Mageborn Template (PEACH)

[Hunter Noventa]

I'll warn you now, this is my first real attempt at a homebrew anything aside frommy off and on work on a Suikoden setting under d20 rules.

That being said however, enjoy!

The Mageborn
“Human? I might look it, but I'm far more than that my friend...”

Mageborn are normal humanoids who were infused with vast amounts of magical energy before they were even born. Most often there is a long and complicated ritual involved, rarely though, a magical accident can infuse a poor expecting mother with a sufficient amont of energy to create a Mageborn child.

Mageborn always produce mageborn children, regardless of who or what they mate with.

The Mageborn Template
The Mageborn Template is an inherited template that can be applied to any humanoid creature. (referred to hereafter as the base creature). The creatures type remains unchanged, and they gain the following abilities.

Special Attacks:
A Mageborn with an Intelligence or Charisma over 8 gain the following spell-like abilities based on HD.

HD Abilities
1-2 Detect Magic at Will, Prestidigitation at Will, Magic Aura 3/day
3-4 Floating Disk 3/day, Arcane Lock or Misdirection 1/day
5-6 Pyrotechnics 3/day, Dispel Magic or Arcane Sight 1/day
7-8 Remove Curse or Shadow Conjuration 1/day
9-10 Break Enchantment or Shadow Evocation 1/day
11-12 Teleport or Wall of Force 1/day
13-14 Spell Turning or Shadow Conjuration, Greater 1/day
15-16 Dispel Magic, Greater or Globe of Invulnerability 1/day
17-18 Protection from Spells 1/day
19+ Mage's Disjunction 1/day

Ability Scores:
Modify the base creature's ability scores as follows:
Str -2 Int +4 Cha +2

Special Qualities:
Mageborn have Low Light Vision, and Darkvision out to a radius of 60 feet.

Mageborn Crafting(Su):
Mageborn have an innate connection with magical energies. As such, they may craft any magic item they posess the feat, materials and experience for. This funcions as per the Warlock's Imbue Item ability, substituting a Spellcraft check for the Use Magic Device Check, with a base DC of 15 for both arcane and divine spells. Scrolls created in this method cannot be learned from.

Innate Spellpower(Ex):
Mageborn are considered to have one additional caster level when determining The damage of spells and spell like effects. For example, the Fireball of a level 9 Mageborn sorcerer will do 10d6 damage.

Mageborn Manipulation(Ex):
Mageborn add their primary spellcasting class's primary ability modifier, or their intelligence modifier if they have no spellcasting class levels, as an insight bonus on all caster level checks, such as the check to overcome spell resistance.





Things to keep in mind when giving critique:

The idea for the template is as it says at the top, a huamnoid infused with the power of magic. I worked using the Half-Fey template as a relative base, mostly for the levels of available spell-like abilities by HD. I chose the abilities with the manipulation of magic itself in mind, hence the presence of things like shadow conjuration and magic aura. Im fairly happy with most of my choices, though I would like to replace Pyrotechnics with something more interesting, I was just working off the SRD list at the time.

I'm thinking this would have an LA of +2 as it stands, possibly +3.

Anyway, I look forward to your comments!

[Fizban]

LA+2 seems okay, especially since any more removes any possibility of it being an effective caster template.

[Kyace]

You may wish to explain weither or not the spelllike abilities are kept once they move on to the next level. I'm fairly sure you meant for a third level wizard to still be able to detect magic at will, but the table suggests otherwise, that detect magic seems to only work for HDs of 1-2. Unless the chars gain twice the number of uses per day on even levels, you could say that 1+ Detect magic....
3+ Floating Disk....
and so on.

Also, the Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Conjuration as a spell-like ability might be abused, since spell-like abilities require no XP cost. (I don't know of any spell that could be abused, but I'm fairly sure one exists somewhere in the wide range of spelllists.)

Overall, looks like a nifty template, but I don't know enough about casters to say if it is balanced. This reminds me strongly of the cleric's domains, of course that isn't a bad thing, but might give an idea of balance.

[Caduceus]

There's nothing wrong with that table. Look at the familiar table, and it's set up exactly the same. Look at any table that WotC has put into a book (aside from random generation and wealth tables). Does a rogue lose trapfinding at level 2? Of course not, that would be stupid.

Anyway, I like this template. Very well done.

[Neko]

Looks pretty cool. Would be interesting to play as

[Kyace]

There's nothing wrong with that table. Look at the familiar table, and it's set up exactly the same. Look at any table that WotC has put into a book (aside from random generation and wealth tables). Does a rogue lose trapfinding at level 2? Of course not, that would be stupid.

Anyway, I like this template. Very well done.
Good point, I guess I was just too picky.

[Baron Corm]

i'm not so sure why you're emphasizing intelligence. intelligence is merely one's ability to read books and thus learn about magic. charisma, in DND, is one's innate magical ability. a creature infused with magic should get no intelligence bonus at all, and a significant charisma bonus.

[Hunter Noventa]

i'm not so sure why you're emphasizing intelligence. intelligence is merely one's ability to read books and thus learn about magic. charisma, in DND, is one's innate magical ability. a creature infused with magic should get no intelligence bonus at all, and a significant charisma bonus.

That's a good point, I was debating how to distribute the bonuses. I felt that more than just being full of magical power, which they are, a Mageborn also has an innate understanding of magic and how to take it apart and put it back together, which I view as being the domain of intelligence.

On the spell-like abilities, I tried to follow the same sort of pattern that other templates use, and I've always assumed that you kept all the previous abilities as you grew in HD, otherwise templates would be a lot less fun.

One minor issue I came across was deciding on whether to classify abilites as Supernatural or Extraordinary, what do you all think?

Thank you all for the feedback, I plan to run this by my gaming group to see what they have to say about it too. Hopefully I'll be able to use it in the future.

[JoshuaZ]

Looks good. A few quibbles: "Mageborn have an innate connection with magical energies. As such, they may craft any magic item they posess the feat, materials and experience for. To emulate the spel they roll a Spellcraft check with a DC equal to 10 + Spell Level + Item Caster Level." - this wasn't easy to understand initially. I would explicitly specify that this applies even without knowing any of the required spells. Second, does this allow retries and what happens if one fails? For that matter, when in the item creation process is this check made? Third, does this apply to scrolls? If so, I don't see why a wizard mageborn can learn spells simply by scribing them on a scroll and then copying them from the scroll to the spellbook. This seems overpowered. Am I missing something here?

Also there are a few minor spelling errors: "spel" for "spell" in the Mageborn Crafting , "with" for "will" in the "Innate Spellpower", and "isight" for "insight" in Mageborn Manipulation, and "over come" should be one word.

[Hunter Noventa]

Looks good. A few quibbles: "Mageborn have an innate connection with magical energies. As such, they may craft any magic item they posess the feat, materials and experience for. To emulate the spel they roll a Spellcraft check with a DC equal to 10 + Spell Level + Item Caster Level." - this wasn't easy to understand initially. I would explicitly specify that this applies even without knowing any of the required spells. Second, does this allow retries and what happens if one fails? For that matter, when in the item creation process is this check made? Third, does this apply to scrolls? If so, I don't see why a wizard mageborn can learn spells simply by scribing them on a scroll and then copying them from the scroll to the spellbook. This seems overpowered. Am I missing something here?

Also there are a few minor spelling errors: "spel" for "spell" in the Mageborn Crafting , "with" for "will" in the "Innate Spellpower", and "isight" for "insight" in Mageborn Manipulation, and "over come" should be one word.

Thanks for catching that, that could have been a major balance issue. I've reworked it to function like the Warlock's Imbue Item, and tweaked it. I equalized the DCs for arcane and divine spells, but added the stipulation that the scrolls created cannot be learned from, as is the case with the Warlock. It also now has the same failure issues as the Warlock ability.

I also corrected the spelling errors.