eggynack
2014-10-21, 04:43 PM
As my opening remark, I can only ask the following: What the hell is up with the watchspider? I can answer part of that question now, to guide folks along on the road of oddity. Basically, it's an odd spider creature from the book city of splendors: waterdeep, and for our purposes, it's mostly notable because it's an animal companion that can be taken by a druid at 4th level, and it's a halfway reasonable one at that, with some nifty utility.
And it's a frigging magical beast.
For those not in the know, animal companions are for the most part animals. In fact, they're all animals, to my knowledge, with the exception of this one. I can probably explain the oddity without help, actually. Waterdeep was published in 2005, and the PHB originally had animal companions become magical beasts, which was errata'd in 2006. Waterdeep was not errata'd, however, and I don't think it was updated either.
It is thus apparently fully possible to, within the rules, pick up an animal companion that is a magical beast. So, what do we do with that? My first and best instinct is to try to use this with intelligence boosters. Animals are limited to 2 intelligence or less, and magical beasts are very much not, so while sticking a +int item on a fleshraker might create a rules black-hole, putting it on a watchspider seemingly leaves you with a companion fully capable of communication.
You might even be able to use that new-found intelligence to turn the watchspider towards good, and use that to apply vow of poverty. Granted, that creates new issues where the feat forces the removal of the intelligence, but that can be worked around with inherent bonuses, or if the timing can be worked out, you might be able to use the vow's intelligence bonus to keep things running. You might need something like fox's cunning to keep up the intelligence while you remove the item, but it could work. There might be other tricks though, and I'm interested to see what folks can come up with.
In any case, I promised some fun with fangshields druid substitution levels, and here it goes. The basic idea here it to take the principle of magic based temporary qualification, and apply it to the fangshield's druid's ability to wild shape into humanoids for extended periods. On the simplest level, this can be combined with something like commune with stone (RoF, 189). It's a reasonably powerful divination that is apparently limited to dwarves in some fashion, but now you're a dwarf, so you can cast it. On a more complicated level, this can be combined with something like seeker of the misty isle, granting you the ability to enter the reasonably useful class without wasting your racial choice on an elf. It's a thing that could see some interesting applications, I think, and humanoid wild shape is an ability I've wanted to cheese out for awhile.
And it's a frigging magical beast.
For those not in the know, animal companions are for the most part animals. In fact, they're all animals, to my knowledge, with the exception of this one. I can probably explain the oddity without help, actually. Waterdeep was published in 2005, and the PHB originally had animal companions become magical beasts, which was errata'd in 2006. Waterdeep was not errata'd, however, and I don't think it was updated either.
It is thus apparently fully possible to, within the rules, pick up an animal companion that is a magical beast. So, what do we do with that? My first and best instinct is to try to use this with intelligence boosters. Animals are limited to 2 intelligence or less, and magical beasts are very much not, so while sticking a +int item on a fleshraker might create a rules black-hole, putting it on a watchspider seemingly leaves you with a companion fully capable of communication.
You might even be able to use that new-found intelligence to turn the watchspider towards good, and use that to apply vow of poverty. Granted, that creates new issues where the feat forces the removal of the intelligence, but that can be worked around with inherent bonuses, or if the timing can be worked out, you might be able to use the vow's intelligence bonus to keep things running. You might need something like fox's cunning to keep up the intelligence while you remove the item, but it could work. There might be other tricks though, and I'm interested to see what folks can come up with.
In any case, I promised some fun with fangshields druid substitution levels, and here it goes. The basic idea here it to take the principle of magic based temporary qualification, and apply it to the fangshield's druid's ability to wild shape into humanoids for extended periods. On the simplest level, this can be combined with something like commune with stone (RoF, 189). It's a reasonably powerful divination that is apparently limited to dwarves in some fashion, but now you're a dwarf, so you can cast it. On a more complicated level, this can be combined with something like seeker of the misty isle, granting you the ability to enter the reasonably useful class without wasting your racial choice on an elf. It's a thing that could see some interesting applications, I think, and humanoid wild shape is an ability I've wanted to cheese out for awhile.