accursed 3.0 3.5 conversions.. (help with a template)

[big teej]

greetings playgrounders,

allow me to get straight to the point.

I have taken it upon myself, as a surprise for my girlfriend, to create the biggest, nastiest, most obscene monstrosity of a character for her.

to further this endeavor, I have decided to use the Tauric Template, from MM II


now, the requirements for the template are a "small or medium humanoid" and a "medium or large creature of the animal, beast or vermin type, with at least 4 legs"

now... the bolded text is where my problem arises.

I interpreted this to mean "magical beast" after all, there is no "beast" type, and I simply chalked it up to shoddy editing (which there is ample precedence for.)

then.... as I'm flipping through the monster manuals I possess, I come across the grizzly mastodon.....

which is a beast.

this realization brought my plans screeching to a halt.

so, I come to the playground for both your opinions and/or solutions, as well as a concrete answer.

first, for the concrete answer.
"am I correct in assuming that the "beast" type was subsumed into the "animal" type?"

second, for the opinion.
"regardless of the answer to the first question, what are your thoughts on using magical beasts as well?"
*it is at this point I'd like to note another part of the logic I used in making the editing error assumption. the example tauric creature given is a hobgoblin/hippogriff. hippogriffs, as per MM I, are Magical Beasts. but I digress.

third, in the event that the previous question is... well, unworkable (in your opinon).
what solution would you suggest?

[HunterOfJello]

There is a 3.0 Tauric template featured in Savage Species too. It has an opening description as follows:


The template can be added to added to any corporeal humanoid or monstrous humanoid of Small or Medium-size (referred to hereafter as the base humanoid) and any Medium-size or Large corporeal animal, magical beast, or vermin with at least four legs (referred to hereafter as the base creature).

Therefore yes, assuming that the word "beast" refers to a magical beast is both justified and appropriate in this situation.

The descriptions in the book are identical from what i can tell and the same picture is used in both books.

[big teej]

There is a 3.0 Tauric template featured in Savage Species too. It has an opening description as follows:



Therefore yes, assuming that the word "beast" refers to a magical beast is both justified and appropriate in this situation.

The descriptions in the book are identical from what i can tell and the same picture is used in both books.

excellent. :smallbiggrin:

now I just need to figure out the appropriate gribbly to use....

[supermonkeyjoe]

Actually the Beast type is a holdover from 3rd edition which basically described any kind of non-magical animal that doesn't currently exist in the real world things like dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and such would fall under the beast type. It was indeed rolled into the animal type for 3.5

The savage species version as pointed out by HunterOfJello is slightly more 3.5 kosher and also explicitly allows magical beasts so definitely go with that if you want some kind of terrifying medusa-basilisk-taur or something

[Darrin]

then.... as I'm flipping through the monster manuals I possess, I come across the grizzly mastodon.....

which is a beast.


Per the 3.5 Conversion Guide, the Grizzly Mastodon is now a huge animal. This is too big to use with the Tauric template, but you can drop its size by adding the Dungeonbred template from Dungeonscape.

Also per the 3.5 Conversion Guide, the LA for a Tauric creature is equal to the base humanoid +3. This means you can load up the bottom half of the creature with any template you can find, and keep the overall LA to just +3.

But a Grizzly Mastodon with 15 levels of racial HD isn't really a good base for a Tauric creature. Ideally you want as few racial HD as possible, since you get more bang for your buck from class levels. The best way to do this is to take a Phynxkin as the base (Dragon Magic, the only medium-sized four-legged animal with only 1 HD), slap a humanoid with good mental stats such as a Magic-Blooded Grey Elf or Magic-Blooded Lesser Aasimar (PGtF version), and then add Necropolitan to drop your 2 HD of Monstrous Humanoid down to 1 HD. Now add class levels, and can you swap out your 1 HD of Monstrous Humanoid for something much more interesting. Final LA is still only +3, which is still somewhat managable with LA buyoff.

I wasn't aware that Savage Species allowed magical beasts, though... so I'm not sure if there's something out there that would be better than Phynxkin. It certainly opens up the number of templates you can add to it, though... so long as you can switch your type back to magical beast. You used to be able to turn anything into a magical beast via the Shadow Creature template (from Manual of the Planes), but this got updated in Lords of Madness and now it only changes animals and vermin to magical beasts.

[Yora]

I think most beasts actually became Magical Beasts, owlbears for example, and I think also hippogriffs.

[big teej]

Actually the Beast type is a holdover from 3rd edition which basically described any kind of non-magical animal that doesn't currently exist in the real world things like dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and such would fall under the beast type. It was indeed rolled into the animal type for 3.5

The savage species version as pointed out by HunterOfJello is slightly more 3.5 kosher and also explicitly allows magical beasts so definitely go with that if you want some kind of terrifying medusa-basilisk-taur or something

fairly certain that medusa is "monstrous humanoid" but I could be way off on that, don't have my books handy.

either way, I appreciate the clarification.



Per the 3.5 Conversion Guide, the Grizzly Mastodon is now a huge animal. This is too big to use with the Tauric template, but you can drop its size by adding the Dungeonbred template from Dungeonscape.

Also per the 3.5 Conversion Guide, the LA for a Tauric creature is equal to the base humanoid +3. This means you can load up the bottom half of the creature with any template you can find, and keep the overall LA to just +3.

But a Grizzly Mastodon with 15 levels of racial HD isn't really a good base for a Tauric creature. Ideally you want as few racial HD as possible, since you get more bang for your buck from class levels. The best way to do this is to take a Phyxkin as the base (Dragon Magic, the only medium-sized four-legged animal with only 1 HD), slap a humanoid with good mental stats such as a Magic-Blooded Grey Elf or Magic-Blooded Lesser Aasimar (PGtF version), and then add Necropolitan to drop your 2 HD of Monstrous Humanoid down to 1 HD. Now add class levels, and can you swap out your 1 HD of Monstrous Humanoid for something much more interesting. Final LA is still only +3, which is still somewhat managable with LA buyoff.

I wasn't aware that Savage Species allowed magical beasts, though... so I'm not sure if there's something out there that would be better than Phynxkin. It certainly opens up the number of templates you can add to it, though... so long as you can switch your type back to magical beast. You used to be able to turn anything into a magical beast via the Shadow Creature template (from Manual of the Planes), but this got updated in Lords of Madness and now it only changes animals and vermin to magical beasts.


while all very helpful, to clarify. I wasn't planning on using the grizzly mastodon. it was simply the first creature I noticed having the "beast" type, and thus engendering this entire conundurm over what creatures I'm allowed to use.

given the houserules I use for LA and HD, all I really need to do is try and aim for <15 HD for the final tauric monstrosity.as it stands, I think I'm gonna go with an Orc combined with either a displacer beast, an avalancer, or a frost salamander.... and then slap on the half dragon template.
but that's just my preliminary set up.