Wild shape, but with golems!

[Fooliscious]

So a friend of mine wants to homebrew a character based on some lore from a book series(Mistborn if it matters) and we have been trying to make it viable. It involves manipulating metal. First test was kinda weak, second doesn't seem much better. Focused around mainly projectiles(metal coins in specific).

So thinking on ways to improve, i thought, have a pet golem -> Climb inside golem -> pilot golem? Golem Form! Functions like wildshape, only you turn into golems made of different metal as you level up.

Thoughts or suggestions as to how the golem forms would progress would be muchly appreciated. Or if there is something similar to this I am unaware of directions to it would be nice. Obviously Golems in the MM wouldn't work at low levels, so some tweaking needs to be done if based on them.



Current build revolves around consuming metals to gain buffs.
Pewter = Str/con buff
Iron = Magnetism(used for mobility mainly, or pulling and pushing metals. All trip/bullrush/disarms made with wisdom modifier after succesful ranged touch. requires line of sight to act on any metal).
etc etc

For damage projectiles are flung(usually coins) using dex to hit, wis mod adds damage. Damage die increases as level does.

[Gharkash]

Go Gurren Laggan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tengen_Toppa_Gurren_Lagann_mecha) on this s**t!

[SecondRevan]

(Please note that the letter between c and b isn't working at the moment, so many spelling mistakes)

Can't help with the mechanics of golem shapeshifting, sorry.

Howeer, if you want an idea on how to create a class based on mistborn magic, I hae a few suggestions. While pushing and pulling metals is one of the major aspects of the magic system, they do hae other powers. For example, you could focus on their time dilation abilities. With the right metal, a mistborn can see into the future, or they can create a time bubble that either slows or speeds up time for the people inside. They also hae emotional manipulation, so they can some nice mental manipulation. Also, there is chromium and nichrosil, which would be ery interesting to use. Basically, if you tweak the rules of allomancy a bit to fit it into a normal DND game, a mistborn burning chromium has the ability to strengthen the magic of whoeer the mistborn is touching, while a mistborn using nichrosil would be able to use up the number of spells that a magic user can cast, once again just by touching. Combine with the fact that they can enhance their physical attributes (including Dexterity) and hae impressie mobility (by pushing on a coin on the ground to force themseles off the ground), you could create an allomancy class easily, I would think.

Because transforming into golems is ery different to allomancy, sadly

[Fooliscious]

Yeah, we had planned on using those abilities as higher level perks. Time control and spellstealing is kinda a big deal. The problem is viabilty at low levels. It makes a great infiltrator, but can't deal very much damage.

[SecondRevan]

Yeah, we had planned on using those abilities as higher level perks. Time control and spellstealing is kinda a big deal. The problem is viabilty at low levels. It makes a great infiltrator, but can't deal very much damage.

I can understand the issues at low levels. My idea would be twofold. First, focus on control abilities. Considering the type of stuff they get at higher levels, it will be better for them to spend all 20 levels focusing on controlling conflicts than doing high damage. While at high level they do this with spell and time control, at lower level do it through rioting and soothing emotions, or by pushing and pulling metals to do things like trip or disarm with a ranged touch attack. And don't forget using pewter to give high enough stats for direct combat, since they are supposed to be dagger users

Secondly, instead of making sure they always have metal, assume they always have metal; except after using duralium. for example, what if the pewter bonuses were a feat instead of a power, and an allomancer naturally goes round with +2 to strength, dexterity and constitution. Then give every allomancer class ability except things like allomatic leap a duralium overdrive, and whenever you use that duralium ability, all abilities associated with that metal are disabled till you drink another vial of metal. That stops them from suffering a lack of resources to fight, allowing them to play while keeping the allomancer flavour.

[Fooliscious]

That was a whole lot of stuff I'm not overly familiar with, haven't read the books. oO. He decided he likes the golem form idea though, so we are gonna try to work that in too.

[SecondRevan]

If your player is cool with the golem idea, I'll stop lecturing you on allomancy, though I'll link you to a page with all the information if you want to incorporate some of that stuff.

http://mistborn.wikia.com/wiki/Allomancy

Have to say, I'm tempted to try and homebrew an allomancer class.

[Pilo]

Do you know about:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/astralConstruct.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/astralConstruct.htm

They are psion power. There is a way (with a power, which i do not remember) to fuse with the astral construct. I think you can adapt it to what you want to do.

[Fooliscious]

Hmm... Thanks! I will have to poke around with that. The baseline constructs are kinda weak for a full class ability, but that could be tweaked. And revan thanks for the advice. You are saying that they would have certain abilities baseline, then eat a potion of duralium, hyperbuff for a moment, then lose tue buff all together? Then have to drink a potion to get it back?

[Togo]

For low level effectiveness, try treating propelled coins and similar as thrown shuriken, allowing them to be combined with such things as the two-weapon fighting feat and maybe a flurry of blows power of some kind. That gives you a base of three attacks a round, albiet at heavy to hit penalties, so even modest to hit and damage bonuses start going a long way.

I'd also have a look at the Marshal from minature's handbook Treat each minor aura as a different allomancy power, and allow them to scale up as level. The key to a fun design is to make the class both scale up individual powers and add more as the class progresses, so you end up with a wide range of viable options.

Golem suits is quite hard to scale. I'd suggest looking at the summon undead spells from spell compendium/libra mortis, and comparing the level they become available with the effectivenss of the golem. Having a temporary use suit is quite similar to having a temporary use creature, and undead share many of the same immunities as golems, and so make good comparison creatures. You may also, for higher levels, want to look at the summoning spells for inevitables.

[Golden Ladybug]

I might be wrong, but I think the Urban Druid variant from Dragon Magazine Compendium can Wild Shape into Golems.

[Fooliscious]

Any chance for a link to the Druid variant, and the Marshall? On my phone and it takes an hour to do anything.

I totally forgot about inevitables. Those might work well. Just need to scale em back some. Couldn't find multiple instances of differed metal golems, just iron.

[ericgrau]

The Pathfinder Eidolon is often refluffed for things like this. There is a variant where you climb inside the Eidolon. Give the player levels in PF's synthesist summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner), refluff evolutions into constructions, and you're good to go. The synthesist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner/archetypes/paizo---summoner-archetypes/synthesist) variant is at the bottom.

If you play with a lot of splatbooks then the power level should be about right, otherwise you might need to counteract PF's power creep a little.

[SecondRevan]

And revan thanks for the advice. You are saying that they would have certain abilities baseline, then eat a potion of duralium, hyperbuff for a moment, then lose tue buff all together? Then have to drink a potion to get it back?

Your idea works perfectly, though I would make it that you can hyperbuff at any time, as long as you drank the potion of duralium in the last 24 hours. Drinking duralium gives you the ability to supercharge iron, which therefore requires you to drink a potion of iron or steel to geet the powers related to that metal back. However, I would make a slight change, both to make it simplier and because in the books, mistborn rarely drink a vial with only one metal in it.

I would probably have a rule saying that an allomancer has no class abilities unless they drink an allomancy vial every 24 hours, and this potion will represent all the allomatic metals (except atium, which, even as a level 20 ability, is probably far too powerful without some sort of limitation on uses). This would include duralium, which means they don't need to drink duralium and can instead choose to hyperbuff at any time. The rest is correct, though, as they would lose the ability, and not be able to use it again unless they drink another allomancy vial.

The only other suggestion, to keep things consistent with the books (though you are welcome to ignore consistency to make a better class) is to have a couple of related abilities also be disabled until they drink another potion. For example, you could have an ability called coinshot, whcih will have Steel as one of the types, as a mistborn must burn steel to push metal. If they want to hyperbuff coinshot, they get the buff, but lose coinshot and every other class ability that has the type 'Steel', which will include stuff like the ability to leap, and whatever other abilities you can link to their ability to push steel.

This might seem harsh, but considering there are 16 different metals an allomancer can use (though some like gold could only be done as flavour power, duralium would be done through hyperbuffs and aluminium is worse than useless), a mistborn will never lose too many abilities from hyperbuffing. THough of course, Steel is probably the most useful metal, as just from the books I could think of about five or six different class abilities that could be created.

[nedz]

(Please note that the letter between c and b isn't working at the moment, so many spelling mistakes)

Pro-Tip:
Hold the Alt key down, type 86 on the numeric keypad, release the Alt key.
Ed: Alt-118 for v, or just copy and paste of course.



The Pathfinder Eidolon is often refluffed for things like this. There is a variant where you climb inside the Eidolon. Give the player levels in PF's synthesist summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner), refluff evolutions into constructions, and you're good to go. The synthesist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner/archetypes/paizo---summoner-archetypes/synthesist) variant is at the bottom.

If you play with a lot of splatbooks then the power level should be about right, otherwise you might need to counteract PF's power creep a little.

Metal Master Dragon 311 p59 - is not what you want, but is a metallic druid
Urban Druid Dragon 317 p30 - may not be what you are looking for either.
There are many, many changes to the class. Urban forms do not include Golems, just lots of urban creatures, vermin and humanoids; animated objects from 16th.

[Fooliscious]

In order to keep the class combat ready, I have been keeping iron/steel baseline active at all times. Doesn't seem to unreasonable, as long as it relates solely to melee/range combat. Pretty much replaces weapon proficiencies, which the class currently doesn't get with their aversion to metal and all. Things like ranged disarms, ranged bullrushes, shooting the coins, jumping off metal(with balance checks). Making a weight limit that relates to class level so things don't get out of hand.

Example of how this worked during one play test: A melee'r was bout to get eaten alive by a shambling mound, allomancer pulls on the melee'rs armor, but due to weight she has to move too. Max amount allowed to pull is movement range, so the other pc was pulled back 15 ft, she was pulled forward 15. Now I just need to fiddle around with a few more of the metals. Pewter I know I am going to use, super easy. I'm thinking maybe 5, 6 tops.

On the golem-form issue, I'm still flopping back and forth between just having one form that gets better, or having multiple forms that do different things, but still scale. Problem with the first one is, it may get boring, and the problem with the second is I don't think I can come up with that many golems that are different and useful.

Towards the latter, I found my first golem form, the force golem in MM5. It will focus on pushing a lil more, so double the force of pulse, and increase the dc of Force burst somewhat. For stats, since its still a medium golem, something like +4 strength, -2 dex, construct immunities(excepting mind affecting), HP would equal current hp - con*level + 20 as per golem rules. In case that's too good, I thought about auto fail on reflex saves for higher level forms.

[Fooliscious]

Oh. I see where everyone is getting this merging idea from. Badly worded in the op =X. I'm thinking along the lines of druids wild shape, only you turn into a metal golem instead. The urban variant wasn't quite what I was after, and the Inevitables didn't have base stats like I thought, just created that way.

Where do I find the Dragon magazines?

[SecondRevan]

In order to keep the class combat ready, I have been keeping iron/steel baseline active at all times. Doesn't seem to unreasonable, as long as it relates solely to melee/range combat. Pretty much replaces weapon proficiencies, which the class currently doesn't get with their aversion to metal and all. Things like ranged disarms, ranged bullrushes, shooting the coins, jumping off metal(with balance checks). Making a weight limit that relates to class level so things don't get out of hand.

While Mistborn usually don't use metal weapons, they usually use daggers made out of obsidian or something. I can't exactly remember, as I keep getting confused with dragonglass from song of ice and fire. Also, there is one well known scene where Vin, a teenage girl, wields a greatsword that would be in DND terms at least one size category above Medium (through pewter).

Also, I suggest you don't forget pewter, as it enhances a mistborn's physical abilities greatly in all ways, so they will be able to do a lot of damage with their daggers or a giant greatsword

[Fyermind]

The druid has rules in PHB II for sacrificing animal companion and wildshape for a animal shape ability. Refluff for constructs instead of animals and elementals, and you've got it.