Possible Rite of Spellscale Assumption cheese

[Gadora]

Races of the Dragon contains an odd little ritual on page 31, called the Rite of Spellscale Assumption. It is not too unlike the dragonborn ritual, but there is one key difference: you lose your racial hit dice. Now, theoretically, a... let's say bugbear, could be played, meet BAB or skill prereqs for a prestige class, and then undergo the rite, losing those three humanoid hit dice that bugbears have, keeping their prestige class, yes?

My question is basically what can be done with this? How cheesy can it get?

[TuggyNE]

Black ethergaunts?

[Gadora]

Black ethergaunts?

Sadly, the ritual seems to require nondraconic humanoids.

[OldTrees1]

You lose:
Ability score adjustments
RHD (and everything they gave)
Racial LA
Racial Traits

You keep:
Your languages
Your favored class

So not much room for abuse.

Hellbred is a race that retains the languages known from their past life.
A Spellscale (formerly a Hellbred (formally a Druid))
Would know Druidic and Infernal in addition to the other languages their 1st race knew and the languages the picked due to high Int for both their first and second lives.
They would also have both Paladin and Sorcerer as favored classes

You are also correct that you could meet prerequisites and then lose the prerequisites via RHD. This is only beneficial for PrCs and 2 books (Complete Warrior and something else) will not let you.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

This is not at all abusable, unless it can somehow be reversed, but even then you'll most likely regain all those racial HD along with everything else. I guess if you were to somehow make a character of a powerful (humanoid) race who began play as a 1st level Spellscale (assuming you can afford 2,000 gp for the ritual) and manage to Pazuzu a wish to reverse it, you can be a high HD, high LA Humanoid in a party of 1st level characters. Don't expect that to work in any actual game, though.

Edit: Lycanthropes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lycanthrope.htm) are still Humanoids, so do this with a Were-Legendary Tiger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/legendaryAnimal.htm) and you've got your shenanigans.

[OldTrees1]

I think the OP means something like this:

Bugbear (3 RHD, +1 LA) / Barbarian 4 / Frenzied Berserker 2 = 10th level xp
Rite of Spellscale Assumption
Spellscale (0 RHD, +0 LA) / Barbarian 4 / Frenzied Berserker 2 with 10th level xp
Level up with overflow xp
Spellscale (0 RHD, +0 LA) / Barbarian 4 / Frenzied Berserker 6 = 10th level xp

I used a prestige class from Complete Warrior to show how it could work even with Complete Warrior's more restrictive PrC rules.

[Thiyr]

You are also correct that you could meet prerequisites and then lose the prerequisites via RHD. This is only beneficial for PrCs and 2 books (Complete Warrior and something else) will not let you.

I still (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17056540) disagree with this assertion. Cwar and CArc (the other book you're looking for) create a new general rule for this. Discussing this in spoiler 'cause it's not really super relevant to the OP

Note that I only just saw curmudgeon's response to me earlier today, but I hold that he is, surprisingly, mistaken for once. While the ruling does come in a subsection of the PrC chapter regarding The Martial Prestige Classes, this is a descriptive title to a section, not a rules-based qualifier for the section. Everywhere else in that section, including the subsection entitled "Meeting Class Requirements", it reference prestige classes, without the martial qualifier tacked on front.

And even if we use that astoundingly shaky descriptor as a qualifier, that doesn't do anything in regards to the passage in CArc, p17. If Martial Prestige Classes are separate from normal prestige classes in a rules-sense, then CArc's passage has nothing which contradicts it, giving that extra set of restrictions to all PrCs, as a general rule. If martial is being used as a fluff-y descriptor of a section header, then there is no contradiction between the two or any other source in regards to what happens if you stop qualifying for a PrC. And if you STILL think that it's a notable enough divider but the two rules are in conflict, CArc has the later publishing date, and isn't citing/referencing the ruling in CWar, making it the most recent primary source to work off of. Either way, its a general rule which applies to everything.

Hell, this is even further clarified in the Spellscale section of RotD! p32

If you no longer qualify for a prestige class, you lose the benefit of any class features or other special abilities granted by the class. You retain Hit Dice gained from advancing in the class, as well as any improvements to base attack bonus and base save bonuses that the class provided. If you later meet all the prerequisites for the class, you regain the benefits.

This still opens the room for some shenanigans, as was posted earlier in the thread, and fixes the prior rules-hole that you didn't explicitly regain your PrC's abilities if you lost your prereqs and then later regained them.

tl;dr, disqualifying yourself from a PrC has the effects listed in CWar p16, CArc p 17, and RotD p32 regardless of book the PrC is present in, unless there is another book which has an explicitly contradictory ruling elsewhere.


Somewhat more on topic, that Frenzied Berzerker build is actually an amusing way to take advantage, even if it requires a somewhat terrible racial choice given the build. "Early entry" shenanigans require some kind of cost to be paid though, I suppose.

[OldTrees1]

I still (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17056540) disagree with this assertion. Cwar and CArc (the other book you're looking for) create a new general rule for this. Discussing this in spoiler 'cause it's not really super relevant to the OP.

Somewhat more on topic, that Frenzied Berzerker build is actually an amusing way to take advantage, even if it requires a somewhat terrible racial choice given the build. "Early entry" shenanigans require some kind of cost to be paid though, I suppose.

I agree with you but I do not feel like I have enough evidence to argue that position.

The more I think about the Spellscale (formerly Bugbear), the more early entry I can think of it replacing.
BAB: It gives +2 BAB (after 2-3 levels in a PrC, the PrC will self qualify)
Skills: It gives you 6+3Int skill points and max ranks +3 (after 3 levels the PrC will self qualify)
Feats: It gives 1 feat. Take an early entry feat and replace it after the PrC obsoletes the early entry feat.

[Gadora]

I agree with you but I do not feel like I have enough evidence to argue that position.

The more I think about the Spellscale (formerly Bugbear), the more early entry I can think of it replacing.
BAB: It gives +2 BAB (after 2-3 levels in a PrC, the PrC will self qualify)
Skills: It gives you 6+3Int skill points and max ranks +3 (after 3 levels the PrC will self qualify)
Feats: It gives 1 feat. Take an early entry feat and replace it after the PrC obsoletes the early entry feat.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant.