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View Full Version : [3.5]Sword Demon Template, wording and balance help requested



Darth Stabber
2012-11-28, 02:42 AM
The followers and worshipers of the abyss have long sought to gain demonic power during their earthly existance. This rite is how one demonologist created a means to do, and by that act created the first Sword Demons. Outsiders tied to mortal flesh, these foul warriors skip the need for death and spiritual torment normally needed to create tanar'ri, while keeping some of the benefits of their mortality.

Note: the lore surrounding this template is based on the existance of the bladeborn, a "homebrew" I use in my own campaign setting. The bladeborn are simply gestalted soulknife and soulborn with wild talent replaced by hidden talent and the soulknife's weapon enhancements and weapon abilities combined into one pool. This class isn't really needed to make the template function, though it does take away the most direct route for qualification. The lore needs very little modification to remove the custom class's connection, and indeed the most powerful wearer of this template in my own setting is a sorcerer who simply qualified using a number of scrolls and a powerstone.

Lore:Heartened by the success of ashalardon's replacement of his heart with a demon, and the continued efficacy of the rites of the acolytes of the skin, a group of demonologists found a new and profoundly powerful way of corrupting the mortal form. Demons are created from souls of the dead and damned transformed into manes, then promoted into higher forms from there. But what happens if a soul is promoted while still tied to it's mortal coil?

As is turns out the very nature of mortal flesh prohibits this effect. The soul needs to be somehow made distinct from the physical form, either whole or in part. The various orders of the bladeborn have the ability through spiritual meditation, and psionic manipulation, to call forth a portion of their soul and form it into a weapon of great potency. Their ability to channel incarnum gives them the ability to reinforce the connection of their soul to their mortal bodies, thus reducing the risk of accidental severance during the promotion ceremony.

The favor of a balor or higher ranking demon was needed to enact the rite, how this favor is achieved it a thought best not dwelled upon. The subject presents his mindblade, incarnum folded in, to the ritemaster. Profane prayers and dark invocations ply the demonic patron with tales of the subjects wickedness and dedication to the corruption and destruction of all mortal life. Upon the patron's foul blessing, the subject transforms, his soul now thoroughly debased and truely demonic. Each creature created in this way is unique in many ways. Instead of becoming one of the regular breeds of demons (which happens in the case of a failed rite), they retain some portion their mortality, though their form is twisted by the corruption now inherent in their souls. Their powers are derived from their skills in life, and since they all have at least started out with some skill in psionics and incarnum, often these are enhanced. Given that demons (like all outsiders) are made of a unified spiritual and physical form, the mortal corpus of the sword demon is fortified by their soul. However this ritual causes the soul and body to have a rather odd connection. Upon the death of a sword demon's mortal form, their soul (now a pure demon) appears in the abyss, it's fiendish features no longer muted by their mortal flesh, and their physical bodies on earth appear as fairly normal looking human corpses, unmarred by the diabolical features their partially physical spiritus imbued them with. However the connection between the two is very hard to sever, meaning that a sword demon is unable to refuse resurrection magic, but that resurrection magic avoids the normal costs associated with that process. The remaining mortal corpus also refuses to decay, unless forced to by magical means, and is unable to be formed into an undead creature. This corpus acts much like a lich's phylactery, a demon slayed in the abyss would normally be almost irrevocably destroyed, but a sword demon not incarnated in his mortal flesh who is destroyed while that mortal flesh still exists returns to the abyss in demonic form just as any demon slain outside of the abyss would.

The bladeborn are the most direct means of acquiring the skillset needed to undergo this ritual, as the ability to create create a mindblade is somewhat reproducable by means of the psionic power call weaponry, and there are other paths to gaining the requisite skills in incarnum manipulation


Sword Demon Template

Sword demon is an aquired template that may be added to any humanoid, monsterous humanoid, or human-like abberation (elans, synads, ect).
additional requirements: able to manifest the psionic power call weaponry, or mindblade class feature, and able to bind a soulmeld to a chakra.
Size: unchanged
Type: changes to outsider, gains the chaotic, evil, tanar'ri, native, and augmented(original type) subtypes.
HP/hit dice: any hitdice less than d10 become d10, reroll hp
Speed:: base land speed increases by 10', all other movement modes are unaffected.
abilities:as base creature, bit gains +2str, +4con, +6cha

special abilities:
Outburst of damnation(su):
Once every 4 rounds, as a standard action, a sword demon releases a terrifying scream. This attack fills a 30' cone and deals 1/2hd d4 of sonic damage and 1d6 of fire damage, reflex for half, DC=10+1/2hd+con modifier. Those in the area must also make a will save, dc = 10+1/2hd+cha modifier, or become shaken.

dark mindblade: the creature gains any of the following soulknife class features they did not possess as it were a soulknife of a level equal to it's hitdice: mindblade, throw mindblade, shape mindblade, freedraw, and mindblade enhancement. The mindblade also deals an additional d4 of sonic damage. This weapon is considered chaotic and evil for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction

In addition, since the mindblade is partially crafted of the user's soul, and the users soul is literally a demon, and a demon's soul and body are the same, the mindblade appears to be a weapon crafted of muscle, bone, and sinew as opposed to energy.

SLAs: all sword demons have the following slas (caster level = hd): 2/day: truestrike, true seeing, entropic shield. @will: detect magic, detect good, tongues

Summon Tanar'ri (Sp) all sword demons of 6 or more hd may attempt to summon another tanar'ri with a 50% chance of success, 1/day as a standard action.
6-10hd - babau
11-18hd - vrock
19-22hd - maralith
23+hd - balor

Special qualities

Natural armor: the creature gains +3 natural armor, if it already has a natural armor bonus it uses whichever is greater.

Demonic Quickness (Su): A sword demon may add its charisma modifier as a Dodge bonus to its Armor Class. It loses this bonus when denied its dexterity bonus to AC. In addition, it gains a +3 profane bonus to initiative rolls.

resistances: a sword demon gains dr10/good or cold iron, and resist 10 fire, lightning and cold, and has immunity to sonic damage


LA: +3
CR: +2


I am unsure of my LA and CR here, but I was making a homebrew monster, when I thought "may as well make a reusable and interesting template, so I can easily make similar critters in the future. Also I feel like the wording is off I several places but i'm not 100% sure how I want to phrase things.

Let me know what you think.

Debihuman
2012-11-28, 01:55 PM
I am going through your Template. I love the name. The execution is lacking however and you threw way too much onto this with all the requirements. Unfortunately, none of it makes it feels like something called a "Sword Demon" at the end.

The first problem is that it is an inherited template instead of an acquired one. If you have to take it a character generation, you must lose the requirement of a class.

As in inherited template: you have to take a levels in one of the Psychic classes (so you should gain the Psionic subtype as well) and then you have Soulmelding on top of it. [Okay I'm already biased at this point. I am not a fan of those things].

Most of the template is okay, some is out of order. Size and Type should be on one line for example and your subtypes should be listed alphabetically. You also should proofread a bit. You have a lot of errors in this.

Your special abilities are missing designations. The one thing that irks me is that I really dislike taking class features and giving them out as special abilities. It dilutes the classes and what makes them special.

Outburst of Damnation (Su): This is mess. It looks like you couldn't make up your mind what to do with it. I recommend you narrow the focus. How does this make a "sword demon" better? How does it reflect what a sword demon does? I recommend it be a burst and probably does a single type of energy damage rather than a random choice. Don't make the DM's hard tougher.

The DC of Su abilities is always 10 + 1/2 creature's HD + charisma modifier.

Dark Mind Blade (Su): Just make having a level in soulknife as a requirement as this is kinda pointless and doesn't add anything new or special to the template other than the fluff of what it looks like.

I recommend that you look at your Spell-like Abilities and narrow their focus. What does a sword demon do? What makes it special. There's nothing on your spell list that makes it any easier to define your creature. There's nothing particularly "swordy" about them other than perhaps true strike. I really recommend that you define what a Sword Demon is and does and let the spell-like abilities flow organically rather than the tacked on feel it has. I also don't like adding spells at higher HD level. This just makes more work for the DM to use this template,.

Summon Tanar'ri (Sp): looks okay. Nothing special unfortunately.

Abilities: : As base creature but gains +2 str, +4 con, +6 cha.

Armor: A sword demon gains +3 natural armor. If the base creature already has natural armor, it uses whichever natural armor is better.

The following should be added Under Special Abilities.

Demonic Quickness (Su): A sword demon may add its charisma modifier as a Dodge bonus to its Armor Class. It loses this bonus when denied its dexterity bonus to AC. In addition, it gains a +3 profane bonus to initiative rolls.

If it is a profane bonus then it should be a Supernatural ability not an Extraordinary one.

Adding essentia and power points to this thing is overkill. If you want more take levels in the appropriate classes.

Damage Resistance: A sword demon gains DR 10/Good or cold iron. It should have energy immunity in association to the energy it doles out under outburst of damnation (which needed work so if you fix that don't forget to fix this too.).

Spiritual oddity: Okay this is slightly problematic. This is just background and isn't really a special ability at all. Once you have this template, what happens to you belongs in description. Why does it have to be slain? What happens if it isn't slain? I recommend that you lose this entirely.

Debby

Darth Stabber
2012-11-28, 08:08 PM
Made a few of the suggested changes.

The outburst has the damage save keyed to constitution since I was basing it on dragon's breathweapon, though the secondary effect made no sense with con, thus the two save formulas.

The SLAs were kind of grabbed based on what higher cr demons have available, though they aren't really imprtant to the concept, and thus most of them got cut.

The soulknife abilities were added to properly equip those taking the template without forcing them to suffer through the soulknife class, giving them the titular sword for the sword demon, while allowing actual class features. It's not really going to add to the challenge, and it was a simple way of providing the automatic equipment.

Zale
2012-11-29, 10:10 AM
How often can they summon demons? What action does it take?

Debihuman
2012-11-29, 01:29 PM
Have you posted your bladeborn anywhere? I think that might give me some insight into what you are actually trying to do. Right now, it's still looking disjointed to me.

Debby

Darth Stabber
2012-11-29, 02:55 PM
Have you posted your bladeborn anywhere? I think that might give me some insight into what you are actually trying to do. Right now, it's still looking disjointed to me.

Debby

I haven't really posted it anywhere, but it isn't really anything complicated:
Gestalt soulknife//soulborn, replace soulknife's wild talent with hidden talent.

I'm working on a version that doesn't care about alignment, but that one isn't in use and hasn't affected the development of sword demon.


How often can they summon demons? What action does it take?

Standard action, 1/day

Tarsten Corvus
2012-11-30, 12:11 AM
about the Hit Dice. i can understand changing it, but say your only 10nth -12th level when you go for this. wouldn't rerolling all your Hit Dice be overpowered? or am i understanding incorrectly?

Darth Stabber
2012-11-30, 04:14 AM
about the Hit Dice. i can understand changing it, but say your only 10nth -12th level when you go for this. wouldn't rerolling all your Hit Dice be overpowered? or am i understanding incorrectly?

I can't see why it would be overpowered(not to say it isn't for some reason I have missed). The hit die change is representative of outsider HD, and if any of your HD change you would have to reroll them, or what's the point of having the bigger die. If you rolled really badly on hp the first time around, and did pretty good the second time around I could see a person might find the ability a touch strong, but that really only shows the flaws inherent in rolled HP. There could be another factor I am missing though. Changing type to undead makes you reroll hd (since all of them become d12), so I didn't think this was too far out of line, though given you keep your CON score (and it gets bigger) it might push this template a bit further than I wanted (plus it is of significantly more benefit to classes with HD<d10).

Tarsten Corvus
2012-11-30, 12:27 PM
Nice thank you for the explanation :smallsmile:. Thats why i was just wondering because i was not sure is all.