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silver spectre
2011-08-03, 09:11 AM
Hi folks,
I'll be playing a human warlock 5/pale master 6 (with a minor entry requirement modification) in an upcoming game (3.5).
The basic fluff on him is that his family was annihilated during an invasion by an undead horde when he was a child and he was taken by a necromancer in the horde for experimentation. He was rescued by a group of adventures before any physical harm occurred to him but the mental/emotional trauma left with a fascination for the undead and skeletal undead in particular.
I’ve drawn up a couple of invocations and the spells they are based on for this character.

What are your thoughts on their power level, or do you know of something similar that has already been created?




LEAST INVOCATIONS
Flesh Strip: Blast the flesh from the target.

GREATER INVOCATIONS
Bone Craft: Craft functional items from once living material.


DARK INVOCATIONS
Greater Servant: Create more powerful skeletons.




INVOCATION DESCRIPTIONS
BONE CRAFT
Greater, 6th
The warlock is able to craft functional items from once living material (bone, chitin, horn, etc…). This invocation duplicates the bone shape spell and also increases the hardness (instantaneous effect) of the material affected by one third of the warlock’s invoker level.

FLESH STRIP
Least; 1st; Eldritch Essence
The invoker may instantly strip away all flesh from an inanimate body. If used on a living creature damage is taken normally, but only soft tissue is damaged by the blast. The skeleton and/or exoskeleton is unharmed leaving only a clean skeleton behind if the damage was enough to destroy the target.

GREATER SERVANT
Dark, 7th
You can use skeleton merge as the spell.




SPELLS
BONE SHAPE
Transmutation
Level: Dread Necromancer 1, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S,
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: One touched piece or pile of bone no larger than 1 cu. ft./level
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (object)
Bone shape enables you to form one existing piece of inanimate bone or pile of bones, chitin, or horn into any shape that suits your purpose. For example, you can make a Bone weapon, fashion a special trapdoor, or sculpt a crude idol. While it is possible to make crude coffers, doors, and so forth, fine detail isn’t possible. There is a 30% chance that any shape that includes moving parts simply doesn’t work.


SKELETON MERGE
Transmutation
Level: Dread Necro 7, Sor/Wiz 8
Casting Time: one minute
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: four skeletons
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Willing only
Spell Resistance: No
You merge four skeletons of the same nature (undead or deathless), size category, and the same general structure (bipedal, quadripedal, finned, etc…) into a golem like creation that combines the abilities of the disparate skeleton into one creation. The new skeleton resembles a hollow version of a creature similar to a creature that one of the skeletons originated from (i.e. if you merge the skeletons of a lion, a two horses, and a rhino then the final result can resemble a lion a horse, or a rhino). The quality of detail of the merged skeletons appearance is decided by a successful craft (sculpting or carving) check at DC 20. Otherwise the final skeleton will resemble a mannequin with little detail. The skeleton may have compartments and doors sized and placed appropriately for the creature.
The merged skeletons natural armor, ability scores, and speed are the highest of each of the constituent skeletons (if two of the skeletons have a STR of 11, one had a STR of 16, and one has a STR of 4 then the final result would have a a STR of 16) .
If one of the skeletons had a different speed category (burrow, swim, climb, etc…) then the merged skeleton has those abilities as well.
The merged skeleton also retains any extraordinary, supernatural, and spell like abilities possessed by the individual skeletons.
All hit dice of the constituent skeleton are totalled together up to what the caster could animate with one casting of the animate dead spell (if a 16th level mage merges four skeletons with ten hit dice each then the final result could not have more that 32 hit dice).
All skeletons must controlled by the same creator are considered willing participants if their creator permits the effect. Uncontrolled skeletons or skeletons controlled by different creators are considered unwilling and cannot be affected by this power.
One of the constituent skeletons may be an intelligent skeleton if it chooses to be affected by this power, but the final creation will be an autonomous creature (basically the intelligent skeleton with a power boost).

Gamer Girl
2011-08-03, 08:25 PM
BONE SHAPE
Transmutation
Level: Dread Necromancer 1, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S,
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: One touched piece of wood no larger than 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./level
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (object)
Bone shape enables you to form one existing piece of bone or pile of bones, chitin, or horn into any shape that suits your purpose. For example, you can make a Bone weapon, fashion a special trapdoor, or sculpt a crude idol. While it is possible to make crude coffers, doors, and so forth, fine detail isn’t possible. There is a 30% chance that any shape that includes moving parts simply doesn’t work.


This spell does a lot for 1st/2nd level. Basically it effects way too much bone. You would need to cut down the amount, something like 5 cubit feet plus one every other level or something. And there should be a note that the spell can't effect magical bone or undead.



SKELETON MERGE
Transmutation
Level: Dread Necro 7, Sor/Wiz 8
Casting Time: one minute
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: four skeletons
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Willing only
Spell Resistance: No
You merge four skeletons of the same nature (undead or deathless), size category, and the same general structure (bipedal, quadripedal, finned, etc…) into a golem like creation that combines the abilities of the disparate skeleton into one creation. The new skeleton resembles a hollow version of a creature similar to a creature that one of the skeletons originated from (i.e. if you merge the skeletons of a lion, a two horses, and a rhino then the final result can resemble a lion a horse, or a rhino). The quality of detail of the merged skeletons appearance is decided by a successful craft (sculpting or carving) check at DC 20. Otherwise the final skeleton will resemble a mannequin with little detail. The skeleton may have compartments and doors sized and placed appropriately for the creature.
The merged skeletons ability scores and speed are the highest of each of the constituent skeletons. If one of the skeletons had a different speed category (burrow, swim, climb, etc…) then the merged skeleton has those abilities as well. The merged skeleton also retains any extraordinary, supernatural, and spell like abilities possessed by the individual skeletons will me possessed by the merged skeleton.
All skeletons must controlled by the same creator are considered willing participants if their creator permits the effect. Uncontrolled skeletons or skeletons controlled by different creators are considered unwilling and cannot be affected by this power.
One of the constituent skeletons may be an intelligent skeleton if it chooses to be affected by this power, but the final creation will be an autonomous creature (basically the intelligent skeleton with a power boost).

Looks a bit powerful. I can just see a evil guy mix/maxing ultimate skeletons. With a couple of days, a single wiz/dread could make some insane skeletons. Worse, while they can only control so many skeletons, with this spell they can merge there skeletons into super skeletons, and then control more and more and eventually have all super skeletons.

This spell needs some type of drawback, like an XP or gold cost or such.

And you'd need to note something about stats. What would the combine skeletons AC be, for example. What about it's HD? Would you add all the HD's of each skeleton together?

silver spectre
2011-08-04, 06:57 AM
This spell does a lot for 1st/2nd level. Basically it effects way too much bone. You would need to cut down the amount, something like 5 cubit feet plus one every other level or something. And there should be a note that the spell can't effect magical bone or undead.


I modified this to specify inanimate material and reduced the amount affected a bit, but this was originally just the wood shape spell (2nd level I think) with bone replacing wood so I don't really see how it's too powerful. Besides, outside of an elephant graveyard, how often do you see that much bone that you can touch in one place?


I wasn't worried too much about the total hit dice as this would ultimately not allow a caster to control more HD of undead that he normally could.
It would allow for the creation of some powerfull undead, but a creative caster with a lenient DM can do that with the animate dead spell anyway.
The result of this spell would just have that same range of allowed power focused in one critter rather than dispersed through four.
It would give you an undead that is not much more powerfull than what you could already animate, but allow you to avoid having every cleric and adventurer with a grudge blasting it out of existence without requiring that you hunt down the bodies of insanely powerful creatures to animate.

That said I included a blerb about natural armor and put a HD (equal to the limit of the animate dead spell) on the final result.

I really dislike XP cost in spells, but the material component cost makes sense. My first thought is to use onyx as a requirement, but that was already part of the initial animation cost so it seems a bit redundant. What about 10gp worth of ivory per final HD of the merged skeletons?

I appreciate the feedback.:smallsmile:

Gamer Girl
2011-08-04, 01:34 PM
I modified this to specify inanimate material and reduced the amount affected a bit, but this was originally just the wood shape spell (2nd level I think) with bone replacing wood so I don't really see how it's too powerful. Besides, outside of an elephant graveyard, how often do you see that much bone that you can touch in one place?

Granted the average person would not have all that much bone laying around. However the average caster of this spell, like a Dread Necromancer would have tons of bones. And 10 cubic feet or so is a lot, and they can cast it more then once.

It's just personal preference, but I'd also make this a necromancy spell. Yes, it 'officially' is transmutation, but I'd say the fact that it's specialized makes it necromancy. After all spells like break bones and such are necromancy. And I put all the healing/life spells as necromancy in my games. A necromancer using negative energy to shape bones sound good to me.



I wasn't worried too much about the total hit dice as this would ultimately not allow a caster to control more HD of undead that he normally could.
It would allow for the creation of some powerfull undead, but a creative caster with a lenient DM can do that with the animate dead spell anyway.
The result of this spell would just have that same range of allowed power focused in one critter rather than dispersed through four.
It would give you an undead that is not much more powerfull than what you could already animate, but allow you to avoid having every cleric and adventurer with a grudge blasting it out of existence without requiring that you hunt down the bodies of insanely powerful creatures to animate.

That said I included a blerb about natural armor and put a HD (equal to the limit of the animate dead spell) on the final result.

I really dislike XP cost in spells, but the material component cost makes sense. My first thought is to use onyx as a requirement, but that was already part of the initial animation cost so it seems a bit redundant. What about 10gp worth of ivory per final HD of the merged skeletons?


Skeleton Merge is deferential a necromancy spell though...it effects skeletons after all. Though your wording says 'the skeletons turn into a golem'? Did you really want this spell to transform undead into constructs? That's a bit odd, and would suck for the average necromancer as their helpful boost spells would no long effect the construct.

It might be important to say ''this spell only effects skeletons'', as someone might try to claim a lich(or other such skeletal undead) is a 'skeleton' for this spell.

10gp of ivory per HD sounds a bit cheap for a super skeleton, that will be under 200gp most of the time. And 'ivory' does not sound right anyway. 25 gp per HD of grave dirt mixed with special powders sounds a bit better(and is close to create undead)