Using Lyconthropy for early entry

[Rebel7284]

I was thinking how many prestige classes can be difficult to qualify for. If only there was a way to get extra hit dice temporarily, then get rid of them once you self-qualify.

Then I realized you can do that by being a lycanthrope and then removing the template later. 100% RAW, no optional retraining rules needed.

So for example, Human Bard 1/Wizard 5/Were Fleshraker 4/Sublime Chord 1/Ultimate Magus 3 +2LA = ECL 16. Use break Enchantment to remove the HD and LA (you also need a DC 20 will save, but that should be trivial) and you become:

Bard 1/Wizard 5/Sublime Chord 1/Ultimate Magus 3 then you gain new levels super fast since you're so behind the party and end up finishing Sublime Chord by the time you're back at ECL 16... oh and I also added an almost full wizard casting to that because that's how I roll. :P

More examples:

Barbarian 1/Were-Dire Lion 8/Bear Warrior 6/LA +2 = ECL 17.. get rid of the animal HD and now you can super quickly get all 10 levels of wear warrior and all the levels of warshaper you wanted on top.

Wizard 1/Were Fleshraker 4/Ur-Priest 4/LA +2 = ECL 11. Full Ur-Priest casting by level 11.

Benefit:
- This is 100% rules legal.
- Lycanthrope isn't too bad of a template, especially if your character already wants to eat face.

Drawbacks:
- With some of the uses, particularly the Ur-Priest one, this can be extremely cheesy. Casting 9th level spells by ECL 11 is broken, even if you have to redo some of those levels.
- Massive jumps in ECL can be difficult to deal with in-game. Imagine playing the bear warrior build from level 1.
At early levels, a were tiger does not fit into the party at all. If allowed at all, it would probably not gain XP for many levels.
Then at level 17, when other are getting 9th level spells, you suddenly lose more than half of your HD... try to not die to a random meteor swarm... xD

What do you guys think?
Can anything more ridiculous than Ur Priest be done with this technique?
On the flip side, considering this is CORE, are there any reasonable and flavorful ways to use this?

Edits:
1. If you are boosting skills with the early entry, note that being human allows you to take Able Learner so that you don't have to spend double on cross-class skills for the animal, potentially significantly lowering the required INT (and hey, humans get extra skills too.)
2. As all HD count as half-initiator level, this has some interesting uses for initiators. On the mild side, taking a 2HD Lycanthrope fixes the Warblade stance progression.

[Baroknik]

Just as a note, using the savage progression web enhancement allows for low level use of this without the large ECL jump...

[Rebel7284]

Just as a note, using the savage progression web enhancement allows for low level use of this without the large ECL jump...

This indeed avoids one of the two ECL jumps, thanks! Although the drawback of this method is that savage progressions have only been defined for Wererat, wereboar, werewolf, weretiger, and werebear. If you want something more exotic, like the werefleshraker I mentioned, you are out of luck.

[black-jack]

Note that if you remove the HD of the were fleshraker, you are losing those levels as well as the skills you gained during those levels. If losing them disqualifies you for a prestige class, then you lose the benefits of that prestige class. So while this is an interesting technique, it wouldn't be too useful for what you're trying to do. Of course, all of this is barring DM yay or nay.

[Rebel7284]

Note that if you remove the HD of the were fleshraker, you are losing those levels as well as the skills you gained during those levels. If losing them disqualifies you for a prestige class, then you lose the benefits of that prestige class. So while this is an interesting technique, it wouldn't be too useful for what you're trying to do. Of course, all of this is barring DM yay or nay.

I take into account that the skills/BaB are lost. Note that i take 4 class levels before removing the 4 wereflashraker HD exactly for the skills. In case of the barbarian, i am cheating the BaB requirement so 6 levels of full BAB class before I remove the 8 animal HD (animal HD have 3/4 BaB).

Also, I appended the OP with a note about Able Learner. Helps with the skills a lot if you are not Int focused as most animals don't have spellcraft on their skill list and stuff. =)

[Chronos]

Losing prerequisites for a prestige class doesn't matter unless the prestige class says so explicitly, or it's from Complete Arcane or Complete Warrior. It especially doesn't matter for Ur-Priest, since every ur-priest loses one of the class's prerequisites.

[black-jack]

I take into account that the skills/BaB are lost. Note that i take 4 class levels before removing the 4 wereflashraker HD exactly for the skills. In case of the barbarian, i am cheating the BaB requirement so 6 levels of full BAB class before I remove the 8 animal HD (animal HD have 3/4 BaB).

Also, I appended the OP with a note about Able Learner. Helps with the skills a lot if you are not Int focused as most animals don't have spellcraft on their skill list and stuff. =)

I didn't notice that on my first read through. I can imagine some DM's wouldn't appreciate this technique, but a very interesting idea regardless.


Losing prerequisites for a prestige class doesn't matter unless the prestige class says so explicitly, or it's from Complete Arcane or Complete Warrior. It especially doesn't matter for Ur-Priest, since every ur-priest loses one of the class's prerequisites.

Ur-priests don't actually require divine casting, just 8 ranks in knowledge religion and a couple feats.



The character must have no ability to cast divine
spells. If such spellcasting ability was previously possessed
(as with an ex-cleric), that ability is forever forsaken.
The character must be trained by another ur-priest.

[Rebel7284]

I think some people take issue about the line "The character must have no ability to cast divine spells" on a class that grants divine casting.

[WhamBamSam]

You don't lose exp for curing lycanthropy, do you? Your Ex-Lycanthrope should still have the exp of a character of whatever ECL it previously was when you cure yourself and lose all the lycanthrope HD and LA. You might be able to level the character right back up without actually needing to play catch up with the party.

You can also meet minimum CL and ML requirements with this trick, using Practiced Spellcaster or Practiced Manifester. Ardents can meet powers known requirements this way (ie an Ardent 1/Were-Fleshraker 4/Ardent +1 with Practiced Manifester can learn 3rd level powers, an Ardent 1/Werebear 8/Ardent +1 with the Magic Mantle, Practiced Manifester, and Practiced Spellcaster, learn 5th level powers).

Meeting BAB prereqs, and the fact that one can accomplish this without help are the most interesting things about this trick. You can break the skill cap in a similar way by having a Bard use Inspire Greatness on you, then having your old skill points PsyRef'ed, but that requires outside help.

What this really needs though, is a catchy name. Maybe we could call it "teaching an old dog new tricks" or something to that effect.

[Rebel7284]

You don't lose exp for curing lycanthropy, do you? Your Ex-Lycanthrope should still have the exp of a character of whatever ECL it previously was when you cure yourself and lose all the lycanthrope HD and LA. You might be able to level the character right back up without actually needing to play catch up with the party.

You know, I am not sure if this was ever addressed in the rules. I personally feel that, just like losing a level to level drain, this would knock your XP down. If anyone can provide a rule otherwise, I would appreciate it. However, if you use Thought Bottle... (haven't met any DMs who haven't implicitly or explicitly banned Thought Bottle, but that's a different story), THAT would allow you to bounce back to your old XP total!


You can also meet minimum CL and ML requirements with this trick, using Practiced Spellcaster or Practiced Manifester. Ardents can meet powers known requirements this way (ie an Ardent 1/Were-Fleshraker 4/Ardent +1 with Practiced Manifester can learn 3rd level powers, an Ardent 1/Werebear 8/Ardent +1 with the Magic Mantle, Practiced Manifester, and Practiced Spellcaster, learn 5th level powers).

There is some argument if the magic mantle actually works that way. With the "most campaigns already treat it this way" line, it seems the intent was to force regular transparency. Regardless, yeah, this is certainly a nice way to get a bunch of higher level powers. =)



Meeting BAB prereqs, and the fact that one can accomplish this without help are the most interesting things about this trick. You can break the skill cap in a similar way by having a Bard use Inspire Greatness on you, then having your old skill points PsyRef'ed, but that requires outside help.


Well not _quite_ without help, you need to locate the right lycanthrope and get it to bite you. :P I do like how Ur-Priests in particular can just use a third level spell to get rid of the curse whenever they want.



What this really needs though, is a catchy name. Maybe we could call it "teaching an old dog new tricks" or something to that effect.

what about:
Furry boosting
Unleash your animal
Werelevel

Edit:
Oh! Pestilence Domain in Complete Divine has Curse of Lycanthropy - 6th level spell that can give you the template. :) Make friends with some evil clerics!

Edit2: And there is also Were Doom spell in case SpC changing the spell completely bothers you. :P

[(Un)Inspired]

Why not call it Lycanhopping?

Lycanthrope sounds kinda like lycanhop

[Forrestfire]

If you're going this far out of your way to get the extra hit dice for skill ranks and BAB and such, why not instead use Reincarnate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm)? There's an extraordinarily funny rules-break in the text:


A reincarnated creature recalls the majority of its former life and form. It retains any class abilities, feats, or skill ranks it formerly possessed. Its class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, and hit points are unchanged.

And you still lose the level or hit die, keeping your skills. Admittedly, the main utility of this is to be able to level into spellcasting prestige classes multiple times on the first level, gaining massively-increased effective level for learning and casting spells. However, it could also be used to eat the lycanthrope levels more cleanly than removing them by getting rid of the curse, since you'd keep your skill points, BAB, saves, and abilities off the race/savage progression, then be able to go into anything else :smallbiggrin:

[Rebel7284]

If you're going this far out of your way to get the extra hit dice for skill ranks and BAB and such, why not instead use Reincarnate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm)? There's an extraordinarily funny rules-break in the text:



And you still lose the level or hit die, keeping your skills. Admittedly, the main utility of this is to be able to level into spellcasting prestige classes multiple times on the first level, gaining massively-increased effective level for learning and casting spells. However, it could also be used to eat the lycanthrope levels more cleanly than removing them by getting rid of the curse, since you'd keep your skill points, BAB, saves, and abilities off the race/savage progression, then be able to go into anything else :smallbiggrin:

Huh. That's pretty poorly worded. That means that any race with HD would retain those benefits RAW... I assume they meant BaB/skills/etc FROM CLASS LEVELS, but that's not what it says.

Seems even cheesier than remove curse, but YMMV.

[Rebel7284]

bumping in case more people would like to offer feedback.

Also, more classes that I find interesting with this approach.

Rogue 1/Sneak Attack Fighter 1/shadow-walker 1/(Animal HD 5)/Telfamar Shadowlord 5

Crusader 1/(Animal HD 8)/Divine Crusader 6

Wizard 1/(Animal HD 7)/Abjurant Champion 5

[daremetoidareyo]

monk 1 + hd 5 animal + slimelord! (PGtF)

skarn warblade 1 + hd 4 animal + spinemeld warrior

human Crusader 1 + HD 4 animal + suel arcanamach

bard 1 + HD 3 animal + war chanter

The thing that I am noticing here is that a lot of lame prestige classes would be better off being out of the box starter classes. Slimelord's abilities are nice for early game but lose their luster if you are getting your capstone at level 15 instead of 11. Same for spinemeld warrior. Maybe, as a diplomacy tactic, one could ask the DM to just start out as the prestige class, rather than using the lycanchassis which is likely to be nixed outright.

[Ettina]

How do you cure lycanthropy, anyway? I thought you could only cure it by drinking belladonna right after you were bitten.