Incarnate Life-Shaped Level Adjustment

[Ruethgar]

What would be a fair level adjustment for the following?

Life-Shaped Creation
Small Construct(Life-Shaped)
Hit Dice: 1/2d10+1(3 hp)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 20ft
Armor Class: 13 (+1 Size, +2 Dex)
Full Attack: Unarmed +2 melee (ld3+1)
Special Attacks: None
Special Qualities: Masterwork Hands and Skin, Set Bonus(you gain three item effects costing a maximum of 360g, 200g, and 45g)
Saves: Fort +3, Ref +2, Will +0
Abilities: Str 12, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 11, Cha 7
Skills: Knowledge(Life Shaped) +1, Craft(Life Shaped) -1
Feats: Education
Environment: Any
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Advancement: By Class Level

The Life-Shaped subtype is almost exactly the Living Construct subtype. Looking at it the only things it adds are:

No natural healing
DC 20 Spot to distiguish it from an animal or magical beast
Takes 1dmg/spell level from defiling
Can be hit with construct specific spells
Can be raised but not resurrected
Destroyed at 0 hp
Ability to Enchant: Skin as armor and hands as weapons


Edit: SS Assessment- Small -1, Stats +0, Set Bonus +1, Enchantable +1, -10 HP immune to res no natural healing easily -1

[Extra Anchovies]

This should probably be in the homebrew subforum. I'll leave the decision to report for a move up to you.

So the ability changes are +2 Str, +4 Dex, +2 Con, -4 Int, -4 Cha? That's... not that great, really.
Also:

three item effects costing a maximum of 360g, 200g, and 45g
What item effects fall within that category? What do you even mean by "item effects"? Since this seems to be a creature made from inanimate objects, do you mean that they have three tools or pieces of equipment that are effectively a part of their body?

Takes 1dmg/spell level from defiling
So this is Dark Sun-specific?

I wouldn't give this a level adjustment at all. Doesn't really have anything powerful about it.

[Ruethgar]

Item effects as in enchants. This is almost entirely limited to low level spells with limited uses per day(or week) or minor skill boni. And they are not inanimate objects, they are living pieces of construct on an incarnated creature. It is Dark Sun specific and while it uses custom item creation, it is not homebrew. The life-shaped creature rules say they can be playable but fail to provide an assessment on how to determine LA which is why I come to the playground to gauge how they think a sample simple Life-Shaped creature should compare in LA.

I chose incarnate to avoid the health boost of constructs, but even without it it still only has what amounts to the diehard feat instead of -10 health, also the humanoid targetable may be worth something.

[Extra Anchovies]

Item effects as in enchants. This is almost entirely limited to low level spells with limited uses per day(or week) or minor skill boni. And they are not inanimate objects, they are living pieces of construct on an incarnated creature. It is Dark Sun specific and while it uses custom item creation, it is not homebrew. The life-shaped creature rules say they can be playable but fail to provide an assessment on how to determine LA which is why I come to the playground to gauge how they think a sample simple Life-Shaped creature should compare in LA.
This is off topic, but it's bonuses. we're speaking english here, not latin.
Do these item ability costs follow standard crafting rules? If so, it's pretty balanced; there's not much you can do with a 360g budget that'll break a game.


I chose incarnate to avoid the health boost of constructs, but even without it it still only has what amounts to the diehard feat instead of -10 health, also the humanoid targetable may be worth something.

Hm. Still, doesn't give much more than Warforged does (better ability scores, though). WotC would give this a +1 because they're overly harsh with LA. I'd give it a +0 because a few extra +1's here and there won't destroy party balance, but I'd want to know any game-mechanics factors behind a player choosing this race in case there's some weird interaction somewhere.

[Ruethgar]

The Set Boni are free of cost from simply having their hands, legs, skin and mind(and could be partially removed if you made them a plegic or flayed them). Technically this should be set in stone for the entire race, though multiple builds of the same creature could generate different, potentially random, results in subsequent generations. At any rate the set boni cost nothing.

Enchanting the hands and skin is as normal for enchanting though DM adjudication may be required for determining if they count as armed and armored. The text suggests yes to both.

Life shaped creatures only have support from one book as far as I can tell. And I can't really find anything that would interact weirdly with other game mechanics that you wouldn't already run into with Warforged. This option does give you the customizable appearance on what is essentially a Warforged. Even without incarnate they look like normal living things and are made of flesh. so for people that wanted to play some weird creature, (a Halo Elite, a Starcraft Protos, a Farscape Delvian etc)they could just make a life shaped version to play.

[Ruethgar]

As an extra note, if you are not incarnating it, you can make it look like whatever. I realize after re-reading that I only came up with humanoid-ish examples. But if a player wants to play a tree, a animal, talking furniture, a magical beast with massive LA and RHD? All can be shaped into a life-shaped creature. You would have to adjust the above if you wanted a quadruped or something without hands, but not much different. I did choose small because it has the least adjustments. Any smaller and you get into +6 Dex territory and larger gets Str very quickly. +2, +4, +2, -4, -4 I felt was the fairest array for a playable creature. Plus it fits the fluff of life-shaping since it is a halfling only skill it would make sense that intelligent creatures created from it would be made in their image/size(there is a sidebar for giving it to a rare few others but majority would be halflings).