[3.5] Tainted Raver LA

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

Just wondering - if you were to house rule Tainted Raver (HoH, p.154) to be a playable template, what LA would you assign it?


Perpetual Rage (EX): much like the Barbarian ability (+4 Str, +4 Con, +2 to Will saves, -2 to AC) but no effect on skills or action you can take
Fast Healing 3 (Ex)
Madness (Ex) (Cha to will saves instead of Wis, immunity to Insanity and Confusion, telepathic contact causes 1d3 Wis damage)
Abilities: Wis -6, Cha +6 (plus raging ability mods as above)


It's good for a melee based character, and very good to Cha based casters (the -2 to AC hurts a little, but +6 to Cha and +4 to Con is fairly strong).

I'm thinking LA +3, but interested to hear what you think.

Cheers - T

[atemu1234]

I'd say that's fair, but as I'm more lenient with LA, I'd say +2 works.

[Xervous]

I'd ballpark this as LA+2

Comparing it to Shadow Creature (LoM) it's roughly on par, fast healing kicks in at ECL 6 for Shadow Creatures and they have pseudo invisibility, a bunch of stat boosts and a save swap can't be worth more than that.

Compare it to Saint and... we get into a discussion of how broken saint is

[Mr Adventurer]

I'd say +1

[VariSami]

Lessee...

Fast Healing is effectively out of combat healing so any amount of Fast Healing maybe below 5 or so should be considered an equally powerful effect. Feral grants Fast Healing and it is a +1 LA template (albeit a strong one) and thus this should not be considered a reason to increase LA beyond +1.

Perpetual Rage should mostly be considered a stat modifier; the bonus to Will only equals Iron Will and the penalty to AC is mostly irrelevant at higher levels of play although it can and will hurt at lower levels. Particularly if the character will wade in melee.

The biggest bonus Madness grants is having Cha to Will instead of Wis which is also equal to a feat (Force of Personality; CAd). The rest are quite situational.

Thus, we have a template which grants Fast Healing and has a net bonus of +8 to stats with a +6 to Cha as its biggest bonus (making it very min-max concerning that stat). Since only casters tend to care about Charisma and they are hurt worst by LA, this should be a consideration. Str and Cha synergize poorly so you will most likely only benefit of one (unless playing a crusader or a sorcerer gish).

Simply because of the stat balance, I would call it a +2 LA template. In higher power play, having it be +1 LA would be passable, I think. Wizards would likely tag it with a +4 LA so if trying to balance it with the majority of templates and races is a thing, having it be +3 LA would do. I would still recommend against that because, well, why would you make something playable only to make it unplayable?