gain the ability blindsense, from page 306 of the Monster Manual. The ability has a range of 5 feet per 2 character levels. This ability is negated by any effects that negate psionics.
(7) You gain the ability blindsight, from page 306 of the Monster Manual. The ability has a range of 5 feet per 2 character levels. This ability is negated by any effects that negate psionics.
(8) You become even more like a thought eater. You cease to age, though you still retain any aging penalties already acquired. In addition, each time that you fulfill the requirement for your mental sustenance ability, you do not need to breathe for the next 24 hours.
Destroyer Feats and Racial Substitution Levels
Sample Destroyer Mindscourge
Aging:
Destroyers age erratically. Some individuals age at an accelerated pace, wasting away to nothing within a few decades. Others retain their vitality much longer than humans, living for well over a century. Most destroyers alternate between periods of relatively slow aging, changing very little for several years at a time, and bouts of rabid maturation that last for a similar span of time.
Starting Age:
{table=head]Adulthood|Simple|Intermediate|Complex
2 Years|
+2d4 Months|
+4d4 Months|
+6d4 Months[/table]
Age Categories
{table=head]Middle Age|Old|Venerable|Maximum Age
+4d10 Years|
+4d10 Years|
+4d10 Years|
+4d10 Years[/table]
To determine when a particular destroyer reaches a specific age category, roll the indicated dice and add the resulting number to the beginning age of the previous category. The resulting number is the age at which the destroyer advances to the next category.
Height and Weight:
{table=head]Race and Sex|Base Height|Height Mod|Base Weight|Weight Mod
Destroyer, M|
4'5"|
+1d8"|
80 lb.|
x(1d3)
Destroyer, F|
4'5"|
+1d8"|
80 lb.|
x(1d3)[/table]
Here's the fluff (I'll be adding more):
Physical Description:
In comparison to humans, destroyers are quite short and lanky in build, typically standing a few inches shy of five feet, and weighing about 90 pounds. They have less muscle mass than similarly-sized humans do, and burn energy to quickly to efficiently build fat stores. Many destroyers appear to be underweight, even emaciated.
Destroyers vary little in individual appearance. All destroyers, female and male alike, have delicate, androgynous features, large eyes, and lean forms with little in the way of curves or muscle. Determining a destroyer's gender at a glance is virtually impossible. Other than their short eyelashes and the thick, fairly straight hair on their scalps, destroyers lack any kind of body hair, including eyebrows. The combination of all these traits gives them a rather childlike appearance, which many people find disconcerting.
Destroyers generally have unusual coloration. Their skin is within human norms, ranging the gamut from extremely pale to near black, but is always characterized by a subtle purple or bluish tint. This is most noticeable in the mucus membranes and on the bottoms of the hands and feet, which are slightly darker than is typical for humans. Their hair is monochromatic, although it can be any tone from blue-black to yellow-white. A destroyer’s nails, which are a bit thicker than those of a human, are the same color as their hair.
Destroyers have striking eyes, bearing yellow-white pupils, purple- or blue-black irises, and no white to speak of. Their pupils appear to reflect light, and seem to glow in the dark.
Psychology:
A product of human and something utterly alien, destroyers live with constant internal conflict, both physical and mental. Neither the human body nor the human mind was meant to handle powers that infuse a destroyer’s being. While their bodies work in erratic and often dysfunctional ways, their minds are arguably even worse.
Madness is the birthright of every destroyer. Some display mental instability from childhood, while others develop it later in life. This insanity can manifest in a wide variety of ways, including hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and memory dysfunction, among many others. There is one main constant in destroyer mental disorders: as a destroyer grows more powerful, so does the madness.
The main source of this racial insanity is the inherent psychic power that destroyers were created for. Destroyers possess a portion of the clairsentience ability and telepathy of their thought eater forbearers. However destroyers do not have the ability to smoothly process all of the psychic information they receive. As a result, they are often struck by flashes of past, present, and future, and stray thoughts from other creatures. Most destroyers have difficulty distinguishing these psychic visions from their ordinary hallucinations (if such a thing could be considered “ordinary”).
As a destroyer’s psychic senses grow more sensitive, the visions increase in frequency, length, and intensity. Some of the most powerful destroyers, usually the worst afflicted, have trouble telling others’ thoughts from their own, and can no longer perceive time in sequence. Such destroyers have a tendency to confuse tenses and pronouns in speech, often referring to others as “Me” or speaking of future events in the present tense.
Physiology:
Destroyers are a highly neotenic species, never reaching the degree of physical maturity that humans do at adulthood. Destroyers reach “adulthood” 23 to 28 months years after activation, adulthood being defined as the point at which destroyers have ceased their physical growth and begun to develop their psychic powers. An “adult” destroyer is the physical equivalent of a human adolescent between 12 and 16 years of age.
While technically a distinct species, destroyers cannot truly be considered true breeding. While both sexes possess normal human reproductive organs, the fact that destroyers stop growing at early to mid adolescence means that their bodies never mature.
Male destroyers are usually fertile, although less so then human males, due to lower testosterone levels. However, female destroyers are incapable of reproducing naturally, as their bodies are immature. While it is possible to impregnate a female destroyer through supernatural or technological meddling, the pregnancy and birth is very difficult and potentially fatal for the mother and child alike. Destroyers are not built for childbearing.
Destroyers as a species display a few other physical oddities as a result of their unnatural genetics. Arguably the most noticeable of these is their hypermobility. Destroyers are exceptionally loose-jointed and incredibly flexible, capable of contorting into seemingly impossible positions with ease. However, as a side effect, their joints are also fairly delicate and more easily dislocated than a humans’. While this type of injury is considerably less damaging and painful for destroyers than it is for humans, it limits the amount of force their bodies can exert.
Another odd feature of destroyer physiology is their teeth. A destroyer has a full set permanent teeth by the time they are “born”. However, destroyers sporadically grow new teeth, which replace the old ones in the same fashion as a human child’s permanent teeth replace their baby teeth. A destroyer typically grows a new tooth every two to three years.
A destroyer’s skin is no thicker or less flexible than an ordinary human’s, but it is abnormally tough and resistant to damage. This tough skin helps to support and protect the destroyer’s fragile joints.
Destroyers have much higher metabolisms than humans. During their brief childhoods, destroyers grow drastically, gaining ten to sixteen inches and thirty to forty pounds within less than two years. To fuel this extreme growth, young destroyers require four times as much food as a similarly sized human. In order to consume the necessary amount of nutrients, growing destroyers often eat the equivalent of a full meal every two to three hours.
Once destroyers reach their full size, their metabolic rate barely decreases. Their nutritional needs are only double those of a human, but their caloric needs are triple. Mature destroyers need a great deal of energy to fuel the psychic power that suffuses their bodies and minds.
Despite their relatively frail bodies, destroyers are remarkably resistant to toxins and chemicals. Destroyers often metabolize such things so quickly that they take very little harm from them. They are also surprisingly resistant to disease. Their unnatural physiologies are too alien to Earth’s microbes. Additionally, destroyers have much higher body temperatures than humans, a result of their rapid metabolisms. A healthy destroyer’s temperature is usually 103.4°F. This fever-like temperature is inhospitable to many disease-causing microbes, and gives destroyers further resistance to illness.
The high body temperature of destroyers, coupled with their slim builds and absence of body fat, makes them particularly sensitive to cold climates. The traits that give destroyers such difficulty maintaining their body temperature in the cold also make them surprisingly tolerant of hot weather.
Like many animals, destroyers have tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer behind the retina, which makes their pupils appear luminous in dim light. However, destroyers lack the optical adaptations necessary to use the reflected light effectively, and as a result, only see marginally better than humans in darkness.
Destroyers have a sharp, chemical smell, similar to chlorine or bleach. This is no stronger than a human’s natural scent, but tends to be more noticeable and unpleasant due to its unfamiliarity. This strange odor is a natural product of their physiology, but can be masked by the application of other scents.
Life Cycle:Destroyers have no place in nature, and no means of reproducing naturally. They are exclusively a laboratory-created species.
Destroyers begin life as fertilized human eggs specially selected for compatibility with the thought eater genetic material that will trigger the development of psychic powers. The introduction of this alien material kills about 95% of the eggs within an hour. The few survivors are placed in individual test tubes and left to grow for three weeks. After their first 21 days, the destroyer embryos are moved to incubation tanks. The destroyers spend the rest of their prenatal period in these large, cylindrical tanks. Only 30% of the eggs live to the end of this stage, but after this critical period, survival to activation is almost certain.
During the 700 days (give or take a week) spent in incubation, destroyers mature at a breakneck pace, transitioning from embryo to late childhood in less than two years.
During this period, the developing destroyers are fed their basic education via a cybernetic connection to a computer console. The receptors and transmitters mounted along the destroyers’ skulls and spines also monitor vital signs and physiological development.
The standard “curriculum” for incubating destroyers includes lessons in subjects such calculation, speech, and writing ability, along with basic life skills, such as walking, eating, and personal hygiene. The cybernetic implants control the destroyers’ motor functions, enabling the incubating psychics to exercise their developing muscles and develop coordination.
Once fully developed, a destroyer’s incubation tank is drained and opened. The cybernetic link activates the destroyer’s body functions as the tank’s life-support system begins to shut down. The new destroyer is carefully removed from its tank, its vital signs closely monitored all the while.
A destroyer is generally capable of coherent speech and unassisted mobility within five minutes of activation, though it may be rather clumsy in both words and actions for it’s first day. Once the destroyer’s ability to speak and walk is confirmed, the cybernetic conduits are removed, along with the nutrient, air, and waste tubes embedded in the incubating destroyer’s back. The coin-sized, puckered scars left by these implants are the “tank born” equivalent of a naturally born creature’s navel.
After reaching adulthood, destroyers age erratically. Some individuals age at an accelerated pace, wasting away to nothing within a few decades. Others retain their vitality much longer than humans, living for well over a century. Most destroyers alternate between periods of relatively slow aging, changing very little for several years at a time, and bouts of rabid maturation that last for a similar span of time.
Destroyers that have developed an enormous amount of power undergo a strange transformation, breaching the gap between a physical entity and one of pure thought. Able to derive all sustenance from the thoughts of other creatures, such a destroyer enters a kind of physiological stasis, no longer needing food, air, or sleep. The destroyer ceases to age altogether, thought their cells continue to replicate and renew themselves.
History:
(I'm still working on it)
Alignment:Destroyers often behave erratically and irrationally, driven by madness more than reason. Due to their broken perceptions of reality, they have great difficulty understanding the concepts of ownership and authority. These traits make destroyers almost uniformly chaotic.
While their keepers try their best to instill young destroyers with a sense of morality and empathy, most of the genetically engineered psychics mature into self-serving creatures. Destroyers often have trouble sorting out other people’s thoughts from their own, which means they have a hard enough time pursuing their own ends without taking other people’s desires into consideration. Out of necessity, destroyers learn to look out for their own needs, and not to concern themselves with others. This attitude generally lends itself to neutrality.
Some destroyers become overwhelmed by the ever-present bombardment of psychic feedback. They lash out at the world in retaliation, seeking to share their pain with everyone and everything around them. Succumbing to madness and developing evil tendencies generally leads to a self-destructive cycle of rage and hate. These destroyers are tormented by the pain and terror resulting havoc they wreak, which drives them even further into violence and madness. Eventually, the destructive actions of these rogue destroyers draws the attention of someone with the power and authority to eliminate them.
Religion:Destroyers are not taught religion by their creators or caregivers. Their inability to understand authority generally makes the idea of devoting themselves to a deity alien to them.
Destroyers do understand power and fear, though, and they will obey those who wield such forces over them. While religious group could use such methods to coerce a destroyer into serving a deity, this is not true religious faith. Destroyers despise such treatment, and would seek to escape their oppressors as soon as possible, and possibly eliminate them if given the chance.
However, destroyers might devote themselves to causes they found worthy. Not creatures to do things in half-measures, such destroyers would throw themselves into such causes with astounding fervor. The difficult part would be finding a cause that a destroyer would be willing to serve. Generally self-serving creatures, destroyers typically do not seek to change the world or aid others, and helping themselves rarely requires measures as extensive as those used by religious groups. The exception to this trend is the Last Pyre*.
Beings created for the sole purpose of war, destroyers can understand the Last Pyre in a way like few others. Leading tormented existences, exposed to the very worst that conflict can bring, afflicted by madness, constantly bombarded by uncontrollable visions and psychic feedback, it’s understandable why destroyers might seek oblivion.
*The Last Pyre is an extremist group in Breakdown that seeks to end the suffering of the world by destroying all of existence.
NamesDestroyers are numbered in the order they were created. They generally see little significance in names, and rarely take initiative in choosing one. However, destroyers that have escaped their creators are sometimes taken in by other people. Such destroyers may be given more typical names by their new companions.
Thought Eaters:
Though eaters are extradimensional beings lacking any sort of physical form. Essentially self-aware thought, they feed on the mental energy of other creatures. Merely contacting the mind of a creature using its formidable psychic ability is all that is necessary for a thought eater to consume the creature's spent thoughts. This means that feeding is a passive activity for though eaters, and harmless to the hosts.
*I'm still working on statting thought eaters, but I'm open to suggestions.
Edit 01/12: I reformatted and updated the thought eater bloodline. I think the last feature was powerful enough without the damage reduction. Oh, and I finally decided on languages.
Here's a picture of my destroyer PC, Forty-Nine:
http://th02.deviantart.net/fs51/300W/i/2009/297/e/f/You__re_Gonna_Go_Far__Kid_by_Pencil_of_Sketching.p ng
Destroyers are genetically engineered creatures created to serve as psychic soldiers. While mostly human, their psychic abilities come from their other ancestor; though eaters (more on those further down). This strange and normally incompatible marriage of physical being and incorporeal entity resulted in a race gifted with destructive psychic powers and rampant insanity.
Destroyer:
-2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, +2 Charisma. Destroyers are quite agile, but their small, lean frames possess little strength or durability. Destroyers are self-confident and sharp of mind, but have poor judgment and a strong predisposition towards mental disorders.
• Medium Aberration (Psionic) Destroyers are not subject to spells or effects that affect humanoids only, such as charm person.
• Base Land Speed: 30 feet.
• Unlike most aberrations, destroyers do not have darkvision.
• +1 Natural Armor Bonus: Destroyers have surprisingly tough skin.
• Major Thought Eater Bloodline: All destroyers have major thought eater bloodlines. Destroyers manifest more and more of their otherworldy heritage as they grow in power.
• Hypermobility (Ex): +8 racial bonus on Escape Artist checks. Destroyers can always take 10 on Escape Artist checks. A quirk of their unnatural genetics, destroyers have very loose joints with an abnormally large range of motion.
• Naturally Psionic: Destroyer gain 2 bonus power points at 1st level. This benefit does not grant them the ability to manifest powers unless they gain that ability through another source, such as levels in a psionic class.
• Preprogrammed Knowledge (Ex): Destroyers receive most of their education during incubation, through cybernetic implants. They are always literate.
• Quick Learner (Ex): 4 extra skill points at 1st level and 1 extra skill point at each additional level. Like human, destroyers are highly adaptable and quick to take to new skills.
• Rapid Metabolism (Ex): +2 racial bonus on saves against poison and disease. Destroyers have such rapid metabolisms that they often work toxins through their bodies to quickly too take any harm from them. This accelerated metabolism also results in a very high body temperature that makes for an inhospitable environment for pathogens.
However, this rapid metabolism means that destroyers require a much more food than most similarly sized creatures. Destroyers require three times as much food as other medium-sized humanoids.
• Uncultured (Ex): -2 Penalty on Diplomacy, Gather Information, and Sense Motive checks. Raised in laboratories with minimal outside contact, destroyers have very little understanding, and even less experience, in social interaction.
• Heat Tolerance: +2 racial bonus on Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of hot weather. Destroyers have high body temperatures and very little body fat, making them surprisingly heat-tolerant.
• Cold Vulnerability: -4 racial penalty on Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of cold weather. The same traits that make destroyers resistant to high temperatures also make them very sensitive to cold weather.
• +2 racial bonus on Spot checks in dim light. Destroyers can see in the dark better than humans can.
• Automatic Languages: English (Common in standard campaigns), Bonus Languages: None. Incubating destroyers are instructed in in their native tongue though their cybernetic implants. Most destroyers develop telepathy shortly after reaching adulthood, rendering further language instruction redundant.
• Favored Class: Mindscourge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131476)
• Level Adjustment: +0
The Uncultured racial trait isn't really meant to balance anything. It's mostly for flavor. I haven't included languages in this because I'm still deciding the language selection for Breakdown
Thought Eater Bloodline (If you're unfamiliar with these, the rules can be found here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm)
1st - +2 on Bluff Checks
2nd - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
3rd - Intelligence +1
4th - Telepathy (Su) (2)
5th - Thought Eater Affinity +2 (3)
6th - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
7th - +2 on Intimidate Checks
8th - Mindsight (Su) (4)
9th - Charisma +1
10th - Mental Sustinance (Su) (5)
11th - Thought Eater Affinity +4 (3)
12th - Blindsense (Su) (6)
13th - +2 on Concentration Checks
14th - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
15th - Dexterity +1
16th - Blindsight (Su) (7)
17th - Thought Eater Affinity +6 (3)
18th - Bonus Madness Feat (1)
19th - +2 on Use Psionic Device Checks
20th - Extradimensional Transformation (Ex)
The footnotes are under the spoiler tag.
(1) At the indicated levels, you may select any madness feat for which you meet the prerequisites as a bonus feat. Madness Feats can be found here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129960
(2) You gain the supernatural ability telepathy from page 316 of the Monster Manual. You can communicate telepathically with any other creature that has a language within 5 feet per character level. You can address multiple creatures at once telepathically, although maintaining telepathic conversation with more than one creature at a time is just as difficult as simultaneously speaking and listening to multiple people at the same time. This is a mind-affecting affect.
(3) You gain the indicated bonus on all Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Intimidate, and Perform Checks to interact with thought eaters.
(4) You gain Mindsight as a bonus feat (Found in Lords of Madness, allows the user to detect sentient creatures within range of telepathy)
(5) Your physiology becomes more like that of your thought eater ancestors. You develop the ability to feed off thought. When a creature susceptible to your telepathy spends at least one continuous minute within range of it, you do not need to eat or sleep for the next 24 hours. You still need 8 hours of rest to prepare spells, ect.
(6) You gain the ability blindsense, from page 306 of the Monster Manual. The ability has a range of 5 feet per 2 character levels. This ability is negated by any effects that negate psionics.
(7) You gain the ability blindsight, from page 306 of the Monster Manual. The ability has a range of 5 feet per 2 character levels. This ability is negated by any effects that negate psionics.
(8) You become even more like a thought eater. You cease to age, though you still retain any aging penalties already acquired. In addition, each time that you fulfill the requirement for your mental sustenance ability, you do not need to breathe for the next 24 hours.
Destroyer Feats and Racial Substitution Levels
Sample Destroyer Mindscourge
Aging:
Destroyers age erratically. Some individuals age at an accelerated pace, wasting away to nothing within a few decades. Others retain their vitality much longer than humans, living for well over a century. Most destroyers alternate between periods of relatively slow aging, changing very little for several years at a time, and bouts of rabid maturation that last for a similar span of time.
Starting Age:
{table=head]Adulthood|Simple|Intermediate|Complex
2 Years|
+2d4 Months|
+4d4 Months|
+6d4 Months[/table]
Age Categories
{table=head]Middle Age|Old|Venerable|Maximum Age
+4d10 Years|
+4d10 Years|
+4d10 Years|
+4d10 Years[/table]
To determine when a particular destroyer reaches a specific age category, roll the indicated dice and add the resulting number to the beginning age of the previous category. The resulting number is the age at which the destroyer advances to the next category.
Height and Weight:
{table=head]Race and Sex|Base Height|Height Mod|Base Weight|Weight Mod
Destroyer, M|
4'5"|
+1d8"|
80 lb.|
x(1d3)
Destroyer, F|
4'5"|
+1d8"|
80 lb.|
x(1d3)[/table]
Here's the fluff (I'll be adding more):
Physical Description:
In comparison to humans, destroyers are quite short and lanky in build, typically standing a few inches shy of five feet, and weighing about 90 pounds. They have less muscle mass than similarly-sized humans do, and burn energy to quickly to efficiently build fat stores. Many destroyers appear to be underweight, even emaciated.
Destroyers vary little in individual appearance. All destroyers, female and male alike, have delicate, androgynous features, large eyes, and lean forms with little in the way of curves or muscle. Determining a destroyer's gender at a glance is virtually impossible. Other than their short eyelashes and the thick, fairly straight hair on their scalps, destroyers lack any kind of body hair, including eyebrows. The combination of all these traits gives them a rather childlike appearance, which many people find disconcerting.
Destroyers generally have unusual coloration. Their skin is within human norms, ranging the gamut from extremely pale to near black, but is always characterized by a subtle purple or bluish tint. This is most noticeable in the mucus membranes and on the bottoms of the hands and feet, which are slightly darker than is typical for humans. Their hair is monochromatic, although it can be any tone from blue-black to yellow-white. A destroyer’s nails, which are a bit thicker than those of a human, are the same color as their hair.
Destroyers have striking eyes, bearing yellow-white pupils, purple- or blue-black irises, and no white to speak of. Their pupils appear to reflect light, and seem to glow in the dark.
Psychology:
A product of human and something utterly alien, destroyers live with constant internal conflict, both physical and mental. Neither the human body nor the human mind was meant to handle powers that infuse a destroyer’s being. While their bodies work in erratic and often dysfunctional ways, their minds are arguably even worse.
Madness is the birthright of every destroyer. Some display mental instability from childhood, while others develop it later in life. This insanity can manifest in a wide variety of ways, including hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and memory dysfunction, among many others. There is one main constant in destroyer mental disorders: as a destroyer grows more powerful, so does the madness.
The main source of this racial insanity is the inherent psychic power that destroyers were created for. Destroyers possess a portion of the clairsentience ability and telepathy of their thought eater forbearers. However destroyers do not have the ability to smoothly process all of the psychic information they receive. As a result, they are often struck by flashes of past, present, and future, and stray thoughts from other creatures. Most destroyers have difficulty distinguishing these psychic visions from their ordinary hallucinations (if such a thing could be considered “ordinary”).
As a destroyer’s psychic senses grow more sensitive, the visions increase in frequency, length, and intensity. Some of the most powerful destroyers, usually the worst afflicted, have trouble telling others’ thoughts from their own, and can no longer perceive time in sequence. Such destroyers have a tendency to confuse tenses and pronouns in speech, often referring to others as “Me” or speaking of future events in the present tense.
Physiology:
Destroyers are a highly neotenic species, never reaching the degree of physical maturity that humans do at adulthood. Destroyers reach “adulthood” 23 to 28 months years after activation, adulthood being defined as the point at which destroyers have ceased their physical growth and begun to develop their psychic powers. An “adult” destroyer is the physical equivalent of a human adolescent between 12 and 16 years of age.
While technically a distinct species, destroyers cannot truly be considered true breeding. While both sexes possess normal human reproductive organs, the fact that destroyers stop growing at early to mid adolescence means that their bodies never mature.
Male destroyers are usually fertile, although less so then human males, due to lower testosterone levels. However, female destroyers are incapable of reproducing naturally, as their bodies are immature. While it is possible to impregnate a female destroyer through supernatural or technological meddling, the pregnancy and birth is very difficult and potentially fatal for the mother and child alike. Destroyers are not built for childbearing.
Destroyers as a species display a few other physical oddities as a result of their unnatural genetics. Arguably the most noticeable of these is their hypermobility. Destroyers are exceptionally loose-jointed and incredibly flexible, capable of contorting into seemingly impossible positions with ease. However, as a side effect, their joints are also fairly delicate and more easily dislocated than a humans’. While this type of injury is considerably less damaging and painful for destroyers than it is for humans, it limits the amount of force their bodies can exert.
Another odd feature of destroyer physiology is their teeth. A destroyer has a full set permanent teeth by the time they are “born”. However, destroyers sporadically grow new teeth, which replace the old ones in the same fashion as a human child’s permanent teeth replace their baby teeth. A destroyer typically grows a new tooth every two to three years.
A destroyer’s skin is no thicker or less flexible than an ordinary human’s, but it is abnormally tough and resistant to damage. This tough skin helps to support and protect the destroyer’s fragile joints.
Destroyers have much higher metabolisms than humans. During their brief childhoods, destroyers grow drastically, gaining ten to sixteen inches and thirty to forty pounds within less than two years. To fuel this extreme growth, young destroyers require four times as much food as a similarly sized human. In order to consume the necessary amount of nutrients, growing destroyers often eat the equivalent of a full meal every two to three hours.
Once destroyers reach their full size, their metabolic rate barely decreases. Their nutritional needs are only double those of a human, but their caloric needs are triple. Mature destroyers need a great deal of energy to fuel the psychic power that suffuses their bodies and minds.
Despite their relatively frail bodies, destroyers are remarkably resistant to toxins and chemicals. Destroyers often metabolize such things so quickly that they take very little harm from them. They are also surprisingly resistant to disease. Their unnatural physiologies are too alien to Earth’s microbes. Additionally, destroyers have much higher body temperatures than humans, a result of their rapid metabolisms. A healthy destroyer’s temperature is usually 103.4°F. This fever-like temperature is inhospitable to many disease-causing microbes, and gives destroyers further resistance to illness.
The high body temperature of destroyers, coupled with their slim builds and absence of body fat, makes them particularly sensitive to cold climates. The traits that give destroyers such difficulty maintaining their body temperature in the cold also make them surprisingly tolerant of hot weather.
Like many animals, destroyers have tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer behind the retina, which makes their pupils appear luminous in dim light. However, destroyers lack the optical adaptations necessary to use the reflected light effectively, and as a result, only see marginally better than humans in darkness.
Destroyers have a sharp, chemical smell, similar to chlorine or bleach. This is no stronger than a human’s natural scent, but tends to be more noticeable and unpleasant due to its unfamiliarity. This strange odor is a natural product of their physiology, but can be masked by the application of other scents.
Life Cycle:Destroyers have no place in nature, and no means of reproducing naturally. They are exclusively a laboratory-created species.
Destroyers begin life as fertilized human eggs specially selected for compatibility with the thought eater genetic material that will trigger the development of psychic powers. The introduction of this alien material kills about 95% of the eggs within an hour. The few survivors are placed in individual test tubes and left to grow for three weeks. After their first 21 days, the destroyer embryos are moved to incubation tanks. The destroyers spend the rest of their prenatal period in these large, cylindrical tanks. Only 30% of the eggs live to the end of this stage, but after this critical period, survival to activation is almost certain.
During the 700 days (give or take a week) spent in incubation, destroyers mature at a breakneck pace, transitioning from embryo to late childhood in less than two years.
During this period, the developing destroyers are fed their basic education via a cybernetic connection to a computer console. The receptors and transmitters mounted along the destroyers’ skulls and spines also monitor vital signs and physiological development.
The standard “curriculum” for incubating destroyers includes lessons in subjects such calculation, speech, and writing ability, along with basic life skills, such as walking, eating, and personal hygiene. The cybernetic implants control the destroyers’ motor functions, enabling the incubating psychics to exercise their developing muscles and develop coordination.
Once fully developed, a destroyer’s incubation tank is drained and opened. The cybernetic link activates the destroyer’s body functions as the tank’s life-support system begins to shut down. The new destroyer is carefully removed from its tank, its vital signs closely monitored all the while.
A destroyer is generally capable of coherent speech and unassisted mobility within five minutes of activation, though it may be rather clumsy in both words and actions for it’s first day. Once the destroyer’s ability to speak and walk is confirmed, the cybernetic conduits are removed, along with the nutrient, air, and waste tubes embedded in the incubating destroyer’s back. The coin-sized, puckered scars left by these implants are the “tank born” equivalent of a naturally born creature’s navel.
After reaching adulthood, destroyers age erratically. Some individuals age at an accelerated pace, wasting away to nothing within a few decades. Others retain their vitality much longer than humans, living for well over a century. Most destroyers alternate between periods of relatively slow aging, changing very little for several years at a time, and bouts of rabid maturation that last for a similar span of time.
Destroyers that have developed an enormous amount of power undergo a strange transformation, breaching the gap between a physical entity and one of pure thought. Able to derive all sustenance from the thoughts of other creatures, such a destroyer enters a kind of physiological stasis, no longer needing food, air, or sleep. The destroyer ceases to age altogether, thought their cells continue to replicate and renew themselves.
History:
(I'm still working on it)
Alignment:Destroyers often behave erratically and irrationally, driven by madness more than reason. Due to their broken perceptions of reality, they have great difficulty understanding the concepts of ownership and authority. These traits make destroyers almost uniformly chaotic.
While their keepers try their best to instill young destroyers with a sense of morality and empathy, most of the genetically engineered psychics mature into self-serving creatures. Destroyers often have trouble sorting out other people’s thoughts from their own, which means they have a hard enough time pursuing their own ends without taking other people’s desires into consideration. Out of necessity, destroyers learn to look out for their own needs, and not to concern themselves with others. This attitude generally lends itself to neutrality.
Some destroyers become overwhelmed by the ever-present bombardment of psychic feedback. They lash out at the world in retaliation, seeking to share their pain with everyone and everything around them. Succumbing to madness and developing evil tendencies generally leads to a self-destructive cycle of rage and hate. These destroyers are tormented by the pain and terror resulting havoc they wreak, which drives them even further into violence and madness. Eventually, the destructive actions of these rogue destroyers draws the attention of someone with the power and authority to eliminate them.
Religion:Destroyers are not taught religion by their creators or caregivers. Their inability to understand authority generally makes the idea of devoting themselves to a deity alien to them.
Destroyers do understand power and fear, though, and they will obey those who wield such forces over them. While religious group could use such methods to coerce a destroyer into serving a deity, this is not true religious faith. Destroyers despise such treatment, and would seek to escape their oppressors as soon as possible, and possibly eliminate them if given the chance.
However, destroyers might devote themselves to causes they found worthy. Not creatures to do things in half-measures, such destroyers would throw themselves into such causes with astounding fervor. The difficult part would be finding a cause that a destroyer would be willing to serve. Generally self-serving creatures, destroyers typically do not seek to change the world or aid others, and helping themselves rarely requires measures as extensive as those used by religious groups. The exception to this trend is the Last Pyre*.
Beings created for the sole purpose of war, destroyers can understand the Last Pyre in a way like few others. Leading tormented existences, exposed to the very worst that conflict can bring, afflicted by madness, constantly bombarded by uncontrollable visions and psychic feedback, it’s understandable why destroyers might seek oblivion.
*The Last Pyre is an extremist group in Breakdown that seeks to end the suffering of the world by destroying all of existence.
NamesDestroyers are numbered in the order they were created. They generally see little significance in names, and rarely take initiative in choosing one. However, destroyers that have escaped their creators are sometimes taken in by other people. Such destroyers may be given more typical names by their new companions.
Thought Eaters:
Though eaters are extradimensional beings lacking any sort of physical form. Essentially self-aware thought, they feed on the mental energy of other creatures. Merely contacting the mind of a creature using its formidable psychic ability is all that is necessary for a thought eater to consume the creature's spent thoughts. This means that feeding is a passive activity for though eaters, and harmless to the hosts.
*I'm still working on statting thought eaters, but I'm open to suggestions.