Piggy Knowles
2012-05-02, 05:01 PM
Hey, all,
Every week or two, it seems like there is a post about someone wanting to play a vampire, and someone inevitably suggests doing something like playing a necropolitan shifter soul eater instead. We also recently had a succubus thread, and another thread where someone imitated all of the abilities of a Greathorn Minotaur from MM4.
In any case, I think the idea of building a character that essentially picks up the abilities of an iconic monster is pretty cool, and I thought it would be fun to put it all in one place. The goal is to create a playable character that picks up most or all of the abilities of one of these monsters.
So, here are a few to start things off. I put a brief description of each monster, followed by what I think its most iconic abilities are, and then its other abilities. Then I posted some thoughts as to how it could be achieved in a build.
This isn't meant to be written in stone, by the way - instead, it's more for brainstorming. If you feel I've missed an iconic ability, or a really cool way to pick up ability XXXX, or have a suggestion for another iconic monster to reproduce, let me know and I'll edit it in!
VAMPIRE
Blood-sucking undead. Gains sustenance and power from drinking blood, and can create spawn under its control. Averse to sunlight. Lives in a coffin. Usually depicted as humanoid, with additional abilities including shape shifting, mental domination and super strength.
Iconic Abilities
1. Undead
2. Blood-sucking
3. Creates spawn
Other Abilities
1. Alternate Form – ability to change shape into a bat or wolf.
2. Fast healing
3. Damage reduction
4. Gaseous form
5. Ability to climb walls
6. Dominate person
7. Drain levels on a natural attack
8. Able to summon rats, bats or wolves
Build Thoughts
Undead is easy enough to deal with, by going Necropolitan. Alternatively, we could fake it with Tomb-Tainted Soul, but why bother when Necropolitan is an option?
To imitate blood-sucking, we’re going to definitely need some sort of bite attack, and a way to drain energy through it. Technically we should be draining Constitution to represent blood loss, but if we can get in a level drain, that should be fine as well.
Some sources of bite attacks (certainly not exhaustive) include...
Hunger domain gives you a bite attack.
Darfellan (race, Stormwrack).
Longtooth Shifter (cool thematically, since you can but limited number of times/day).
A ton of Totemist soulmelds do the trick.
Draining energy is interesting. Soul Eater from BoVD will give an energy drain attack right off the bat. If you want more of a bleeding effect, you could attach the Wounding property to your bite attack via an Amulet of Natural Attacks, or find a way of gaining sneak attack and taking the feat Disemboweling Strike.
Creating spawn is tough. The best way I can think of is to just fake it, by picking up the ability to raise the dead. My favorite way of doing this is the Horned Harbinger prestige class from Faiths and Pantheons, which gives you various animation SLAs that scale well with level. However, your mileage may vary.
OK, so that hits the three major iconic abilities. You could play a Necropolitan darfellan with a level or two in Soul Eater and some way of raising the dead, and you’ll do a halfway decent job of being a fake vampire. But come on, we can do better than that!
Let’s start with fast healing, since that’s one of the first things I think of with vampires.
Feral template. Adds a bunch of other cool things as well.
Four levels in Warshaper. Requires the ability to change form.
Shadow template. Slightly higher LA than Feral, but some cool stuff.
The Vigor aura of a Dragon Shaman.
For damage reduction, there are about a bajillion sources, including feats, templates and more. Here are a few:
Barbarian, Dread Necro, DFA and Warlock all get some DR in small amounts as they level.
Both the Feral and Shadow templates can provide some DR.
Various feats, including Abyssal Heritor feats, Fey Skin, and more.
Many soulmelds and vestiges.
Gaseous Form, on the other hand, is tough. We can take it as a spell, which might be the best option. And it’s a bit of a cheat, but as a Necropolitan we could always Alter Self into a Vampire Spawn and use Assume Supernatural Ability to pick it up.
Spider Climb is easily picked up as a spell or invocation, or via levels in Dragon Shaman, or by just taking a race with a climb speed.
Dominate Person is not easy to get at will. Everything I can think of that grants it at all requires a pretty serious level investment - Mindbender, various spellcasting classes, etc.
Sample Builds
Feral Necropolitan Darfellan, Warlock 6/Horned Harbinger 2/Soul Eater 2/Horned Harbinger +8/Soul Eater +2
INVOCATIONS
Least: Spiderwalk, Summon Swarm, Entropic Warding
Lesser: Charm
Become a horned, undead feral creature of the night. Walk on walls, summon swarms of bats, and bend enemies to your will (Charm isn’t dominate, but we can pretend). Drain your enemies to nothing, then bring them back as your thrall.
MISSING: No gaseous form ability, although Entropic Warding could be replaced with Breath of the Night or Miasmic Cloud to pretend, I suppose - but it’s not at all the same. No alternate form. While you have a bite attack that drains levels (thanks to Soul Eater), you’re really not draining blood - although an Amulet of Natural Attacks with Wounding could help here.
SUCCUBUS
Attractive temptress demon who can imitate any humanoid and focuses on seduction and trickery. Appears naturally as a beautiful winged humanoid. Primarily fights through control and misdirection rather than brute force.
Iconic Abilities
1. Demon
2. Wings
3. Ability to take the form of any humanoid
4. Drains energy via kiss
Other Abilities
1. Tongues
2. Ability to summon lesser demons
3. Spell-like abilities including charm monster, detect thoughts, detect good, ethereal jaunt, suggestion and greater teleport
4. Telepathy
5. Demonic resistances
6. Claw Attacks
Build Thoughts
Demon can probably be done easiest via tiefling (although that comes with a Cha penalty), or by template. Half-Fiend works well, since it also gives wings, but it’s expensive. A gloaming (Underdark) gives a winged outsider with a Charisma bonus for not too huge a penalty, although the small size is a bit off. The fey’ri is also an interesting choice.
For wings, we’ve got the Half-Fiend template again. Raptorans and dragonborn get wings, but dragonborn need to be non-evil and raptorans don’t really fit the look. There are also grafts that will do the trick in Fiend Folio and Dragon Magic. A tiefling qualifies for the Outsider Wings feat, which is perfect - although again, that Charisma penalty just doesn’t sit well with me. There’s also the Draconic Flight invocation of a DFI.
The alternate form effect is most easily duplicated by a changeling. Alternatively, the DFI has a nice lesser invocation, Humanoid Shape, that does the trick also at will.
Energy drain can probably come pretty easily from our good friend the Soul Eater.
Sample Builds
TBA
MIND FLAYER
Tentacle-faced, brain-eating mastermind. Outrageously intelligent and long-planning, typically lives underground. Psionic. Can stun enemies and then extract their brain, killing them instantly.
Iconic Abilities
1. Stun enemies with a mental blast
2. Grapple with face tentacles
3. Extract and eat brains
4. Detect thoughts
Other Abilities
TBA
Build Thoughts
TBA
Sample Builds
TBA
Every week or two, it seems like there is a post about someone wanting to play a vampire, and someone inevitably suggests doing something like playing a necropolitan shifter soul eater instead. We also recently had a succubus thread, and another thread where someone imitated all of the abilities of a Greathorn Minotaur from MM4.
In any case, I think the idea of building a character that essentially picks up the abilities of an iconic monster is pretty cool, and I thought it would be fun to put it all in one place. The goal is to create a playable character that picks up most or all of the abilities of one of these monsters.
So, here are a few to start things off. I put a brief description of each monster, followed by what I think its most iconic abilities are, and then its other abilities. Then I posted some thoughts as to how it could be achieved in a build.
This isn't meant to be written in stone, by the way - instead, it's more for brainstorming. If you feel I've missed an iconic ability, or a really cool way to pick up ability XXXX, or have a suggestion for another iconic monster to reproduce, let me know and I'll edit it in!
VAMPIRE
Blood-sucking undead. Gains sustenance and power from drinking blood, and can create spawn under its control. Averse to sunlight. Lives in a coffin. Usually depicted as humanoid, with additional abilities including shape shifting, mental domination and super strength.
Iconic Abilities
1. Undead
2. Blood-sucking
3. Creates spawn
Other Abilities
1. Alternate Form – ability to change shape into a bat or wolf.
2. Fast healing
3. Damage reduction
4. Gaseous form
5. Ability to climb walls
6. Dominate person
7. Drain levels on a natural attack
8. Able to summon rats, bats or wolves
Build Thoughts
Undead is easy enough to deal with, by going Necropolitan. Alternatively, we could fake it with Tomb-Tainted Soul, but why bother when Necropolitan is an option?
To imitate blood-sucking, we’re going to definitely need some sort of bite attack, and a way to drain energy through it. Technically we should be draining Constitution to represent blood loss, but if we can get in a level drain, that should be fine as well.
Some sources of bite attacks (certainly not exhaustive) include...
Hunger domain gives you a bite attack.
Darfellan (race, Stormwrack).
Longtooth Shifter (cool thematically, since you can but limited number of times/day).
A ton of Totemist soulmelds do the trick.
Draining energy is interesting. Soul Eater from BoVD will give an energy drain attack right off the bat. If you want more of a bleeding effect, you could attach the Wounding property to your bite attack via an Amulet of Natural Attacks, or find a way of gaining sneak attack and taking the feat Disemboweling Strike.
Creating spawn is tough. The best way I can think of is to just fake it, by picking up the ability to raise the dead. My favorite way of doing this is the Horned Harbinger prestige class from Faiths and Pantheons, which gives you various animation SLAs that scale well with level. However, your mileage may vary.
OK, so that hits the three major iconic abilities. You could play a Necropolitan darfellan with a level or two in Soul Eater and some way of raising the dead, and you’ll do a halfway decent job of being a fake vampire. But come on, we can do better than that!
Let’s start with fast healing, since that’s one of the first things I think of with vampires.
Feral template. Adds a bunch of other cool things as well.
Four levels in Warshaper. Requires the ability to change form.
Shadow template. Slightly higher LA than Feral, but some cool stuff.
The Vigor aura of a Dragon Shaman.
For damage reduction, there are about a bajillion sources, including feats, templates and more. Here are a few:
Barbarian, Dread Necro, DFA and Warlock all get some DR in small amounts as they level.
Both the Feral and Shadow templates can provide some DR.
Various feats, including Abyssal Heritor feats, Fey Skin, and more.
Many soulmelds and vestiges.
Gaseous Form, on the other hand, is tough. We can take it as a spell, which might be the best option. And it’s a bit of a cheat, but as a Necropolitan we could always Alter Self into a Vampire Spawn and use Assume Supernatural Ability to pick it up.
Spider Climb is easily picked up as a spell or invocation, or via levels in Dragon Shaman, or by just taking a race with a climb speed.
Dominate Person is not easy to get at will. Everything I can think of that grants it at all requires a pretty serious level investment - Mindbender, various spellcasting classes, etc.
Sample Builds
Feral Necropolitan Darfellan, Warlock 6/Horned Harbinger 2/Soul Eater 2/Horned Harbinger +8/Soul Eater +2
INVOCATIONS
Least: Spiderwalk, Summon Swarm, Entropic Warding
Lesser: Charm
Become a horned, undead feral creature of the night. Walk on walls, summon swarms of bats, and bend enemies to your will (Charm isn’t dominate, but we can pretend). Drain your enemies to nothing, then bring them back as your thrall.
MISSING: No gaseous form ability, although Entropic Warding could be replaced with Breath of the Night or Miasmic Cloud to pretend, I suppose - but it’s not at all the same. No alternate form. While you have a bite attack that drains levels (thanks to Soul Eater), you’re really not draining blood - although an Amulet of Natural Attacks with Wounding could help here.
SUCCUBUS
Attractive temptress demon who can imitate any humanoid and focuses on seduction and trickery. Appears naturally as a beautiful winged humanoid. Primarily fights through control and misdirection rather than brute force.
Iconic Abilities
1. Demon
2. Wings
3. Ability to take the form of any humanoid
4. Drains energy via kiss
Other Abilities
1. Tongues
2. Ability to summon lesser demons
3. Spell-like abilities including charm monster, detect thoughts, detect good, ethereal jaunt, suggestion and greater teleport
4. Telepathy
5. Demonic resistances
6. Claw Attacks
Build Thoughts
Demon can probably be done easiest via tiefling (although that comes with a Cha penalty), or by template. Half-Fiend works well, since it also gives wings, but it’s expensive. A gloaming (Underdark) gives a winged outsider with a Charisma bonus for not too huge a penalty, although the small size is a bit off. The fey’ri is also an interesting choice.
For wings, we’ve got the Half-Fiend template again. Raptorans and dragonborn get wings, but dragonborn need to be non-evil and raptorans don’t really fit the look. There are also grafts that will do the trick in Fiend Folio and Dragon Magic. A tiefling qualifies for the Outsider Wings feat, which is perfect - although again, that Charisma penalty just doesn’t sit well with me. There’s also the Draconic Flight invocation of a DFI.
The alternate form effect is most easily duplicated by a changeling. Alternatively, the DFI has a nice lesser invocation, Humanoid Shape, that does the trick also at will.
Energy drain can probably come pretty easily from our good friend the Soul Eater.
Sample Builds
TBA
MIND FLAYER
Tentacle-faced, brain-eating mastermind. Outrageously intelligent and long-planning, typically lives underground. Psionic. Can stun enemies and then extract their brain, killing them instantly.
Iconic Abilities
1. Stun enemies with a mental blast
2. Grapple with face tentacles
3. Extract and eat brains
4. Detect thoughts
Other Abilities
TBA
Build Thoughts
TBA
Sample Builds
TBA