Purified Form (3.5 Feat)

[gooddragon1]

So, I wanted to try and make a feat that is balanced against Extended Life Span for the purpose of granting immortality.


Extended Life Span [Epic]

Benefit

Add one-half the maximum result of your race’s maximum age modifier to your normal middle age, old, and venerable age categories. Calculate your maximum age using the new venerable number. This feat can’t lower your current age category.
Special

You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.

I came up with this:


Purified Form [General]

Your extensive use of positive energy has given you eternal youth.

Prerequisites

Ability to cast 5th-level spells with the healing descriptor.

Benefit

You constantly age in reverse until you reach the physical age of adulthood for your race (this eliminates any penalties for aging you may have accrued).

Special

You cannot use negative energy by any means. This includes necromancy effects. This benefit and drawback of this feat remain even if you cease to meet the prerequisites.

This feat would probably requires a 9th level character, it has prerequisites other than level, it has a significant drawback, and it only provides one benefit.

While extended life span requires investiture of feats, it does allow anyone to take it and has no other drawback.

PEACH (Please Evaluate And Critique Honestly).

[Zaydos]

This has the dragonwrought kobold problem of +3 to all mental ability scores. Also druids don't have many necromancy effects, and clerics can pass them up (although I'd miss Harm) without much problem.

Edit: Also a specialist wizard who gave up necromancy might be willing to take Arcane Disciple and this for the +3 to mental ability scores.

[gooddragon1]

This has the dragonwrought kobold problem of +3 to all mental ability scores. Also druids don't have many necromancy effects, and clerics can pass them up (although I'd miss Harm) without much problem.

Not quite. If someone decided to go venerable, it would take years for them to age back to adulthood. In some cases many hundreds of years.

[Milskidasith]

Giving up an entire school for +3 to all ability scores is an... interesting feat, to say the least. However, for it's actual purpose, it's unclear if you just stop aging when you reach youth, or if you start aging back to normal.

[Zaydos]

Not quite. If someone decided to go venerable, it would take years for them to age back to adulthood. In some cases many hundreds of years.

If they start level 9 or above it doesn't matter. If they don't it's very unlikely for someone to take the feat.

[gooddragon1]

Giving up an entire school for +3 to all ability scores is an... interesting feat, to say the least. However, for it's actual purpose, it's unclear if you just stop aging when you reach youth, or if you start aging back to normal.

1> Read my above post, it will take even a half-orc 15 years just to age from the minimum of venerable to old. So the ability score penalties will effectively remain if you try to cheese it.

2> Your age reaches an equilibrium at adulthood and stays there. If you are somehow aged artificially the process of reverse aging starts again until you reach the equilibrium of adulthood.


If they start level 9 or above it doesn't matter. If they don't it's very unlikely for someone to take the feat.

Not sure what you mean by the first part. It's up to the DM how much time passes in a game. It's possible that you'd never get back to adulthood. Also, I'd take the feat.

[Zaydos]

It's the same thing done with dragonwrought kobolds. There's no maximum starting age so you start out at an advanced age. So if you're starting at 9th level you play a character whose already 200 years old.

[gooddragon1]

It's the same thing done with dragonwrought kobolds. There's no maximum starting age so you start out at an advanced age. So if you're starting at 9th level you play a character whose already 200 years old.

... and you'd take a -6 penalty to Str, Dex, and Con? Because you keep those penalties with this feat until at least 15 years pass (in the case of a half-orc).

[Milskidasith]

... and you'd take a -6 penalty to Str, Dex, and Con? Because you keep those penalties with this feat until at least 15 years (in the case of a half-orc).

Yes, that's the point. The feat is completely worthless (as in giving no mechanical at all) if you take it in any situation you don't get +3 ability scores with no penalty (or +1 or +2, but those are strictly worse), and you'll *always* take it that way at character creation; otherwise, the feat is balanced with the epic lifespan feat in that both are a waste of a feat, although this feat actively hurts you if you aren't using it at character creation.

[Zaydos]

... and you'd take a -6 penalty to Str, Dex, and Con? Because you keep those penalties with this feat until at least 15 years pass (in the case of a half-orc).

200 years old would mean you had to have the feat for at least 80 years if human (max life span 120) or 90 if half-orc.

[gooddragon1]

200 years old would mean you had to have the feat for at least 80 years if human (max life span 120) or 90 if half-orc.

I see what you mean now. Well, at the very least, this does have the drawback of prohibiting use of an entire school of magic. In addition, stuff like rebuking undead becomes impossible as well.

[Zaydos]

Doesn't really hurt a good aligned divine caster much (they lose Harm and maybe a 7th level Death spell of worth), and the only wizards who will take it are specialists who banned necromancy anyway and are willing to give up 2 feats for it. Although a high level bard could take it too but there they're paying a more severe cost (wasting a 5th level spell known on Mass Cure Light Wounds).

[gooddragon1]

Doesn't really hurt a good aligned divine caster much (they lose Harm and maybe a 7th level Death spell of worth), and the only wizards who will take it are specialists who banned necromancy anyway and are willing to give up 2 feats for it. Although a high level bard could take it too but there they're paying a more severe cost (wasting a 5th level spell known on Mass Cure Light Wounds).

Okay, but unlike dragonwrought, you can't take this at 1st level, it has a drawback, and it doesn't provide dragon type benefits and access to other feats. So, in my opinion, in a great majority of cases this should be balanced. Your DM can also prevent you from cheesing with this feat by saying what age you start at.

[Gan The Grey]

I really think it's a bad idea to balance every new thing in the game against dragonwrought kobalds. It's pretty much a given that they break unbroken things for breakfast.

[gooddragon1]

I really think it's a bad idea to balance every new thing in the game against dragonwrought kobalds. It's pretty much a given that they break unbroken things for breakfast.

This feat provides no actual benefit other than a flavor benefit. It is only when you couple an unscrupulous player and an inexperienced DM that it becomes broken. At that point, you might as well have your DM allow gauntlets of true striking or other cheese and this will be the LEAST of your problems. By that extension, it is balanced. I am not balancing it against dragonwrought. I am balancing it against extended life span.

[Zaydos]

This feat provides no actual benefit other than a flavor benefit. It is only when you couple an unscrupulous player and an inexperienced DM that it becomes broken. At that point, you might as well have your DM allow gauntlets of true striking or other cheese and this will be the LEAST of your problems. By that extension, it is balanced. I am not balancing it against dragonwrought. I am balancing it against extended life span.

Which is an epic feat and actually still worse than this in most cases where it matters (you won't take the feat unless losing necromancy doesn't hurt). Without cheese this is a penalty. With cheese it's broken. Extended Lifespan stops you from reaching later age categories which means you can't get stat benefits without penalties.

[ArcanistSupreme]

I would personally make it so that it automatically "youthenizes" (:smallbiggrin:) you, rather than taking so much time, so that both character's that were created with the feat and those taking it later are on a level playing field.

On a side not, it's not a very good idea to create a feat or ability that is dependent on DM experience and/or player responsibility. See Iron Heart Surge for reference.

[gooddragon1]

Which is an epic feat and actually still worse than this in most cases where it matters (you won't take the feat unless losing necromancy doesn't hurt). Without cheese this is a penalty. With cheese it's broken. Extended Lifespan stops you from reaching later age categories which means you can't get stat benefits without penalties.

Accursed WotC not making a feat for immortality so that now when I do make one it seems broken in comparison. Can't a guy have immortality to look forward to from a feat with no other benefits and in fact a penalty. It's okay, my DM will hopefully allow it knowing that I will not be using it for cheese.

[DaragosKitsune]

Immortality is all fine and dandy, but most campaigns don't last long enough for dying of old age to be an issue. I'd rather go for swordwraith than this. At least swordwraith has awesome flavor: a warrior who couldn't accept the peace of death, and thus came back to fight and kill the living.

[Zaydos]

Accursed WotC not making a feat for immortality so that now when I do make one it seems broken in comparison. Can't a guy have immortality to look forward to from a feat with no other benefits and in fact a penalty. It's okay, my DM will hopefully allow it knowing that I will not be using it for cheese.

Honestly a feat that just made you stop aging wouldn't be over-powered, as long as it didn't give you the benefits or penalties of age. No need to cut off schools of magic for it. Might ought to be epic just because non-epics being immortal and alive is kind of... well silly and totally makes the existence of liches be really, really stupid, but game mechanically one that just stops aging is sound (it's an improved Timeless Body but Timeless Body isn't super great).

[Gan The Grey]

Honestly a feat that just made you stop aging wouldn't be over-powered, as long as it didn't give you the benefits or penalties of age. No need to cut off schools of magic for it. Might ought to be epic just because non-epics being immortal and alive is kind of... well silly and totally makes the existence of liches be really, really stupid, but game mechanically one that just stops aging is sound (it's an improved Timeless Body but Timeless Body isn't super great).

Well...this feat is sorta the exact opposite of a lich. And many casters would still rather become a lich because it eliminates many of the pesky issues with having flesh and blood, and doesn't prevent them from casting any spells.

However, due to the existence of such things as Timeless Body, the feat should possess more strenuous prerequisites. For one, I think it should be an Exalted feat.

This isn't a worthless feat. Just because 'most' games don't last longer than a year of in-game time doesn't mean that it won't be useful in 'some' games. There are ALOT of feats that are mechanically useless in the majority of games, yet they do have their place in other games. Obviously the OP sees a place for this feat in his games, otherwise he wouldn't have proposed it.

[Kobold-Bard]

This feat provides no actual benefit other than a flavor benefit. ....

Ten why should they have to take a Feat to do it if it's pure flavour? I can just say my character never ages ecause of a spell his great uncle Bob cast on him and be done with it.

[DracoDei]

I approve of this feat. I believe in designing things on the assumption that both the GM and player are of above average intellegence (D&D is hardly a game for the stereotypical jock.... not that a "Real Man" might be a jock, but they aren't a stereotypical one).

Also, I believe in 1 year between adventures as a minimum for most campaigns.

[Zaydos]

My typical is a month or two minimum to level. A year between adventures seems strange for many characters who wouldn't just sit there and do nothing, or even live an ordinary life (I tend to play either Chaotic wanderers, or Knight-Errants), for a year. At higher levels when they're invested in a certain realm (yay having a duchy), married, etc then the time between adventures increases (I had a 2 year break in game one time while the characters lived their lives because the campaign arc ended).

[Milskidasith]

I approve of this feat. I believe in designing things on the assumption that both the GM and player are of above average intellegence (D&D is hardly a game for the stereotypical jock.... not that a "Real Man" might be a jock, but they aren't a stereotypical one).

Also, I believe in 1 year between adventures as a minimum for most campaigns.

Even with a one year gap it is mechanically useless since it won't even prevent advancing age categories or stop you from dying of old age (unless you are in a short lived species).

[Tetrasodium]

Accursed WotC not making a feat for immortality so that now when I do make one it seems broken in comparison. Can't a guy have immortality to look forward to from a feat with no other benefits and in fact a penalty. It's okay, my DM will hopefully allow it knowing that I will not be using it for cheese.

Dragon 354 has a feat called Wedded to History with a bunch of minor perks you can select from with the flavor being what you gained it from and what perk you get.