Daelkyr Half-blood Are Just Plain Wierd

[silverwolfer]

meh, sorry for the caps


Anyways, what a weird little race for a player character. Ebberaon really is a little gold mine, for fun and unusual races to use in other places.

Symbiotic racials, some of them are very nice, others just seem blah.

What do you all think, throw some psychic rogue?

[kestrel404]

I've done a few different things with this race that were interesting. The best things involved homebrew, but for a non-homebrew character it depends on what level you're starting at.

Because the really sweet part of the race is the fact that you can get a tentacle whip (and be proficient with it).

Using a tentacle whip with the really sweet touch attack SLAs from Shadowcaster (Tome of Magic) and you've got a very strong gish foundation. Add in some Duskblade, Paladin or Tyranny, or Binder (Paimon) and you can get some really interesting combos going.

[eggs]

They make really cool unseen seers. Shared Persisted Hunter's Eye + Shared Persisted Cloud of Knives + a natural weapon for sneak attackers is heaps of fun.

Plus they have that scarab thing for low-level blasting and symbionts make nice platforms for mental pinnacle and other personal-range spells that kind of suck for a caster to use on itself.

[ThiagoMartell]

I've seen it used alongside with Impure Prince for good gish builds using Suel Arcanamach.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Some of the lesser known symbionts are very useful, the show sibling gives 50% miss chance as a immediate action.

[HunterOfJello]

I've always been interested in trying out this race, but never found a build I really liked for one.

The tentacle whip idea sounds cool.

[Psyren]

Plus they have that scarab thing for low-level blasting and symbionts make nice platforms for mental pinnacle and other personal-range spells that kind of suck for a caster to use on itself.

This is the gist I got, yeah. You can also store an additional Contingency in it, and use it for familiar/psicrystal tricks like Vigor + Share Pain. So at a minimum it is a free familiar in that respect.

The symbionts themselves have nice tricks to them; I'll summarize below:

1st-level

Breed Leech: Though the benefits are primarily RP-focused, this one also has 60ft. blindsight and can speak telepathatically with you, so it can tell you exactly where things are hiding.

Crawling Gauntlet: This one gives you a claw attack. Useful early on for extra attacks but should probably be replaced later.

Throwing Scarab: This gives you a ranged attack, as others have mentioned above, that does a small amount of slashing damage as well as some acid damage. Combined with sneak attack and/or Psionic Shot this can do a lot of damage early on. The scarab also has 60ft. Blindsight.

5th-level

Stormstalk: You can fire a ray that does 1d6 electric and applies a dex penalty that doesn't stack. This one is pretty weak, and actually does more damage when detached from you (as well as not requiring your actions to fire) though this way does give it a 1-round cooldown between shots.

Winter Cyst: You can fire a ray that does 1d6 cold and applies a Str penalty; this is otherwise identical to stormstalk. I'm not too impressed with either of these tbh. The rays are supernatural though (for dealing with SR/immunes.)

10th-level

Spellwurm: This one gives you free spells known (even to classes with fixed lists like warmages.) Mage Armor and Blur aren't the best around, but they're still handy; Ancient Knowledge sucks thanks to the material component, which this does not waive. However, detached from you you get a free 5th-level sorcerer buddy for whom you can pick the spells.

Tentacle Whip: Gives you a whip with some nice TWF benefits that can deliver touch spells at 15 ft. It also deals lethal damage and can poison. Not bad for melee types/gishes.

15th-level

Tongue worm: This gives you a bite attack, reach, paralytic poison and poison immunity, as well as the blindsight 60 many of the others do. Not bad all-in-all, and very handy for melee.

[eggs]

One thing my group's quarreled a bit about is whether the symbionts like Tongue Worm and Crawling Gauntlet can still make their own claw/sting attacks in the same round that the halfblood uses their claw/sting attacks.

RAW, there's nothing stopping 2 attacks per weapon and I believe it's just the whip that explicitly doesn't allow that, there's been some debate whether the whip should be taken as a precendent of whether combination should work, or as an exception in contradiction to the general way things are supposed to work.

[silverwolfer]

how does the class treat outside symbiots like shadow sibling and stuff?

[Psyren]

One thing my group's quarreled a bit about is whether the symbionts like Tongue Worm and Crawling Gauntlet can still make their own claw/sting attacks in the same round that the halfblood uses their claw/sting attacks.

RAW, there's nothing stopping 2 attacks per weapon and I believe it's just the whip that explicitly doesn't allow that, there's been some debate whether the whip should be taken as a precendent of whether combination should work, or as an exception in contradiction to the general way things are supposed to work.

If it's separate from you it gets its own attacks, if its attached it doesn't. Seems a reasonable interpretation to me. Being attached means it gets to benefit from your protection (i.e. treated as attended) so it makes sense.