Layering Creature Types

[betelgeuce]

To avoid thread necromancy I'm starting a new thread. The post is exactly as the title says. If I take a creature and apply a change to it, does it lose its creature type. For example, If I apply feral to a abberation creature, does it become a monstrous humanoid and lose access to spells/abilities/modifiers that only effect abberations?

[KillianHawkeye]

I don't know the details of Feral, but if a template changes your creature type to something else, you no longer have your original type.

A vampire who used to be an elf doesn't need to worry about charm person spells anymore, because they're an undead, not a humanoid.

[betelgeuce]

The template reads:

Creatures with this template become monstrous humanoids if not already

[betelgeuce]

My problem is this:
I'm applying a mineral warrior template to a character, feral template, and air element template to make the most holy of all warriors from heaven whose entire purpose is to use his body and what average intelligence he has to protect his gods temples and his gods followers. A devout protector at heart, just not the wittiest of all characters. 11 Int isn't the most I've ever given a PC. I am hitting a snag on the part in mineral warrior

Speed: A mineral warrior gains a burrow speed equal to one-half the base creature's highest speed. The base creature loses its fly ability, if any.
and the part in Air Element

An air element creature has a fly speed of 100 feet, unless the base creature has a higher fly speed, with perfect maneuverability.
Feral is an Inherited template and Mineral Warrior is an acquired template so they stack in that order mineral over feral just mineral dumps fly and fly comes on before Mineral if I have it at birth.

[JeminiZero]

AFAIK The only place where there are apparently rules for template stacking, is the Type Pyramid in Savage Species pg 142. Basically, when you gain a type higher up the pyramid, you cannot revert to a type lower down the pyramid.

For example, Undead is higher up the pyramid than Monstrous Humanoid. Hence if you apply Feral* to an undead creature (e.g. Nightwalker), its type remains as undead (it won't suddenly gain a Con score and revert to being a living creature). But if you use animate dead on monstrous humanoid corpse, its type does change to undead.

*I am AFB at the moment, so I'm not sure if it is legal to apply Feral to undead. But lets assume that it is for this example.

[Ashtagon]

One "important" template rule is that inherited templates must be applied before any acquired templates. Which means the feral template must be the first one to be applied.

Assuming the air element template is the one from Dragon 307, it probably can't be applied to a character with the feral and mineral warrior templates, due to the air element template's prerequisites.

[kardar233]

AFAIK The only place where there are apparently rules for template stacking, is the Type Pyramid in Savage Species pg 142. Basically, when you gain a type higher up the pyramid, you cannot revert to a type lower down the pyramid.

For example, Undead is higher up the pyramid than Monstrous Humanoid. Hence if you apply Feral* to an undead creature (e.g. Nightwalker), its type remains as undead (it won't suddenly gain a Con score and revert to being a living creature). But if you use animate dead on monstrous humanoid corpse, its type does change to undead.

*I am AFB at the moment, so I'm not sure if it is legal to apply Feral to undead. But lets assume that it is for this example.

I believe the Type Pyramid has been made void. Since Feral can only be applied to Humanoids or Monstrous Humanoids, you shouldn't run into any problems.

Seeing as most type-changing templates are restricted to a small number of viable types anyway, you shouldn't need the Type Pyramid.

[Curmudgeon]

You can only have a single creature type, but multiple subtypes. That Savage Species type pyramid was void as soon as the 3.5 Monster Manual came out with rules which specified type changes that happen contrary to the type pyramid. For instance, Half-Dragon applied to an Aasimar changes it to Dragon type because that's what Monster Manual (the primary rule source for templates) says happens (page 146). The type pyramid says that type change doesn't occur, which is a disagreement. In the case of disagreements like this, the Primary Sources Errata Rule says Monster Manual is correct and so that Savage Species rule is no good.

[betelgeuce]

One "important" template rule is that inherited templates must be applied before any acquired templates. Which means the feral template must be the first one to be applied.

Assuming the air element template is the one from Dragon 307, it probably can't be applied to a character with the feral and mineral warrior templates, due to the air element template's prerequisites.

Yea that was the template I was thinking about. I am trying to build a tank that stays good but can't be hit by criticals, poisoned, paralyzed. etc all the template involves at level 1. I might ease off of feral and pick up something else just to keep it. Any other ideas about how to go around that?